Soviet Union Face-Off on Reform

By John Kohan

The second session of the Congress of People's Deputies had barely begun last week when a bald, stoop-shouldered man hesitantly made his way to the front of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. Mikhail Gorbachev motioned for Deputy Andrei Sakharov to step up to the podium, then settled back in his seat, not quite sure what to expect.

In a quavering voice, Sakharov urged the more than 2,000 parliamentarians to change the agenda of the meeting and discuss deleting articles from the constitution that stand in the way of urgently needed economic reforms. Disapproving murmurs rumbled through the hall. Was Sakharov trying to derail the proceedings? Why was he wasting time with such matters? An impatient Gorbachev finally cut Sakharov off in mid-sentence: "I have the impression that you don't know how to realize your suggestions -- and we don't either."

But Sakharov was not quite finished. He handed Gorbachev a handful of cables supporting the abolition of Article 6, which grants the Communist Party a monopoly on power.

"You come see me," snapped Gorbachev. "I'll give you three files with thousands of such cables . . ."

"I have 60,000 of them," countered Sakharov.

"Let's not put pressure on each other by manipulating public opinion," said Gorbachev, waving his hand. "There's no need." Dismissed, Sakharov slowly walked off the stage.

There have probably been moments, like the one last week, when Gorbachev had second thoughts about the telephone call he made to the city of Gorky in 1986, informing Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner that they could return to Moscow after seven years of political exile. Like the prophets of biblical times who appeared before kings at the most inconvenient times with uncomfortable truths, the distinguished nuclear physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner was always insisting that Soviet citizens deserved better, much better, than what the Soviet system had to offer. But last week's brisk exchange was destined to be the final encounter between two men who have come to symbolize in different ways the mind and soul of perestroika. Two days after the testy exchange, Sakharov, 68, died of a heart attack while sitting alone in the study of his Moscow apartment.

As a subdued Gorbachev looked on, Politburo member Vitali Vorotnikov opened the next day's session of the Congress by asking the Deputies to stand in a moment of silent tribute. Considering the abuse that was once heaped on the former dissident, Vorotnikov's words of praise groaned with irony. "Everything that Sakharov did," he said, "was dictated by his keen conscience and profound humanistic convictions." Whatever bitterness Sakharov's friends may have felt about the way he was treated in the past, the authorities, at least, tried to make amends. An official obituary published on Saturday in the party daily, Pravda, condemned the noted physicist's banishment to Gorky as a "grave injustice."

When grumbling could be heard at the suggestion that Monday's session be cut short to allow Deputies to attend the funeral, Gorbachev intervened, noting that "we ought to pay our respects to Andrei Dimitreyevich." Approached by reporters, Gorbachev delivered a eulogy of his own, hinting at his genuine feelings for the man who had so often challenged him to move further and faster toward overhauling their struggling country. "It is a great loss," he said. "You could agree or not agree with him, but you knew he was a man of conviction and sincerity. He was not a political intriguer. I valued this in him."

From the moment Sakharov returned from Gorky, he was often at odds with the man who gave him his freedom, whether pressing at home for the immediate release of all political prisoners or warning audiences abroad that Gorbachev was amassing too much power. He clashed with the Soviet leader on the opening day of the Congress last May, saying he would support him as President only after an open debate, and was dismissed from the podium on the final day when he tried to outline his own political program.

With his whining voice, rambling syntax and rumpled suits, Sakharov was not cut out to be a public speaker in an era of live television. Sometimes he was all too ready to embrace every needy political cause and seemed in danger of squandering his considerable moral authority. Two weeks before his death, Sakharov joined a handful of Deputies from a radical coalition known as the Interregional Group in calling for a "warning strike" to force Congress to debate Article 6 and a package of reform laws. The strike was a failure, a tactical error that strained relations with Gorbachev, who was already impatient with Sakharov's frequent interruptions at legislative sessions. Nonetheless, Sakharov's death left a permanent void in the ranks of the liberal opposition and deprived the democratic movement of its symbolic leader.

