Where is the Soviet Union going today?

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Gorbachev spur production from workers who control.

" Up until now, plant sures and lavoffs in the Soviet Union were 12 SOCIALIST ACTION / JUNE 1987 campaign Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's new glasnost campaign is generating significant changes within the Soviet Union.

Films which have been on the shelf for more than 15 years are being shown. Soviet theater has come alive with new plays challenging once-sacred cows. A number of Soviet dissidents are being freed from prison.

Even a play on the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty has been released, which for the first time portrays Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin, two of the early leaders of the Bolshevik Party murdered by Joseph Stalin.

What is happening in the Soviet Union Gorbachev represents the more lucid wing of the Soviet bureaucracy which recognizes the gravity of the economic and political crisis into which bureaucratic mismanagement has plunged the Soviet Gorbachev's answer to this crisis is what he calls "restructuring." It includes a campaign for greater labor discipline and against corruption, absenteeism, and alcoholism. Its aim is to increase the efficiency and productivity of the Soviet economy.

The restructuring campaign also includes a degree of political openness—or glasnost —which is geared at enlisting the support of the artisitic and scientific intelligentsia, including the dissidents among them, for Gorbachev's reform program.

Gorbachev has called for a "revolution" to attempt to resolve the ills of Soviet society. But his goal is to preserve the bureaucratic system, not to overthrow it.

Much evidence could be cited to point out that Gorbachev's objective is to defend the bureaucratic dictatorship.

Gorbachev, for example, has stubbornly upheld the principle of the one-party system. A clear statement of this was presented on March 5, 1987, by Yegor Ligachev, a member of the ruling Politburo. In his statement, Ligachev attacked critics who demand more demo -cracy than the party is willing to grant.

"So you see," Ligachev exclaimed, "they still cherish the hope of weakening our system by way of democratization and turning it into a channel of political pluralism. These are pipe dreams, to put it bluntly. Profound restructuring in no way signifies the break-up of our political system."

In other words, according to the Gorbachev reformers, there will be no challenge to the single-party monopoly political rule by the Soviet bureaucracy.

Limited release of dissidents Equally revealing of the limits of Gorbachev's "democratization" is the man -ner in which political prisoners are being released.

On Feb. 14, the Soviet daily Isvestia announced the liberation of 140 political prisoners who, according to the newspaper, had "agreed not to pursue any further anti-Soviet activities.

(The number of current political prisoners is estimated in the thousands.)

The day after this newspaper article appeared, various underground papers quoted a number of the 140 political prisoners, who stated that they had never signed any statement repudiating their past activity or offering to hide their views in the future.

A week later, the Soviet bureaucracy announced, without explanation, that some of the dissidents whose release had been announced-Yossif Begun, Anatoli Koryagin and others—would not be released. Immediately these dissidents announced a hunger strike.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, a march was organized to demand Begun's freedom. Within a couple of days, the Soviet bureaucracy gave into the demands and released Begun and the others.

But even those who are being released have no guarantee that they will be permanently freed. A letter from the wife of Pavel Protsenko illustrates this problem:

"My husband was released from prison on Feb. 4, 1987," she writes, "but his file was not closed. In fact, the state still has charges pending against him. It is clear that he will be arrested once again as soon as political life resumes its normal course."

According to the underground Soviet press, none of the prisoners in the specialregime detention camps or the special feel they should have more psychiatric wards have been released. Moreover, the worker dissidents who had attempted in 1978 to organize an independent trade union (the SMOT) are also still behind bars or in special psychiatric wards. They include Oleg Alifanov, Vladimir Khlebanov, Alexander Skobov, and Wladimir Sytinski.

The liberation of all political prisoners is the demand that is being raised by the opposition movement in the Soviet Union.

Increasing labor discipline

The overall goal of Gorbachev's policy is to make the workers work harder and better. For this, various capitalist market mechanisms are being introduced that will allow enterprises to fire workers.

On March 27, 1987, for example, the Soviet press agency TASS reported on the first plant closure in the Soviet Union resulting from the new bankruptcy law.

