Growing worker unrest forces party shake-up

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Where is Gorbachev's 'perestroika' headed? Steelworkers demonstrate in Montenegro, Yugoslavia. The specter of such an upsurge in the Soviet Union keeps Gorbachev awake at night.

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT SOCIALIST ACTION SUPPLEMENT 1 ::X8 39810 . MOCA BAMA Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev returned from a September visit to Siberia in a hot sweat. People there were "at my throat," he said on Soviet television. Apparently, Gorbachev heard an earful of complaints— and for good reason.

People are fed up. There has been a steady and serious decline in the Gross National Product (GNP)—particularly in agricultural production—in the last two decades. And these figures have continued to drop since Gorbachev took over as general secretary of the Communist Party (CPSU).

Exiled dissident Alexander Amerisov presents an accurate picture, confirmed by numerous other reports, when he writes: "Gorbachev's policies ... have backfired, producing misery for the Soviet people rather than benefiting them. Wages are down. Prices are up. Shortages are even greater than under Brezhnev."

The skepticism of the Soviet people toward the economic reforms is, therefore, quite understandable. It also explains why the bureaucracy has been consciously moving slow in implementing perestroika—that is, economic restructuring involving the introduction of capitalist-type market mechanisms. The bureaucrats want to avoid a flare-up with the working class.

While increasingly bold expressions of public dissent have been appearing for some time, it was the heat Gorbachev took in Siberia that finally convinced him to make some rapid-fire political moves aimed at removing the resistance to his reform program among "hard-line" sectors of the bureaucracy.

He immediately convened an emergency session of the Supreme Soviet and got himself elected president. Several other changes were made to strengthen his leadership in the CPSU.

Gorbachev's goal to satisfy the minimal social needs the population Horvat-Picture Group before impatient workers and peasants begin to utilize democratic openings of glasnost to raise their own program. The bureaucracy is desperately trying to avoid a massive political confrontation with the working class like the one that began in Poland years earlier when similar economic austerity "reforms" were introduced.

China has also just reported that strikes took place in 19 cities this past summer in reaction to perestroika-type price increases.

In short, Gorbachev is in a race to keep perestroika ahead of glasnost. But, paradoxically, it is precisely the introduction of perestroika "market reforms" which makes a confrontation with the working class and poor farmers inevitable.

Latest government shake-up

Among the most important recent leadership changes made in the CPSU was the elevation of Vadim A. Medvedev to a full seat on the CPSU politburo. He was (continued on suppl. 7)

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the soviets (councils) to give the stamp of approval for his anti-working class economic package.

To achieve his purpose, he must invest the soviets with a carefully crafted democratic image. Gorbachev claims that he desires to limit "functions performed by the party and state bodies and [to] restor[e] in full power the soviets at all levels.

His most ambitious plans are to be implemented in April 1989, when the Supreme Soviet will be replaced by a freshly elected Congress of People's Deputies.

But how can this Congress really represent the interests of the workers and peasants when the Soviet government still denies basic political rights to the population?

Gorbachev's soviets

Originally, the soviets were democratically elected councils that developed throughout Russia in the months leading up to the 1917 insurrection. They were made up of delegates from mass organizations representing millions of