CA PROPAGANDA PERSPECTIVES 1 MARCH 1971

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01194A000300120001-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 166
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 5, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 1, 1971
• Content Type: REPORT

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FOR BACKGROUND USE ONLY March 1971
THE 24TH CPSU CONGRESS
The Main Issues
In the five-year interval between the 23rd CPSU Congress
March 1966 and the forthcoming 24th Congress, the essentially
unchanged:Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership has presided over a
steadily deteriorating internal situation and a severe
erosion of its authority in the international Coliumnist move-
ment, while continuing to pursue its expansionist foreign
policy.
Whatever Brezhnev strikes as the keynote on domestic
developments in his main address to the Congress, the real
keynote is "stagnation." The economy has been c;teadily
slowing down, falling further and further behind that of
its chief rival, the U.S.. The ever expanding technological
gap is severe and a matter of special distress to Soviet
scientists. The Soviet consumer has long since been
convinced that improvement of his lot is at best mere oratory.
Even the 'members of the Soviet privileged class, the Communist
Party, knowing the meaninglessness of the Party's ideological
slogans, reserve their best efforts for in-fighting for
personal position in the Party bureaucracy. The only place
the Soviet leaders see any significant and positive movement
is in the demands for change made by the scientific and
literary-artistic intelligentsia. And here the leadership's
only concern is to snuff out this small sign of life in
the Soviet body politic.
In 1966, the Soviet leaders were just beginning to face
the phenomenon of serious, open challenge to their leadership
of the world Communist movement, occasioned by the outbreak
of the-Sino-Soviet ideological conflict. In the intervening
years, they have seen this situation deteriorate to a shooting
war on the Sino-Soviet border. By August 1968 they were
frightened into mounting a full-scale invasion of Czechoslovakia,
provoking condemnation by the so-called "capitalist" world,
and by important Communist parties and individuals from France
to Venezuela to Australia. As in the case of internal dissent,
international Communist dissent provicb some of the most telling
criticism of the essential weaknesses of the Soviet system.
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In the 1966 Congress, the leadership was still able to
speak plausibly (but just barely so) about the solidarity of
the world Communist movement and Soviet leadership of it. It
will be interesting to see the verbal gymnastics required to
maintain the fiction in 1971.
Meanwhile, the Soviet leadership pursues a foreign policy
of cautious expansionism, employing a variegated arsenal of
tools -- smiling diplomacy here, gunboat diplomacy there,
offering "innocuous" trade and aid deals here, stepping up
KGB agent infiltration there -- all the while protesting its
desire for peace, but doing nothing visible to advance it,
as it might in Vietnam and the Middle East. Even in a case
like West Germany, where the Soviets seemed to negotiate
d?nte seriously (as a step to dislodge the U.S. from
Europe and to tap West Germany's valuable economic and
technological resources), they permit (or urge) East German
boss Walter Ulbricht to keep the pot boiling by harassment
of access to Berlin.
Expansion of its worldly dominion has been an essential
ingredient of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union since
the beginnings -- not least because Marxist-Leninist dialectic
ideology poses neverending conflict in some form with non-Communist
entities as the natural way of international life. The forth-
coming Congress will clothe the usual Communist prophecy
of victory for Communism and defeat for "capitalism" in
typical:verbiage for those who would believe it. More
knowledgeable observers will be searching behind the rhetoric
fdr signs that the Soviet Union intends to make a genuine
contribution to world peace.
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March 1971
Party Congresses - What Are They?
Congresses are technically the Soviet Cohmumist Party's
supreme ratifying body, but in actuality they have became
purely ceremonial gatherings to give the rubber stamp of
approval to previously agreed upon decisions. Party statutes
require that a Congress be held every four years, but they
seldom are. They are large affairs. The 23rd Congress,
for example, was attended by 4,942 voting delegates and 323
consultative delegates and by delegations from 36 foreign
parties, in all a gathering of about 6,000 persons. At
the fortheoming Congress, as at the 23rd Congress, the
assemblage will approve General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev's
report on Party stewardship, will approve Premier Alexei
Kosygin's report on the new five-year economic development
plan for the years 1971 through 1975, and will elect the
leading party organs -- the Central Committee, the Presidium
(Politburo) of the Central Committee, and the Secretariat
of the Central Committee. Anything else? Whether or not
any important changes in policy are to emerge remains to be
seen. Given the present leadership's unimaginative conser-
vatism, the 24th Congress is likely to be a pretty dull affair.
By way of contrast, some quite significant and often
spectacular policy pronouncements have came out of some of
the more recent congresses:
20th Party Congress - February 1956: Khrushchev's
"secret" denunciation oi Stalin on the Congress's closing
day was the most far-reaching and shattering expose of the
dictator's political leadership ever made and set off
reverberations which eventually led to the Hungarian uprising
of that fall. In a development closely linked with his
rejection of much of the Stalinist legacy, Khrushchev an-
nounced doctrinal changes which promised more flexibility
for Soviet diplomacy. Specifically, he declared that Lenin's
dictum on the inevitability of war with the imperialists no
longer applied. The Chinese Communists, with some justifi-
cation, Call the 20th Congress the "revisionist" Congress,
and the seeds of Sino-Soviet discord were certainly well
fertilized at this gathering. The 20th Congress also
breathed new life into the old Stalinist concept of "peace-
ful coexistence" by emphasizing the possibility of a
peaceful transition to socialism, and by discovering a
"zone of peace" in the Third World where Moscow could seek
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to expand its influence through more flexible diplomacy and
cooperation with neutralist forces.
21st Party Congress - January-February 1959: Khrushchev
had survived the major political attack on his stewardship
in June 1957 and managed to rout his opponents, who hence-
forth were called the "Anti-Party Group" (Molotov, Malenkov,
et al). The political castigation of members of the Anti-
Party Group continued at the 21st Congress, but calls to
expel some of the group's leaders were fruitless. In many
respects, the Congress was a propaganda triumph for Khrush-
chev, who delivered the main report and outlined an ambitious
program to overtake the U.S. in the production of certain
key commodities at the end of the Seven-Year Plan, 1959-
1965.
22nd Party Congress - October 1961: By this time there
were definite signs that Khrushchev had already passed the
peak of his rule in some respects. Problems were mounting
in agriculture, which began to stagnate in 1958 after five
years of rising output; proposals for further reorganization
of the countryside had been rebuffed despite Khrushchev's
apparent sponsorship. However, Khrushchev vigorously re-
sumed the offensive at the Congress against his internal
political opposition and mounted a ringing attack against
Stalin's excesses. (That was the Congress during which
Stalin's body was removed from the Lenin-Stalin Mausoleum
and reburied in the Kremlin wall.) The Anti-Party Group
was heavily condemned at the Congress, but variations
in leadership attitudes toward Group members cropped up
during the Congress speeches. Khrushchev reaffirmed the
1956 planks of peaceful coexistence, non-inevitability of
war, and the possibility of a peaceful "parliamentary"
transition to socialism. The Sino-Soviet dispute flared
up publicly when Chou En-lai walked out at mid-Congress and
went home, but not without first having laid a wreath on
Stalin's grave, just before the body was moved.
23rd Party Congress - March-April 1966: The ouster
of Khrushchev in October 1964 was followed by the repeal
of many of his innovations in agriculture and his system
of regional economic councils was replaced by recentralizat-
ion of economic administration. The de-Stalinization cam-
paign was halted and actually reversed as a gradual and
selective campaign for his rehabilitation was initiated--
i.e. Stalin's "excesses" were ignored while his record as
a wartime leader was refurbished. Otherwise, the 23rd
Congress, the first under the Brezhnev-Kosygin team, was
marked by few surprises. Brezhnev stressed coexistence with
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the West, and orthodoxy in the face of allegedly anti-
Soviet. literary and cultural tendencies within the USSR.
Kosygin presented the 5-year plan for 1966-1970 and reported
that the program of industrial reorganization reform, which
Kosygin had launched in October 1965, was burgeoning. A
bland gathering.
24th Party Congress - March-April 1971: A hint of what
form the impending 24th Congress might take was given by a
political writer, N. Kuzmin, in an article he authored for
Kollununist (the main CPSU theoretical journal), May 1970.
Kuzmin suggested that the 9th Congress of 1920 -- when
Lenin defeated all the groups opposed to the existing leader-
ship would be the model for 1971. What Kuzmin over-
looked, was that at the 10th Party Congress, only a year later,
Lenin Was compelled by events to introduce a market economy
in the, form Of the "New Economic Policy." Could history
repeat. itself?
The statutory requirement for quadrennial party con-
gresses has not been observed during the last quarter
century, and 1970 was no exception. The March-April
1970 deadline for the 24th Congress was apparently over-
shadowed by the Lenin centennial celebration in April.
But the primary cause for the 12-month postponement of
this impending Congress is probably accounted for by
difficulties in formulating the new 5-year economic =
development plan, and its unveiling promises to be the
main event of this Congress.
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LE MONDE, Paris
29 January 1971
CPYRGHT PREPARATIONS FOR 24TH CPSU CONGRESS REACH DECISIVE PHASE
Preparations for the Soviet CP's 24th Congress moved into their most
important phase this week with the start of the party's regional conferences.
These assemblies will choose the delegates who will attend the Congress, and
it is here that the real issues that will be debated in Moscow will get their
first airing.
The party's regional conference is itself the culmination of a lengthy
process. It all begins with meetings of the rank-and-file "base organiza-
tions," meaning the party sections in the factories, on the irollectivx Zarms,_
the institutes, etc. . On this level, the party structure is based on 'voca-
tional groupings. The members of a "base organization" hear 'a report on
the work of their leadership committee, elect a new bureau, an;d appoint
their delegates to a district conference. The district conference is a
geographical grouping. It too hears a report from its leader" elects new
ones, and names its delegates to the regional conference.
The same pattern continues at the regional conference, which elects
delDgates to the Congress. According to the Central Committee directives
published after the Plenum of 13 July 1969, there will be one voting dele-
gate for every, 2,900 party members, and one non-voting delegate for every
2,900 "trainees," or candidates for party membership. This makes around
5,000 people who will be coming together on 30 March in the Congress Palace
in Moscow.
The general pattern allows for a number of exceptions. It applies to
? the entire Federation of Russia, as is. It is somewhat modifpd in the
other federated republics. Each of them -- but not the RSFS1_-- actually
holds its own congress a few weeks prior to the Onion Congress. Sometimes
the delegates to the Moscow conference are chosen by these congresses.
Delegates for the party members in the Ukraine, in Byelorussia, in
Uzbekstan, and in Kazakistan, however, are elected by the regional confer-
ences, but this does not prevent each of these republics from holding their
own congresses to elect their new leaders. In addition, some cities have
special status equivalent to that of districts or even regions. Moscow
and Leningrad are two such. With its 300 or so delegates, the capital's
regional representation at the Congress will be second in size only to the
one from the Ukraine.
Waiting for the 5?Year Plan Directives
Getting this gigantic machinery into motion was not achieved
without some grinding of gears. Last year, on 13 April, Mr Brezh?
nev announced that the Congress would be held before the end of
1970, and on several occasions thereafter he repeated that pledge.
Then on 13 July the Central Committee decided that the Congress
would be held "in March 1071." The 30 March date was not set until
the last Plenum of the CC on 7 December.
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CPYRGHT
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Delay in drafting the outline for the next 5?year Plan un?
doubtedly had something to do with the delay in preparations for
the Congress. In December, authoritative and reliable sources said
that the directives would be published in January, but today there
is talk of possible further delay.
There would be nothing exceptional, for that *atter, about
such a delay. The directives for the 8th Plan (19664.1970) were
not approved by the OU until 19 February 1966, when he 5?Year Plan
was already being implemented, and less than 40 days before the
opening of the 23rd Party Congress on 29 March.
Preparing for a Congress is.like building a pyramid in which
the summit governs the position of every element in the base. It
is in this sense that some have claimed that democracy operates in
reverse within the party, since a regional conference is shaped and
oriented primarily.by the objectives laid down by -40 political
bureau and the Central Committee office in Moscow.
There is a good deal of truth in this image, Iti'Ut it fails to
take sufficient account of the diversity of undercurtents within
the party, all of which find a prime opportunity fon;expressing
their views during preparations for a Congress. Furthermore, no
matter how monolithic the Soviet leadership may be, it is no less
reasonable to assume that it does contain conflicting ambitions, and
that each leader hopes to get his men into the party apparatus.
Recruiting ?C2L-tialikeltupsn sgenciad.
Symptoms of a behind?the?scenes struggle are Otill not very
visible, it is true, at least according to what we blow about the
meetings that have been held thus far.
There is, however, one sign that the advantage at present
lies with what might be termed the "conservatives:" the instruc?
tions handed out several months ago in connection with party re?
cruiting. We would point out that no "intellectual," in the broad
sense of the term, has been permitted to join the party since last
summer. The primary purpose of this move is to increase the per?
centage of factory workers, laborers, anc collective farm people
in the organization. In 1966 the Soviet OP's rolls showed 37.3
percent laborers and 16.5 percent collective farm workers. It
would also appear that this was an effort to bar party membership,
at least for a while, to such elements as might be least likely to
go along quietly with orders from the top.
The first impression one gets from what is known of the re?
sults of the preliminary meetings is one of great stability. Here
and there, a first secretary was ousted. This is what happened
to the first secretary of the party for the city of Sverdlovsk,
who was "retired" at the age of 60, a move which leaves little
doubt that he was actually fired.
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At the regional conferences, the changes in leadership chan?
ges were infrequent, most of them understandable on the bases of
administrative considerations (creation of new organizations, a
shift from one office to another, and the like). The same sort of
stability was also apparent in the rank and file organizations.
The Central Committee magazine Partinaya Jizn reports that in 145
of these groups the work of the bureau was deemed unbatisfaotory,
and that 464 secretaries were not re?elected. These figures are
very low, when you consider that there are more thaA 300,000 ',base"
organizations in the party (312,000 in 1966 just before the 23rd
Congress).
What kind of delegates will be sent to the Congress? Ac?
cording to the statutes, they are elected by secret ballot. It
goes without saying that the election will faithfully reflect the
choices made previously by the higher?ups. But this choice is it?
self the subject of considerable discussion within the apparatus.
The regional, conference actually amounts to a committee chosen to
draw up the list of candidates. It is here, in this commission,
that the decisions are made. Sitting on it are not only the party
bosses for the region, but also a'number of leading non?political
figures -- the heads of big industrial concerns, directors of the
various institutes, chairman of leading collective farms, etc. --
whose opinions are taken into consideration. The list drawn up
by these notables is then approved by the conference. Sometimes
there is some sharp bargeining, not to mention shrevia horse?trad?
ing. And so it is at this level that the Congress Is "made," and
this is where whatever small shifts in the incumbeni apparatus the
notables feel desirable are performed.
Economic Issues and the Stalin Matter
Reports in the Soviet press give the impression that econo?
mic issues loom very large in the current debates. 4Each organiza?
tion's performance is assessed primarily on the bests of the way
it has implemented the directions and resolutions of the Central
Committee as handed down in December 1969 and July 1970. There is
much talk of productivity, labor discipline, and even of the use of
fertilizer and the quality of seed. At the same time, though,
there is talk of "ideological work" and of relations within the
party. Sometimes "shortcomings" are reported, or there are com?
plaints about the "inertia" of organizations that pass a great many
resolutions but show very little concern with implementing them.
On the whole, though, these criticisms are merely rehashes of those
that appear regularly in the editorial columns of Pravda and other
party organs.
Nevertheless, the signs of a deeper debate are beginning to
emerge, however indirectly. As it did on the eve of the 23rd Con?
gress, the use of Stalin's name is the touchstone by which we can
distinguish between what might be called the conservatives and the
progressives. The name cropped up in 196,6 in several reports from
the meetings of the party in Georgia. This year, the Moldavian CP
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newspaper, in its 16 January issue, opened fire by stating that in
his article on "Marxism and the National Question" Stalin had pro?
vided a definition amounting to "a generalization of all Karl Marx,
Frederich Engels, and V.I. Lenin ever said about the fundamental
features of the nation." The reference is an important one, be?
cause it tends to restore to Stalin the role of THE communist theor?
etician which the 20th Congress had taken away from him.
This is not surprising in Moldavia, where the first party
secretary, Mr 1.1. Bodioul, has a long?standing reputation as a
Stalinist. Such language, for the time being, at least, would be
unthinkable in the central party press, but it is beyond any doubt
that serious pressure is being brought to bear within the party,
perhaps not so much for a return to Stalinist concepts -- which are
in any case too outmoded for use under present?day conditions --
as for a rejection of the more or less liberal experiments tried
since the death of' the dictator under Mr Khrushchevfs regime. This
is the issue that is going to dominate the 24th Congress. It is
still to early to assess the balance of forces that will clash on
this ground, or to distinguish the positions on which the men and
factions classified perhaps too summarily as "Stalinists" and "anti?
Stalinists" will actually cross swords.
LE MONDE, Paris
29 January 1971
La preparation du 24' congres
du P.C. sovietique
est entree dans sa phase decisive
De nOtre correspondant 'ALAIN JACOB
moscou. ? La preparation du vingt-quatrieme congas du P.C. sovie-;
tlque est entr? ces dernlers lours, dans as phase Is plus Important., avec
I. debut des conferences regionales du part!. C'est au seln de cos asseni+
bless, en effet, que sont designee les delegues qui assisteront au congres
que commencent C litre aborchle les themes veritables qui seront abet-
C Pk 6141?-
CPYRGHT
elles mats non ia kt.S.P.S.R '
tient en effet son propre congres
quelques semaines avant celui de
l'Union. Parfois les ? delegues au
? congres de MoScOu sont designes
?Par ces congres. En revanche,
les delegues des communistet
1, &Ukraine, de Bjelorussie, d'Ouz-
1' bekistan et du Kazakhstan sont
,
-elus dans les regions, ce qui n'em-
,peche pas chacune de ces repu-
bliques de tenir son congres pour
,renouveler les organismes dlri
.geants. D'autre part certftities,
'vines ont des statuts particuliers:
-equivalent a celui de district oil
meme de region, comme MoscoU,
!et Leningrad Avec quelque trots:
rents delegues, la capitale consti-
luera an congres le groupe regio-
'
nal le plus important apres celut
;de l'Ukraine.
;Dans l'allenfe des directives
. La conference regionaie au part; L..e rneme scnema se reproault, pour le plan?
est elle-meme l'aboutissement 111. in conference regionale, qui' -
d'un long processus. Tout corn- Mit les delegues au congres. L'ensemble de cette &forme ma-
x-pence avec les reunions des e. or- D'apres les directives du comite, chine ne s'est pas nits en route
ganisations de base 3,, c'est-a-dire central publtees apres le plenum',? sans quelques rates. be 13 avrit
des sections d'usines, de kolkho- .du 13 juillet 1969, on comptera tin xiernier, M. Brejnev annoncalt clue,
zes, d'instituts, etc. A ce niveau, dengue avec voix deliberative 1 le tong/As se tiendratt avant .1a
,la structure du part; a tine base podr deux .mille neuf cents meat- 1 fin de 1970, et a plusieurs reprises
.professionnelle. Les membres -,,?bres-du part!, et un delegue avec t 11 avait confirme la nouvelle. Or,
dune it organisation. de base' ,4 1, voix consultative pour deux mine 1 Pe, 13 juillet, le comite central de-,
entendent un compte rendu d'ac- t?neuf cents e stagiaires , ou cart- ' tide que le congres. aurait Hell,
tivite de leur direction, elisent un thdats adherent au parti: Elivironi en Mart 19712 . . ' La date du
:nouveau bureau et designent leursi crag mule personnes devralentl p0 mars n'a ete fixte qu'au? dernier
delegues A une confetehce de dis--r, ''?? done se .reutfir le 80 mars 6. MOS-I plenum du cordite central le 7- de-:,
Viet. JCello-ci est formee sur tine ''cou. au Palais des congres. ' teMbre.
rbase. geographique ; ? elle entend ? ? ? ' ? ', ? '? - ,?attente des directives' Pour 'f '
,
.elle aussi un compte .rendu de sa C . g prwhain plan quinquennal a saig
line lei le d'eAcePtions: n .vauti,
? directionr Alit de nouveaux dirt- ' ' 'dente ? pose quelque pen sur la'
pour l'ensemble de la Pederaticm
geants et designe les 'dengue's qui' ? -.preparation du congres, Au mots
ise rendrent
do. Russia, Il est plus ou mins
ft la Conference reglo- de decembre des sources', cOncot-
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?publk,es en 'envier. mats on wile
aujourd'hui d'un retard possli>le.
Lin tel retard n'auralt d'ailleurs
rien d'exceptionnel. : Les three-
lives du huitietne plan: (1966-1DM
Wont, en effet. ote approuvees
par Is comae central que le
? 19 fevrier 1966, alms que le plan
qulnquennal etait delft entame et
moms de quarante jours avant
l'ouverture, Is 2D mars, du vingt-
trothleme conRills du Pulti
?La preparation du congreS res-
semble a la construction dune
pyramide dans laquelle le som-
met determine la mise en place
a la base de cheque element.
