Let The Parties Begin

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

"REGRETTABLY, WE ARE BEGINNING TO DISCARD EVERYTHING OLD WITH EASE, INCLUDING THOSE THINGS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN OF USE TODAY."

Yegor Ligachev, conservative Politburo member

"THIS IS GORBACHEV'S LAST CHANCE. EITHER HE ACTS OR HE LOSES US."

Boris Yeltsin, Moscow parliamentarian and reformer

"THE MANAGEMENT OF THE STATE IS FALLING FAST. MINISTRIES ARE COMPLETELY PARALYZED."

Boris Gidaspov, Leningrad party chief

"WE DO NOT THINK ANY SINGLE PARTY SHOULD PRETEND TO HAVE A MONOPOLY."

Alexander Yakovlev, Politburo member and Gorbachev supporter

"IT IS TOO LATE TO DISCUSS WHETHER THE COUNTRY NEEDS A MULTIPARTY SYSTEM OR NOT. IT IS A FAIT ACCOMPLI."

Nikolai Ryzhkov, Prime Minister

"WE HAVE BROUGHT THE MOTHERLAND TO AN AWFUL STATE, TURNING IT FROM AN EMPIRE ADMIRED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD TO A STATE WITH AN INGLORIOUS PRESENT AND INDEFINITE FUTURE."

Vladimir Brovikov, Ambassador to Poland

The first signal that Mikhail Gorbachev's three-day ordeal was over came shortly before 9:30 p.m. last Wednesday, when the television lights in the auditorium of the Foreign Ministry suddenly flashed on. For three hours the Moscow press corps had been waiting impatiently for a delegation of party officials, led by Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev and Vice President Anatoli Lukyanov, to bring news of the final hours of the plenum of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. The event had been billed as a make-or-break meeting for the Soviet leader and his unprecedented program of political and economic reforms. The question now was whether Gorbachev had been able to continue his remarkable winning streak and once again prevail over entrenched party conservatives.

There was no need to ask. As the Kremlin emissaries filed onto the stage, the answer was written all over their faces. The normally dour Lukyanov let a grin slip. The balding and bespectacled Yakovlev looked like a schoolboy who had just received straight A's. After praising the plenum as a "major step . . . away from an authoritarian-bureaucr atic model of socialism toward a democratic society that has opted for socialism," Yakovlev was asked how the meeting had affected Gorbachev's position. A smile, then the reply: "Very, very positively."

Very, very true. It is easy in these days of sweeping change in the communist world to grow jaded about events, to use words like "historic" and "stunning" so often that the superlatives lose their meaning and all the headlines merge into a gray blur. But what Gorbachev accomplished last week truly is historic. Though there is still much debate about how the reforms will play out, February 1990 may go down in Soviet history as a month equal in significance to February 1917, when the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty ended with the abdication of Czar Nicholas II.

After a rancorous debate, the 249-member Central Committee approved a draft platform that will in effect end the Communist Party's seven-decade-long monopoly on political and economic life. Furthermore, the Central Committee proposed an overhaul of the party's ruling Politburo and the creation of a presidential system of government, putting extensive authority into Gorbachev's hands and granting him, at least on paper, more power than any other leader in Soviet history. Not bad for a party man who only two weeks ago was rumored to be resigning.

Gorbachev, of course, has been reported to be in political trouble almost from the day he took office, nearly five years ago. As he joked last summer, he had already died seven times and his family had been killed three times. Since the beginning of this year, however, there have been signs that the Soviet leader was stumbling in his masterly balancing act. Despite his personal mediation, Lithuanian Communists vowed to continue on their defiant course of independence from Moscow. In the Caucasus ethnic tensions exploded in a virtual civil war, forcing Moscow to send tanks into Azerbaijan in defense of Soviet power. Meanwhile, grumbling about a vacuum of leadership at the center has grown audible, as food and consumer goods dwindled and crime and corruption increased. It was all evidence for Gorbachev's conservative opponents that his brand of reform was pushing the country into chaos.

Nor has the radical left been satisfied with Gorbachev's preference for staying close to the center. Party committees toppled as rank-and-file Communists vented their anger at local apparatchiks who were flaunting their privileges at a time when everyone else had to wait in line. Just before the plenum, Gorbachev got an earful from a delegation of miners, many of them activists in last summer's wildcat coal strikes. One worker advised him, "You need to determine more precisely just whose side you are on in this battle." Gorbachev seemed surprised at the criticism, asking, "You mean to say it isn't clear?" No, not for most Soviets. At least not until last week's plenum.

On the eve of the meeting, radical-minded reformers staged their most impressive political strike so far. Indeed, it is difficult to come up with anything comparable since the early years of the Bolshevik regime. A crowd of more than 200,000 wound its way through the center of Moscow to the very shadow of the Kremlin walls for a rally promoting democratic change. The message was clear from the banners bobbing above the marchers: SOVIET COMMUNIST PARTY, WE'RE TIRED OF YOU! . . . AWAY WITH LIGACHEV AND HIS CLIQUE . . . 72 YEARS ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE. If reform-shy regional party secretaries gathered for the plenum needed a graphic reminder of the dangers of delaying change, they had only to look out their hotel windows at the sea of protesters.

