Soviet Union Back-Alley Politics in the Kremlin

By David Brand

The candidate seeking election goes on television to accuse one of his country's leading politicians of corruption. The injured politician denounces his accuser. The government launches an investigation, and the investigators blast the candidate. The incident would not be out of place in a Western capital. But this, last week, was the Soviet Union, which is finding that one side effect of glasnost is political alley fighting in public.

The accused politician is none other than Yegor Ligachev, 68, the ruling Politburo's leading conservative. His accusers are Telman Gdlyan and Nikolai Ivanov, government prosecutors who specialize in rooting out official corruption in central Asia.

The fiery Gdlyan, 48, spent five years uncovering a corruption scandal in Uzbekistan and became a popular hero when it led to the conviction last year of Yuri Churbanov, son-in-law of the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Early this month, at a meeting of Moscow-based members of the new legislature attended by Mikhail Gorbachev, Gdlyan delivered a 47-minute speech charging top Communists with corruption. Soviet sources say that when he finished, Gorbachev advised him to make sure he was right "because I will ask you tough questions." A few days later, Pravda disclosed that Gdlyan would be suspended from his post as prosecutor. The official reason: misconduct in a 1983 corruption investigation of Estonian scientist and nationalist Johannes Khint.

But the Khint case was not the real issue, according to Gdlyan's colleague, Ivanov, 37. During a televised debate Ivanov, who was running for a Leningrad seat in the legislature, said Gdlyan was suspended because his investigations had begun to implicate leading officials, including Ligachev and former Politburo members Grigori Romanov and Mikhail Solomentsev.

The next day Pravda denounced both Ivanov and Gdlyan for their "provocative statements" and announced that a special government commission would investigate the prosecutors' "methods." Ligachev then issued a public denial of the allegations and described them as "political provocation." The commission wasted no time in issuing a lengthy report at week's end that assailed Gdlyan's professional conduct and charged him with "insulting people who were under arrest."

Even some liberals criticize Gdlyan. Last week Yegor Yakovlev, editor of the reform-minded Moscow News, tore into him for "the tragedy" of the Khint case. Others say Gdlyan and Ivanov are using public accusations to promote their political careers. If that's so, it appears to be working: Ivanov won his seat with 61% of the vote.

Opinion is also divided over the validity of Gdlyan's charges. "Ligachev is a perfectly incorruptible man," insists Sovietologist Michel Tatu of the French newspaper Le Monde. "As the guardian of party orthodoxy and authority, his aims are political, not personal." Ultimately at stake, perhaps, is the corruption of official life that is being exposed by the new politics. As Tatu notes, "There's been a general awakening as to just how rotten the regime is."

With reporting by Ann Blackman and Paul Hofheinz/Moscow