C'est en ce sens que ion a pu
pretendre qu'au sein du parti la
democratie fonctionnait a Pen-
,vers, une conference regionale
:etant - avant tout conditionnee
par les objectifs que definissent le
? bureau politique et le secrktariat
du coMite central a IVIoscOu.
Cette image comporte ? une
bonne part de verite, math elle
ne tient pas suffisamment
Lcompte de la diversite des cou-
? rants a rinterieur du part!, qui
trouvent justement dans .1a pre-
paration du congras une occasion
exceptionnelle de se manifester.
61 monolithique' d'autre part que
soft la direction sovietique, II n'en
est pas moths raisonnable de pen-
ser que des ambitions s'y op-
posent, et que chacun souhaite
placer dans l'appareil du part',
' des hommes qui lui sont acquis.
Le recrutement
des 4 intellect uels
suspendu
? Les signes crun debat interieur
isont encore pen apparents, 11 est.
vrai, du thoins, d'apres ce que
l'on salt des reunions. qui ont eu
Lieu jusqu'a present.
On releve cependant un pre-
mier indice a l'avantage de ce
'que Ion pourrait appeler les
conservateurs ? les consignes
.tionnees 11 y a deja plusieurs
mois en 'ce qui concerne le re-
crutement. Precisons qu'aucun
intellectuel ?, an sens large du
terme, n'a ete admis a entrer au
part! depuls Vete dernier. L'ob-
,jectif premier est Id d'aug-
menter le pourcentage des tra-
vailleurs, ouvriers et .kolkhozlenst
? au sein de rorganisation (en 190(1
P.C. sovietique ? comprendit
% d'ouvriers et 16,6 % de
kolkhoziens). IL semble bien quo:
? Von alt aussi voulu tenir a reeart,
au moths pour quelque temps, les
elements les moms enclins par',
? mature suivre sane. discuSsioif
'lea. directives de rapparell.
La premiere impression. d'au-,
`tre part, que donnent les rend-
tats connus des reunlone est cella;
dune grande stabilite. Ca, et
un premier secretaire est evince.
Ce fut le cas par exemple du
premier secretaire du parti pour
In ville de Sverdlosk, ? mls a la
retraite ? a rage de soixante ans,
ce qui ne laisse aucun doute sur
le fait qu'll s'agit bien dun limo-
geage.
Dans les conferences de region,
les changernerits cla poraOnnel
sent asses rares ou explicables
par des raisons purement admi-
nistratives (creation d'organisa-
tions nouvelles, mutation du ti-
tulaire a d'autres fonctions, etc...).
La meme stabilite s'etait d?
manifestee dans les organisations
'de base. La revue du comite
central Partinaia Jian indimle
'cute dans ? cent quarante - cinq
d'entre elles le travail 'd e s
bureaux a ete juge insatisfaisant
,et que quatre cent sothante-qua-
,tre secretaires wont pas ete
reelus. Ces chiffres sent tres mo-
destes car 11 y a plus de ,trois
cent mile a organisations de
base ? au seindu parti (trots cent
dome mille en 1966 a is veille
du vingt-troisleme congas).
Quels delegues seront envoyes
au congres D'apres les statuts,
Us sont elus au scrutin secret.
II va de soi que l'election corres-
pond fidelernent au choix fait
prealablement par les instances
superieures. Mais ce choix est
lui-meme l'objet d'une discus-
Sion an sein de l'apparell. La
conference de region forme, en
effet, une commission charges de
dresser /a Hate des candidats.
C'est dans cette commission que
les decisions sont prises. Y
si?
gent non seulement les perma-;
nents du parti pour la region,
mais aussi un certain nombre de -
Personnalites ? patrons de gran- '
des entreprises industrielles, di-,.
?recteurs d'instituts, presidents de
kolkhozes d'avant-garde, etc.
dont l'avis est pis en conside-
ration.' La liste etablie par ces-
notables sera approuvee par la
conference. Parfois elle restilte
de marchatidsges ?serres. ?C'est;
done a ce nivean qUe 'se ?fait*.
ic congres et que sa physionornie
peut etre legerement corrigee par
rapport a celle de rappareil en
place.
Les questions Oconomiques
? el le us
LeS coMptes rendus de la presse
sovietique ?donnent rimpreasion
que les , questions economiquee
tiennent tine tres large plaCe dans
les clebata en copra. Le travail, de
chaqtie organisation est aPpredie
"avant tout' invent Is Maniere
dont elle a applique lea - dire?.
Wes reSolutiona-. du , eon*
!ventral en decembre 1969 et juillet
.1970. II est done beaucoup ques-
tion de Productivite, de discipline
du travail et meme de fertill-
'aation des sols 'et de qualite des
semences. A roceasion, toutefois,
? on parle aussi de' * travail idea-
=logique et des relations a
? terieur du parti. Des t insuffi-
..sences * sont parfois signalees,
r inertje 2, par exemple d'orga-
; filsationst Qui prenhent quantite
de resollitione et Me pm ecupanb
peu de leur application, Dans Fen-
sernble. ees critiques lie font que
lePrendre celles que formulent
periodiquement .Jes editoriaux de
Is Pravda et les autres organes
.du. part.
Pourtant, de maniere Indirecte,
comrnencent it percer les 'signes
d'un debat .plus',profond. Comme
it la veille..du XXIIP congres, la
. reference au nom de Staline joue
;le role de plerre de touche entre
.ce que ion poUrrait apPeler
conservateurs et progresgistes. On
vu apperaltre en 1966 dans
Certains comptes rendus de reu-
nions du part! 'en Georgie. Cette'
armee, c'est l'organe du P.C. de
.Moldavie qui,. dans son numero
du. 16 janvier, a pour ainsi dire
ouvert le feu en .ecrivant que
Staline evait, donne, dans son ar-
ticle ? Le rharxisme: et Is question_
hationale ?, une ,definition repre-
eentant one #eneritlisation de
tout ce gia 'a .ete dit par Karl
Marx, Frederic Engels et V. I.
Lenine.;a propos ? de ressence et
dee traits londantentaux de /a.
nation a. La reference est im- ,
inottante. car elle tend a restau-
rer Staline dans le role de theo-,
riclen du communisme que lui,
avait ote le XX e congres.
Oe n'est pas surprenant en
Molds vie, on le' premier secre-
Aaire du parti,, M. I. I. Bodioul, a
uric reputation bien eta bile de
? stalinien ?. Parch l langage, pour?
i !Instant an moins, serait incon-_
?-cevable dans Is presse centrale,'
niais il est incontestable que des
pressions serieuses au sein du
parti, moths peut-etre en faveur
.crun retour a.. des conceptions
stallniennes touts maniere
trip decalees. par rapport, aux
?conditions conternporaines,? que
? pour un rejet des experiences plus
ou moths liberales tentees depute
..la mort du dictateur sous le regne
t cle; M. Khrouchtchev. C'est le
debat qui delimit: dofniner le
.?XXINTe congres.' Il est encore trap
tOt'pour appreeier le rapport des
forces qui vent:. S!cipPoser sur ce
;,terrain, 'voire..pbut .distinguer les,
tpositions stir lesquelles vont se'
deflnir deg hOmmes.ou des grou-4
1Pes'. trinfluenee, gut, trop. sorn-
t,rdaireMeht ?pent4tre,... on qualifie
.alljdurd'hui dc a.stallniens et
d".! antistalinfelis'?.? ?
?? ? ALAIN JAC0i, 1
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March 1971
Today's Leadership and Prospects of the Soviet System
A remarkable consensus prevails among the better qual-
ified observers of Soviet affairs concerning the leadership
of the country and the trend of development (or more pre-
cisely, :the non-development) in the Soviet system. Many
have noted the advanced age of the 11-man committee known
as the Politburo which collectively determines every major
policy Of the country (see the attached list of Politburo
members 1which shows all but three in their 60's or over).
Along with their advanced age, the leaders suffer from what
these observers variously describe as cautiousness,
conservatism, narrowness, spiritual "sclerosis," intellec-
tual mediocrity, colorlessness, immobility, fearfulness,
and other such infirmities. Ironically, there may be some
tomfort.,for the rest of the world in the thought that these
very characteristics may be a blessing in terms of peace --
for all their lack of imagination, the Soviet leaders appar-
ently appreciate the fact that a head-on military clash
with Western military power would mean that they themselves,
as well as whatever they stand for or try to achieve in
their own country, -would be utterly destroyed. Apart
from that, the future is a cheerless prospect for the
Soviet peoples under such leadership.
After some seven years in power, the current leader-
ship seems to have transmitted its own immobility to the
society over which it rules. It is becoming more widely
recogniZed throughout the world that, far from being the
progressive, productive, modern system it claims to be,
the whole Soviet system of economics, of politics, of
ideology and intellectual life is obsolescent, has reached
an impasse, and where it goes from here is the subject of
considerable debate among informed scholars. Whether it
will degenerate, reform, or suffer revolutionary upheaval
are some of the alternatives. (A thoughtful essay reflecting
on the nature of the Soviet system and its leadership by
Zbignieii Brzezinski, "Soviet Political System: Trans-
formatiOn or Degeneration?" is attached.)
A balance sheet of Soviet domestic and foreign gains
and losses would show a serious minus between 1966 and
1971. In fact, the minus is so plain that one wonders how
the 11-man Politburo can go on endorsing the stewardship
of Brezhnev and Kosygin. While signs are few that the
Congress will produce any major change in leadership
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alignments (i.e. purges or a palace coup), anything is
possible in the conspiratorial world of high Soviet
politics. The logic of the situation from the free world
point of view would seem to require a change in the leader-
ship to inject an innovative dynamism in some direction
away from dead center. "Khrushchevism" would be one
answer -- and some respectable Sovietologists have specu-
lated that the appearance of the Khrushchev Remembers book
in the West may have been a deliberate effort by one or
more highly placed Soviets to force the issue and bring
new movement into Soviet society.
However, the logic of the situation as seen from
the outside world is not apt to matter. It is more likely
that the "logic" prevalent in the leadership is that of
self-preservation, which primarily means continuation of the
"status quo." This fundamental attitude of increasing
reliance upon and utilization of Stalinist norms holds
little promise for progress in Soviet policies or leadership.
That Stalinism versus Khrushchevism may be an issue
at this time is revealed by what could be the tip of a
substantial iceberg of underlying contention within Party
circles. The tip first showed itself in the semi-public
statement of a Soviet diplomat in Prague deploring
Khrushchevism and promising a revival of Stalinism, and
then in the public praise of Khrushchev by the former
Deputy Minister of Defense Grigoriy Bagramyan in his
recently published memoirs (see the attached news accounts).
2
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FOR PAINNIMiiimmealiagaimmo March 1971
WHO'S WHO IN THE POLITBURO
OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU
Brezhnev, Leonid Ilich (born 1906)
A member of the USSR Supreme Soviet since 1950, Brezhnev was one
of Khrushchev's close associates and rose to prominence as a Party
leader in the Ukraine. By 1949 he had been elected a member of the
Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party. In 1950, he took
over in Moldavia as Party First Secretary when the _Moldavian Party
was under fire for its handling of agricultural production. In the
mid 1950's, Brezhnev did much to promote Khrushchev's Virgin Lands
Campaign while serv,ing as First Secretary of the Kazakhstaiommunist
Party. By May 1960, Brezhnev replaced Voroshilov as President of the
USSR and after Khrushchev's ouster, became Party General Secretary.
? Like Khrushchev, Brezhnev has made agriculture his personal
responsibility. He has promoted increased capital investments and
financial incentives to stimulate above-plan production. Yet, he
continues to favor the brigade system of farming although he acknow-
laaged the important contribution of the farmers' private plots.
? J.
During the 1968 crisis over Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev was the
central figure at all the meetings of the Soviet Politburo with the
Czechoslovak leadership at which the Russians sought to dissuade
Dubcek and his colleagues from carrying out their liberalization
program. Reported to have had reservations about military inter-
vention in Czechoslovakia, he eventually sanctioned the 21 August
invasion
In November, 1968, Brezhnev attended in Wai-saw the Fifth Congress
of the Polish United Workers (Communist) Party, at which he expounded
his "doctrine of limited sovereignty" (the "Brezhnev_Doctrine") where-
by the USSR reserves the right to interfere in the internal affairs
of a Communist State where she considers "Socialism" to be "threatened."
The doctrine lays down that the defense of "Socialism" is the common
international duty of all "Socialist" countries, and that the sovereignty
of the Socialist system takes precedence over State sovereignty. The
doctrine was reflected in the new Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty, signed
by Brezhnev and Kosygin in Prague in May 1970.
In domestic affairs, Brezhnev has presided over the rehabilitation
of Stalin as a war leader and "major theoretician." This has been
accompanied by the introduction of repressive measures against dissident
intellectuals and national minority groups, and a general tightening
of party, State and labor discipline. He has built up Soviet military
strength, and appealed to Soviet patriotic feelings.
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Kirilenko worked with Khrushchev in the Ukraine as a Party
organizer and awed his promotion to high party office to Khrushchev's
patronage. He held high posts in the Ukrainian Party organization,
was elected to the CPSU Central Committee in 1956 and by 1966,
became the Central Committee Secretary. Kirilenko has headed state
delegations throughout East Europe, visited Latin America, and attend-
ed both Italian and French Party Congresses. Kirilenko is often
lined up with the more orthodox of the Politburo members such as
Shelest, Polyansky, et al.
Kosygin, Aleksei Nikolaevich (born 1904)
Kosygin, who replaced Khrushchev as Chairman of the Council of
Ministers in October 1964, has for many years been regarded as one
of the most experienced and able economic administrators in the
Soviet leadership.. His connection with the Communist Part dates
from 1927; his membership in the Politburo, from 1960. Kosygin
went with Khrushchev on his 1960 state visit to France and since
1964 has headed nearly every significant Soviet delegation going
abroad.
At the September 1965 party plenum, Kosygin introduced important
reforms of the economic administration, seeking to combine central
ministerial control of industry with fewer restrictions on factory
managers. The whole of Soviet industry was to adopt the new system
by the end of 1968. This target was not achieved, but by iid-1970
40,000 enterprises, accounting for 92 percent of industri4 output,
were said to have gone over to the new system. The reforM has not
brought the hoped-for results.
Kosygin is believed to have had reservatibns about military
intervention by Soviet and,other Warsaw Pact forces in CzecAoslovakia
in August 1968, although he distrusted her liberal reforms on
ideolcgtal grounds. According to some reports he even declared
against intervention at the crucial CPSU meeting at which the signal
for invasion was given.
In 1969, he paid a visit to Pakistan in an evident effort to
counter-balance Chinese influence in Karachi. In May 1970, he called
his first Moscow Press conference since succeeding Khrushchev in 1964
and, accusing the USA of wanting to become the "international gendarme,"
rejected a British initiative seeking a fresh Geneva conference on
Indo-China. He also revealed his sensitivity to Western speculation
about possible changes in the Soviet leadership.
Mazurov, Kirill Trofimovich (born 1914)
Mazurov, son of a peasant, worked his way up in Belorussian
politics, in the Republic where he was born, and by 1956 had become
Party First Secretary. He became a member of the CPSU Central
Committee in 1956 and a full member of the Politburo in 1965.
At the October 1965 Supreme Soviet session, Mazurov was the one who
presented the plans for economic reform which Kosygin had spelled out
for a Central Committee plenum a few days earlier. Mazurov has
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travelled extensiyely in East Europe and has been to Finland,
Sweden, Belgium, and New York.
Pelshe, Arvid Yanovich (born 1899)
Born a Latvian, Pelshe's formative years were spent in Russia.
(Ifter Russian annexed Latvia in 1940, Pelshe went "home" and gradually
became a leading figure in the Latvian Communist Party, chiefly
because of his efforts in the "Russification" of Latvia. Pelshe
is beet known for him attacks on "bourgeoise nationalism" in Latvia,
a subject on which he continues to be vocal. A.Politburo member
since 1966, Pelshe has most recently been involved with the "watchdog"
body of the Czechoslovak Communist Party now engaged in the normalization
of that country.
Podgorny, Nikolai Viktorovich (born 1903)
Soviet President since 1965, Podgorny is an experience Party
official who worked for many years in the Ukraine under Khrushchev.
He has held various posts in the Ukrainian and Moscow Food Industry
Ministries. He worked his way up in the Ukrainian Party to become
its First Secretary in 1957; by 1960, he was a member of the CPSU
Presidium (Politburo). At the November 1964 plenum, Podgorny
reported on the dismantling of one of Khrushchev's more important
reforms -- the merging of industrial and agricultural party organs
which Khrushchev had divi,ded _in 1962. Podgorny's travels have
been limited to East Europe and the Middle East.
Suslov, Mikhail Andreevich (born 1902)
Suslov is a leading Party theoretician and one of the most
influential men in the Kremlin. He has been a permanent member
of the CPSU Presidium (Politburo) since 1955 and is one of that
bodies very few intellectuals. On the fringe of the leadership
in Stalin's time, Suslov is still considered to be one of the most
influential members of the Party leadership. He acts as the CPSU's
top intermediary with Communist parties throughout the world. In
aU of his top political posts and as head of Agitprop and editor
of Pravda, Suslov has acted as the custodian of the Party's
conscience, the liquidator of "deviationists" both Right and Left.
He is the only member of the post -Khrushchev leadership to have
made an explicit public reference to an "error" committed by Stalin.
In recent years, Suslov is said to have suffered from recurring
tuberculosis and a kidney complaint and to have been hospitalized
several times.
Voronov, Gennady Ivanovich (born 1910)
An agricultural expert, Voronov has been a CPSU Central Committee
member since 1952 and a full member of the Presidium (Politburo)
since 1961. His rise to power is attributed to his known support
for Khrushchev's agricultural policies and to his proved efficiency
in regional management affairs. Voronov has travelled to New Zealand,
Britain, and in East Europe. He is Chairman of the RSFSR Council
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Soviet of the RSFSR openly supported the cause of specialist
training in business management for everybody -- from Ministers
to heads of workshops. In 1969, in another speech to the
Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, he called for a greater role of the
Soviets in local planning at the expense of Ministries.
Polyansky, Dmitri Stepanovich (born 1917)
Son of Ukrainian peasants, Polyansky had his early training in
agriculture, was in the military in World War II, and then was
selected for training at the higher Party School in Moscow, from
which he was graduated in 1942. For 16 years Polyansky served in
various regional party posts in Siberia, the Crimea, Chkalov, Krasnodar,
and finally in the RSFSR. He has been a full member of the CPSU
Presidium (Politburo) since 1960. Polyansky is often cited as
the patron of'some of the pro-Stalin, anti-intellectual Soviet
authors.
Shelepin, Aleksandr.uikolaeyieb, (born 1918)
Shelepin is one of the younger and more forceful members of
the CPSU Politburo. He was one of the main beneficiaries oi the
coup which overthrew Khrushchev in October, 1964. He became a full
member of the party Presidium (later renamed Politburo) without
having been a candidate-member. Shelepin had earlier served the
party as a youth leader and as chief of the security police (KGB).
From 1952-58, he was First Secretary of the Komsomol, responsible
for moulding the rising generation in the party's image. Hp played
a prominent part in reviving the anti-religious campaign amOng youth,
becoming noted for his handling of "heretical", tendencies in the
Komsomol -- "nihilism," hooliganism, drunkeness, etc. -- which_
reached their peak in 1956. "Nihilists" among students, young writers
and intellectuals were expelled from the Komsomol on Shelepin's orders.
In Mar 1958, Shelepin was appointed head of the Department for
Party Organs of the Party Central Committee. In December 1958,
he was made Chairman of the Committee of State Security, taking over
from General Serov.
At the December 1965 Central Committee plenum, Brezhnev announced
that the Control Committee would be reorganized and its functions
curtailed. The reorganized body, the .P_copieri-Control Committee, was
placed under one of Shelepin's former Deputies. Shelepin was also
released from his post as Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of
Ministers "in order to concentrate on work in the Central Committee
of the CPSU," in his capacity as a member of the Secretariat, in
which he assumed responsibility for the light and food industries.
Shelepin's career received _a further setback when in July 1967
he was made Chairman of the Aja-Union Central Council of Trade Unions
(AUCCTU), a post of little political influence.
4
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Shelepin formally relinquished his Central Committee secretaryship
in September 1967. His political influence has also been undermined
by the progressive removal of former associates of his from responsible
posts.
In March 1970 Shelepin was reported to have been ill and for
nearly two months he was absent from the public scene.
4 Shelest, Petr Efimovich (born 1908)
Another Ukrainian of peasant origin, Shelest is now First Secretary
of the Ukrainian Communist Party, a post he has held since 1963. He
has been a CPSU Central Committee member since 1961 and after Khrushchev's
ouster, he became a full member of the CPSU Politburo. Shelest has
never travelled outside East Europe.
He is an outspoken opponent of intellectual freedom at home and
abroad and also of Ukrainian "bourgeois" nationalism. In 1969, he
bitterly attacked China for her anti-Soviet propaganda and criticized
the "aggressive" policies of the USA and the Federal Republic of
Germany. In March 1970, in -a report to the 21st Congress of the
Ukrainian Komsomol he emphasized the dangers of foreign pr ganda
and what he stigmatized as "imperialist ideological press
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PROBLEMS OF COMMUNISM
January-February 1966
CPYRGHT
_LL
0 11 tyi
TITh\I
?
generation:
TC) ZTzg
? .
amLew ezskj
?
