Soviet Crackdown Watch (Part 10): Bitter Fruits of The Referendum?
(Washington, D.C.): In the aftermath
of Mikhail Gorbachev’s 17 March
referendum — a transparent effort to
justify imposing a more authoritarian
union on the peoples of the Soviet empire
— it appears that Moscow center is
prepared to embark on a new, possibly
bloody phase of repression. The
freshest evidence of the evolving
crackdown is among the most dramatic:
yesterday’s announcement by the USSR
Cabinet of Ministers that all public
demonstrations or rallies in Moscow would
be banned, effective immediately.
TASS reported that the directive
emanates from a 24 March order by
Gorbachev to “ensure public order
and safety in Moscow.” The ban is in
effect until at least 15 April,
making it illegal to hold a mass
demonstration scheduled in support of
Boris Yeltsin for Thursday — the day
hardliners in the Russian Chamber of
Peoples Deputies will try to use their
“wired” majority to topple him
from power. Similarly, it will presumably
preclude public protests likely to occur
when a 70-percent hike in the overall
Soviet price index goes into effect on 2
April.
Other noteworthy developments in the
Crackdown Watch include the following:
- Today, former Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze told the
BBC that a military coup
cannot be excluded if the
military “goes out of
control.” He
cautioned that the new all-union
treaty would not satisfy
republican demands for
independence. - Yesterday, Premier Valentin
Pavlov made clear in a televised
statement that the stonewalling
of the striking coal miners’
political demands by the Kremlin
would continue and
specifically warned against any
inclusion of demands for changes
in Soviet political leadership
(read Gorbachev’s resignation) as
a precondition to returning to
work. - Gorbachev’s order yesterday
banning demonstrations follows,
and is of a piece with, recent
action by the USSR Supreme Soviet
— an organization whose
anti-democratic coloration is
becoming more evident daily. On
21 March, the Supreme Soviet
voted to block a 28 March rally
organized by Democratic Russia to
coincide with the opening of a
RSFSR Congress of People’s
Deputies special session on
Yeltsin’s leadership. It stated
that the rally would create
“an explosive
situation” and would
“disrupt public order.”
Speaking on behalf of this
measure, USSR First Deputy Prime
Minister Vitali Doguzhiev said
the rally would “threaten
people’s lives.” Clearly,
Moscow center wants, under no
circumstances, to see a repeat of
the 500,000 person pro-Yeltsin
demonstration which occurred in
Moscow on the eve of the
referendum. - Also on 21 March, the
USSR Supreme Soviet voted to make
the results of the March 17
referendum on the future of the
Soviet Union binding on all
15 Union republics.
Prior to the referendum, Gorbachev
had made clear that the results
would be non-binding.
Reactionary Supreme Soviet
members denounced what they
called “violations of human
rights by republic governments
under slogans of national
sovereignty and democracy”
in the six republics that
boycotted the referendum. - The recent crackdown on the
Soviet press and resurgence of
the old-style practice of blaming
the United States for Soviet
problems prompted even U.S.
Ambassador Jack Matlock — a man
who has studiously tried to
prevent U.S.-Soviet relations
from being unduly troubled by
Kremlin repression — sharply to
criticize Vremya, the
main Soviet evening television
news program. On 21 March,
Matlock called a press conference
to blast this widely watched news
show which accused the AFL-CIO of
interference in Soviet affairs by
declaring solidarity with
striking Soviet coal miners. - In an interview published in Komsomol’skaya
Pravda on 20 March, KGB
Major Aleksandr Mavrin (an expert
on workers’ movements) disclosed
that KGB regional offices
were directly ordered by the
leadership to follow closely the
“dynamics of independent
workers’ movements and their
interaction with foreign trade
unions and international
organizations.” - In testimony to the House Foreign
Affairs Committee on 20 March, Secretary
of Defense Dick Cheney warned
that the Gorbachev regime was
more likely to crack down because
of his increasing reliance on the
KGB, the Soviet army, and the
Communist Party bureaucracy.
Gorbachev “appears ready to
rely on the security services and
the military and their use of
force to maintain order,”
Cheney said. He added that “In
the absence of ongoing reform,
there is no prospect for a
permanent transformation in
U.S.-Soviet relations.” - On 19 March, Diena
reported that the USSR Finance
Ministry has again demanded that
Latvia pay 4.1 billion
rubles to Moscow center — an
amount exceeding Latvia’s total
annual budget. - In another example of Gorbachev’s
financial terrorism against
Soviet citizens, Agence
France Presse reported on 19
March, citing Interfax,
that a directive to
freeze 50 percent of all savings
held in personal and private
commercial accounts is now being
drafted. USSR Prime
Minister Pavlov reportedly
outlined the plan at a closed
meeting of the USSR Supreme
Soviet on 19 March. Such action
follows closely on the heels of
Gorbachev’s January decree
confiscating an estimated
one-third of the money in
circulation. (See
Crackdown Watch (Part 7): Mikhail
Gorbachev — Financial Terrorist.) - On 18 March, the White House
announced that Viktor G.
Komplektov, a veteran hard-liner,
has been chosen by the Kremlin as
the new ambassador to the United
States, yet another indication of
the retrenching taking place in
Moscow and in the US-Soviet
relationship. Komplektov was
Deputy Director of the USA
Department of the Foreign
Ministry from 1969 to 1978 and
Director of that department from
1978 to 1982. He moved to his
current post as Deputy Foreign
Minister in 1982. - Col. Gen. Vladislav A.
Achalov, the Soviet general who
directed the January crackdown in
the Baltics, was recently named
the Defense Ministry’s top
“enforcer” for civil
unrest — further evidence of the
growing involvement of the
military in domestic police
functions and sinister signal of
the intentions of the leadership.
In a recent report published in Moscow
News, a group of retired
military officers conducting an
independent investigation of the
13 January crackdown in Vilnius
concluded that the action
was planned, approved and
coordinated by the central
leadership, including
President Mikhail Gorbachev,
well in advance.
Contrary to earlier reports, it
now appears that this was a job
assigned to elite military and
KGB units, namely the KGB’s
“speznaz” detachment
attached to its Seventh
Administration, troops from the
Pskov Airborne Division, and tank
units from the Vilnius garrison
— all under Colonel General
Achalov’s command.
In a corresponding development, the Washington
Post today reported continuing
disagreements between the Gorbachev
regime and all other signatories of the
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE)
Treaty over Moscow’s effort to exempt
from the treaty’s mandated reductions
three army divisions cynically
redesignated naval infantry. What should
not be lost sight of in this controversy
is the fact that 60,000 plus pieces of
equipment have been moved by the Soviets
east of the Urals in blatant
circumvention of the treaty. Such forces
include front-line Soviet tanks, armored
personnel carriers and artillery pieces
which could substantially augment Soviet
capacities for bloody repression of
internal dissent.
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