MOSCOW’S POTEMKIN ‘REFORMS,’ NEW ‘OPPOSITION’ GROUP: MORE FROM THE FOLKS WHO BROUGHT YOU PERESTROIKA
(Washington, D.C.): As the Soviet
campaign to win new economic concessions
from the West enters the home stretch in
the run-up to the London Economic Summit,
Moscow center is pulling out all the
stops. Scarcely a day goes by without an
announcement of some Kremlin policy
shift, some legislative action by the
Gorbachev-dominated Supreme Soviet or
some nominally unauthorized
initiative being taken by close Gorbachev
associates.
What these steps have in
common is a cynical attempt to mollify
Western concerns about the Soviet central
authorities’ commitment to fundamental
reform — without altering
meaningfully their actual control over
the levers of power. A
partial listing of recent examples of
such initiatives includes the following:
- Erstwhile Gorbachev economic
advisor Gregori Yavlinski has
been the prime Soviet mover
behind the so-called “Grand
Bargain” proposal developed
with Harvard academics over the
past two months. Gorbachev has
coyly indicated his personal
interest in this deal featuring
at least $120 billion in Western
aid flows over the next few years
in exchange for the promise
of reform in the USSR. Even as he
has done so, the Soviet president
has allowed his prime minister,
Valentin Pavlov, and other
cohorts to go unchallenged in
denouncing it and ridiculing its
terms. Fortunately for Western
taxpayers and genuine reformers
in the USSR, this deal seems to
have died aborning as a result of
premature exposure to critical
examination in the West. - The Supreme Soviet passed what
Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ)
described as the equivalent of a “sense
of the Senate resolution”
concerning the right of Soviet
citizens to emigrate from the
USSR. The act established that
such a right would be protected
by law starting in 1993
and subject to certain
conditions. Remarkably, such a
flim-flam was viewed by the Bush
Administration as sufficient
grounds to waive the
Jackson-Vanik Amendment — even
though it fell far short of that
Amendment’s requirements for
genuinely free emigration, to say
nothing of meeting President
Bush’s own, previously stated
requirements for a full
codification of this right and
a period during which its
faithful implementation could be
observed. - Ironically, just yesterday,
published reports in the New
York Times and elsewhere
indicated the pernicious effect
that the new emigration
“law” is having on the
flow of people leaving the USSR.
In an article entitled “Rush
of Soviet Immigrants to
Israel,” the Times
revealed that: - The Supreme Soviet also acted
recently to make it possible, in
principle, for Soviet citizens to
own land privately. The terms and
conditions applied to that
ownership, however, are such as
to make it exceedingly difficult
for the average Soviet to acquire
title — even if, despite bitter
historical experience to the
contrary (notably, Stalin’s
violent repression of kulaks who
took advantage of an earlier
liberalization to own their own
farms), they actually believe the
government will faithfully honor
such transactions in the future. - On 1 July 1991, the Supreme
Soviet also adopted a new statute
authorizing the private ownership
of as much as 70% of state-owned
properties. As with most other
reform legislation, this
authorization is substantially
emasculated by conditions,
caveats and exceptions that will
greatly reduce its effect in
opening up the Soviet economy to
free market forces. - In a marvelous indictment of this
legislation and its sister
“reforms” enacted in
recent weeks by the Supreme
Soviet, yesterday’s New York
Times quoted an obviously
jaded, but quite realistic,
Western businessman who has
worked in Moscow for five years
as saying: - Also on 1 July, nine present or
former close associates of
Mikhail Gorbachev — led by
former Soviet Foreign Minister
Eduard Shevardnadze — agreed to
organize a political opposition
group. The exact intentions of
this group are unclear; it might
or might not form an actual
opposition party in September to
campaign against the Communist
Party. All of the organizers,
however, have been intimately
associated with the Communist
Party. Some, like Shevardnadze
continue to be Party members.
Several, notably Shevardnadze,
have moreover rather unsavory
records as apparatchiks; href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=91-P_59at”>the
attached article by Michael
Ledeen which appeared in the Wall
Street Journal on 13 May
1991 documents some aspects of
the former Foreign Minister’s
career administering the KGB in
his native Georgia. - What is rather more clear is that
this initiative may
constitute the life boat for the
Communist Party — the
vehicle whereby communists can
affect a more “human
face” calling themselves
Social Democrats or by some other
moniker, much as they have done
elsewhere in the former Soviet
bloc. The involvement of
Gorbachev’s intimates, if not
Gorbachev himself, in such an
undertaking suggests furthermore
that this movement is yet
another in a series of steps that
appear to challenge the
old order he continues to lead
but that actually help him to
channel and control such
challenges —
rendering them ineffectual in
every respect except in
impressing the West with Kremlin
tolerance for “change.” - Equally indicative of the true
character of this
“opposition” group is the
absence of bona fide reformers
like Boris Yeltsin and Gary
Kasparov whose loyalties lie
unmistakeably with the
anti-communist reformers
— something that cannot be
said of the mayors of Leningrad
and Moscow (Anatoly Sobchak and
Gavril Popov, respectively).
“A sudden rush of
new immigrants, eager to
leave the Soviet Union before
its new passport law
took effect today, pushed
Soviet immigration for
June to its highest total
since October….But
Israeli officials said the
same forces that caused
the sudden rush would
probably reduce
immigration to a mere
tricklein July.
Starting July 1, every
Soviet citizen who leaves
the country must have a
passport…there is
apparently some doubt
about the Soviet
bureaucracy’s ability to
[ensure that every
would-be Soviet Jewish
emigrant will get a
passport quickly].”
(Emphasis added.)
“In the past year or
so, the Supreme Soviet
keeps passing laws in
which the title sounds
right but the details
don’t add up to what you
would think was promised.
They pass a law on free
emigration and travel and
you can’t leave freely.
They authorize private
land ownership, but you
can’t buy and sell land.
And now, we have this
spanking new law on
privatization where it
would seem you can’t buy
an enterprise.”
The Center for Security Policy believes
that the Bush Administration and
its counterparts in Western capitals must
exercise great care in distinguishing real
systemic change from Moscow center’s
potemkin reform machinations. It
would be an egregious mistake to reward
the Soviet central authorities for
undertaking the former — through
liberalized access to
taxpayer-underwritten assistance,
technology transfers, arms control
concessions or other devices — when, in
fact, they have (at most) engaged in the
latter.
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