EDITORS' NOTE: The essay below by Prof. Brzezinski represents a fundamental
inquiry into the essential evolutionary processes of the Soviet political system. in
our opinion, it deserves careful reading and discussion. Accordingly, we have asked
a number of prominent scholars?historians, philosophers, sociologists, political
analysts?to submit brief comments on Prof. Brzezinski's essay, as well as Son the
articles in our recent .cymposium,"Progress and Ideology in the USSR" (Novem-
ber-December 1965). Replies will appear in forthcoming issues of this journal.
_L._ he Soviet Union will soon celebrate its
.:(:)zh anniversary. In this turbulent and rapidly
:ging world, for any political system to sur-
:iv.: half a century is.an accomplishment in its
right and obvious testimony to its dura-
iity. There are not many major political
.zructures in the world today that can boast of
:len longevity. The approaching anniversary,
......ever, provides an appropriate moment for
:?critical review of the changes that have taken
place in the Soviet system, particularly in re-
gard to such critical matters as the character of
izs top leadership, the methods by which its
leaders acquire power, and the relationship of
the Communist Party to society. Furthermore,
the time is also ripe to inquire into the implica-
tions of these changes, especially in regard to
the stability and vitality of the system.
The Leaders
Today Soviet spokesmen would have us be-
lieve that the quality of the top Communist
leadership in the USSR has been abysmal. Of
the 45 years since Lenin, according to official
Soviet. history, power was exercised for au-
proximately five years by leaders subsequently
unmasked as traitors (although later the charge
of treason was retroactively reduced to that of
deviation); for almost 20 years it was wielded
by a paranoiac mass-murderer who irrationally
slew his best comrades and ignorantly guided
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Soviet war strategy by pointing his hngcr at a
globe; and, most recently, for almost ten years,
by a "harebrained" schemer given to tantrums
and with a propensity for wild organizational
experimentation. On the basis of that record,
the present leadership lays claim to representing
a remarkable departure from a historical pat-
tern of singular depravity.
While Soviet criticism of former party leaders
is now abundant, little intellectual effort is ex-
pended on analyzing the implications of the
changes in leadership. Yet that, clearly, is the
impo.rtant question insofar as the political sys-
!.e:;)
fAnin was a rare type of political leader, fus-
ing in his person several functions of key impor-
tance to the working of a political system: he
acted as the chief ideologist of the system, the
principal organizer of the party (indeed, the
founder of the movement), and the top adminis-
trator of the state. It may be added that such
personal fusion is typical of early revolutionary
leaderships, and today it is exemplified by Mao
Tse-tung. To his followers, Lenin was clearly a
charismatic leader, and his power (like Hitler's
or Mao Tse-tunqb's) depended less on institu-
tions than on the force of his personality and in-
tellect. Even after the Revolution, it was his
personal authority that gave him enormous
power, while the progressive institutionalization
of Lenin's rule (the Cheka, the appearance of
the apparat, etc.) reflected more the transfor-
mation of a revolutionary party into a ruling
one than any significant change in the character
of his leadership.
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Lenin's biographers ' agree that here was a
man characterized by total political commit-
ment, by self-righteous conviction, by.; tenacious
determination and! by an outstanding ability to
formulate intellectually appealing principles of
political action as:well as popular slogans suit-
able tor mass consumption. He was a typically
revoluti9nary figure, a man whose genius can be
consummated only at that critical juncture in
history when the new breaks off?and not just
evolves?from the old. Had he lived a genera-
tion earlier, he probably would have died, in a
Siberian taiga; a generation later, he probably
would have been shot by Stalin.
nder Stalin,! the fusion of leadership func-
tions was continued, but this was due less to his
personal qualities 1 as such than to the fact that,
with the passage Of time and the growing toll of
victims, his power became nearly total and was
gradually translated also into personal author-
ity. Only a mediocre ideologist?and certainly
inferior in that respect to his chief rivals for
Dower?Staliniecam institutiona:lv the ideo-
. jogue of the vs.:ern?A ciz.Cu speaker, he eventu-
ally acquired the `i,`routinized charisma" 2 which,
after Lenin's death, became invested in the
Communist Party as a whole (much as the
Pope at one timei acquired the infallibility that
for a long time had rested in the collective
church). But his: power was increasingly insti-
tutionalized bureaucratically, with decision-
making centralized at the apex within his own
secret7iat, and its exercise involved a subtle
balancing of thei principal institutions of the
political system: the secret police, the party,
the state, and the army (roughly in that order
of importance). .:Even the ostensibly principal
organ of power, the Politburo, was split into
Angelica Balabanoff, Impressions of Lenin, Ann
Arbor, Mich.; University of Michigan Press, 1964. Louis
Fischer, Life of Lenin, New York, Harper, 1964. S. Pos-
sony, Lenin, the Compulsive Revolutionary, Chicago,
Regnery, 1964, Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Who Made a
Revolution, New Yotk, Dial Press, 1948.
2 For a discussion of "routinized charisma," see Amitai
Etzioni, 4 Comparative Analysis of Complex Organiza-
tions, Glencoe, 114, Glencoe Free Press, 1961, pp. 26 ff,
minor groups, "the sextets," the "quartets," etc.,
with Stalin personally deciding who should par-
ticipate in which subgroup and personally pro-
viding (and monopolizing) the function of
integration.
If historical parallels for Lenin are to be found
among the revolutionary tribunes, .for. Stalin
they are to be sought among the Oriental des-
pots.' Thriving on intrigue, shielded in mystery,
and isolated from society, his immense power re-
flected the immense tasks he succeeded in im-
posing on his followers and subjects. Capitalizing
'on the revolutionary momentum and the ideo-
logical impetus inherited from Leninism, and
wedding it to a systematic institutionalization
? of bureaucratic rule, he could set in motion a
social and political revolution which weakened
all existing institutions save Stalin's own secre-
tariat and his chief executive arm, the secret
police. His power grew in proportion to the de-
gree to which the major established institutions
declined in vitality and homogeneity.4
The ,var, however, as well as the postwar re-
construction, produced a paradox. While Stalin's
personal prestige and authority were further en-
hanced, his institutional supremacy relatively
declined. The military establishment naturally
grew in importance; the enormous effort to
transfer, reinstall, and later reconstruct the in-
dustrial economy invigorated the state machin-
ery; the party apparat began to perform again
the key functions of social mobilization and
political integration. But the aging tyrant was
neither unaware of this development nor appar-
ently resigned to it. The Byzantine intrigues
resulting in the liquidation of the Leningrad
leadership and Voznesenski, the "doctors' plot"
With its ominous implications for some top
party, military and police chiefs, clearly augured
an effort to weaken any institutional limits on
Stalin's personal supremacy..
6 Compare the types discussed by J. L. Talmon in his
Political Messianism: the Romantic Phase, Nell' York,
Praeger, 1960, with Barrington Moore, Jr., Political
Power anti Social Theory, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard
University -Press, 1958, especially Chapter 2 on "Totali-
tarian Elements in Pre-Industrial Societies," or Xarl
Wittfogcl, Oriental Despotism, New Haven, Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1957.
'It seems that these considerations are as important to
the un?lerstanding of the Stalinist system as the psycho-
patimlogical traits of Stalin that Robert C. Tucker rightly
emphasizes in his "The Dictator and. Totalitarianism,'
11"orld Polities, July 1965.
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- 7-
Came to power os jet nsibly to
Ihfllfl,which dulincd as saft?guarding
the traditional priority Of heavy industry iind
rt:storinc,? the primacy of the party. In fact, lie
presided over the dismantling of Stalinism. He
roklo to power by redwing tho predominant po-
sition of the party apparat. But the complex:-
ties of governing (as contrasted to the priorities
of the power struggle) caused him to dilute the
party's position. While initially he succeeded in
. diminishing the political role of the secret police
and in weakening the state machinery, the mili-
tary establishment grew in importance with the
continuing tensions of the co1d'war.5 By the time
Khrushchev was removed, the economic priori-
ties had become blurred because of pressures in
agriculture and the consumer sector, while his
own reorganization of the party into two separ-
ate industrial and rural hierarchies in November
1962 went far toward undermining the party's
homogeneity of outlook, apart from splitting it.
Institutionally. Consequently, the state bureau--
cracy recouped, almost by default,-some of its
integrative and administrative functions. Khru-
shchev thus, perhaps inadvertently, restored
much of the institutional balance that had
existed under Stalin, but without ever acquiring
the full powers of the balancer.
Khrushchev lacked the authority of Lenin to
generate personal power, or the power of Stalin
to create personal authority?and the Soviet
leadership under him became increasingly dif-
ferentiated. The top leader was no longer the
top ideologist, in spite of occasional efforts to
present Khrushchev's elaborations as "a crea-
tive contribution to Marxism-Leninism." The
ruling body now contained at least one profes-
sional specialist in ideological matters, and it
was no secret that the presence of the profes-
sional ideologue was required because someone ?
had to give professional ideological advice to the
party's top leader. Similarly, technical-adminis-
trative specialization differentiated some top
leaders from others. Increasingly Khrushchev's
function?and presumably the primary source
of his still considerable power?was that of pro-
viding political integration and impetus for new
domestic or foreign initiatives in a political sys-
tem otherwise too complex to be directed and
administered by one man:
The differentiation of functions also made it
more difficult for the top leader to inherit even
the "routinized charisma" that Stalin had even-
tually transferred to himself from the party as
a whole. Acquiring charisma was more difficult
for a leader who (even apart from a personal
style and vulgar appearance that did not lend
themselves to image building") had neither the
great "theoretical" flare valued by a movement
that still prided itself on being the embodiment
of a messianic ideology, nor the technical exper-
tise highly regarded in a state which equated
technological advance with human progress.
Moreover, occupying the posts of First Secre-
tary and Chairman of the Council of Ministers
was not enough to develop a charismatic appeal
since neither post has been sufficiently institu-
tionalized to endow its occupant with the special
prestige and aura that, for example, the Presi-
dent of the ? United States automatically gains
on assuming office.
Trying to cope with this lack of charismatic
appeal, Khrushchev replaced Stalin's former
colleagues. In the process, he gradually came to
rely on a younger generation of bureaucratic
leaders to whom orderliness of procedure was
instinctively preferable to crah carnoaiens. Ad-
ministratively, however, Khrushchev was a true
product of the Stalinist school, with its marked
proclivity for just such campaigns at the cost of
all other considerations. In striving to develop
his own style of leadership, Khrushchev tried to
? emulate Lenin in stimulating new fervor, and
Stalin in mobilizing energies, but without the
personal and institutional assets that each had
commanded. By the time he was removed,
Khrushchev had become an anachronism in the
new political context he himself had helped to
create.
rezhnev and Kosygin mark the coming to
power of a new generation of leaders, irrespec-
tive of whether they will for long retain their
present positions.? Lenin's, Stalin's, and Khru-
shchev's formative experience was the unsettled
period of conspiratorial activity, revolution, and
?in Khrushchev's case?civil war and the early
phase of communism. The new leaders bene-
ficiaries of the revolution but no longer revolu-
tionaries themselves, have matuteri
nv't
5 For a good treatment of Soviet military debates, see ? See S. Bialer, "An Unstable Leadership," Problems of
Thomas Wolfe, Soviet Strategy a: ik CrossroadsAr?70910? cerAiRep,7411bak
-vruF9s4N6b0300120001-0
bridge, Mass., giippraiiildrftt9PiKeteaSe "IU
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established political setting in which the truly
large issues of policy- and leadership have been
decided. Aspiring young bureaucrats, initially
promoted during the purges, they could obserye-
??but not suffer -from--:the debilitating conse-
quences of political extremism and unpredic-
table personal rule. TO this new generation of
clerks, bureaucratic stability?indeed, bureau-
cratic dictatorship?must seem to be the only
solid foundation for effective government.
Differentiation of functions to these bureau-.
crats is a. norm, while personal charisma is
ground for suspicion. The new Soviet leadership,
therefore, is both bureaucratic in style and es-
sentially impersonal in form. The curious em-
phasis on kolicktivr,ost rukovocittva (collec-
tivity of leadership) instead of the traditional
kollektivnoe ritkovoclitvo (collective leader-
ship)?a change in formulation used immedi-
ately after Khrushchev's fall?suggests a cle?
libo.rate effort at achieving not only a- personal
but also an institutional collective leadership,
designed to prevent any one leader from using a
particular institution as a vehicle for obtaining
political supremacy.
. The question arises, however; whether this
kind of leadership can prove effective in guiding
the destiny of a major state. The Soviet system
. is now led by a bureaucratic leadership from the
very top to the bottom. In that respect, it is
unique. Even political systems with highly de-
veloped and skillful: professional political bu-
reaucracies, such as the British, the French', or
.that of the Catholic Church, have reseved some
top policy-making and hence power-wielding
positions for non-bureaucratic professional poli-
ticians, presumably .on the assumption that a
free-wheeling, genetalizing and competitive
political experience is of decisive importance in
shaping effective national leadership.
.To be sure, some top Soviet leaders no acquire
such experience, even in the course of rising up
the bureaucratic party ladder, especially when
assigned to provincial or republican executive
responsibilities. There they acquire the skills of
initiative, direction, integration, .as well as ac-
commodation, compromise, and delegation of
authority, which are the basic prerequisites for
executive management of any complex organi-
zati;n.
Nonetheless, even when occupying territorial
'positions of responsibility, the apparatc.hila: are
still part of an extremely centralized and rigidly
hierarchical bureaucratic organization, increas-
ingly set in its ways, politically corrupted by
years of unchali,-noed ,,ower an
more&IPERYAMitiMMMIst'llOg
case with a ruling body by its lingering and in-
creasingly ritualized doctrinaire tradition. It is
relevant to note here (from observations made
in Soviet universities) that the young men who
become active in the Komsomol organization
and are presumably ernbark.ing on a professional
political career are generally the dull conform-
ists. Clearly, in a highly bureaucratized political
setting, conformity, caution and currying favor
with superiors count for more in advancing a
political career than personal courage and indi-
vidual initiative.'
Such a condition poses a long-range danger tn.
the vitality of any political system. Social evolu-
tion, it has been noted, depends not only on the
availability of creative individuals, but on the
existence of clusters of creators who collectively
promote social innovation. "The ability of any
gifted individual to exert levb
era,e within a so-
ciety . . . is partly a function of the exact com-
position of the group of those on whom he de-
pends for day-to-day interaction and for the
execution of his plans."' The revolutionary
milieu of the 1920's and even the fanatical
Stalinist commitment of the 1930's fostered such
clusters of intelleetual and political talent. It is
doubtful that the CPSU party schools and the
Central Committee personnel department en-
courage, in Margaret Mead's terms, the growth
of clusters of creativity, and that is why the
transition from Lenin to Stalin to KhrushcheV
to Brezhnev probably cannot be charted by an
ascending line.
This has serious implications for the Soviet
system as a whole. It is doubtful that any or-
ganization can long remain vital if it is so struc-
tured that in its personnel policy it becomes,
almost unknowingly, inimical to talent and
hostile to political innovation. Decay is bound
to set in, while the stability of the political sys-
tem may be endangered, if other social institu-
tions succeed in attracting the society's talent
and begin to chafe under the restraints imposed
by the ruling but increasingly mediocre appa-
ratchiki.
7 Writing about modern bureaucracy, V. A. Thompson
(Modern Organization, New York, 1961, p. 91) observed :
"In the formally structured group, the idea man is doubly
dangerous. He endangers the established distribution of
power and status, and he is a competitive threat to his
peers. Consequently, he has to be suppressed." For a
breezy treatment of some analogous experience, see also
E. G. Hegarty, How to Succeed in Company Politics New
York, 1963.
8 Margaret Mead, Continuities in Cultural Evolution,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1964, p. 181. See also
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degenerated into simple '.anarchy, and Stalin's
power grew immeasurably because he effectively
practiced the art of leadership according to his
own definition:
Jr ?Power
The struggle for power in the Soviet political
system has .certainly become less violent. The
question is however: Has it become less debili-
tating for ;he political system? Has it become a
more regularized process, capable of infusing the
leadership with fresh blood? A closer look at
the changes in the character of the competition
for power may guide us to the answer.
Both Stalin and Khrushchev rode to power by
skillfully manipulating issues as well as by tak-
ing full advantage of the organizational oppor-
tunities arising from their tenure of the post of
party First Secretary. It must be stressed that
the manipulation of issues was at least as im-
portant to their success as the organizational
factor, which generally tends to receive Priority
in Western historical treatments. In Stalin's
time, the issues facing the party were, indeed, on
a grand scale: world revolution vs. socialism in
one country; domestic evolution vs. social revo-
lution; a factionalized vs. a monolithic party.
Stalin succeeded because he instinctively per-
ceived that the new apparatchiki were not pre-
pared to sacrifice themselves in futile efforts to
promote foreign revolutions but?being for the
most part genuinely committed to revolutionary
ideals?were becoming eager to get on with the
job of creating a socialist society. (Moreover,
had the NEP endured another ten years, woulid
the Soviet Union be a Communist dictatorship
today?)
Stalin's choice of socialism in one country was
a brilliant solution. It captivated, at least in
part, the revolutionaries; and it satisfied, at
least partially, the accommodators. It split the
opposition, polarized it, and prepared the ground
for the eventual liquidation of each segment
with the other's support. The violence, the ter-
ror, and finally the Great Purges of 1936-1938
followed logically. Imbued with the Leninist
tradition of intolerance for dissent, engaged in
a vast undertaking of social revolution that
taxed both the resources and the nerves of party
members, guided by an unscrupulous and para-
noiac but also reassuringly calm leader, govern-
ing a backward country surrounded by neigh-
bors that were generally hostile to the Soviet
experiment, and increasingly deriving its own
membership strength from first-generation pro-
letarians with all their susceptibility to simple
explanations and dogmatic truths, the ruling
party easily plunged down the path of increas-
ing b rutliAlpp Fdissicii4zoibftltotiSeb1999Y6/02 ? CIA-RIDIP791.0171V4A001:1300420#0tV01940. r.
that violence and controlled it. The terror never 10 338.
The art of leadership is a serious matter. One
must not lag behind the movement, because to
do so is to become isolated from the masses.
But neither must one rush ahead, for to rush
ahead is to lose contact with the masses.l. e who
wants to lead a movement and at the same time
keep in touch with the vast masses must wage
a fight on two fronts?against those who lag
behind and. those who run ahead.?
Khrushchev, too, succeeded in becoming the
top leader because he perceived the elite's pre-
dominant interests. Restoration of the primary
position of the party,.decapitation of the secret
police, reduction of e privileges of the state
bureaucrats while .maintaining the traditional -
emphasis on heavy industrial development
(which pleased both. the industrial elite and the
military establishment.)?these were the issues.
which Khrushchev successfully utilized in the .
mid-1950's to mobil* the support of officials
and accomplish the adual isolation and even-
tual defeat of Malen4v.
But the analogy ends right there. The social
and even the political system in which Khru-
shchev came to rule was relatively settled. In-
deed, in some .respects, it was stagnating, and
Khrushchev's key problem, once he reached the.
political apex (but before he had had time to
consolidate his position there) was how to get
the cbuntry moving again. The effort to infuse
new social and political dynamism into Soviet
society, even while consolidating his power, led.
him to a public repudiation of Stalinism which
. certainly shocked some officials; to sweeping
economic reforms which disgruntled many ad-
ministrators; to a dramatic reorganization of
the party which appalled the appareackiki; and
even to an attempt to circumvent the policy-
making authority of the party Presidium, by
means of direct appeals to interested groups,
which must have both outraged and frightened
his colleagues. The elimination of violence as
the decisive instrumentality of political Compe-
tition?a move that was perhaps prompted by
the greater institutional maturity of Soviet so-
ciety, and which was in any case made inevita-
ble by the downgrading of the secret police and
the public disavowals of Stalinism?meant that
Khrushchev, unlike Stalin, could not achieve
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both soCial dynamism and the stability of his
power.. Stalin magnified his power as he strove
to changc society; to change society Khrushchev
had to risk his power. -
he range of domestic disagreement in-
volved in the post-Stalin struggicshas a1?
rowed
nar-
rowed with the maturing of social commitments
made earlier. For the moment, the em r--
alternatiVeS is over in: Soviet society. Even
:hough anv struggle tends to exaggerate differ-
ences; the issues that divided Khrushchev from
his opponents, though of great import, appear
pedestrian in comparison to those over which
Stalin and his enemies .crossed swords. In
Khrushchev's case, they pertained primarily to
policy alternatives; in the case of Stalin, they-in-
volved basic ?conceptions of historical develop-
ment. Compare the pot-Stalin debates about
the allocation of resoUrces among different
branches of the economy, for example, with the
debates of the 1920's about the character and
,
pace of Soviet industrialization; or Khrushchev's
homilies on the merits of corn?and . even his
undeniably bold and controversial virgin lands
campaignwith the dilemma of whether to col-
lectivize a hundred million ?reticent peasants, at
what pace, and with what intensity in terms of
resort to violence.
