Soviet Crackdown Watch 9: Baker Stumps for Gorbachev as Sunday’s Vote Sets Stage for Expanded Repression

Even in the dark days following the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Bush Administration’s preference for dictators — who offer repression cloaked as "stability" — over reformers demanding such inconvenient and untidy changes as respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms was never more clear than it is at present. According to Leslie Gelb of the New York Times, the prospect of a revolution for democracy in the Soviet Union "disturbs cooler heads like Mr. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser, who understand the risks and uncertainties of chaos in an empire stretching from Europe to China."

Certainly, this preference has been on display in the U.S. decision thus far to acquiesce in Saddam Hussein’s desperate bid to suppress militarily the rebellion sweeping Iraq — denying any prospect for democracy to take hold there and, in the process, endangering the allied victory won at such great cost. A still more dramatic example of the Administration’s choice of putative "stability" over freedom is Secretary Baker’s evident determination to bolster the ever-more repressive Soviet regime of Mikhail Gorbachev at the expense of the democratic forces throughout the USSR.

In what can only be viewed as a "campaign swing" to Moscow on the eve of a major test of Gorbachev’s influence and power — the nationwide voting Sunday on a referendum on the future of the Soviet Union — the Secretary of State will reportedly try to persuade the leaders of the breakaway republics and other reformers to close ranks with the Soviet president.

The premise underlying this new "Baker Plan" — intended henceforth to govern dealings between the Soviet Union and the industrialized West — is that Gorbachev remains a closet reformer, worthy of their trust. Incredible as this must seem to the bona fide Soviet reformers and democrats with whom he is scheduled to have "photo ops" tomorrow, Baker apparently wants them to believe that Gorbachev is not willingly part of the problem, but a key ingredient of the solution. Unfortunately, the facts continue to speak otherwise:

• On 26 February, in a meeting with the Byelorussian Academy of Sciences carried by the USSR state television, President Gorbachev reiterated, "My dear Party comrades, I am a communist, and I adhere to the socialist idea. And I shall remain so until the end of my days. For me, this matter has been decided once and for all….We should be correctly understood in all countries with whom we maintain relations. Whatever we do is our own affair….The attempts to pose as a tutor towards the Soviet Union, a great state that has contributed so much to the entire world civilization, are unacceptable. Even more inadmissible is a haughty attitude toward us."

 

• Last month, Gorbachev appointed non-reformer Vladimir Orlov, former chairman of the Central Referendum Commission and a protege of the paranoid Prime Minister Pavlov, to the post of Finance Minister.

 

• An even more striking appointment is that of the new Vice President, Gennady Yanayev, an apparatchik whose career was characterized by unswerving loyalty to the KGB and its sister front organizations (e.g., the International Department of the Central Committee). Rather than being a Gorbachev loyalist, however, Yanayev may be the harbinger of a still more doctrinaire and brutal totalitarian regime, should Gorbachev outlive his usefulness to the Communist Party, the army and the KGB.

 

• On 5 March, the USSR Supreme Soviet approved a draft law which would transfer control of the KGB from the USSR Cabinet of Ministers to the USSR President and Supreme Soviet as well as provide legal immunity for KGB officers from Soviet citizens. Under the KGB’s direct command will be four branches of troops, a development unparalleled in the KGB’s history.

 

• On 7 March, Gorbachev blamed parliamentary deputies for the unrest in the mines, exclaiming that "There are parliamentary deputies, especially from the Russian Federation, going around mining regions, calling on people to go on strike."

 

• Also on 7 March, Gorbachev urged the USSR Supreme Soviet last week to forbid unauthorized foreign trips by members of the liberal parliamentary opposition, on the grounds that certain reform-minded deputies have been urging the West to deny credits to the central government. Deputies would be allowed to travel abroad only when permitted to do so by the Supreme Soviet. As Gorbachev put it, "The Supreme Soviet would do well to analyze who does what during trips abroad and offer relevant information in this respect."

 

• Gorbachev reportedly is blaming the activities of these deputies for the substantial reduction in Western credits he was expecting. This is a bitter irony since it was the Jackson-Vanik amendment — abandoned by President Bush on 12 December 1990 — which linked freedom to leave the Soviet Union to access to government-guaranteed credits.

   

• A new eight-man Soviet National Security Council, stacked with hardliners and headed by President Gorbachev, was approved on 7 March by the Soviet parliament. The list of members includes Defense Minister Dimitri Yazov, KGB Chief Vladimir Krychkov, Interior Minister Boris Pugo, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Vice President Yanayev, Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh, and Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov.

