Soviet Crackdown Watch (Part 2)

As part of its continuing monitoring of the coming Soviet crackdown, the Center for Security Policy adds the following developments to its list of worrisome indicators:

• Speaking on the orders of President Gorbachev, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov stated in a televised address on 11 December that the KGB would wage battle "with all the means at their disposal" against "anti-communist" forces from within the country and abroad that threaten the authority of Soviet central power.

 

• Kryuchkov also said, "The KGB has made its choice, to defend the socialist motherland….The KGB will protect law and order and block all forces trying to tear the union apart." In classic KGB fashion, Kryuchkov blamed the country’s problems on Western intelligence agencies, stating that "Certain radical political movements are being masterminded by foreign support…When our country needs unity as never before, we are coming up against forces who would undermine our fraternity."

   

• Yesterday, President Gorbachev reinforced Kryuchkov’s statement and urged the Communist Party leadership to fight those "who are trying to topple the Soviet Union….We must not give a helping hand to those who are trying to topple the Soviet Union under the guise of criticizing the old center."

 

• Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis told a news conference in Washington on Tuesday that Lithuania has once again been threatened with an economic blockade from Moscow. Gorbachev has threatened to stop the delivery of food, fuel, raw materials, metal, wood, electronic goods and construction materials on 1 January 1991 unless Lithuania agrees to remain within USSR central planning and surrenders its hard currency earnings to the USSR.

 

• Latvian Deputy Prime Minister Bisers said Monday that he anticipates staged incidents in his country designed to provide a pretext for "presidential rule."

 

• The Financial Times today reports that "In the past two weeks alone, [Gorbachev] has been forced to fall back on the three fundamental pillars of the old Soviet system — the Communist Party, the military, and the KGB." Referring to the Kryuchkov speech on Tuesday, the FT opines that "If he means what he says, it bodes ill for the whole process of reform. Mr. Kryuchkov’s vision of the world is fundamentally at odds with a switch both to a market economy and to a multiparty democracy."

"It is astounding that President Bush would act to waive the Jackson-Vanik amendment tying preferential treatment to Soviet respect for human rights in the midst of mounting evidence of an imminent and probably bloody Soviet crackdown," noted Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director. "It is his clearest sign yet that he favors the appearance of ‘stability’ offered by repressive regimes over the often untidy but indispensable exercise of human rights, political freedoms, and economic opportunity by democratic forces in the USSR and elsewhere."

Gaffney added, "Still more amazing is the fact that President Bush seems utterly untroubled by the mañana treatment he keeps getting from Gorbachev on enacting free emigration legislation. Even Mr. Bush must be wondering: Since the Soviet Parliament does Gorbachev’s bidding, is its continued failure to pass this long-promised bill just another sign that the crackdown is coming — or is it possibly a sign of Mr. Gorbachev’s contempt for President Bush and his now famous penchant for making commitments and establishing preconditions, and then abandoning them?"

Attached is a copy of an op.ed. article that addresses aspects of this subject published by Center Board of Advisor member Roger W. Robinson, Jr. in today’s Wall Street Journal.