It is only in the realm of foreign affairs that
one can perhaps argue that grand dilemmas still
impose themselves on the Soviet political scene.
The nuclear-war-or-peace debate of the 1950's
and early 1960's is' comparabk in many respects
to- the earlier conflict over "permanent revolu-
ti(m" or "socialisrn in one country." Molotov's
runoval and Kozlov's political demise .were to
a large extent related to .disagreements concern-
ing foreign affairs; nonetheless, in spite of such
?occasional rumblings, it would appear that on
the peace-or-war issue there is today more of a
consensus zi;nong the Soviet elite than there was
on the issue of permanent revolution in the
1920's. 'Although a wide spectrum of opinion
does indeed exist in the international Commu-
nist movement on the crucial questions of war
and peace, this situation, as far as one car; judge,
'obtains to a considerably lesser degree in the
USSR itself. Bukharin vs. Trotsky can be com-
pared to Togliatti vs. Mao Tse-tung, but hardly
to Khrushchev vs. Kozlov.
The narrowing of the-range of disagreement
is refle6teAjitpticogkInEartiRiabiasafl 99109/0
In the earlier part of this discussion, some corn-
parative comments were made about Stalin,
Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. It is even more
revealing, however, to exainine their principal
rivals. Take the men who opposed Stalin: Trot-
sky, Zinoviev, and Bukharin. What a range of
political, historical, economic, and intellectual
creativity, what talent, what a diversity of per-
sonal characteristics and backgrounds! Com-
Dare this diversity with 010 erommt,ii,
personal training, narrowne-ss of perspective,
and poverty of intellect .of Malenkov, Kozlov
and Suslov." A-regime of the clerks cannot help
but clash over clerical issues.
The narrowing of the range of disagreement
and the cooling of ideological passions mean also
the wane of political violence. The struggle
tends to become less a matter of life or death,
and more one in which the price of defeat is
simply retirement and sorne personal disgrace.
In turn, with the routinization of conflict, the
political system develops even a body of prece-
dents for handling fallen leaders. By now there
must be a regular procedure, probably even
some office, for handliq pensions and apart-
ments for former PresidiVm members, as well
as a developing social. etiquette for dealing with
them publicly and privately."
lo One could hardly expect a historian to work up any
enthusiasm for undertaking to write, say, Malenkov's bi-
ography: The Apparatchik Promoted, The .ripparatchik
Triumphant,The A pparatchik Pensioned1
1' Can Mikoyan, for example, invite Khrushchev
lunch? This is not a trivial question, for social mores and
political style are interwoven. After all, Voroshilov, who
had been publicly branded as a military idiot and a political
sycophant, was subsequently, invited to a Kremlin recep-
13atiyutIsLcharge still
YM jt inlYlInniversary
celebration of the Soviet victory in World War II.
2 : CIA-Mrs/01MM isic
11
I_ .;..._ ore important is the apparent develop-
ment in the Soviet system of something which
might be described as a regularly available.
"counter-elite." After Khrushchev's fall, his suc-
cessors moved quickly to restore to important
positions a number of individuals whom Khru-
shchev had purged," while some of Khrushchev's
supporters were demoted and transferred. Al-
ready for a number of years now, it has been
fairly common practice to appoint party offi-,
cials demoted from high office either to diplo-
matic posts abroad or to some obscure, out-of-
the-way assignments at home. The total effect
of this has been to create a growing body of offi- -
cial "outs" who are biding their time on the '
sidelines and presumably hoping someday to :
become the "ins" again. Moreover, they may i
not only hope; if sufficiently numerous, young,
-and vigorous, they may gradually begin to re-
semble somethinr, of a political alternative to
those in power, and eventually to think and even
act as such. This could be the starting .point of
informal factional activity, of intrigues and
conspiracies when things go badly for those in
power, and of organized efforts to seduce some
part of the ruling elite in order to stage an inter-
nal change of guard." In addition, the availa-
bility of an increasingly secure "counter-elite"
is likely to make it more difficult for a leader to
consolidate his power. This in turn might tend
to promote more frequent changes in .the top
leadership, with policy failures affecting the
power of incumbents instead of affecting?only
retroactively?the reputation of former leaders,
as has hitherto been the case.
The cumulative effect of these developments
has been wide-ranging. First of all, the reduced
importance of both ideological issues and per-
sonalities and the increasing weight of institu-
tional interests in the periodic struggles fot
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : Cl*R.p.E794111Atimcmpiplapptot4 more
structured quality ,of present-day Soviet life as
compared with the situation under Stalin?tends
to depersonalize political conflict and to make it
a protracted bureaucratic struggle. Secondly,
the curbing of violence makes it more likely that
conflicts will be resolved by patched-up com-
promises rather than by drastic institutional
redistributions of power and the reappearance
of personal tyranny, Finally, the increasingly
bureaucratic character of the strbggle for power
tends to transform it into a contest among high-
level clerks and is therefore not conducive to
attracting creative and innovating talent into
the top leadership.
Khrushchev's fall provides a good illustration
of the points made above, as well as an impor-
tant precedent for the future. For the first time
in Soviet history, the First Secretary has been
toppled from power by, his associates. This was
done not in order to tvlace him with an alter-
native personal leader'0 to pursue ,enuineIv al-
ternative goals, but in order to depersonalize the
leadership and to pursue more effectively many
of the previous policies. In a word, the objec-
tives were impersonal leadership higher bu-
reaucratic efficiency. ? Khrushchev's removal.
however, also n-crais that personal intrigues and
cabals can work, that,' subordinate members of
the leadership?or possibly, someday, a group
of ex-leaders?can effectively conspire against
a principal leader, with the result that any fu-
ture First Secretary is bound to feel far less se-
cure than Khrushchev must have felt at the
beginhing of October 1964.
The absence of an institutionalized top execu-
tive officer in the Soviet political system, in con-
junction with the increased difficulties in the
way of achieving personal dictatorship and the
decreased personal cost of defeat in a political
conflict, create a ready-made situation for group.
pressures and institutional clashes. In fact, al-
.
-though-the range of disagreement may have nar-
rowed, the scope of elite participation in power
conflicts has already widened. Much of Khru-
shchev's exercise of power was preoccupied
with mediating the demands of key institutions
such as the army, or with overcoming the oppo-
sition of others, such as the objections of the,
administrators to economic decentralization or
of the heavy industrial managers to non-indus-
trial priorities. These interests were heavily in-
volved in the Khrushchev-Malenkov conflict
and in the "anti-party" episode of 1957.
At the present time, these pressures and
clashes take place in an, almost entirely amor-
CIXRDR793.1114114A6G03130t11200011e0nition
11 F. D. Kulakov, apparently blamed by Khrushchev in
1960 for agricultural failings in the RSFSR, was ap-
poimed in 1965 to direct the Soviet Union's new agricul-
tural programs; V. V. :Vlatskevich was restored as Min-
ister of Agriculture and appointed Deputy Premier of the
RSFSR in charge of agriculture; Marshal M. V. Za-
kharoy was reappointed as Chief-of-Staff of the, Armed
Force; even L. G. Melnikov reemerged from total ob-
scurity as chairman of the industrial work safety com-
mittee of the RSFSR.
1.3 Molotov's letter to the Central Committee on the eve
of the 22nd Party Congress of October 1961, which
bluntly and directly charged Khrushchev's program with
revisionism, was presumably designed to stir up the ap-
paratchiki against the First Secretary. It may be a portent
of 'things to come.
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12
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and established procedures. The somewhat
greater 'role played by the Central Committee
in recent years still does not suflice to give this
process of bureaucratic conflict a stable institu-
tional. expression. As far as we know from exist-
ing evidence, the Central Committee still acted
during the .1957 and.1964 crises primarily as a
ratifying body, giving formal sanction to deci-
sions-- already fought out in, the Kremlin's corn-
dors of power." It did not act as either the ar-
biter or the supreme legislative body.
The competition for power, then, is changing
from a death struggle among the few into a con-
test played by many more. But the decline of
violence does .not, as is often assumed, automati-
cally -benefit the SovieCpolitical system; some-
.- thing -more effective and stabk has to take the
place of violence. The"g,arne" of politics that has
replaced the former mafia-style struggles for
power is no longer murderous, but it is. still not
a. Stable game played within an established
:arena, according to accepted rules, and involv-
ing more or less formal terms. It resembles more
..the anarchistic free-for-all of the playground
and therefore could become, in SQIIIC, respects,
even ? more debilitating to the system. Stalin
encouraged institutional conflict below him so
that he could wield his power with less restraint.
Institutional conflict combined with mediocre
and unstable personal leadership makes for in-
effective and precarious power.
Pay and Onrizzp Einlereas
In a stimulating study of political develop-
ment and decay, Samuel Huntington has argued
that stable political growth requires a balance
between political "institutionalization" and
political "participation": that merely increasing
popular mobilization and participation in poli-
tics without achieving a corresponding degree
of "institutionalization of political organization,
and procedures" results not in political develop-
ment but in political decay.l'i Commenting in
passing on the Soviet system, he therefore noted
that "a strong party is in the Soviet- public in-
terest" because it provides a stable institutional -
framework."
14 Roger Pethybridge, .4 Key to Soviet Polities, New
York, Praeger, 1962. See also Myron Rush, The Rise ot
Khrushehcv, Washington, DC, Public Affairs Press. 195R
15 Samuel P. Huntington, "Political Development and
Polittcal Decay," World 2 olitia. (Princeton Is1.1:.1 Aora
1965. Approved For Reiease 9uu/u9-(o2
p. 414.
13
The Soviet political system has certainly
achieved a high index of institutionalization.
For almost five decades the ruling party has
maintained unquestioned supremacy over the
society, imposing its ideology at will. Tradition-
ally, the Communist system has combined its
high institutionalization with high pseudo-par-
ticipation of individuals." But a difficulty could
ariso if division within the top leadership of rho
political system weakened political "institution-
alization" while simultaneously stimulating
genuine public participation by groups and in-
stitutions. Could this new condition be given
an effective and stable institutional framework
and, if so, with what implications for the
"strong" party?
Today the Soviet 'political system is again
oligarchic, but its socio-economic setting is now
quite different. Soviet society is far more de-
veloped and stable, far less malleable and at-
omized. In the pa4, the key groups that had
to be considered as potential political partici-
pants were relatively few. Today, in addition to
the vastly more entrenched institutional inter-
ests, such as the police, the military, and the
state bureaucracy, the youth could become a
source of ferment, the consumers could become
more restless the collective farmers more re-
calcitrant, the scientists more outspoken, the
non-Russian nationalities more demanding. Pro-
longed competition among the oligarchs would
certainly accelerate. the assertiveness of such
groups.
" The massive campaigns launching "public discussions"
that involve millions of people, the periodic "elections"
that decide nothing, were designed to develop participation
without threat to the institutionalized political organiza-
tion and procedures. The official theory held that as Com-
munist consciousness developed and new forms of social
and public relations took root, political participation would
: CiA-RarirharitnkibibittOtboldh Tuld come to
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000300120001-0
By now some of these groups have a degree of cannot be categorized so simply, and some;
institutional cohesion, and occasionally they act , clearly; could be shifted left or right with equal
in concert on some issues."' They certainly can , r cause, as indeed they often- shift themselves.
lobby and, in turn, be courted by ambitious and 1. Nonetheless, the chart illustrates ,the range of
opportunistic oligarchs. Some groups, because ' opinion that exists in the Soviet system and sug-
of institutional cohesion, advantageous location, , . gests the kind of alliances, group competition,
easy access to the top leadership, and ability to - and political Courtship that probably prevail,
articulate their zoals and interests,can be quite : cutting vertically through 'the party organiza-
influential.'" Taken together they ruprument it ,. tion. .
:
wide spectrum of opinion, and in the setting of - Not Just Western but also Communist
oligarchical rule rule there is bound to be some cor- though not as yet Soviet) political thinkers are
respondence between their respective stances comirig to recognize more and more openly the
Communist-
and those of the top leaders. This spectrum is ; existence of group conflict even in a dominated society. A Slovak jurist recently ob-
represented in simplified fashion by the chart
on this page, which takes cumulative account of served:
the principal divisions, both on external and on
domestic issues, that have perplexed Soviet po- The social interest in our. society can be demo-
litical life during the last decade or so." Obvi- eratically formed only by the integration of
ously,.the table is somewhat arbitrary and also group interests; in the process of this intcgra-
highly speculative. Individuals and groups tion, the interest groups,protect their own eco-
12 A schematic distribution of these groups is indicated nomic and other social tuterests; this is in no
by the following approximate figures: (A) amorphous so- way altered by the fart that everything appears
cial forces that in the main express passively broad social on the surface as a unity .of interests.:!'
aspirations: workers and peasants, about SS million;
white collar and technical intelligentsia, about 21 million.
(B) specific interest groups that promote their own, panic- The author went on to stress that the key poli-
lar interests: the literary and artistic community, about tical problem facing the Communist system is
75 thousand; higher-level scientists, about 150 thousand;
that of achieving Integration ot group interests.
u
physicians, about 380 thousand. (C) policy groups whose
interests necessarily spill over into broad matters of na- Traditionally, this function of integration has
tional policy:, industrial managers, about 200 thousand; been monopolized by the party, resorting?since
state and collective farm chairmen, about 45 thousand; the discard of terror?to the means of bureau-
commanding military personnel, about SO thousand; cra:ia arbitration. In the words of the author
higher-level state bureaucrats, about 250 thousand. These
groups are integrated by the professional apparatchiki, I just cire8, "the party as the leading and direct-
who number about 150-200 thousand. All of these groups ing 'Political force fulfills its functions by resolv-.
in turn could be broken down into sub-units; e.g., the ing intra.-class and inter-class interests." In do-
Eter....,-' community, institutionally built around several ,
journa'ls, can be divided into hard-liners, the centrists, and ing so, the party generally has preferred to deal
the progressives, etc. Similarly, the military. On some with each group bilaterally, thereby preventing
,issues, there may be cross-interlocking of sub-groups, as the formation of coalitions and informal group
well as more-or-less temporary coalitions of groups. See . consensus. In this way the unity of political di-
Z. Brzezinslci and S. Huntington, Political Power: US/I-
USSR, New York, Viking Press, 1964, Ch. 4, for further rection as well as the political supremacy of the
discussion. - . ruling party have been maintained. The party
IP An obvious example is the military command; bureau- , has always been very jealous of its "integrative",
eraticolly cohesive and with a specific esprit de corps, lo-'
cote41 in Moscow, necessarily in frequent contact with. prerogative, and the intrusion on the political
the top leaders, and possessing its own journals of opinion. ' ' scene of any other group has been strongly re-
(where strategic and hence also?indirectly?budgetary, -sented.- The party's institutional primacy has
foreign, and other issues can he discussed )..
2" The categories "systemic left," etc., are adapted from thus depended on limiting the real participation
R. R. Levine's hook, The Arms Debate (Cambridge, of other groups.
Mass., Harvard University Press, 1963), which contains If, for one reason or another, the party were
a suggestive chart of American opinion on internatimial
issues. By "systemic left" is meant here a radical reformist to weaken in the performance of this function,
outlook, challenging the predominant values of the existing - the only alternative to anarchy would be some
system; by "systemic right" is meant an almost reactionary iiistqutionalizedprocess of mediation, replacing
return to past values; the other three categories designate
differences of degree within a dominant "mainstream."
In the chart below (unlike Levine's), the center position
serves as a dividing line, and hence no one is listed directly 21 M. Lakatos, "On Some Problems of the Structure of
. under. it. IVIalenkcv is listed as ."systemic left" because his Our Political System," Pravny obior (Bratislava), No. 1,
proposals reoesented at the time a drastic departure from 1965, as, quoted in Gordon Skilling's.illuminating paper,
established positions. Molotov is labeled "systemic right" "Interest Groups and Communist Politics," read to the
StaliniSt systat
because of h._,'-. incIinrationagfetbndsttl(A 'essentials of tlib9,
: Cl kliibiSf6-itaillS6i2Chtfgotdi iordefil-965.?
since Stalin's deat . 1
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Policy Spectrum USSR
Mergina
Systemic
Left Left
Centrist
Right
Systemic
r? ?
Malenkov Khrushchev
Kosygin
Brezbnev
Kozlor
Molotov
Podgorny
Mikoyan
Shelepin
Suzlov
Kaganovich
Voronov
Regional
Central
Agitprop
Consumer
Apparat
Apparat
Goods Industry Light
Heavy
Industry
'Industry
Military
Conventional
Innovators
Army
. Agronomists
MiniSterial
Secret
Scientisth
Bureaucrats
Police
Moscow-Economic
Economic
Leningrad Refbrmers
Computators
Intellectuals (Liberman)
(Nernthinov)
I ;.rty's bureaucratic a rb tra don. Since, as
noted, group participation has become more
wideipread, while the party's effectiveness in
achieving integration has been lessened by the
decline, in the vigor of Soviet leadership and by
the .persistent divisions in the, top echelon, the
creation and eventual formal institutionaliza-
tior_9f some such process of mediation is gaining
in urgency. Otherwise participation could .out-
-run institutionalization and result in a challenge
to the party's integrative function. '
7.77?
.2.1.....hrushchev's practice of holding enlarged
Centrai Committee plenums, with representa-
tives of other groups present, seems to have
be,l) a step towards formalizing a more regular
comultative procedure. (It also had the politi-
ealiy expedient effect of bypassing Khru-
shchey's opponents in the central leadership.)
Such enlarged plenums provided a consultative
forum, where policies could be debated, views
articulated, and. even some contradictory in-
terests resolved. Although the device still re-
mained essentially non-institutionalized and
only ad hoc, Consultative and not legislative,
Nril 1 subject to domination by the party a:pparat,
it was nonetheless a response to the new quest
for real participation that Soviet society has
manifested and which the Soviet system badly
needs. It was also a compromise solution, at-
tempting to wed the party's primacy to a pro-
cedure allowing group articulation.
However, the problem has become much more
complex and fundamental because of the organi-
zational and ideological crisis in the party over
its relevance to the evolving Soviet system. For
many years the party's monopoly of power and
hence its active intervention in all spheres of
Soviet life could indeed be said to be "in the
Soviet' public interest." The party provided
social mobilization, leadership, and a dominant
outlook for a rapidly changing and developing
society. But, in the main, that society has now
taken shape. It is no longer malleable, subject
to simple mobilization, or Susceptible to doctri-
naire ideological manipulation.
As a result, Soviet history in the last few years
has been dominated by the spectacle of a party
in search of a role. What is to be the function of
an ideocratic party in a relatively complex and
industrialized society, in which the structure of
social relationships generally reflects the party's
ideological preferences? To be sure, like any
large sociopolitical system, the Soviet system
needs an integrative organ. But the question is,
What is the most socially desirable way of
achieving such integration? Is a "strong" party
one that dominates and interferes in everything,
and is this interference conducive to continued
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Approved For Release.1999/09102 :
Soviet economic, political and intellectual
growth?
In 1962 Khrushchev tried to provide a solu-
tion. The division of the party into two verti-
cally parallel, functional organs was an attempt
to make the party directly relevant to the econ-
omy and to wed the party's operations to pro-
duction processes. It was a bold, dramatic and
radical innovation, reflecting a recognition of
the need to adapt the party's role to a new state
of Soviet social development. But it was also
a dangerous initiative; it carried within itself
the potential of political disunity as well as the
possibility that the party would become so
absorbed in economic affairs that it would lose
its political and ideological identity. That it
was rapidly repudiated by Khrushchev's succes-
sors is testimony to the repugnance that the re-
organization must have stimulated among the
professional party bureaucrats.
His successors, having rejected Khrushchev's
reorganization of the party, have been attempt-
ing a compromise solution?in effect, a policy of
"muddling through." On the one hand, they
recognize that the party can no longer direct
the entire Soviet economy from the Kremlin
and that major institutional reforms in the
economic sphere, pointing towards more local
autonomy and decision-making, are indis-
pensable.22 (Similar tendencies are apparent
elsewhere?e.g., the stress on professional self-
management in the military ? establishment.)
This constitutes a partial and implicit acknowl-
edgment that in some respects a party of total
control is today incompatible with the Soviet :
public interest.
On the other hand, since obviously inherent ,
in the trend towards decentralization is the :
danger that the party will be gradually trans-
formed from a directing, ideologically-oriented
organization to a merely instrumental and prag-
matic body specializing in adjustment and com-
promise of social group aspirations, the party
functionaries, out of a sense of vested interest,
have been attempting simultaneously to revive :
the ideological vitality of the CPSU. Hence the
renewed stress on ideology and ideological train-
the report delivered by A. Kosygin to the CC ,
Plc mill on Sept. 27, 1965, proposing the reorganization of .
the Soviet ? economy. Also his speech at a meeting of the
USSR State Planning Committee, Planovoe oziaistvri
(Moscow) April 1965; and the frank discussion by A.. E.
Lunev, "Democratic Centralism. in Soviet State Adminis-
tratian'"45106Vderk5f/A6reffg4ligggibft2
4, 1965.