This plant, a construction plant near Leningrad, went under, according to TASS, because it was unable to "change its mode of operation."

Two thousand workers were laid off. According to the new law, all factories that are not profitable, i.e., that are operating at a loss and have had to be subsidized by the state, will be allowed to go bankrupt.

Up until now, plant closures and layoffs in the Soviet Union were unheard of.

It is estimated that about 13 percent of the country's factories ran a deficit in 1986.

The new law stipulates that the laid-off workers will obtain the wage of an average Soviet worker for three months (200 rubles). Those who cannot find a job in the same branch of industry will be "recycled," i.e., retrained for another job.

A week before the law was approved, a well-known Soviet economist, Vladimir Kostakov, wrote an article in Kommunist, the ideological journal of the Communist Party, in which he estimated that the not be able to absorb the large numbers of unemployed manual workers. "We are already experiencing difficulties with reemployment of the released work force, Kostakov stated.

The example of Hungary To illustrate the extent to which the Stalinist bureaucracy is making conces -sions to the imperialists, it is instructive to glance at the Hungarian economy.

Hungary is a country which Gorbachev has pointed to as an example to follow. It offers us a look at what the Soviet Union might look like a few years down the road.

Since 1968, Hungary has been slowly moving toward a less centralized marketoriented economy. Free enterprise flourishes among small firms. The size limitation on these firms was recently raised. State-owned firms have the right to go bankrupt.

The Hungarian Development Bank has introduced interest-bearing industrial bonds to help companies raise capital from foreign investors. An active bond market now exists.

Capitalist economists say they expect the Budapest Stock Exchange, which closed in 1946, to reopen within five years after the Hungarians enact monetary and tax reforms.

In a New York Times op-ed article in June 1986, Thomas H. Naylor, a professor of business administration at Duke University, wrote the following about the Hungarian example:

"The Soviet Union seems eager to emulate parts of the Hungarian experience... Soviet managers of the new breed are pragmatic, nonideological and ambitious. Those who have sampled Western-style consumerism...seem to like it. Indeed, their value systems seem to be close to those of the American 'yuppies.' "But these are precisely the kinds of incentives that have energized Hungarian economic reforms and will be required to activate the incentives on which the Gorbachev reforms are based."

Up a downward escalator But have the new reforms "energized" the Hungarian economy, as Naylor states?

This is how The Economist of London described the Hungarian situation:

"To the casual visitor, perhaps even to Gorbachev, who visited there in June 1986, Hungary seems to be flourishing... Downtown Budapest [has] an impressive gloss.

"There Hungarians can buy Western newspapers and clothes by Benetton and Pierre Cardin. Smart restaurants compete with fast-food outlets....

"But outward prosperity is only part of the story. Real wages are no higher today than they were 10 years ago. Living in Hungary, says one Hungarian, is like being on a downward escalator: It is still possible to go up, for those who can work afterhours in the legal 'second' economy or the illegal 'third' one. But with an inflation rate of at least 7 percent in recent years, it has been all too possible to slide downward."

The Economist magazine does not give a full picture of the problem. A letter from a Hungarian dissident written in late 1986 gives a much better idea of the extent of the attacks on the Hungarian working class. He writes:

"Hungary has long been considered the showcase of the new reform movement of Eastern Europe...

"But in Hungary the working and living conditions of the workers worsen with each passing day. The prices of consumer goods keep rising-despite official government promises to the contrary—while wages remain the same... The level of inflation is now over 10 percent and is expected to be even higher in 1987.

"From the time Hungary joined the International Monetary Fund, the situation has not stopped deteriorating...

"The 'miracle of the Hungarian econo -my,' as it was commonly hailed during the 1970s, is nothing but a dream. A series of historic gains of the Hungarian working class are being attacked: Government (continued on page 13, in “" In Hungary... market already”)

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Soviet Union has begun to understand the need to turn its attention to the working class-to th e task of organizing and seeking support from the international an active bond

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