SOVIET TRANSFORMATION WATCH #2: THERE’S BAD NEWS…AND THERE’S GHOULISH NEWS

(Washington, D.C.): Events of the past
week have raised serious
questions about the prospects for a
genuinely democratic transformation in
the former Soviet Union — even as they
have cast fresh light on the appalling
character of the ancien regime.
While the latter revelations of the
depravity of the old order foster hope
that neither the erstwhile subjects of
Soviet misrule nor the West will accept a
return of the demonstrably “Evil
Empire,” it appears that Mikhail
Gorbachev and others on the new ruling
State Council may have other ideas in
mind.

In a striking report from Moscow
published in yesterday’s New York
Times, Francis X. Clines — long one
of Gorbachev’s most unabashed admirers —
raised an alarum over the undemocratic,
if not patently antidemocratic, behavior
of the post-coup leadership. Entitled “Gorbachev
and His Friends Cut a New Deal,”
this article cites the following as
grounds for concern over the latest
manifestation of the classic Leninist
technique of serving up totalitarian old
wine in more palatable new bottles:

There is precious little
indication of when, under the new
governing arrangements,
“the people will again be
invited back into the system through
free elections, a workable
constitution and an independent
legislature.”

“Sponsors of the new
[governing] mechanism…promised
that the State Council
would be genuinely transitional until
a new constitution and elections
could be prepared and democratic
guarantees spelled out. But
crisis has a way of ever
travelling here, as politicians
rationalize their ineffectiveness
and continually amend anti-crisis
plans that never seem to be set
long enough to be tested beyond
debate.”

“…The condemnation
and suspension of Communism that
followed the failed
coup has caused a scramble in
many republics by government
leaders forced
into molting overnight. Azerbaijan
finally holds a direct
presidential election today in
which its newest anti-Communist,
Ayaz Mutalibov, of late the
party chief and parliament
chairman, is running unopposed.
He thus is waiting to reap
the post-Communist future as a
veritable republic chieftain and
one of 11 members of the national
State Council.”

“In the writing of
the latest anti-crisis plan,
references to ‘constitution’ were
struck from the
legislation to mollify
the Ukraine [also led by a man
who was, until recently, chief of
the Communist Party], where the
nationalist movement is heady now
with demands for pre-eminence for
the republics. A new union body
of permanent law and principles
reflecting decentralized
authority is still promised. But
for expediency’s sake the C-word
is out for now.”

“…There is the
question of how President
Gorbachev might behave in
relation to the new State
Council. He has already
issued his own decree, a vague
one on economic management tasks
ahead….It was not clear whether
this was an action of the new
council or solely of Mr.
Gorbachev….”

“The State Council’s initial
action in recognizing the Baltic
republics was announced by the
Foreign Ministry, with no direct
report from council members. The
first council meeting
in the Kremlin was notable —
some would say ominous
— for the sparse
information that
followed, a style reminiscent of
the old Politburo, except that
the methods of
Communism now are supposed to
be suspended.”
(Emphasis added throughout.)

Interestingly, CBS News — which has,
evidently under the fatuously
pro-Gorbachev influence of its consultant
Professor Stephen Cohen of Princeton,
done more than any other American
television network to suggest that
“the methods of Communism were
suspended” long before the
August 1991 coup — has recently
broadcast two reports to the ghoulish
contrary.

On 6 September 1991, the CBS
Evening News aired footage shot
by the first Western camera crew to visit
the Kazakh region near the Semipalatinsk
nuclear test site. It captured
evidence of the mind-boggling
human toll exacted by Soviet indifference
to the most rudimentary
testing-safety precautions.

This practice has, over the years,
resulted in the routine venting of
radioactive contamination from Soviet
underground tests. When — as it did
scores of times — such radioactivity was
dispersed beyond Soviet borders, the
USSR was in violation of international
obligations assumed under the Limited
Test Ban Treaty of 1963. In any event, as
graphically portrayed by this report, the
Soviet government’s wanton disregard of
the health of its people
exposed them in incalculable numbers to
crippling, mutating and even lethal
doses of radioactive elements. To
this day, no warning has been issued
about contamination of the land and
water.

Subsequently, on 8 September, CBS’s 60
Minutes scored another
journalistic coup by revealing the
existence and continued operation
of a Mengele-style
“scientific” research
institution in Moscow. Known as the
Institute of the Brain, this organization
was created by Stalin to prove his
preposterous theory that within the
crania of leading Communists was some
common physiological attribute that made
them the “true master race.”

More staggering even than the fact
that within the Institute’s super-secret
“Room 19” were — in the words
of the reporter — the brains of the
Soviet counterparts of “George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham
Lincoln, Roosevelt, Robert Frost…”
was another revelation: Since leading
Communists had declined to leave their
brains to the Institute in recent years,
a special mobile unit was created to
secure brains “on short notice”
when the occasion arose. According to 60
Minutes, one of those who was brain-jacked
in this fashion after his untimely
death in December 1989 was the heroic anti-communist,
Andrei Sakharov.

The Center for Security Policy
believes that every effort must be made,
both by the former subjects of the USSR
and by the West, to ensure that the
full record of Soviet crimes
against humanity is brought to light. Only
by so doing is there any hope that
Communist totalitarianism — in all of
its manifestations — can be utterly
discredited and, more importantly,
effectively and permanently rooted out of
power.