The next day Gorbachev was outwardly composed as he delivered his opening address, but participants detected a quaver of tension in his voice. It was not his purpose, he said, "to dramatize the situation and impart a tragic character" to the fateful decisions facing the plenum, but "the party will be able to fulfill its mission as a political vanguard only if it drastically restructures itself, masters the art of political work in present conditions and succeeds in cooperating with all forces committed to perestroika." No burst of thunderous applause greeted the end of his hour-long speech. After enduring a gauntlet of criticism at a plenum last December, Gorbachev was prepared to play to a tough audience again, with one major difference -- this time, a full transcript of the closed-door sessions was to appear each day in Pravda.

Despite the harsh words directed at his programs over the next three days, Gorbachev, who has been known to lose his temper in public, betrayed little emotion. He made a point of exchanging pleasantries with Politburo member Yegor Ligachev, the de facto leader of the conservative opposition, when Ligachev returned to his seat after delivering a demagogic rebuttal to Gorbachev's platform. When the vote to approve the document was finally taken -- and passed with only one dissenting vote, from populist Boris Yeltsin -- the Soviet leader broke with tradition and invited the 108 candidate members of the Central Committee and more than a hundred guests to join in expressing their views. This time the response was a unanimous show of hands. The platform, which still must be approved by the party's congress this summer, is not so much a specific blueprint as a rough sketch for reform. Some Central Committee members complained that they received the document only when they arrived for the plenum -- suggesting that it was either drafted in haste or deliberately held back to put conservative forces at a disadvantage. The major points:

-- Article VI of the Soviet constitution should be revised, ending the "leading" role of the Communist Party and entertaining the possibility of granting official recognition to other political movements.

Never one to be bound by foolish consistency, Gorbachev dismissed the notion of a multiparty system as "rubbish" just a year ago and warned against taking a hasty decision on Article VI at the Congress of People's Deputies in December. Then, on his visit to Lithuania in January, he lobbed a political hand grenade, off-handedly remarking that he saw "no tragedy" in the development of a multiparty system. Last week he said the Communist Party would still struggle to play a leading role but "within the framework of the democratic process by giving up all legal and political advantages." The * Communists, he said, recognized that alternative parties might develop and were prepared to cooperate and conduct dialogue "with all organizations committed to the Soviet constitution and the social system endorsed in this constitution." But the statement did not spell out what the Kremlin's attitude would be toward political groups that do not support a socialist system.

When will the Soviet Union become a multiparty democracy? Given the current Communist monopoly on power and a tentacular organizational structure reaching across the country, probably not any time soon. Yakovlev cautioned last week against drawing too many comparisons between events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, pointing out that most of those countries enjoyed a tradition of multiparty politics. One interim stage might be the formation of national fronts, uniting Communist factions. Groups advocating "fascism, terrorism, militarism and nationalist extremism" will not meet the criterion for registration, but it is unclear just who will decide who qualifies.

-- The Politburo and Central Committee should be reorganized into new party councils.

Liberals expressed disappointment last week that there had been no personnel changes in the Central Committee. Gorbachev may have decided that there was no point in shuffling the Politburo if the institution's days are numbered anyway. Current plans call for the creation of a Central Committee Presidium of about 30 members, presided over by a chairman and two deputies. In a bid to halt the secessionist trend begun by the Lithuanian Communists, the Presidium would include representatives from all 15 republics.

Gorbachev also wants a new, streamlined Central Committee, "working on a permanent basis" with only 200 voting members, instead of the present 249 voting and 108 nonvoting members. He also spoke out against electing members simply because they held important posts, terming the practice an "expression of the party-and-state system of power." The proposed arithmetic had its critics, most notably Ambassador to Poland Vladimir Brovikov, who sarcastically wondered whether "democracy within the party will decline if there are 500 people in the hall instead of the 200 suggested in the document." But Victor Lomin, one of the visiting miners invited to the meeting by Gorbachev, took a different view of the Central Committee: "My first impression was that I was in an old people's home. I think these people can decide absolutely nothing."

< -- A new presidential post should be created, invested with full executive and administrative powers.

As chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Gorbachev seems to spend most of his time as a speaker of the house, presiding over excruciatingly long parliamentary debates. The plenum discussed plans to invest the position with enhanced powers, creating a presidency more along the lines of the American or French model. The Soviet President's new portfolio is likely to include national security, foreign policy, the KGB and police and oversight of economic reforms. Georgi Arbatov, the country's best-known Americanologist, believes the new President should have veto powers, noting that "we should carefully study the American experience on this." For the present, the President would continue to be elected by the Congress of People's Deputies -- although the notion of direct popular election could be introduced into a new constitution.

Such a post would seem tailored for Gorbachev, making him in effect the guardian of perestroika, a powerful overseer who could serve as an arbiter among political interest groups, prodding the parliament into action and blocking legislation that contradicted his vision of reform. In short, the new President would be the "iron hand" at the center advocated by both proponents and enemies of radical reform during the transition to a state governed by law. Pravda editor Ivan Frolov says "the idea of a presidential structure was born out of Gorbachev's personality . . . I would vote for Gorbachev with the assurance that he would be elected." But would Gorbachev run for the office as a Communist? Asked that question during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, Gorbachev responded, "Let's wait and see."