16.
CIA-RIDP79-01194A0003001200Q1-P
ing; hence the new importance attachea to the
? work of the ideological commissions; and hence
the categorical reminders that "Marxist educa-
tion, Marxist-Leninist training, and the ideolog-
ical tempering of CPSU members and candidate
members is the primary concern of every party
organization and committee." 23
Ti
owever, it is far from certain that eco-
nomic decentralization and ideological "re-
tempering" can be pushed forward hand in hand.
The present leadership appears oblivious to the
fact that established ideology remains vital only
when ideologically motivated power is applied
to achieve ideological pals. A gradual reduc-
tion in the directing roll of the party cannot be
compensated for by an increased emphasis on
ideological semantics. Economic decentraliza-
tion inescapably reduces the scope of the politi-
cal-ideological and increases the realm of the
pragmatic-instrumental. It strengthens the
trend, publicly bemoaned by Soviet ideologists,
toward depolitization of the Soviet elite:2! A
massive indoctrination campaign directed at the
elite cannot operate in a "de-ideologized" socio-
economic context, and major efforts to promote
such a campaign could, indeed, prompt the
social isolation of the party, making its dogmas
even more irrelevant to the daily concerns o: a
Soviet scientist, factory director, or army gen-
eral. That in turn would further reduce the abil-
ity of the party to Provide effective integration
in Soviet society, while underscoring the party
apparatchik's functional irrelevance to the
workings of Soviet administration and tech-
nology.
If the party rejects a return to ideological
dogmas and renewed dogmatic indoctrination,
it unavoidably faces the prospect of further
internal change. It will gradually become a loose
, body, combining a vast variety of specialists,
engineers, scientists, administrators, profes-
sional. bureaucrats, agronomists, etc. Without a
23 "Ideological Hardening of Communists" (editorial),
Pravda, June 28, 1965. There have been a whole series of
articles in this vein, stressing the inseparability of ideologi-
cal and organizational work. For details of a proposed
large-scale indoctrination campaign, see V. Stepakov, head
of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation of the
Central Committee of the CPSU, "Master the Great
Teaching of Marxism-Leninism," Pravda, Aug. 4, 1965.
24 Stepakov, ibid., explicitly states that in recent years
"many comrades" who have assumed leading posts in the
"directive aktivs" of the party have inadequate ideological
knowledge, even though they have excellent technical back-
grounds; and he urges steps against the "replacement" of
party training "by professional-technical education."
CIA-RDP79-01194A000300120001-0
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common dogma and without an active Program,
what will hold these people togsther? The party
at this stage w?ill face the same dilemma that the
fascist and falange parties faced, and that cur-
rently confronts the Yugoslav and Polish Com-
munists: in the absence of a large-scale domcstic
program of change, in the execution of which
other groups and Institutions become subordi-
nated to the party, the party's domestic pri-
macy declines rind .its ability to provide ocia1-
political is negated.
Moreover, the Soviet party leaders would be
wrong to assume Complacently that the nar-
rowed range of disagreement over domestic
policy alternatives Could not again widen. Per-
sistent difficulties in :Igriellit Ilre C0111(1 some day
prompt a political aspirant xo question the value
of collectivization; Or the dissatisfaction of some
;lationalities could :mpose a major stram on the
Soviet constitutional structure; or foreign af-
fairs could again become the source of bitter
internal conflicts. The ability of the system to
withstand the combi!ned impact of such divisive
ues and of greater group intrusion into pol-
itics would much depend on .the adaptations
tliat it makes in its organization of leadership
and in its processes of decision-making. Unless
alternative mechanisms of integration are
created, a situation could arise in which some
group other than the top apparat?a group that
had continued to attract talent into its top
ra:nks and had not been beset by bureaucrat-
ically debilitating Conflict at the top?could
step forth to seek power; invoking the Soviet
public interest in the name of established Com-
munist ideals, and offering itself (probably in
coalition with some section of the party leader-
ship) as the only alternative to chaos, it would
attempt to provide :a new balance between in-
stitutionalization arid .participation.
The Threat o:f .egerloration
The Soviet leaders have recognized the need
of institutional reforms in the economic sector
in order to revitalize the national economy. The
fact is that institutional reforms are just as
badly needed?and even more overdue?in the
political sector. Indeed, the effort to maintain
.a doctrinaire dictatorship over an increasingly
modern and industrial society has already con-
tributed to a reopening of the gap that existed in
prerevolutionary Russia between the political
systeg and Aercixo therebimw e
thre PPM glE 1#10?#
A political system can be said to degenerate
when there is a perceptible decline in the quality
of the social talent that the political leadership
attracts to itself in competition with other
groups; when there is persistent division within
the ruling elite, accompanied by a decline in its
. commitment to shared beliefs; when :there is
protracted instability in the top leadership;
? when there is a decline in the capacity of the
, ruling elite to (lane the purposes of the political
system in relationship to society arid to express
them in effective institutional terms; when there
is a fuzzing of institutional and hierarchical
lines. of command, resulting in the uncontrolled
and unehanneled intrusion into politics of hith-
erto politically uninvolved groupings." All of
these indicators were discernible in the political
systems of Tsarist Russia, the French Third
Republic, Chiang Kai-Shek's China and Ra-
kosi's Hungary. Today, as already noted, at
least several are apparent in the Soviet politicalsystem.
This is not to say, however, that the evolution
of the Soviet system has inevitably turned into
degeneration. Much still depends on how the
ruling Soviet elite reacts. Policies of retrench-
ment, increasing dogmatism, and even violence,
which?if now applied?would follow almost a
decade of loosening Up, could bring about a
grave situation of tension, and the possibility of
revolutionary outbreaks could not be discounted
entirely. "Terror is indispensable to any dicta-
torship, but it cannot compensate for incom-
petent leaders and a defective organization of
authority," observed a historian of the French
revolution, writing of the Second Directory."
It is equally truc of the Soviet political scene.
Thi: threat a degeneration could be lessened
through several adaptations designed to adjust
the Soviet political system to the changes that
have taken place an the now more mature so-
First of all, the top policy-making organ
; of the Soviet system has been traditionally the
exclusive preserve of the professional politician,
and in many respects this has assured the Soviet
political system of able and experienced leader-
ship. However, since a professional bureaucracy
is not prone to produce broad "generalizing"
talents, and since the inherent differentiation of
functions within it increases the likelihood of
leaders with relatively much narrower speciali-
zation than hitherto was the case,_ the need for
25 For a general discussion and a somewhat different
formulation, see S. Huntington, "Political Development
ClA-Rpp, 415-17.
AAGIa03011120004k0, New York,
17
Columbia University Press, 1965, Vol. II, p. 205.
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000300120001-0
somewhat broader representation of social
talent within the top political leadership, and
not merely on secondary levels as hitherto, is ,
becoming urgent. If several outstanding scien-
tists. professional economists, industrial rnanag,-
ers, and. others were to be co-opted by lateral
entry into the ruling Presidium, the progressive
transformation of the leadership into a regime
of clerks: could they be averted, and the
alienation . of other groups from the political
system 'perhaps halted.
Secondly, the Soviet leaders would have to
institutionalize a chief executive office and
.?
strive to endow it with legitimacy and stability.
This would eventually require the creation of a
formal and open procesS of leadership selection,
. as well?probably---as a time.,,Iimit on the ten-
ure of the chief executive position. The time
limit, if honored, would deperorihlize Power,
? while an institutionalized process of selection
geared to a specific date?and therefore also
- limited .in time?would reduce the debilitating
effects of unchecked ,and protracted conflict in
the top echelons of power.
777
1.1
he CPSU continues to be an ideocratic
'party with .a strong tradition of dogmatic in-
'tolerance and organizational discipline. Today
less militant and more bureaucratic in outlook,
it still requires a, top catalyst, though no longer
a personal tyrant, for effective operations. The
..example of the papacy, or perhaps of Mexico,
where a ruling party has created a reasonably
effective system of presidential succession, offers
- a demonstration of how one-man rule can be
combined with a formal office of the chief execu-
tive, endowed with legitimacy, tenure and a for-
mally established pattern of selection.
Any real institutionalization of power would
have significant implications for the natty. If its
Central Committee were to become in effeet.an,
electoral college, selecting a ruler whom no one
could threaten during his tenure, the process of
selection would have to be endowed with con-
siderable respectability. It would have to be
much more than a mere ratification of an a
priori decision reached by some bureaucratic.
cabal, ?The process would require tolerance for
the expression of diverse opinions in a spirit free
of dogmatism, a certain amount of open COM- !
petition among rivals for power, and perhaps
even the - formation of informal coalitions?at
least temporary ones. In a word,. it would mean
a break with the Leninist past, with conse-
? quences that would unavoidably spill over from
? the party into the entire system and society.
Thirdly, increased social participation in poli-
? tics unavoidably creates the need for an insti-
tutionalized arena for the mediation of group
interests, if tensions and conflicts, and eventu-
ally perhaps even anarchy, are to be avoided.
The enlarged plenums of the Central Commit-
tee were a right beginning, but if the Committee
to irtediuto aFitictivoly grnoill? tha intioty
institutional and group interests that now exist
in Soviet society, its membership will have to
be made much more representative and the pre-
dominance of party bureaucrats watered down.
Alternatively, the Soviet leaders might con-
sider following the Yugoslav course of creating
a new institution for the explicit purpose of pro-
viding group representation and reconciling dif-
ferent interests. In either case, an effective
organ of mediation could not be merely a front,
for the party's continued bureaucratic arbitra-
tion of social interests, as that would simply
perpetuate the present dilemmas.
Obviously, the implefinentation of such insti-
tutional reforms would eventually lead to a pro-
found transformation of the Soviet system. But
it is the absence of basic institutional develop-
ment in the Soviet political system that has
posed the danger of the system's degeneration.
It is noteworthy that the Yugoslays have been
experimenting with political reforms, including
new institutions, designed to meet precisely the
probldrns and dangers discussed here. Indeed,
in the long run, perhaps the ultimate contribu-
tion to Soviet political and social development
that the CPSU can make is to adjust gracefully
to the desirability, and perhaps even inevitabil-
ity, of its own 'gradual withering away. In the
meantime, the progressive transformation of the
bureaucratic Communist dictatorship into a
more pluralistic and institutionalized political
system?even though still a system of one-party
rule?seems essential if its degeneration is to be
averted.
Brzezinski is Director of the Research Insti-
te on Communist Affairs, Columbia Univer-
,.i:y. His books include The Soviet Bloc: Unity
..nd Conflict (Cambridge, Harvard University
Press, 196o) and Alternative to Partition (New
York, McGraw Hill, 1965).
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; THE WASHINGTON POST gatanley, Peb 6,1971'
rezhn.ev cmains the lominant
e dership
CPYRGHT Figure in Soviet
? Dy Anthony Astrachan
? Washiniton Post Torsion ElervIes
MOSCOW, Feb. 5?Leonid,
Brezhnev remains the domi-
nant figure in the collective,
Soviet leadership as the
Communist Party conducts
final preparations for the?
24th Party Congress, which
begins March 30.
This is the virtually unanif
mous view of Western, neu-
tral and Communist observ-
ers here. But as one ambaso
sador remarked, "There are-.
no degrees? of knowledge%
about what. goes on in the
Kremlin?only degrees of
Ignorance." Nobody who re-
members the surprise ouster
of Matt Khrushchev in Oc-
tober, 1964, will make confi-
dent predictions about how
long Brezhnev will remain
the chief beneficiary of the
Kremlin balance of power.
Since surviving the last
teriotis challenge to his
dominance last July, the
general secretary has gar-
nered ? several harvests cif,
publicity reminiscent , of
Khrushchev. They seemed
efforts. to add to ,his per.;
tonal stature while mobiliz-,
ng public support for the
+arty congress.
He made three major
peeches in republic capitals
letween the end of August
nd the end of November.
;lach included significant
oreign policy -pronounce-
aents. Each got heavy preSs
nd television play, and one
epublic party leader re-
erred to Brezhnev as "head
f the politburo," a violation
f collective protocol.
?On New Year's Eve,.
rezhnev broke , precedent
nd delivered the traditional
'ew Year message person-
, ay on radio and television
1) millions of Soviets funed
t to hear the Kremlin
times usher in the new
!ar.
No Soviet' Party leader
ad ever done this before'.
ii recent years, Yuri Levi"?'
1st, a well-known and Sow-
us announcer, had read an
itonymoug enitql-F
ge from the ptt and gov,!%
: nment.
Braahnav Shia?110thing 010,
,nificant in the speech. He ,
portrayed 1970 hs a year,ofl
' Soviet triumphs at horne'
and abroad and said 1971.4
would be even better. I3nt
the Soviet press ran_ the full
_ ,
text in all major papers on;
, New Year's Day, and four
more articles on it appeared?
in a variety of papers in the
;text three days.
,
,Kosygin Interview
Premier , Kosygin, whom
Westerners often assume to,
differ from Brezhnev in poi-
. itburo debates, gave an unu.
SUM interview to tho Japan,
nese newspaper Asahi Shim-
bun Jan. 2, which was also
? printed in the Soviet press.
Ile too made important for-
eign policy comments. Kosy--
gin has also been the chief
Soviet voice denouncing the
invasion of Laos this week.
Some observers said this
was a normal division of.
labor. Others thought ? it
might have been arranged
to remind Brezhnev and the
party that he does not stand ,
alone- in. the letzdership. But,
none tbought 11 a challenge'
to his position in the group. '
Brezhnev, in fact, has?
shown' his pre-eminence by ,
intervening in functions.?
that used to be thought of
as governmental?i.e., Kosy-
gin's. ?
In October, he played the
leading Soviet role in the
visit of French President'
Georges Pompidou, for inat-
,ance.? . ;
? In. December, the central'
'.tottunittee?of which Brezi.)
nev is general secretary?!.,,
..clecided . to "instruct" the
goVernment to sub-
:mit, the draft ' plan and,
budget for 1971 to Supreme
,Soviet. The central commit-
%tee always considers the
Tian and budget first, and
party control .18 a basic fact
of Soviet life, but this WaS
the first time it openly as-
serted formal control of gov-
ernment actions In_ thts_ wax.
o rate I easeeti9S810192i2
another Brezhnev, bid to ex. member, who would thus be
pand Ms power. ' 19
, This week, , Brezhnev
,played a major role in the
,visit of Syrian leader Hafez
Assad, who himself com-
bines state and party jobs.
Dominance Continues
The general secretary's.
dominance in the party lead-
ership has continued into,
the 4)eriod before the party;
'congress when political con-,
filets usually increase in
scope and acerbity. In fact,,
there is little evidence of in-,
tensifying struggle this year,
though the Kremlin pot has
been simmering steadily'
since July.
The number of changes in
regional and republic party
jobs during the past year
has been smaller than be-
fore previous congresses. As,
of today, 47 of the 147 re-
gional committees have held
,pre-congress conferences?a
small proportion for this
stage?and only one of the.
47 changed first. secretaries.
at its conference.
Little change presumably
..means little challenge to the
present leadership as a new
central committee is formed;
for election at the party con-,
gram. Many of MO ohangoa
,that have taken place have
benefited men previously
sociated with Brezhnev or
reduced the power of men
thought to belong to oppos-
ing camps. ?? .
Crisis in the major prob-
lem areas of Soviet life
?could always change this.
?But so far the Soviet leaders
have preferred to muddle
through economic troubles,
political and cultural restric-
tions and national minority;
problems rather than make
Anajor changes _ ,and risk
-their jabs/ ' . ?
Not even publication of
the Khruilichev memoirs No
the West poses . a serlota,
danger to Brezhnev, in the,,
Moscow view. ,Observers.:
elsewhere have suggested;
that the memoir material
*OM
challenging Brezhnev. A few
Muscovites think it possible
that a politburo member
was involved,' but most ob-
servers, agree that the mate-
rials 'could have been ex-,
ported withoufthe participvi
tion of any high-level protee--
'tor. .
Some faction may have,:
seen the Khrushehev book
as a tool to help stop the ret
!'vival of Stalinism. That does!
:not necessarily make it ,st.
tool to dislodge BrezhneV.!
'He survived a more danger.
ous tool?a direct ?.appettl!
from Soviet intellectuals to
avoid rehabilitating Stalin
:at the 23rd Party Congress!
in 1966. ? -
'Mending Fences
The last real challenge to-
Brezhnev's leadership came
in July, when some still'un-
'disclosed trauma compelled
the holding of two central'
'committee meetings in 11'
'days and the postponement
of the party congress from
last fall to next March.
'Brezhnev cancelled a sched-
uled trip to Romania be-.
' tween plenums to stay home
and mend fences. '
? The two likeliest reasons,.
Moscow observers think,
, were opposition to Brezh-
,nev's farm policy and to
'plans for changes in the,
;leadership.
At the first j?tily
`Brezhnev laid doWn farm
;policy for the new five-year'
.plan,- calling for a major in-,
crease in investment in agri-'
eulture and the diversion Of
some defense and' heavy In.
dustry production td farm
tools.
% In one sense, this meant
,tho mama approach to and.'
culture as before?more'
money and bigger projects,
Instead of better technology.
But the decision to put:
, more . money , Into, farming.
'Suggested Maier changes in',
0042190420804 4 Soviet re-.'
:sources. This may '..,havel
iltirred real opposition: 'the;
..reeurring hsattlo rivist;fiftitIdel
CPYRGHT
Approved For Release 19991U91U2 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000300120001-0
for heavy .. industry,
zsumer gond,..-agricultue,
defense and social. servicesi
Is as critical here as any,
Washington struggle such asi
those over Indochina, race
and urban needs.
Brezhnev's presumable op-
ponents on farm policy'
make an odd combination:
military 1Oby1t find the
"metal-eaters who favor
heavy industry, both hating
to lose funds to farmers; re-,
rform-minded pragmatists
who want to invest less in
agriculture. because it pro-
, duces a smaller return on
the investment ruble thani
any other sector of the So-,
eeonomy, and party,
hacks in major regional and;
republic jobs, who hate any
change in the status quoi
' that they oversee.
Under Conununist prow::
Hee, the representatives of
these pressure groups could
not object to the farm policy,
adopted Bies'
'once the central committee!dopted it. ut their cr
kthat the policy demanded re-i
consideration of five-yearl
'plan guidelines could have,
'forced Brezhnev to postpone
the congress at which thei
plan would be adopted,
:ReplaCentents?' ? .
It l?lso possible?that the
i party congress had to be',
? postponed because the cen-'
? tral. committee could notj
. agree on proposals to re-i
'place some of the top lead-1
..;ers placement that would;
?,have to be revealed at theS
"congress.
?
1 Six of the 11 politburo
members will be 65 or older)
; this year, including Brezh-t
net. Some or all will die or
retire In the five-year period'
, for which the congress will;
set policy. The men at the
top undoubtedly want to
plan smooth transitions, but ?
might encounter arguments
one or two levels down.
It is possible that the July,
'trauma occurred because
.Premier Kosygin actually
:wanted to retire and either
'the politburo could not'
agree on who should replace
him, or the central commit.'
tee would not accept a polit-
? tburo choice.
Moscow speCulation cert.
? tered on two possibilities.
One was that the central
committee refused to accept"
politburo member and First
Deputy Premier Dmitri Po-.
lyansky as Kosygin's succes-.
sor. If this did happen, therel
Is no guarantee it was a;
blow to Brezhnev. .
The other possibility was
that Brezhnev wanted te
combine the top party and
government jobs, as Joseph
Stalin and Nikita Khrush-
chev did, and that either the
politburo or the central'
committee refused to pi!
along.
That would have been !
roe rebuff. But Brezhnev
was stiff selected to deliver
the r report at the party
congress?a selection an.
flounced at the second July
plenum. He appears to have
.strengthened his position
since, within recognized lim-
its. Only the party congress
Itself is likely to reveal
whether his position has
been significantly. weakened
lbehind the facade Of in
Ittreasing strength.
THE ECONOMIST D./MEMBER lb,' 1969
os.2y
71 ? cis
CJ1 VZ) tea.?
If Marx went to Mr Brezhnev's Russia he would diagnose a classic case of
CP`69ra4Tevolutionary situation
hcre is a young man who claims he knows for sure Which
?untry is today the sick man of Europe. According to
ndrei Amalrik, thc 31-year-old Russian historian who is
. present growing cucumbers and tomatoes in a little village
!ar Moscc.)w, it is Mr Brezhnev's Russia. " I have no
nibt," he writes in an essay whose full text is published
the west this week, "that this great eastern Slav empire,,
emud by the Germans, Byzantines and Mongols, ha:, entered
.e last decades of its existence." He is in fact prepared
be quite precise: the downfall of the. Soviet Union will
kc place by 1984,' and its cause will be war with China.
