Why The Republics Want No Part Of Gorbachev’s All-Union Treaty

As the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies struggles to digest the implications of Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze’s surprise resignation, the next trauma looms — its consideration, and the repercussions, of Mikhail Gorbachev’s proposed All-Union Treaty.

World chess champion and Soviet dissident Gary Kasparov accurately described this draft treaty in a letter to the New York Times published on 18 November 1990. He wrote:

The West should not be deceived about the significance of this treaty. Far from being, as President Gorbachev pretends, a consensual union of equals, the Union Treaty is actually a last-ditch effort to save the Soviet empire and communism….[It] will not be an expression of the popular will, but a repressive solution forced upon the republics and the democracy movements. (Emphasis added.)

 

"The Bush Administration stands to compound its serious overinvestment in Gorbachev if it fails to recognize that the All-Union Treaty he is advocating is an instrument of repression — not evidence of a commitment to structural political and economic reform," said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director. "If Secretary Baker truly believes Shevardnadze to be a ‘man of his word,’ he had best take his warning of a dictatorship at face value: Its codification may come in the All-Union Treaty Moscow center is trying to coerce the republics to accept."

The Center for Security Policy heartily agrees with Kasparov’s judgment that:

The interests of the Soviet Union’s peoples would be better served by the establishment of independent, democratic states. The West must decide whether it supports the oppressed or the oppressors. The Union Treaty will not bring progress for the oppressed, but its opposite.

 

In the interest of assisting policy-makers in Washington in properly recognizing — and responding to –the Gorbachev All-Union Treaty, the Center today released an analysis of some of its more important provisions. This paper, entitled Gorbachev’s All-Union Treaty: If the Republics Won’t Take It, Can They Leave It?, may be obtained by contacting the Center.