-- All forms of property should be allowed, except that resulting from the exploitation of one citizen by another.

Is the Communist Party ready to endorse the notion of private property? Not in so many words. Moscow party boss Yuri Prokofiyev, who was a member of the committee revising the platform, reported that the debate last week over property was so intense that "it took hours just to write one sentence." Sometimes the differences appeared to be more semantic than real. Instead of "private" property, for example, the document was amended to read property derived from "individual labor." The new easing of restrictions might allow for the emergence of small, privately owned businesses or permit factories to form their own private production units for the manufacture of, say, tools or farm implements.

The platform affirms that farmers should have the right to lease land (with rights of inheritance) through local government councils, or soviets. This clause represents a significant shift away from the current practice of land leasing through collective and state farms, and is expected to encourage more small-scale farming. As Gorbachev stated, "All obstacles in the way of the farmer should be removed. He should be given a free hand."

-- The Soviet federation should be based on a system of treaties with the republics, allowing for the possibility of different types of links with Moscow.

Gorbachev chastised the secession-minded Lithuanians for rejecting the notion of a new Soviet federation out of hand. The party platform follows the basic line worked out at last September's plenum on nationalities. It calls for the present union to be reorganized on the basis of a new voluntary contract between the republics and the central authorities, but leaves open the possibility of "diverse forms of federative ties." Thus the Baltic republics might be allowed to introduce individual clauses into the general contract that would make staying part of the Soviet Union a more attractive proposition.

The conservatives exacted their revenge on the last day of the plenum when the question of how to deal with wayward Lithuanian party members came up. Gorbachev struck a conciliatory tone, urging his Lithuanian comrades to suspend their decision to break away from Moscow headquarters and submit their program for the consideration of the party congress this summer. The central party ought to render assistance to Lithuanian party members who remain loyal, he said, but accept delegates from both the regular and breakaway groups to this summer's congress.

Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze took an even bolder line, urging the plenum to understand the Lithuanian moves "in the context of European and world affairs." Said he: "I am resolutely against any sanctions." That was certainly not the view of Ligachev and other party veterans. They pushed for a change of wording that would "condemn the actions of the incumbent leadership of the Lithuanian party, aimed at splitting and weakening the unity of the Communist Party and the Soviet federation." A compromise was fashioned, incorporating the criticisms of the Ligachev camp and Lithuanian party loyalists.

Given the rapid pace of change, Ligachev's small victory last week may prove to be his last stand. Gorbachev has called another plenum for next week to discuss how to conduct party elections. The General Secretary is determined to push ahead with a complete renewal of local party organization before early summer to prevent hard-line holdovers from stacking the delegations to the policy-setting congress. As he noted in his concluding remarks to the plenum, "It is inadmissible to tarry now. It is necessary to take the lead in stormy and complicated processes."

Nothing is more fraught with risk than Gorbachev's bold gambit to devolve power from the party to the local soviets. After seven decades of Communist domination, regional party organizations have become so intertwined with the running of local economies that in some collective farms there would be no second shift to milk the cows unless the local party boss went door to door rounding up workers. Would a democratically elected mayor on a newly reformed town council be ready to take on the job? Vyacheslav Shostakovsky, rector of Moscow's Higher Party School for Communists, has his doubts. "The party is a hostage of the system it created," he says. "The traditional system of connections is breaking down, but new structures of power do not exist yet. In some places, if the party committee does not intervene, nothing happens."

Shostakovsky is one of the organizers of a new liberal caucus within the Communist Party called the Democratic Platform. He shuns any analogies with the equally liberal Interregional Deputies' Group in the Supreme Soviet, noting that support for that lobby is "amorphous" while the Platform can count on at least 60,000 supporters in 162 party clubs in 103 cities across the Soviet Union. At a founding conference in Moscow last month, the movement's supporters called for "radical reform of the Soviet Communist Party in the direction of a completely democratic parliamentary party, acting in a multiparty system."

So far, the group has seen its primary mission as working within the party for change, but Shostakovsky does not rule out the possibility that the Platform might become a separate faction if reform should lag. In some ways the rector of the Higher Party School seems like a Martin Luther who has yet to nail his 95 Theses on the door of the Central Committee. Says Shostakovsky: "The policy of centrism and compromise has been exhausted by now. It was always a risky strategy that courted disaster. It is time to pursue a more radical course in transforming society."

The party establishment has given little sign so far that it is listening -- even if some of Gorbachev's proposals are not far in spirit from the Democratic Platform. For the moment, the General Secretary seemed more concerned with papering over differences than pursuing new grounds for division within the ranks of a party that has turned almost overnight into an umbrella organization for a host of contending political causes. "We should all be together, should feel each other's support and act together," he said. "We should not start breaking up into clans and groups. This is the road to destroying the party and the country." Only history will tell whether those words turn out to be a successful plea for unity or a quaint summons to an era that has already vanished.

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THE GOVERNMENT

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Moscow