From outside Russia this prophecy might seem strange
a year which has seen a number. of successes fdr Soyiet
reign policy: a pacified Czechoslovakia ; an acquiescent
mem Europe ; a western world once again ready to do
_minas with Russia ; and, in the far cast, a China down
Dm its high horse and talking about the quarrel over
c borders. Mr Brezhnev and his colleagues, who have pulled
is off without actually falling out with one another, .might
el they are not doing too badly. .Mr Amalrik's message
that they would be wrong. He says that thc Soviet 'regime,
C'YRGHT
oftwwwwwwWwwwwwoma..wowwwlorawilmo ow
Approved For Release 1999/09/02:
the economy and Ultimately in politics. This is the.
pC most , peoi..tc still cling to ; he rejects it on the
l'aund that liberalisation caxt, occur only when there Is a'
lan to liLvralise, or at least evidence of a systematic liberali-
Ittion in practice. The past three years have made it plain
hat there is no such plan or practice in -Russia.
It is perhaps inevitable that Mr Amalrilt should see the
Itimate soitition in terms of a Sino-Soviet War, Whether
!lich a war, is likely is hotly debated in the w,?::. On
?vhel-, those who specialise in Chinese drain; tend to
y it is not, because the Russians could not hope to impo:,e
new ?gOVC.-.1MCIlt on China and nothing less will really
Mve their problem. Other people see such a war as some.
Ong a divided Russian regime might embark on. as a way
tit of its internal and foreign dilemmas. But whate'..er I he
hances of war, it must be said that Mr Anadriles analysis
the situation inside the, Soviet Union itself rings depressingly
ritie. Russia's leaders are trapped in a kind of fiozen immo-
iflity. They know. that the country needs economic reforiu,
fLonly to ensure continued economic groWth and to narrow
c technological gap between the communist and capitalist
?iorlds. But they realise from the examples of Jugoslavia and
lzechosloval that economic reform almost inevitably leads
? political reform. And that they will not countenance.
They have one hope. it isl that their present system can
dmehow be made to work well enough to keep most people
tappy in a kind, of soclalist Consumer ?society.' This society
night not be of a kind to appeal to people like .Mr
ic scornfully rejects the idea of a " socialism with bare
*es " of mini-skirts, foreign tourists and jazz records?but
d. a lot of ordinary Russians it might provide just enough
:4mfort and security to make them .forget 'about politics. But
?Ips.s!a is far from achieving. such a society. nven in housing,
WAJ I
CIA-RDP79-01194A000300120001-0
which has clearly been given high priority, the progress is
still. slow. From 1959 to 1965 it is reckoned that a third
'of the population obtained new or improved accommodation.
Yet as recently as two years" ago there were, on average,
Imore than two persons per room., in the Soviet Union, a
ratio far worse than that in most west European countwies.
The Soviet Union's leaders need outside help to ensure
the kind of growth that could help them to put zlies.tbin
right and make material life in their country more attractive
to its ritizen8; That is perhaps:one of the main factors behind.
the present drive for closer economic tics with the west. This
is for Russia a political as much as an economic issue. The
,question is whether the Soviet economic system can make
proper use of western economic aid even if it gets it. .
And there is another great question about the stability..
.of the Soviet Union. This is ;he growing demand from non-,'
Russians in .the Soviet Unio0 for greater equality with the
-Russians. This may not be as pressing a problem at the
moment as. that of living standards. It may become so in
.: a few years' time, when the Russians will lose their present
numerical superiority. But to grant . greater rights to the
.various nationalities would be even more difficult for the
:regime than to grant ordinary civil .rights. To keep such
a vast country together you. probably do need a very strong
government at the .centre. To allow its component parts
any degree of real autonomy would be to invite disintegration'.
Mr Brezhncv and Mr Kosygin arc not going to let that
happen ; and it is hard to see any of their likely successors
' risking it. either. Wherever one looks in Russia, one \sees
'a government sitting, on . the status quo, and lacking\ any
mechanism for a peaceful and orderly adaptation to change.
.That is what Lenin's one-party system has led to. But ho4
long can you just sit ,oa your problems?.,
NEWS
13 January 1971
speec4,treachei West
?
c114 A (44 134 Pi RUZEIC
Le don Express Service
1
I ie Longress of the Soviet Communist Par-
', due to start on March 30, may reintroduce
ahnism and do away with the last remnants
Irushchev's ideas about liberalization ,in all
'h res of Russian life.
This startling forecast was made in a speech
, Czech Stalinists in Prague by Yuri Starikov,
Tretary of .the Soviet Embassy. The details
the speech have Just reached .the West by
.1 Undisclosed route.
"kruschev's ideas, that cancer on the body
! oirununism, will be eradicated by the 24th
ingress of the Soviet Communist Party," Mr.
:arikov told 'a dinner meeting of about 40
trd-liners in 'Vihohrady, on . pe : oxitOsir NAIL':
-:ague4.. .. .
'CORNING POINT ? -
1
"Is the past 14 years, (since the 1956 party
ingress at which Krushchev denounced ,Sta-
a) Stalin's thesis about the sharpening of? the' chief. 2fr.tiletzp?ALpolic.curtetlftans.lti
astbattle and njIppieriesyeidciFitipilte433a$011 Oplipe vrrit4A000300120001-0
into the party has been proved, right," Mr..
Starikov declared.
Ile continued: "The 24th party congress will
be a turnihg pOint." Afterwards we will again
build bridges) across to our Chinese com-
rades."
The speech was made at the end of Novem;
ber, at the time when the Czech hard-liners
tried to topple moderate party leader Gustav
Husak.
Western analysts-of SOViet 'affairs ',regard
Mr. Starikov's strange remarks as deliberate-,
ly made iflz behalf of a strong group of Russian
Politburo members and' some high Russian
army officers who have been pressing '4n. the'
background for Stalin's full rehabilitation.
TOUGH LINE
Among them are reported to be Politburo
Members such as Aleksander Shelepin, former
forms, and some marshals of the Soviet am
who in the past years publicly extolled Stall
as a great military leader.
Some Western analysts are inclined to
gard the latest crisis in the relations betwet
Moscow and Washington as another proof
the coming re-Stalinization.
In their view, the tough Russian line again
the United States has been forced on a reiu
tant Drezhnev and Kosygin by the neo-Stalini
group- which is apparently gaining the uppo
hand.
21
LE MONDE, Paris
Weekly Apitirizteddff okoReleas6
13 January 1971
CPYRGHT
PifintW Imitiagatiiikor
0
Edditaiiie ?.. zft9 adida
1-0
? The-. XXIV I Soviet Communist
Party Congress, due to open in
Moscow on March 30, -11 highly
. likely to set' the party 'seal ' on
oire-litalinisation," According to a
Soviet Embassy official in Prague.
Mr. ' Starikov "believed the next
Congress would ring in a new era
in the USSR' by rescinding ? the
1056 XX Congress's condemnation
of Stalinism" and.' finally- extir-
pating "the'poison of Ktirusheti-;
. ? ? ;..?-?
? The 'ataterrient, 'just ;,reVealed,
Was made by Mr.-StaxikeC 'on' No-
vember 18 at'a function attended
by forty iiltra-tobservativeCzecho-
glovak OommmilelM.
Events ' tzeehoslevaitio;" the
diplomat said, should be assessed
! in the broadest :context taking
into consideration developments
since- the XX. Soviet, Communist
Party Congress. ? . The. extent ,to
which the struggle against the
personality cult had harmed 'the
.international. Communist moved
:anent in ',Hungary, ' Foland and'
'Czechoslovakia had yet to bl
rialized, Mr. Starikov ,added.
He charged that former 'Soviet
Prime.' Minister Khrtt;
shellac's attack on Stalin. htui
paved the way :for this and said;
"Krushchaism is'a poison- in the
'bloodstream of 'the international
Cem.munist Movement, and if the
movement is" to regain its health
this poison must be eliminated/
The' past fourteen years have
proved the rightness of 'Stalin's
thesis on the aggravation of the
class straggle in conditions of
socialism, and the penetration of
the class enemy into the .partyi
When the -XX Congress rejected
this . &leafs- it was opening ' the
,way for enemy penetration into
the ranks of Communist Partie&
The XXIV Congress must repair
this damage."
' Earlier the same day Mr: Starii
kov 'attended a rally organized by'
the "Internationalists" -group at
which the' Soviet-Czechoslovak
Friendship, t SocietY awarded' dcco4
rations to. Rom factory' workers.
Tho' seven verti being cominended-
for -having drafted aletter, signed
by ninety-nine' 'Of' their factory'S
personnel and, sent .'to 'Pravda,
daily 2orgati' the' Soviet' Com.:S
munist"Party in July 1968. .me
letter' protested the policies of
former, Czechoslovak' ?Communist
Party First Secretary- :Alexander
Dubcek, anti' his liberal colleagues
But hone Of' the- conservative
members of the present. leader
ship attended.'. ? ..;!
-Josef,
Catholle People's Party, and in
qP14,3131430012MbiteR4/1eatS,e 1
need for ' the Left Wing irront
(neO-Stalinist) to. take the initia-;
tire at the, next central' commit-
tee session' to Maintain the hard-
tine' ,Infludtketi Mr. Finjher, a -
former :.fternan Catholic priest
Who,' Wes' excommunicated after
the campaign against the Church
In '1941- and 1950, criticized the
Dulicele regime and' some sup!
porters of -the Czechoslovak par-
ty's 'current first secretary, Ous-
ter Husak.' 'Though Mr. Plojhar
was not promoted In this month's
'government reshuffle, he Was 'in*.
traduced at the -rally..as a .future
first vice-premier.;
.; ..i??!,, i'?
1-1 Conservative demands ?
,
The. StarikoV and the Plojhar
speeches came almost immediately
after Mr. }WWI loft for ,MOSOOW
to consult Soviet leaders About
the activities of ultra-donservatire
'factions in Czechoslovakia. ? The
,rLeftists" are believed to have
made some exacting demands at
' party praesidium meetings on No-
vember 16 and November 17. I mr.
Husak travelled to the Soviet cap.
ital the following. day. ; ? ?
? This futrher 'underlin'ed 'Mit
,Husak's apparent feeling that a
speedy' solution tO- the ? problems
'posed by the new 'Leftwas 'vital,
for he could have met his Soviet
opposite number Leonid 13rezha
ner only ? d few days later, In
Budapest and discussed it ? all
with him personally, had he been
willing to wait. , Mr. Brezhnev was
due 'there- on November 22 for
the_flungarlan. Communist Party
Coligress,,.? ;And. the. -plenary see.'
Sian of the Czechoslovak Commu-
nist -Party, in , Prague,. was . not
scheduled until Pecember 10. ..,
"Exactly how; much weight' do
Mr. Starkov's statements ? carry?
? Are 'they merely his own per-
spnal opinions, those of a' Soviet
splinter-group ? or' do they rep-
resent the, official policy of the
'Soviet leadership? His 'remarks,
appear closely related to another
problem which. must be settled
before the XXIV. Soviet Congress
convened.' This involves the 'by,
now celebrated appeal 'for 'help.
from Prague which Moscow still:
Invokes to justify the Soviet-led'
Invasion of its Warsaw Pact, ally
and which, was referred to in the!
Pact countries' communique pub-,
lished during the night of Augusti
21, 1908, as the tanks rolled In.!
Czechoslovakia has so' far- re-.
fused officially to acknowledge;
any such appeal. But a loadings
tiltre.-e,onservative member of, the
Ventral Committee titin 81Wream:
oral Assembly. Frassiditun,
,1470
trumdell a debate on , the appeal
Which Was- signed. by some forty
hard-liners. ' ? ?
ft IS MG SIM% Itat40,1 hope
I
that Czechoslovakia, will finally
acknowledge "having called for
Otte Soviet friends' helli." '
He May liaVe been'aeting on an '
?
understanding with his Left Wing
Front colleagues in asking for
the debate, while not having the
/specific go-ahead from Moscow.
At all events, the Central Com-
mittee has decided, for the sake
of unity, to study the question at
'a future session, probably in Feb.
or. , March. ?
,,,The. Soviet Union would prob-
ably. .welcome acknowledgement
that Czechoslovakia' "asked . 'for
help.", .It would certainly smooth
over Moscow's: relations with . fern
eign Communist parties, among
these, the Italian and French 'par-
ties, which have still not with-
'drawn their condemnation of the
Invasion. 'The recent Polish ?riots
however,. Persuade the .So-
viet _Union to. forego .this state-
ment from. Prague. . Things in
;Czechoslovakia 'appear to have
calmed down and 'Moscow, )4 Oast
,on the face of it,' would have.lit-
tle?tb gain by.embarrassing Husak
:at this stags.'.i ?,:,
AMUR BOUSOOLOU
tauatuMg-01194A000300120001 -0
?
22
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000300120001-0
THE NEW YORK TIMES c
19 January 1971 General's MemoirsP Rhrus'raise h hev
?
By BERNARD GWERTZMAN,
Simla WM, Now York Man 1
CPYRGHT
! MOSCOW, Jan. 19 --- Nikltai
S. Khrushchev, who has gone:
unpraised in the Soviet Union'
since his fall from power six
years ago, is? described as a
hard-working and %enslave
wartime leader by an old as-
Societe, ?Marshal Ivan K.
Bagramyan, in a book of
Memoirs just published.
I Marshal Bagramyan. who was
deputy chief of staff for opera-1
tions m the Southwestern army'
group, at the start of World
War II, worked closely with
Mr. Khrushchev, who was the
party leader in the Ukraine and
the Politburo's representative
on the military council for the
area. ,
, As long as Mr. Khrushchev
iwas the Soviet Union's leader,
Marshal Bagramyan was lavish
In his praise of Mr. Khrushchev.
IThe latest book, "That Is How
the War Started," is more re-,
served in Rs comments but
nevertheless breaks with the
Practice begun after Mri
l,Khrushchev's fall in 1964 of
'not praising him In print. '
. Up to now, military and party
h
!stories have dhimply listed Mr.
Khrushchev u holding a certain
tposition without any
pion of We work; , ??,,i', ..
,
?
Some Color Included
But Marshal Bagramyan, att
73 a Deputy Defense Minister'
and full member of the party's
Central Committee, evidently
was permitted to include some
color 'about Mr. Khrushchev.
Military memoirs in the Soviet
Union tend to be more personal
and open than more official
writings. ,
Mr. Khrushchev also appears
to have been favorably inclined
toward Marshal Bagramyan. In
oral reminiscences, published
abroad as "Khrushchev Ranee
hers," the former Soviet leader
said of the marshal:
"He is a rational: even-hand-
ed man. I like him. I can even
say I am very fond of him,
I have alwar admired him for
his sober mind, his party spi-
rit, his wide-ranging knowledge
of military affairs, and his un-
corruptible integrity, and
straight forwardness." ,
r. Marshal Bagramyan, ? In
his memoris, tries to convey
the sense of disorder in the
Ukraine at the start of the
war when German troops
smashed through Soviet lines
on their way to Kiev. ,
In one scene, he describes the
at beadattarters:* ?V
"only NIthruclicheV'Sitif
not abandon his office: Without
interruption messages arrived.
there, from Kiev and district
centers dealing with further
mobilization of the whole popu-
lation to rebuff the enemy."
Mr. Khrushchev is described
R3 having taken part in policy
Conferences with military corn-.
manders. He is singled out
as having prepared Kiev for
the Nazi attack, which proved
successful:
Suicide of Commissar
Once, Marshal Bagramyan re-
calls, he was ordered by the
Southwestern army group com-
mander, Lieut. Gen. Mikhail
P. Kirponos, to report to mem-
bers of the military council on
some recent decisions:
."I went with my operational
map and ,notes to N.S. Khrush-
they. He was? unusually sad.
He listened to my report and
without hesitation approved It.
Learning that I was going to
Vashugin [another. member, 0.
1 the council( Nikita Sergeyevich
said bltierfy: . - ? ? , , 4
("Don't go: No . one 'needs
to report ,10 hhn atty
NikII NilolayoviOli Ma ended
his war."
Marshal Bagramyan explain-
ed that Lieut. Gen. Vashugin,
the political commissar, had
committed suicide- because of
the setbacks in the first days
of the German advance.
, The memoirs also discuss one
of the more controversial as-
pects of Soviet military history:
Why Stalin insisted on trying
'to defend Kiev in September,
1941, when his military ad-
visers urged him to evacuate
the city to avoid encirclement
and to set up defenses on the
eastern bank of the Dnieper
River. Eventually the city had
to be surrendered and large
'Red army forces were trapped.
General Kirponos was among
those killed.,Marshal Bagra-
myan was with "a group that
'succeeded in breaking out and
rejoining the Soviet lines. '
Marshal Bagramyan says the
decision to try and hold Kiev
"at any price" was taken be-
cause Stalin _ told Harry Hop-
kins,- Peesident Roosevelt's en.
? voyi in August that the Rai
? Army would hold the lines west,
of .?Leningrad, Moscow and ?
Kiev. ,;? ;!lia
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Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000300120001-0
March 1971
Soviet Domestic Dilemmas:
Economic Crisis and Minority Dissent
As time for the 24th Party Congress approaches, the Soviet
Politburo finds itself confronted by many domestic dilemmas, not
the least of which is its future control of the state. The
Politburo's main problem would seem to be the need to find a
middle ground in economic reform processes where necessary libfr
eralizatiOn can be balanced with maintaining control over the
economy.,--.- which in turn is viewed as crucial to holding on to
political Control. To date, the scales have tipped in favor of
those party dogmatists who saw the Soviet economic reform pro-
gram only as a means of improving existing planning mechanisms
and against the "revisionist" group who viewed the reform as a
means to liberalize the economy by restoring a genuine market
mechanism. As a result, the Soviet Union faces an economic
crisis brought on by the inability of its inhibited, party-
hounded economic machine to respond to the demands of the
scientific-technical revolution.
Any solution to the USSR's economic crisis hinges also on
the extent to which the Soviet Politburo plans to crack down
on scientific dissent. There is a growing awareness among
Soviet scientists that the censorship and political orthodoxy
which prohibit the free exchange of ideas between Soviet
scientists and their non-Soviet counterparts are severely
handicapping Soviet research and consequently, the country's
technological capabilities. It is essentially the fear that
the USSR's: technological lag behind the industrial West will
eventually confine their country to the status of a second-
class power that has motivated many scientists to join the
dissidents. in calling for fundamental changes in Soviet life.
This has resulted in the amalgamation of scientific and ar-
tistic dissent, in itself a major political event, the im-
portance of which remains to be seen.
The dissident scientists and their artistic allies are
not the only vocal protesters in the USSR. A whole spectrum
of loosely organized nationalist and minority groups from
among the Crimean Tatars, the Baltic and Ukranian separatists,
Jews, Baptists, and Christian Socialists are arrayed against
the government. In contrast to most of the so-called "intel-
lectual dissidents" who hope to change Soviet society within
the existing system, most of the minority groups are dedicated
to the overthrow of the system --- or at least are opting to
get out of the system. Apart from the Jews, the impact of
these minorities is hardly felt beyond the confines of the
double barbed-wire fences surrounding the USSR's 1,000 or more
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slave labor camps. Nevertheless, these restless minorities re-
present yet another dilemma for the Soviet leadership. There is
concern at the growth of nationalist feeling in the USSR and a
fear that links may be forged between the "intellectual" dissi-
dents and some of the underground opposition forces.
Briefly noted in the paragraphs that follow are some aspects
of the weightier domestic dilemmas that might have a bearing on
the course of events at the 24th Party Congress.
ECONOMIC CRISIS
"If the Soviet Union is to survive," wrote historian Andrey
Amalrik, "it must undergo a total transformation. But if the
present leadership is to survive, everything must remain exactly
as it is." And therein lies the great dilemma. In economic
terms, Amalrik's observation means that the inherited and con-
tinuing Stalinist command structure is inadequate for an increas-
ingly mature, consumer-oriented economy. Decision-making should
ideally be decentralized and delegated to local levels and en-
terprises, subject to planning of key products. Yet, Brezhnev
plans to force "intensive growth" (which requires the continu-
ing introduction of new technology) through strong centraliza-
tion of decision-making with local supervision by the Party
bureaucracy, directed from the center.
The economic reform toward decentralization and recogni-
tion of economic realities, launched in 1965 (the so-called
"Liberman program"), has failed. Basic to this economic reform
failure is the Soviets' refusal to admit the existence of such
a thing as a "demand factor." To have succeeded, the reform
should have been accompanied by more rational and flexible
prices, less central control over the allocation of materials,
and relief from the chronic shortages of raw materials. The
leadership has given DO indication that the necessary radical
changes will be introduced any time in the near future.
Just about all the same economic problems preoccupy Soviet
officials today as did in 1966: the volume of unfinished con-
struction and of uninstalled machinery continues to mount; in-
vestment capital is "dissipated" among too many projects; cen-
tral planners interfere in the operation of factories; enter-
prise plans are altered mid-stream; bureaucratic impediments
frustrate procurement of supplies and sales of products; and
in addition to a too high labor turnover; most Soviet industrial
enterprises suffer from overstaffing and the underutilization
of labor.
In the past two years, emphasis has been on management
discipline as the cure-all for many economic problems. There
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has been an attempt to correct by Government decrees such abuses
as top-heavy staffs, squandering of funds, hiding of reserves,
unofficial adjustment of prices, etc. Early last year chief
planner Baibakov noted that management leaders who failed to
fulfill plans had to be strictly punished "right up to removal
from their posts." Obviously, however, no economy can flourish
if its managers are too intimidated to take risks.
