Soviet Union: Hard Times for the Hard-Liners

By John Kohan/Moscow

While Mikhail Gorbachev blasted "communist fundamentalists" from his Kremlin pulpit last week, one of his main targets, Alexei Sergeyev, sat silently in the audience of Central Committee members, nursing a few grievances of his own. As the founder of the hard-line Communist Initiative movement, Sergeyev concluded that what Gorbachev said about "breaking out of the circle of dogmatic concepts" confirmed his worst suspicions. "In the past, Gorbachev has always disguised his true views," said Sergeyev. "This time, he was almost honest. His speech left me in no doubt that he is not a communist. If you were to change a few words in his program, Margaret Thatcher or George Bush could endorse it."

What particularly incensed Sergeyev and other supporters of traditional Marxist-Leninist doctrine was a draft charter that Gorbachev presented to the plenum of the party leadership -- the first complete restatement of basic principles in 30 years. In Sergeyev's view, Gorbachev's document was too "social democratic," a derogatory term among hard-liners. What he meant was that Gorbachev wanted to abandon basic communist principles. Instead, he has advocated a democratic, parliamentary-style party and a mixed economy. "If the Gorbachev line should triumph," warned Sergeyev, "there will no longer be a Communist Party -- not even in name."

The plenum was not marked this time by bitter personal attacks against Gorbachev. His opponents, said Sergeyev, a professor of political economics at Moscow's Academy of Labor and Social Relations, were trying to stage "a revolt on their knees." There were angry outcries in the hall during the closed sessions, he said, but when the time came to vote, Gorbachev always + won. The General Secretary had trumped his critics by embracing their call for a special congress before the end of the year, thus deflecting their attempts to force an immediate schism in the party or a change of leadership.

There was a time when Gorbachev would not have dared to move so brazenly against the hard-liners. Now he evidently believes that time is running out for them. Party hard-liners have been defeated in almost every major election that has been held during the past two years. While communist rule goes unchallenged in the conservative Central Asian republics, the party is virtually a marginal opposition group in Georgia, Armenia and the Baltic republics. Rank-and-file members across the country are deserting the fold in droves. Some 4 million have left the party during the past 18 months, reducing total membership to 15 million.

Sergeyev fears that if Gorbachev's policies do not finish off the communists, the party's most prominent dropout, Boris Yeltsin, will. In one of his first acts as president of the Russian Federation, Yeltsin banished all party organizations from the workplace and from state institutions. His decree was aimed like an ax at the very roots of communist power: the dense tangle of party cells in factories and businesses that have functioned alongside state agencies as a shadow system of administration. This party bureaucracy has been a major brake on radical economic reforms.

The Central Committee passed a resolution last week condemning the Yeltsin decree. Gorbachev also claimed that he would oppose any moves against local party cells by "all constitutional means." But hard-liners like Sergeyev suspect the President will betray them. They contend that Gorbachev wants the issue to be decided by the Committee for Constitutional Compliance, which rules on the constitutionality of laws, rather than veto the decree himself and risk alienating Yeltsin. No matter what the Kremlin does, the Russians are bound to go ahead with plans to kick party functionaries out of factories.

The struggle between hard-liners and radicals has splintered the party into rival factions. They range from the Bolshevik Platform of neo-Stalinist gadfly Nina Andreyeva to the radical Communists for Democracy group led by Russian vice president Alexander Rutskoi. Sergeyev contends that his Communist Initiative movement alone counts at least 3.5 million sympathizers. Other alternatives are emerging on the fringes of the party. With the tacit approval of Gorbachev, former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze set up a Democratic Reform Movement earlier this month to further perestroika. Last week Alexander Yakovlev, a key architect of Gorbachev's changes, quit the government, presumably to devote his energies to the fledgling movement. Meanwhile, 12 prominent hard-liners called for the creation of a "popular patriotic movement" of their own for "the salvation of the motherland."

The question is not whether there will be a party schism but when. More is at stake than just ideology. Property worth billions of rubles, ranging from printing plants and party office buildings to Black Sea health spas and a luxury Moscow hotel, is held by the Communist Party. No one wants to be the first to leave the party and risk losing claim to a lucrative chunk of the property settlement when the divorce is completed.

Faced with the latest plenum setback, Sergeyev vowed to oppose what Gorbachev is doing to the party "by every possible means -- within the law." He admitted that there would be "tough times" ahead for hard-liners. Gorbachev declared last week that the party would only be "strengthened" if those who opposed his new program resigned, but Sergeyev has his own ideas. "The social democrats and liberals -- and that includes Gorbachev -- should get out," says Sergeyev. "Let them create their own new party. True communists have no reason to leave."