Gorbachev too is likely to regret that Sakharov's prophetic voice has been silenced. Despite their differences, the two men had managed to carry on something resembling a dialogue amid all the clamor at the Congress. Seven months have passed since the new parliament held its first meeting, more than half a year in which political change has outpaced progress in solving economic problems and ethnic tensions. At times last week, Moscow's maestro tried to orchestrate the debate, cutting off talk with a curt "That's all." Still, plenty of sour notes were struck. The Armenian delegation stormed out in protest, radical Lithuanians vented their mistrust of the Kremlin, and ordinary Deputies griped about empty food stores. At one point, a stung Gorbachev even flared, "Don't direct any accusations at me. Just calm down!"

At a time when his popularity has climbed to new heights abroad, Gorbachev must fend off growing attacks at home from two fronts: what he calls the "adventurists" and the "reactionaries." Last week the Soviet leader took on the adventurist radicals, criticizing them for racing "like firemen, with clanging bells" to abolish the constitutional guarantee of Communist Party rule. The Congress decided not to take up the contentious question of Article 6, voting 1,138 to 839, with 56 abstentions. But the margin of victory was not so comfortable that the Kremlin could indefinitely ignore the East European-like rush to multiparty politics. Boris Yeltsin, the ex-Politburo member turned radical populist, urged the leadership to learn the lessons of East Germany, where reforms were delayed so long that they were eventually accomplished within a week -- "without ((Erich)) Honecker."

For all the bluster on the left, Gorbachev's greatest challenge comes from the reactionary conservatives. They make up a bizarre patchwork quilt: hard- line trade unionists and factory workers from groups like the United Worker's Front who oppose a "return to capitalism"; military officials angered by plans to convert defense factories to civilian use; entrenched party apparatchiks who fear the loss of position and privileges; and Russian nationalists who hanker after the Czarist past, many of them aligned with the reactionary Pamyat (Memory) movement. Whatever their ideological differences, the conservatives are united by a concern that the reforms are moving too fast and bringing in alien Western ideas that are pushing the country toward a social breakdown.

Party conservatives who long masqueraded as yea-sayers to Gorbachev have begun to regroup. Leningrad party boss Boris Gidaspov was roundly criticized from the floor of the Congress last week for making "threats against our leader" and "sounding nostalgic notes" for the past. Surprised by the attack, Gidaspov claimed that everything going on in Leningrad was aimed at "speeding up perestroika." Gorbachev watched the whole spectacle impassively from the tribunal.

The Soviet party leader has had his share of bruises lately. He was apparently so angered by the harsh criticisms he heard at the Central Committee plenum two weeks ago that he threatened to resign. Gorbachev has played this trump card on at least two other occasions to rally support. But this time the conservative onslaught was especially fierce, particularly from Alexander Melnikov, party boss from the Siberian city of Kemerovo, one of the sites of coal-mining strikes that swept the nation last July. In an article in the liberal weekly Moscow News, journalist Danil Granin, who was a guest at the plenum, expressed alarm that "here for the first time, not at a factory meeting but from the mouths of leaders of major party committees, I heard direct accusations against Gorbachev." Granin even heard complaints that "if the capitalists and the Pope are praising us, we are taking the wrong road."

A two-stage Five-Year Plan to improve the economy that Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov unveiled last week reflected the tug-of-war going on within the leadership. Ryzhkov made clear that his approach represented a "third alternative" to making minor corrections in central planning or plunging headlong into a free-market economy. Over the next two years, he said, the state intended to use "rigid directive measures" to reduce the national deficit from about 10% to 2.5% of GNP and increase supplies of consumer goods. A real market with varied forms of property ownership would take shape after 1992, he added, when the state would begin to rely primarily on credits, investments, pricing, taxation and other levers for regulating the economy.

Liberals labeled the Ryzhkov proposals a "defeat for perestroika and a victory for central planning." Radical economist Gavril Popov dismissed the new Five-Year Plan as a return to "administrative socialism." Noting that the plan even sets goals for egg production, he quipped, "It's time for the comrades in charge to leave our laying hen in peace so she can provide us with enough eggs by her own efforts."

To keep his reform spirit alive, Gorbachev has continually sought out the middle ground. He feints left, moves right and usually lands in the center. But such compromise policies come at a price, contributing to a widespread feeling that Gorbachev has no clear policies for the future. As Deputy Nina Dedeneva, a textile worker from Omsk, complained at last week's session, "People have ceased to believe in perestroika because the difficulties have only increased, while the period for overcoming them has become too long." Now the Kremlin has asked the people for another five years, and that could prove to be more time than Gorbachev can afford.

With reporting by Paul Hofheinz/Moscow