Continued lowering of production goals is another key to the
sluggish state of the economy: steell production that was to have
hit 130 million tons by 1970 is now targeted at 120 million tons
for 1971; up to 850 billion kilowatts of electric power had been
planned for 1970 and now the goal for 1971 is lowered to 790 bil-
lion kilowatts; in 1971 some 500,000 passenger automobiles are
scheduled to be built, while original plans had called for 800,000
by 1970.
Plan fulfillment results for 1970 published early in February
showed that it was not a bad year for the Soviet economy. After
a powerful fourth quarter spurt, overall growth indices reflected
a marked improvement over the poor returns of 1969. But the an-
nual report also showed that growth rate fell short of most goals.
National income was reported up 8.5 percent over 1969. And, al-
though the lot of the consumer has improved by slow, steady gains,
a continuing sharp growth in savings highlights the economy's
failure to satisfy consumer demands.
Consumer shortages abound in every-day articles ranging from
shoes, toilet paper and matches to electric lightbulbs. Last
August, for example, Premier Kosygin's house organ, Izvestiya,
ran an editorial deploring the shortages of "table knives and
forks, blankets, bath towels, quilted jackets, thermos bottles,
iron ware; drawing paper, pencils, and a number of other con-
sumer goods."
The greatest qualitative change of benefit to the consumer
was apparently in agriculture, which recovered from its crisis-
level slump of 1969. Thanks to good weather and an increase in
direct and indirect subsidies, the food grain problem is tempo-
rarily resolved. The main task of the 1970's will be to increase
meat and animal product output. But without accompanying improve-
ments in :transportation, storage, and distribution facilities,
output growth will mean little.
On the eve of the 24th Congress, however, the whole agri-
cultural picture is muddied by the highly unorthodox procedures
used in reporting last year's agricultural results. First, in
mid-December Nlikaail Suslov claimed the country had "reaped the
biggest harvest in the history of agriculture." Then, two weeks
later, chief Soviet planner Baibakov announced that agricultural
3
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output had risen by only 6.5 percent against a planned 8.5 per-
cent. However, the plan fulfillment report released early last '
month claims an 8.7 percent increase, which would mean that the
1970 plan had been overfulfilled. Statistical corrections of
this magnitude are rare, even by Soviet standards. Also suspect
is the continued failure of the agricultural report to publish
any grain harvest figure.
One cause for the current Soviet labor shortage is the
failure of the economy to free workers from the farms, where 35
percent of the population still labors. The priority growth
areas of Siberia have failed to attract an adequate labor force.
In the European part of the country, established plants -have
tended to overstaff, causing strained labor conditions particu-
larly in the RSFSR.
Interestingly enough, Politburo member and Chairman of the
RSFSR Council of Ministers, Gennadiy Vbronov, suggested in a
November 1970 speech that consideration again be given to link
farming. Vbronov, an agriculturalist (and a proponent of spe-
cialist business management training for everybody) views the
link system as beneficial to both industry and agriculture in
that it would give greater leeway to individual farmers and
should help free farm labor for industry.
Under the link farming system collective and state farms
would be broken into smaller units, each of which would be the
responsibility of a small group of farmers called a "link."
The link groups would be fully responsible for the whole procure-
ment and production process with rewards paid on the basis of
output --- in short, a system in which individual or group in-
centives would be the motive force. Brezhnev and other Polit-
buro members on the other hand prefer the old brigade system of
farming, according to which all functions of farming (plowing,
sowing, fertilizing, harvesting, etc.) are given to worker
brigades which have no stake in the success of the overall
effort. A plowing brigade, for example, is paid according to
how many hectares it plowed, not how well or deeply the furrows
were plowed. The doctrinaire Politburo apparently fears that
the link system may engender a "dangerous" feeling of private
ownership on the part of the farmers.
For the Soviet scientific, technical, and managerial in-
telligentsia, the most alarming failure of the Soviet leader-
ship is its inertia in undertaking to bridge the huge techno-
logical gap between Soviet and Western achievements in all
technological fields, except those that are military and space
related. The reform was meant to raise efficiency by intro-
ducing new technology. But the regime permitted no grand new
strategies; it merely tolerated experimentation with the pres-
ent administrative apparatus. Furthermore, the free exchange
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of scientific-technical information, on which scientific and
technical progress depends, is denied the Soviet scientific-
technical .cohnunity.
The increasing complexity of a major industrial and eco-
nomic system absolutely requires more and more sophisticated
computerization. In this respect, the Soviet Union is computer
"generations" behind the West and Soviet scientists point out
that even now it may be too late to catch up. And still, the
Soviet leadership has not seen fit to permit the freedom of
information exchange necessary to raise the level of computer-
ization or otherwise to stimulate this central feature of an
advanced economy.
The Soviet leaders have been willing to only tinker with
the administrative apparatus and make a beginning in establish-
ing management principles. Thus, the so-called Shchekino ex-
periment (at the Shchekino Chemical Combine in Tula) attempted
to raise productivity by dismissing surplus labor and giving
the wages of the fired workers to those remaining. This modest
innovation is now hailed in the Soviet press as some sort of
revolutionary example to be emulated throughout the country.
The West has for decades recognized the importance of
management as an integral part of economic growth along with
labor productivity, investment, and technology. It is repre-
sentative of the backwardness of Soviet economic doctrine that
the bureaucracy is just beginning to listen to those Soviet
officials who have long been emphasizing that management train-
ing is essential if Soviet enterprise leadership is going to be
capable of utilizing advanced technology. In early February,
it was announced with great eclat that a New Institute for the
Management of the National Economy, the brainchild of Premier
Kbsygin's son-in-law, Zherman Gvishiani, had been opened "as a
first step towards training a more enlightened managerial elite."
Just as Amalrik put his finger on the political dilemma,
Soviet physicist Andrey Sakharov summed up the economic-
technical failure when he wrote in his famous 1966 essay:
"in the 1920s and 1930s...the slogan, 'Catch up with and sur-
pass America' was launched, and we really were catching up for
several decades. The second industrial revolution began, and
now...rather than catching up...we are falling even farther
behind. The gap is so wide that it is impossible to measure
it. We Simply live in another epoch."
MINORITY DISSENT
Long familiar to the West is the eloquent dissent of Soviet
novelists, poets, musicians, historians, and other writers. We
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may call them the creative intelligentsia -- the Solzhenitsyns,
Amalriks, Sinyavskiys and Daniels, the underground "editors" of
Chronicle of Events and other samizdat publications. No one
knows what influence they exert on the various sectors of Soviet
society but for the time being, anyway, that influence is limited.
For this reason, perhaps; they are permitted to exist. Some are
Chosen for special punishment by exile, incarceration in prison,
forced labor camps, or insane asylums.
It is one thing for Soviet authorities to squelch the voices
of some of its artistic dissenters, of its lesser-known intellec-
tuals or civil rights agitators. It is quite another matter when
the voices of dissent belong to prominent and often internation-
ally respected scientists among whose Chief spokesmen are Andrey
Sakharov, Pyotr Kapitsa, Zhores Medvedyev, and most recently
the son of a hard-line Politburo member, Vitally. Shelest.
Biologist and author Zhores Medvedyev, advocate of more
contact with Western scientists and of free, decentralized re-
search, was incarcerated in a mental hospital early last year
and then released after a successful intervention by his fellow
scientists, who included Sakharov and Mstislav Keldysh, Presi-
dent of the USSR Academy of Sciences. On the other hand, later
efforts by Sakharov and other colleagues to obtain a release for
the imprisoned mathematician Revolt Pimenov, were unsuccessful.
The party and its press have been hard-hitting in criti-
cizing the political initiatives of the Soviet scientists and
their outspokenness in advocating the revitalization of Soivet
science. A 23 November Pravda editorial called for "waging pro-
paganda among scientists for the Marxist-Leninist understanding
of contemporary political socio-economic and philosophical
problems, and for uncompromising attitudes towards the ideo-
logical conceptions of anti-communism and revisionism."
In late November, a CPSU Central Committee resolution
attacked the Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow, where Sakharov
is a staff member. The resolution was also designed to chastize
the Ukrainian scientific community, where a strong group led by
Vitally Shelest is opposing additional party controls. Shelest
has called for more advanced theoretical research and wider con-
tacts with Western scientists.
It was during this same month that Andrey Sakharov and two
scientific colleagues formed a non-political "creative associa-
tion," whose aim is to develop the concept and practice of
human rights in the Soviet Union "in accordance with the laws
of the State." At his own request, in December Sakharov was
allowed to attend the RSFSR Supreme Court session held to con-
sider the appeal against the five-year sentence earlier meted
out to Revolt Pimenov. The sentence was confirmed, but Sakharov's
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presence is symptomatic of the quandary he poses for the regime.
Sakharov was also permitted to attend the RSFSR Supreme
Court December session that rescinded the death sentence meted
out to two of the eleven Leningrad highjacking defendants. By
late December, Sakharov's Human Rights Committee had expanded
and included in its membership Nobel Prize winner A1eksandr
Solzhenitsyn.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has increasingly become the focus
of all crucial, issues in Soviet literary life. Recent criticism
of him by official media have been in effect an assault on prac-
tically all original writing presently created in the USSR. The
confrontation of dogmatists and moderates has been building
steadily during the past two to three years.
It is significant that two of the ablest dissidents,
Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, representing two such different
spheres of Soviet intellectual life should join forces. Sakharov,
a top technocratic scientist, argues for democracy in functional
and practical terms: if the system doesn't democratize, it's
doomed. Solzhenitsyn's arguments for democracy and freedom are
ethical, preaching the absolute value of human freedom.
There has been little firm linkage or evidence of solidarity
between.the so-called "intellectual dissenters" and the opposi-
tion forces among the Soviet's oppressed national minorities and
religious groups such as the Baptists, Jews, Crimean Tatars, or
Ukrainian and Baltic separatists. However, the plight of the
nationalist dissenters, most of whose leaders are safely behind
barbed wire, evokes active sympathy among many of the intellec-
tuals.
That even behind the barbed wire fences there may be some
cross-fertilization of ideas is evident from the letter written
by seven political prisoners, including writers Yuriy Galantsov
and A1eksandr Ginzburg at the end of 1969. They wrote that
"putting people into prison for spreading the idea of national
self-determination leads only to the kindling of national hatred,
enmity and the alienation of nations." And already some writers,
including Ukrainian historian Valentin Mbroz, have testified to
the growth of national consciousness in some areas as a result
of repressive policies. (For this testimony, Moroi was imprisoned.)
Although it would be unrealistic to think that meaningful
solidarity could develop from sympathy, the leadership is not un-
mindful of the explosive potential. When the Action Group for
the Protection of Civil Rights made its first protest in 1969,
more than a quarter of the signers represented the minority races.
Maybe that is why the group was so short-lived.
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THE ECONCMIST London
30 January 1971
DI the above cited issue, The Economist posed eleven questions designed to
measure the amount of freedom in any given country. The Economist also answers the
questions for the Soviet Union. Comparisons of answers for almost any country in
the world will show the USSR to be far in the lead in the matter of governing by
c peMb 13114 oppression: (
? Can you leave it if
you don't like it?
No : there is no right to emigration under
Soviet law. Article 64 of the ,Soviet penal code
makes an illegal attempt to leave the country a
treasonable offence punishable by a minimum of
ten years' imprisonment, and a maximum of
death. A few people are allowed to emigrate,
including about 1,300 Jews to Israel since June,
1967.
I there a secret
police ?
Yes; the KGB, ' though no longer allowed to
operate completely outside the law, as it did
under Stalin, still has wide powers including
the surveillance of all foreigners and all suspect
Soviet citizens, and the running of labour camps
and institutions like special psychological hos-
pitals for political dissenters, Under "admini:
stmtive regulations" the KGB is able to order
Soviet citizens to move their place of residence
for security and , economic reasons.
How many political
prisoners are there?
It has recently been calculated that the labour
camps run by the KGB, which are separate
from the main prison system, may hold as many
as a million people, of whom a substantial
number are detained for political reasons. No one
has claimed to have etiOtigii to
make a precise estimate.
Can you move and
travel inside the
country as you wish?
Every Soviet citizen over the age of 16 must
have an internal passport, which has to be
exchanged periodically until he or she is 40.
Younger people can be released from the obliga-
tion to have a passport if they hold office or are
otherwise thought to merit it. To live perman-
ently in a city or town it is necessary to have
the authorisation of the police or some, other
higher authority. For certain offences, the courts
are empowered to sentence people to exile to,
or banishment from, a particular place. The
number of people currently in exile is thought
to be considerable, and to include many released
prisoners who are not allowed to ' return to
Nimcomr.
Habeas corpus?does
it exist ?
Yes, in theory, under the 1936 constitution?
but the constitution is not observed. The pro-
cedure of " administrative " sentencing by the
KGB has sent an unknown, but very large,
number of people 'to imprisonment without
trial. Wire tapping is widespread ; so is censor-
ship of the mail.
How free iS the
judiciary.?
Courts at all levels are under the complete, if
carefully concealed, domination of the govern-
and communist party in? all political
,matters?although less than 50 per cent of all
judges are communist party, members. The
communist party holds that the separation of
poweil is a bourgeois doctrine.
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CPYRGHT
How much political
activity is possible?
No public political activity is allowed except
that organised and controlled by the communist
party. The one-party elections offer only one
candidate for each post. Other political parties
than the communist party were abolished soon
after the 1917 revolution. Factions within the
communist party itself were forbidden in 1021.
What forms of
di.crimination? do
people suffer from?
There is discrimination against the 2 million to
3 million Jews, who are not allowed their own
schools or to be taught Jewish history. Of the
, estimated 1,650,000 people of 12 other nation-
alities whom Stalin, uprooted and sent, to other
parts of the Soviet Union, the .former Volga
Germans and most of the Crimean Tartars are
? still in exile.
Is there freedom of
worship?
Churches are allowed to perform only religions
services ; Any form of religious instruction, or
charitable or social activity, is forbidden.
Religious believers cannot hope to be
appointed to responsible posts.
How much freedom
of the press is there ?
None. All papers, radio and television stations,
publishing houses and similar institutions are
owned and run by the state. Private citizens are
, not even allowed to own duplicatinf machines.
All publications are subject to strict political
control and therefore, sometimes, to long delays
. in publication. Those who illegally write and
-distribute the unofficial publications known as
samizdat?" self-publications "?are subjca to
heavy penalties.
What restrictions are
there on economic
freedom ?
Article to of the 1936 constitution allows the
private ownership of articles of use and con-
sumption, but not things from which an income
may be derived. The result is that the entire
economy is controlled by the state, though there
are a few private artisans and, in some remote
areas, independent peasants. No one else can independence.
Approved
economic
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FORTUNE
May 1970
Report from Moscow
Those Soviet economic troubles
are deep-rooted.
CPYRGHT
by Jerrold L. Scheeler
So many lies have been foretold us,
ky blue phantasmagorias.
The weather prophets lied,
the compass lied:
-EVGENY EVTUSHENKO
"Ballad of the False Beacons"
In the final year of a fie-ear pl;.n that
was supposed to. bring about niassive
economic reforms, the Soviet Union's lead-
ers and planners are realizing that they
have fallen !far short of the mark. The
Soviet press has embarked on a campaign
of national Self-criticism and analysis that
staggers the Western imagination. Since
the December plenum of the Central
Committee, ithe problems of waste, ineffi-
ciency, alcoholism among workers, faulty
planning, arid agricultural shortages have
become an overriding concern of the
Politburo.. -
Demands for improvement in the econ7
omy have become so widespread and in-
sistent that they have led to recriminations.
among the top leadership and to specula-
tion that changes in the ?Politburo are
imminent. During the last few years Party
General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, Prime
Minister Aleksei Kosygin, and President
Nikolai Podgorny have spent much of their
time "normalizing" Czechoslovakia and
fighting off Chinese Communists along tbe
Sino-Soviet border. Such external crises
diverted their attention from the job 'Of
realigning personnel and power within the
party and Ministries so that they could
bring about the much-touted economic
reforms.
Without direction from the top, change
doesn't happen in an authoritarian social-
ist society, and debate still rages over how
to bring about economic reform. Now the
trend seems to be away from the "liberals,"
who press for more local initiative and
responsibility, and toward the "conserva-
tives," who press for central control of the
? decision-malcing process.
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Attack on bad management
One important indicator of the change
was a speech given by tBrezhnev at the
Kharkov tractor factory last month.
Brezhnev, a conservatiVe in Soviet eco-
nomic terms, appears to have taken the
leadership initiative within the Politburo,
and his speech marked a turn toward re-
newed party cOntrol of the economy. He
promised "substantial corrective changes"
and excoriated "bad management, waste-
fulness, and the violation of labor dis-
cipline." But he made no mention of new
economic reforms; rather, he stressed the
need to perfect the reforms that are al-
ready on the books. It is worth noting
that Prime Minister Kosygin's name
? has been closely linked in the past with
proposals for economic experimentation.
Communist leaders stress the need to
develop a scientific and technGlogical base
for Soviet productiOn, but centralized
planning has hindered the advancement of
technology. In other respects, too, the
Soviet economy today presents a picture
'of unfulfilled development. One hears of
insufficient and badly utilized transporta-
tion, duplication of service facilities in
factories, poorly built buildings, and agri-
cultural shortages, especially of meat. In
brief, net much has changed in the Soviet
economy since the bold proposals of the
current five-year plan were first announced.
(See "The Toughest Management Job in
the World," FORTUNE, July 1, 1966, and
"The Auspicious Rise of the Soviet Con-
sumer," August, 1966.)
? The Chief job of the reforms was to put
limits on party and ministerial control of
factories. In theory the role of planners
and ministries in Moscow was to be shifted
to long-range planning and coordination of
industry-wide production. As in major
American corporations, there would be
central planning groups but individual
management of divisions. But in practice,
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prices, capital allocations, and supplies all
remain centrally controlled. Management
functions continue to be blurred and full
of duplications, which contributed to the
failure of key ministries to fulfill their pro-
duction plans last year in such vital areas
as ferrous metals, petrochemicals, paper,
cement, and machine tools.
Weather compounded ,the economic
problems of 1969. Unseasonable cold
waves and severe storms caused declines
in the output of consumer goods and ser-
vices estimated at four to five billion
rubles. According to Soviet figures, gross
agricultural output last year was 3 percent
below 1968, but Western experts say the
situation was worse than the figures in-
dicate because some of the. crops were of
poor quality.
Psychological resistance to bha'fige has
also slowed economic reform. Bureaucratic
lethargy, or what the Soviets call "Oblo-
movism," and the reluctance of officials
and managers to accept new methods have
been serious stumbling blocks.
Computer technology would seem, to
lend itself readily to a centrally planned
economy, but the Soviet Union has been
slow to accept the idea that machines can
play a part in the decision-making process.
Vodka's the villain in this Krokocid
cancion, part of an unprecedented wave
of Soviet self-criticism. Says the work-
man as he uses his bottle as a level:
"Look, we're laying 'em down tineven."
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This biting comment on the Soviet road sys-
tem appeared in the humor magazine Krokodd,
captioned: "On this bumpy road I built my house.".
-Many bureaucrats find it hard to trust
computer data. For example, the Ministry
of Machine Tool .Building Industry has
come under _strong criticism for its -failure
to use computers effeatively. Every plant
under the ministry's control has a com-
puter, and the ministry has forty-three
regionaLdata centers, which have been in
operation for eighteen months. Yet officials
of the ministry continue to make personal
phone calls every ten days to collect the
information, they need. "One of the main -
reasons for this is a psychological Ntrrier '
Of distrust, conservatism of traditions, and
the habit of world lig in the old fashion,"
said Pravda.
Economic ? reforms touch the sensitive -
nerve of interrelated Ministerial and Com-
munist party interests. These delicately
balanced power relationships will have to
be readjusted if reforms are to succeed.
But the aftermath of Czechoslovakia in-
hibits any innovation in Soviet society.
Underlying the mood of caution .is fear
that loosening the restraints on economic
decision making might lead to demands for
political innovation and freedom.
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The price of uneven progress
The Soviet Union has yet to attain the
integrated economies of scale that make
for smooth production and effective long-
range planning. For example, there is
?
plenty of crude steel, but a lack of spe-
cialized proce.sSing equipment limits out-
put of high-quality steel products.
Other examples of uneven progress
abound. Large investments have been
made in lumbering and sawmills, but
the manufacture of quality furniture
has lagged. Automobile production has
increased, but, service facilities have not
kept pace?motels and roadside garages
remain raritieS.
Economists . talk of a 'fifteen-to-twenty-
year over-all plan, and of directbw the
State Planning Committee' (Oosplan) to
quit concerning itself with details.' But
change means more than efficiency and the
streamlining of production; it means elim-
ination of jobs in the overseeing ministries
as well. Top-heavy staffing and duplica-
tion of effort in the ministries are so-appar-
ent that the; Central Committee of the
Communist party and the Council of
M inistraN last October decreed measure's
1,i ei itii naL excesa staff that will help Nave
1.7 billion rubles annually.
