Soviet bureaucracy is sitting on a time bomb

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Mikhail Gorbachev during a recent trip to rebellious Lithuania.

On March 13, the Soviet parliament, presided over by Mikhail Gorbachev, voted to establish a new, strong, executive presidency.

Gorbachev was "elected" to the new post in a hotly disputed race— against no one else-by a vote of 1329 for, 495 against, 54 invalid, with 122 ballots not being cast, as a protest. Thus in a country of 289 million people, 2000 people participated in "electing" a new "super" president to a five-year term.

To fully appreciate the undemocratic nature of this "election," remember that the members of this new parliament were themselves "elected" in a highly restrictive process set up and controlled by the ruling bureaucracy.

To justify both the new super-presidency and the lack of a direct election, the parliamentarians were subjected to dire predictions. "Our country is swept by emotion. Under the circumstances, a direct election of the president will lead straight to civil war. Please believe me and respect my experience," pleaded Dmitri S. Likhacher to the assembled deputies (New York Times, March 14). Likhachev, an 85-year-old Russian history expert, went on to compare the present situation in the Soviet Union to the period following the February 1917 revolution.

Vadim Medvedev, Gorbachev's ideologist, linked the abolition of Article 6, the constitutional guarantee of the leading role of the Communist party, with the new presidency. He said: "Indeed, without a strong presidential power capable of action, the party's abandonment of its present functions could lead to anarchy." (Pravda, March 13).

Whenever a ruling group starts talking of anarchy and civil war, it usually means they're getting hysterical because the people they rule over are starting to fight for some rights of their own. That's the situation in the Soviet Union today; it's the reason that Gorbachev and the ruling bureaucracy are scrambling to find new ways to keep their privileges intact.

Soviet miners in motion The crisis of the Soviet economy, caused by the decades-long mismanagement of the Stalinist bureaucracy, has propelled the Soviet working class into action.

In the summer of 1989, a massive strike wave, centered on the miners, shook the Soviet Union with the largest work stoppages in its history. It started with the Mezhdurechensk miners, spread throughout the whole Kuznetsk coal basin, and continued spreading.

Strike committees were formed that became the centers for local power. Workers remained in the streets for days, discussing all aspects of political life, including the need to form new, independent unions. [For a fuller assessment of the miners' strike, see accompanying report by Soviet oppositionist Boris Kagarlitsky.J These strikes are a signpost to the future. While this time there was no coordination between various regions, the workers learn fast. Many of the strike committees stayed in existence, thus forming both embryos of new trade unions, and embryos of workers' power. Some, such as the Vorkuta Strike Committee, became more political in nature.

A. Nogues Sygma [See adjoining box with excerpts from the Nov. 3, 1989, declaration of the Vorkuta Strike Committee.] Revolt of the nationalities The bureaucrats are worried and are desperately looking for new ways to control the population. The Soviet working class is potentially the most powerful working class on earth and is many times larger than it was in 1917 when, under the leadership of the Bolshevik seized name.

The other major force at work in the Soviet Union today that must limit the peaceful sleep of the ruling caste is the revolt of the nationalities.

Tsarist Russia was known as the prisonhouse of nations, for both the number of subject nationalities in its empire and the way it oppressed them. The October Revolution of 1917 held out to these oppressed peoples the possibility of growth within a democratic, socialist union of nations, and guaranteed them the right to secede from that union if they saw fit.

Stalin broke that promise and found ways to repress nations that were not possible to the Tsars, including wholesale removal of entire peoples from their traditional homelands. Today, emboldened by and in turn contributing to the crisis of Stalinism, these subject peoples are on the move.

Lithuania has become the first republic to act on Lenin's promise of self-determination, declaring independence from the Soviet Union-and Gorbachev has tried to deny that right. [See separate story on Lithuania in this issue.] The other Baltic states may not be far behind. And then there are Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Ukraine, and perhaps even Mongolia (which must also be very worrying to the Chinese bureaucracy) waiting in the wings. The combined total of the non-Russian nationalities is almost 50 percent of the population of the USSR.

The response of the working class and the nationalities to the crisis is to struggle. What is the bureaucracy attempting to do to ensure its continued privileged position on top of a Soviet society that is slowly transforming into a volcano under it?

Bureaucrats look to West The underlying cause of all the motion is the crisis in the Soviet economy. The bureaucracy, after over six decades of trying, has finally realized that it can't successfully manage the economy. It is aware that the degree of accumulated mismanagement has put it in danger of losing its job. So it has been looking around to get ideas.

Because it sees only a threat to its own power whenever it looks at the Soviet working class, the bureaucracy is compelled to (continued on next page)