Hin in Ex-ussr

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However, the crowds do not look even when there were not absolute shortundemourished or inadequately dressed. ages. For example, a middle-aged Although drabber than in the West, they working-class woman in Minsk told me do not at all resemble the masses in of the bitterness she felt because she was such crowds, too, there are always a few inebriates who get fights going.

Everywhere in the ex-USSR-from the Baltics to Moscowthere are crowds nuchino and chovino desneratelv. You can't look at any item for sale except over the shoulders of other people. The telephone lines are so overcrowded that you have to spend hours continually redialing to call anotner city, or orten within the same city.

Third World cities. ple or invalids. But you do not see a significant marginal population, like the homeless in American cities. What is striking is not so much poverty as distortions caused by shortsighted or corrupt economic bosses.

While the shortages could not be easily overcome, there must have been a better way to organize distribution. It was shortsighted not to give a higher priority to develop mass transport in the cities and develop reliable communications grids.

WAIA CTTATTA SIM TA CCOMTOMITATO DITT Tha antitenmnaco Af tha Affiniale craat_. tu a duuc war wazumzou wusuauvu» forced to stand in line 24 hours, outdoors in winter weather, to get a tiny allowance of foreign currency so that she could visit a relative in Poland. "Those Bolsheviks want to humiliate you, to destroy your human dignity."

In some places, the distribution has improved. Growth of small business is represented by a proliferation of kiosks around railway stations, whose owners sell only a few items, or the "resellers," who sell books at many times the prices of the bookstores, or by bazaars dominated by traveling groups of Azerbaijanis.

Working people are discontented, but for the moment intimidated by fear of unemployment. But this fear is a result of accepting the perspective of privatization, the right of bosses to fire workers for the sake of "profitability."

In Poland, where privatization began earlier, the illusions in the market have faded more than in the ex-USSR.

in tha Tatact wore af atribec Dolich LU LUC LALCDI WAVE VI DUrAVo, - VION workers were much less impressed by the needs of any potential bosses. They are turning to militant union leaders who have built an altemative-Solidarosc' 80-to the pro-government unions. This is a union that stands on the program of Solidarosc before it was taken over by procapitalist elements.

Poland set the example for the mass movements against Stalinism. It is still showing workers in the ex-USSR their future but simply reflect the prevailing political climate.

Thus, he told me that when the front was founded it had a Leninist program, then a Social Democratic one, and now a rightwing free-enterpriser program, since a "right wind" is blowing internationally.

It is possible that the LTF-LNKK bloc will succeed electorally at least for a time, so long as the Russian-speaking population is disenfranchised.

However, the LTF is losing its political role. At the same time, it is abandoning important territory to the new Social Democratic Party, which is in the process of trying to define itself programmatically.

The LTF, on the other hand, consciously rejects all aspects of a movement. It aims to be a purely parliamentary party, with a disciplined parliamentary group.

The opposition trade-union movement that developed in the orbit of the LTF, the Workers' Union, now looks to the Social Democratic Party. It is composed equally of Russian and Latvian workers, and is opposed to discrimination against Russians.

The women's movement that grew up in the shadow of the LTF is also going its own way. This organization, the League of Women, began as an anti-militarist movement of mothers of soldiers protesting the treatment of their sons in the Soviet army. It then appealed to mothers in other parts of the USSR to protest against their sons being sent to repress the Latvians. As the movement developed, its leaders became interested in the economic problems of women.

The leader of the League of Women, Anita Stankevica, told me that women had been hardest hit by the economic changes, in particular the closing of daycare centers and higher prices. She wanted to build a united, independent women's movement to fight to defend the interests of women. The Social Democratic Party also supports the idea of an independent women's movement.

Thus, the Latvian Social Democratic Party seems to be playing a significant role in the realignment of political forces.

However, the party itself does not have a left program. It is not programmatically distinct from the local successor of the Communist Party, the Latvian Democratic Party of Labor.

The chair of the Latvian Workers' Union told me that he did not expect the Social Democrats to have any more success in liberal enterpreneurs were doing business with their own money and not the people's. But that distinction is probably pretty fluid. Few in a Stalinist society could accumulate any money without some sort of "in" with the bureaucracy.

Since the opposition fronts-and the new parties that have grown out of themdo not have a different program from the old CP bureaucracy-that, is, they both support capitalist restoration—the distinction between them tends to come down to personnel.

In Lithuania, Sajudis sought unsuccessfully to exclude former CP bureaucrats by law from certain positions. The proposal was called the "De-Sovietization Law."

A leader of the Green Party, which works in the framework of Sajudis, and who supported the measure, told me that she considered that the vote on this bill was the dividing line between "left" and "right."

But despite the hostility of the population to the bureaucracy, it is unlikely that such proposals are very popular. First of all, a considerable part of the population— perhaps one-quarter-had ties of one kind or another with the bureaucracy.

Imposing legal disabilities on old CP bureaucrats and their accomplices would require a very wide ranging witch-hunt. The majority of the population would gain nothing from it.

In the case of most of the fronts, people talk about radicalization. The intellectual layer that originally formed their backbone is withdrawing-generally going into new parties that, to one degree or another, favor compromise with the bureaucracy.

The ranks of the front, on the other hand, are more impatient for a real change from bureaucratic rule.

That applies to the Lithuanian front. But the radicalization of the fronts has not led to a new program. Sajudis's fundamental problem is that its program—privatization-is clearly benefitting the old bureaucracy, not its mass base.

The New York Times attributed Sajudis's electoral defeat to "factionalism," and political divisions within it. But Sajudis has remained less politically differentiated than the other fronts. It went into the elections still showing aspects of a coalition of parties.

The old division that existed between the radical nationalists in Kaunas and the moderates in Vilnius had disappeared. Rather (continued on page 13)

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tion, is that some months before, one of