 

• A leading U.S. Gorbachev apologist, Professor Stephen Cohen of Princeton University, offered the following preposterous explanation in the New York Times on 11 March 1991 as to why the West should not find fault with the Soviet president’s penchant for surrounding himself with such communist mafiosi:

   

 

"Faced with growing destabilization and opposition, Mr. Gorbachev is trying to save perestroika from collapse or overthrow by forming a coalition with new conservatives who have emerged in traditional bastions of power. While resenting the ‘excesses’ of Mr. Gorbachev’s political reforms and demanding that he hold the union together, they substantially support a market economy and even some democratization. They are not the despotic ‘reactionaries’ Eduard Shevardnadze warned against when he resigned as Foreign Minister." (Emphasis added.)

 

• On 9 March, in a major address at the Film-makers’ Club, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said, "Let’s declare war on the leadership of the country, which is leading us into a quagmire, which is again leading us onto the path of anti-democracy….Gorbachev succeeded in rocking me to sleep with the 500 Days program, pretending that it would be a concerted program, he managed not only to mislead me, but also a man so experienced as Shatalin. He actually told us that the program turned out to be very interesting and constructive and let’s tackle it together.

 

"In October we believed this, something we should not have done. You see, we knew even before that he is constantly lying to the nation, and even more to democrats and democracy….A massive onslaught has been going on for quite a long time now against democracy, including in mass media. They do not disdain any methods: Again we see persecution, dirt, cheap allegations being poured on our heads in larger quantities each passing day….We should launch an offensive. Democracy is under threat….This year is going to be a watershed….For six years of perestroika progressing we were being persuaded that this system would be demolished and we would really be implementing democratic reforms. This turned out to be a lie."

 

• On 10 March, an estimated 500,000 citizens poured into the streets of Moscow in a demonstration of support for Yeltsin and condemnation of the Gorbachev regime. Moscow’s mayor Gavril Popov called for the "uniting of all democratic forces" into a mass people’s party "capable of standing up to the Communist party." Other anti-Gorbachev rallies were also held on Sunday in Uldan-Ude, Petropavlovsk/Kamchatcky, Vladisostock, Tomsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Izhevsk, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Kazan, Volgograd, Stravropol, and Rostov.

 

• On 12 March, Grigory I. Revenko, Gorbachev’s chief adviser on the All-Union Treaty, issued a Kremlin warning that a "no" vote against the preservation of the union would move the country "back to 1917 and civil war."

 

• In one of the clearest indications of the passing of glasnost and the unfair, unfree quality of the balloting on the All-Union Treaty referendum, Leonid Kravchenko, chairman of the USSR State Committee for Broadcasting, declined on 15 March to give Russian President one hour of air time for an address to his fellow citizens. The grounds given for this action were the "public outcry" following Yeltsin’s 9 March speech and "a generally adverse political situation." Prophetically, Yeltsin warned the day before that, "Unfortunately, recent indications are that glasnost may be reversed."

The Center notes that, while it is easy enough to understand Secretary Baker’s view that the massive internal Soviet opposition should see Gorbachev as a man with whom business can be done — as the U.S., British and other G-7 governments so palpably do — it is less obvious why such a callous, expediency-driven approach would appeal to reformers who know better.

After all, the reformers understand only too clearly that, having none of the central authorities instruments of power (the KGB, the military, the economic levers and communist party cells permeating every aspect of Soviet life), their only hope for change lies with differentiating themselves morally, politically and economically. This requires that they preserve their right to strike, to demonstrate, to demand the resignation of the unelected, discredited regime and — above all — to reject the All-Union Treaty Gorbachev wishes to impose upon them.

"It would be tragic if the Baker ‘United you stand, divided you fall’ proposition were to be viewed by Gorbachev as reinforcing of his own well-known, fearmongering techniques designed to intimidate reformers into a cooperative posture," said Roger W. Robinson, Jr. a member of the Center’s Board of Advisors. "This is no time for ‘constructive ambiguity’ in U.S. and Western policy toward the Soviet Union. The United States must make clear that it stands firmly with the genuine democratic forces in the USSR — which now so clearly do not include Mikhail Gorbachev."

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director, noted, "One message is in order for the genuine democrats meeting with Jim Baker tomorrow: Beware the Ides of March! They — like their counterparts in Albania and Yugoslavia — are at the threshold of a second East European revolution, what might be called ‘Liberation II.’

Gaffney added, "We must stand with those determined to achieve freedom, not the repressive central authorities equally determined to deny them their fundamental liberties. After all, even more is at stake for Western interests and world peace in this historic catharsis than was involved in 1989."