To break up the centralization of power,
an experiment is under way in the Ministry
of Instrument Making, Automatic De- ;
vices, and. Control Systems. Under the
terms of the experiment, which will be
applied to the entire ministry, the plan-
ning power :has been delegated to the
department-chief level. Every department
forms an industrial unit with the enter-
prises under its control to work out de-
tailed production planning jointly?and
the ministry has no veto power over the
decisions. The staff of the department
paid from the pooled resources of the en-
terprises, with salaries dependent ,on?
the progress of the industry. Last year "
the automation industries that first
applied this plan increased produCtion
by 19 percent.
200 cables, but no approval
Other ministries are less enlightened.
Last year the Meat and Dairy Industry
Ministry sent subordinate enterprises and
organizations more than 40,000 orders,
instructions, and telegrams, most of which
had nothing to do with production. "Un-
,
fortunately, ministries are still engaged in
issuing, redundant orders, very efzer. to the
detriment of their duties," says Georgy
Kalugin, manager of the Leningrad Machine
Tool Building Consolidated Enterprises,
and a frequent critic of overcentralized
,ministerial control. Kalugin cites receiving
up to 200 cables and queries monthly from
his mintetry?"Yet we cannot get the
ministry's approval for the plan of recon-
struction of one of our plants."
Kommunist, the theoretical journal of
the Communist party, noted in a recent
issue that "to eliminate the ' redundant
links in management" is a prime duty of
Communists working in adrninistrative
bodies. "Regrettably," Kommunisl added,
"this is not carried out everywhere."
Merger and consolidation
The adoption of a new five-year-plan for
the economy will be a major item on the
agenda of the Twenty-fourth Party Con-
gress, which is expected to meet late this
year. One of the issues the Congress will
have to deal with is a proposal to stream-
line the structure of Soviet industry
through merger and consolidation. The
aim will be to cut down the number of
inefficient small factories, coordinate each
? industry's parts makers and suppliers, and
eliminatC.the staggering waste that results
when, each factory has its own repair and
toolmaking,. facilities. Most Soviet factories
work according to the "closed-circuit sys-
tem,'.' striving for self-sufficiency in pro-
duction of their products rather than
integration into their industry. The result
has been duplication of effort and high,
uneven costs.
? In Leningrad, a single combine is being
set up to service 200 machine-building
plants under sixteen different ministries
with standard parts, tools, and auxiliary
services. The first stage of operation is set
for 1971 and the second by 1980. When the
first stage goes into effect, an estimated
26,000 jobs will be eliminated. With this
and other economies, the plants will save
some 44 million rubles a year.'
' The Party Congress will also take up
proposals for reducing the kind of ineffi-
ciency that is caused by the way the Soviet
system itself operates. There are many
self-defeating aspects of the economic
system. Miners who are paid on the basis
of quantity rather than quality have been
mixing waste rock with iron ore to increase
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CPYRGHT
? ? a ?
? ? ? a ? a
rm., ? I ...kw II III
their output. At one factory, workers
damaged a freight car by overloading it;
rather than face a penalty for the dam-
age, they- destroyed the car and crushed it
into scrap.
The Party Congress must also decide
, how to adjust prices so that they reflect
not only real costs but differences in
quality as well. Under the proposed price
'reform, a system of flexible prices would be
instituted. But just how this will be done,
and what its impact will be, is one of the
1:nottiest problems facing the. planners.
It is not at all certain that the Soviet
Union's renewed thrust toward a
technological society society will produce any
more lasting results than earlier efforts at
reform. Unless the Soviet leaders can
accommodate political control to freedom
for economic decision making, the reforms
will never take hold, and the leadership
still seems fearful that economic reform
may lead to demands for politicalliberall-
zation. Despite lofty phrases of reform, the
"false beacons" continue to shine and, in
the words of the ancien 1 Russian song,
"Yon sham lights confuse fishermen's
souls, implanting false, hoins ..." END
LE MONDE ? Weekly Selection, October 14, 1970
cpYPuor organization plaguing good Soviet harvest
MOSCOW?Pavoura.bie weather"
has
has given the Soviet Union reason'
to expect the 1970 grain harvest
to surpass last year's. The unof-
ficial estimate is placed at more
than the 160 million tons reached
last year, compared to the 180-
.million mark attained- in 1968.
Considerable progress would
have to be made to reach the
annual goal of 195 million tons
set up by Party Secretary-Gen-
eral Leonid I. Brezhnev last July
for the forthcoming five-year
plan.
Serious problems apparently
cpntinue to plague the organiza-
tion of the actual grain gathering.
Several newspapers, including
Pravda, have pointed out the
deplorable harvesting conditions
in such regions as Omsk and
Aktyubinsk.
Trucks, insufficient in number
or poorly used, are unable to reg-
ularly transport the harvested
grain to the delivery or storage
centres. Grain has piled up by
the sides of roads and fields, ap-
parently loose and exposed to the
elements. Elsewhere, the faciltties
are incapable of handling the
inflow.
A recent issue of Pravda cited
the -case eta sovkhoz (1) where
asloo tomi 4 put, grain are even
noW outs.the' 00eh awaiting
From our correspondent
shipment to the nearest grain
elevator, which can only handle
35 to 55 tons a day. At that pace,
the entire harvest will reach
shelter only in mid-November?
after a considerable portion has
been destroyed or damaged by the
seasonal rain or snow.
There are a number of reasons
for ?these delays. Soviet news-
papers place a major part of the
blame on the large number, o?
trucks laid up in repair shops.
At the ,sovIchoz cited by Pravda,4
more than half of the vehicles
were broken down.
? 'Preventive measures
These difficulties are all the
more dkurbing in that they''
were foreseen well ahead of time
and preventive measures Were
taken. The Communist Party
Central dommittee and the Soviet
Council .of Ministers last, /June
authorized- the 'governments of
the federated republics to mobilize
all , available transportatipn for
the, forthcoming_ harvest, Includ-
ing the drafting of industrial and
management motor resources for
holkhoz ,and'so4haz yqf,
? were granted bonuses of as high,
as 50 per cent of their normal
salaries.
A second Central Committee-
Council of Ministers resolution in
early August criticized the im-
proper use of vehicle pools in a
number of agricultural enter-
prises. The emphasis this time
was on improved repair and tech-
nical service organization.
The most recent press criticisms
are part of 5, year-old campaign
aimed at eliminating, or at least
reducing,: waste in all sectors of
the Soviet economy. ,
The situation is all the more
pressing, in agriculture for two
reasons:t (1) this sector is in the
priority position in the next five-
year plan; and (2) grain produc-
tion requires alt added boost to
Compensate for last year's results.
The apparent ineffectiveness of
the party and government direc-
tives highlights both the clumsy
weight of the Soviet apparatus
and the difficulties facing the
managers of the Russian econ-
omy.
f.
ALAIN JACOB
' ?
,(1)A! sirOlasez is a state farra
.tering" trent' a kachoz. (coilective
stem) An that It is. ;Kt like an
industrK Werprtee ,wit4a la1re4
labOq., POI IMPtir LitrIgf(i?
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U.S. NEWS El WORLD REPORT
25 January 1971
WHY RUSSIA CAN'T CATCH UP
WITHOUT WESTERN Kwyy-How
? Inefficiency, waste, bureaucratic bungling. . . . This is only
!part of the story behind Russia's lagging economy?and why
dRtgl4Co11urning, more and more, to capitalist West for help.
The extent of the profound failure of
I the Soviet Union's economic system is
! now coming into full view.
For a long time Russian leaders
! boasted they would catch up with and
surpass the West.
The fact is established, instead, that
!Russia finds it impossible even to hold
I its own.
Years of economic bungling and in-
efficiency have forced the Soviets to
; turn more and more to the West for
!massive help to make up in some measure
for their own shortcomings in industry
. and technology.
The Kremlin found it necessary in the
1960s to import 6.5 billion dollars' worth
I of machinery from smaller countries of
i the capitalist world?a great blow to
!Russian pride.
? Lag in technology. In computers,
I automation, atomic energy?all fields es-
sential in this technological era?Soviet
!progress is found to lag behind that of
i. the West.
' The Russian people, fed promises that
Iproducts commonplace in the West were
i on the way, continue to find promises,
I not goods? on their shelves. Nor is the
I future much brighter. The five-year plan
that started on Jan. 1, 1971, warns peo-
'pie not to expect any dramatic increases
in consumer goods.
! Industrial growth in Russia last year
I rose 8 per cent?above expectations?but
I failed to erase serious deficits plaguing
I key sectors, such as fertilizers, chemicals
rand construction.
One eminent Soviet physicist, Andrei
Sakharov, in a candid mood of self-crit-
icism, puts it this way:
"We are now catching up .with the
I United States only in some of the old,
traditional industries -which are no long-
ler as important as they used to be for
the United States?for example, coal and
Isteel. In some of the newer fields?for
of their help on "painless" terms. That
means terms that will relieve the Rus-
sians of any additional de-
mands on their already
limited reggrver of foreign
example, automation, computers, petro-
chemicals and especially in industrial
research and development?we are not
onl). lagging behind, but are also grow-
ing more slowly."
So, increasingly, Russia must rely on
the West for assistance in overcoming
its deficiencies. Moscow is counting on
capitalism to supply the large-scale aid
needed to exploit vast untapped natural
Yesources, to build modern industrial
plants and to develop new sources of
hard currency to boost living standards.
Massive imports. The billions of dol-
lars in machinery and equipment the
Russians have imported from countries
such as West Germany, Britain, Japan,
Sweden, Italy and France have covered
every industrial field?ships and marine
goods, chemicals, timber and papermak-
ing, equipment, light industry, and food.
The chart on these pages gives details.
Broad objectives of Soviet', planners
are evident in these deals Rttssia has
concluded or has in the works:
? Russia's auto industry is being rev-
olutionized by construction of a mass-
production plant at Togaliatti on ,the,
Volga River by. Italy's Fiat Company.
? British firms are providing the tech-
nical aid; equipment and Construction
engineers for two huge chemical plants.
? West Germany and Italy have
signed multibillion-dollar agreements to
supply Russia with large-diameter pipes,
compressors and other equipment in re-
turn for gas from new wells in Siberia.
? Japan will help Russia harvest its
virgin forests in return for lumber.
? Other Western firms are negotiating
to help Russia develop tremendous re-
serves of iron, copper and nickel in
? Siberia.
What Moscow is counting on is that
industrial firms and banks in the West
are anxious enough to get a toehold in
the Communist market to provide much
exchange.
Credit from capitalists.
Up to now, Russia has
obtained nearly 1.5 billion
dollars' worth of credits
from Western Europe and
from Japan to finance the
purchase of industrial
equipment, know-how and
management skills. Mos-
cow currently is dickering
for an additional 2 to 3 bil-
lion dollars in credit from
these countries. Most deals
involve the barter of
goods rather than payment
of cash.
Notably absent in the
West's push to capitalize
on Russia's needs: the United States.
Foy political or strategic reasons, and
under Government pressure, American
firms have spurned "feelers" for construc-
tion of a truck factory and a computer-
assembly plant in the Soviet Union.
. And American companies are conspic-
,
uously absent from other important ne-
gotiations.
Russia's reach for a Western hand in
time of trouble is far from new. Almost
from the time Communists took over
they have sought capitalist help in try-
ing to deal with an ailing economy.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s,
American industry played a major role
in the first of Joseph Stalin's five-year
plans. During this period?when Wash-
ington did not even recognize Moscow
diplomatically?U. S. companies laid the
foundations of basic Soviet industries?
coal, iron, steel, petroleum, chemicals
and fertilizers. U. S. engineers helped
build the giant Dnieper Darn, at one
time the world's largest. American ex-
perts taught Russian farmers how to
grow wheat on a large scale.
During World War H, with Russia
staggering before advancing German
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armies, it was the U. S. again which came
to the rescue with food, transport and fuel.
After Stalin's death, Nikita Khru-,
shchev?the same Khrushchev who boast-
ed that Russia would be outproducing 1
the U. S. by 1970?sent his farm experts
to the U. S. to see whether Iowa's corn
and hog-raising techniques could be
adopted by Russia to help solve chronic
food problems.
Specialists on Boviat affairs do strolls
this point: Russia has made giant strides
in some sectors over the years.
Crude-steel output totaled only 4 mil-
lion tons in 1928; today it tops 100
million tons. In certain industries, nota-
bly machine tools and cement, Soviet
output exceeds that of the U. S. In fact,
Russia ranks second only to the U. S. as
a military and industrial power.
Still, Russia's total production ' of
goods and services amounts to no more
than half that of the U. S. The average
Russian waits years to buy a car. He
still finds it hard to purchase such ordi-
nary items as gloves, towels and razor
blades. The chart on page 55 compares
production of the U. S. and Russia in
several key areas.
Shabby, shoddy. One Western au-
thority on Soviet affairs describes the
Russia of today in these terms:
"Soviet planning?or the failure of it
?has produced a country where shabbily
dressed peasants use high-powered jets
to take baskets of poultry and produce
to market because food-short city dwell- ,
ers will pay prices that will more than
cover air fares. It has produced a coun-
try which was the first to orbit a satel-
lite around the earth?but where some
buildings are equipped with nets to
catch falling bricks and plaster."
A Soviet economist, I. Pashko, has
detailed his country's backwardness in
engineering. Soviet auto engines, he said,
weigh two to three times more per
horsepower than comparable American
auto engines. The weight of Russian
truck engines is four times as great as
American counterparts.
Practice in Russia is to pour time and
capital into overhauling existing ma-
chines rather than introducing new ones.
For example, 500,000 lathes in Russia
have been in operation for more than
20 years. One third of all Soviet textile
mills are two decades old, or older. One
fifth of all papermaking machines are
over 50 years old.
To maintain this old equipment, what
the Russians call "the second machine-
building industry" has been spawned,
geared to reconditioning antiquated ma- 1
chinery. This industry ties up more than!
1 million metal-cutting lathes?almost as
many as are used in the entire ma-
chine-building industry itself. In 1968
some 5 billion dollars was set aside for
this rebuilding of industrial machinery?
more than all capital investment in ma-
chine building.
Squandered resources. Waste is wide- '
spread. In 1965, according to one So-!
viet source, Russia's engineering industry
used 25 per cent more material than
was used In foraign countriom to produce
the same output. Twenty-nine per cent
of Soviet rolled metal is scrapped each
year. In the ball-bearing industry the
figure is 57 per cent. Annual waste of
steel shavings is three to four times as
high as in other industrial countries.
Human resources are equally wasted.
Nearly one out of four workers is em-
ployed in "auxiliary work"?such as mov-
ing materials from one place to another.
k
Manual labor is widespread. In the me-
chanical-engineering and metal-process-
ing industry only 38 per cent of the
work force is engaged in mechanized'
tasks. Workers in coal mines still prop ;
timbers by hand. Only five of 88 major
gas fields are fully automated. Some 200
tolling mills are not mechanized. 1
In new construction, Russia lags dra-
matically behind the West. Example: It '
takes 1 to 2 years to build a chemical I
plant in the U. S. and Britain; 5 to 7
years in Russia.
Notes one Soviet writer:
"We design new enterprises in two
or three years, we build them in five to
seven years and we take one to two years
to get them producing. . . . This shows
how inefficiently we are using new
technology and how we are slowing
technical progress."
Auto production is another example.
While the rest of the industrial world
grapples with problems of auto pollu-
tion, traffic jams and parking, the Soviet
Union is barely entering the automobile
age. With a population of 253 million
people it has only 1.3 million cars?half
of them Government-owned?and 3 mil-
lion trucks. Soviet auto production in
1970 was around 300000 and truck out-
put half a million. That compared with,
U. S. production of 6.6 million cars and'
1.7 million trucks, a below-normal out-
put because of the 1970 auto strike.
Computer shortage. Nowhere are So-
viet failings more apparent than in the
computer field. Academician Sakharov
estimates that Russian computer capaci-
ty is "hundreds of times less" than
America's. .
Russia not only has fewer computers
in operation-5,000, against more than
60,000 in the U. S.?but also lacks the
big, complex models that have helped
spur technology in the West. One writer
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estimates that 60 to 80 per cent of com-
puters in the U. S. and Western Europe
belong to the third?the latest?genera-
tion of computers, with the remainder
in the second generation. In Russia and
Eastern Europe less than 5 per cent are
third generation and more than one
third are first generation.
The Soviet Union also is falling down
in computer "software"?programing the
maim to dolivor at utmost offloioney.
Computers in Russian factories, for in-
stance, are usually called upon to solve
very limited problems. Computer sys-
tems to run an entire plant?administra-
tively as well as on the production
fines?are relatively few. Often they per-
form poorly.
Finally, Russia lacks the mathemati-
cians and cybernetics specialists who can
solve practical industrial problems.
Looking to West. With such defi-
ciencies and weaknesses it is no won-
der, experts on Russia point out, that
the Russians are searching for help from
the West. Cars, computers and chemi-
cals?these are the fields where the Rus-
sians are most anxious to get assistance.
To refashion the languishing Soviet
auto industry, the Italians are building
,the Togliatti plant. It is scheduled to
produce 600,000 autos a year by the end
of 1972?more than half the country's es-
timated production at that time.
Negotiations are under way to orga-
nize a European consortium, led by
West Germany's Daimler-Benz, to build
a 1-billion-dollar truck factory with an
annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles.
Renault of France and DAF of Holland
are also involved. The Russians began
talking to these European manufacturers
after getting a turn-down from Henry
Ford II of the U. S. Ford, however, is
reported still to be considering a tractor
deal with the Russians.
Moscow, in its bid to tap Western
ingenuity in the computer sector, is run-
ning into trouble. Main reason: An em-
bargo, observed by all countries of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and
Japan, prohibits the export to Russia of
the large, more sophisticated computers
that could be of strategic value.
For example: Russia last October
tried to get International Business Ma-
chines of the U. S. to build a subassem-
bly plant in the Soviet Union. This was
rejected. Now it is turning to Siemens
of West Germany to explore the possi-
bilities of co-operation in electronic data
? processing. How these negotiations will
fare in view of the NATO restrictions
is uncertain.
Bogged-down deal. In a related de-
velopment, Britain's International Com-
puters, Ltd., has concluded a contract
blitROldftbthihotqejtrer.two big
CPYRGHT
Annrnirl Fnr Rplpacp 1 cicici/Oci/O9 ? CIA-R111D7A-Ol1cutAnnnnnn19nnn1_n
RUSSIA TRAILS U.S.
IN NEARLY EVERY FIEL
OF PRODUCTION
Estia;rated output in 1970?
_
U. S. S. R.
U.S.
Electric power, billion
kilowatt?houra
737
1,630
Oil, million barrels
2,480
3,650
Natural gas, billion cubic feet
6,980
22,000
Coal, million tons
690
585
Steel, million tons
. ,?
' 127
130
Computer systems
Fewer than
1,000
25,000
Cement, million barrels
..
533
400
Trucks
.
i
520,000
1,700,000
Automobiles
329,000
6,600,000
Refrigerators
4,100,000
5,500,000
Washing machines
5;400,000
3,800,000
Source: estimates by USN&WR Economic Unit, based on official data
computers to the Serpukhov high-energy
i physics center. That deal, too, is stalled
in NATO on strategic grounds.
British firms are going ahead with
providing help for construction of two
giant petrochemical plants in Russia.
One, a terylene facility designed to pro-
; duce 50,000 tons of synthetic fibers an-
nually, is scheduled to begin operation
this year. A polyester-film factory is be-
ing built near Moscow with British aid.
The two projects involve contracts total-
ing nearly 130 million dollars.
Nowhere is Russia relying on Western
; aid more than in development of Sibe-
ria's wealth of natural resources. Buried
in that frigid land are 90 per cent of the
country's coal, over half its iron ore,
three quarters of its timber, huge oil
reserves and one third its natural gas.
To get that gas out fast is a major
reason behind the "pipe for gas" agree-
ments Russia has negotiated in Europe.
Russia does not have the time, capital or
equipment to tap those reserves now.
Nor does it manufacture the large 42-
'inch pipe needed to distribute it So
West Germany is supplying 333 million
dollars' worth of pipe and other machin-
ery in return for gas, Italy 200 million
dollars' worth.
Tapping foreign know-how. The
pipe deal points up the advantages accru-
ing to the Russians in such ventures. It
was described this way by one observer:
"Russians grant no concessions to for-
eign firms. Foreigners are not permitted
to own their own producing plants. No
foreign internal-development project is
permanent. No joint Soviet-foreign com-
panies are permitted.
"Instead, Russia calls in foreign firms
to do a job, take a profit and get out.
"In short, the Russians get develop-
ment without any cost to their foreign-
exchange reserves and also acquire a lu-
crative new source of hard-currency
earnings in the future."
Siberia's timber resources are being
exploited similarly in an arrangement
with Japan. The Japanese have agreed
to supply on deferred-payment terms
150 million dollars' worth of machinery
and other equipment for forestry devel- ?
opment. Payment will be 3.3 billion
board feet of lumber.
Japan also is co-operating with Russia
in construction of the new port of Uran-
gelya in the Far East near Nahodka, to
handle the rapidly growing volume of
trade between the Soviet Union and
Japan. Russia is angling for long-term,
low-interest loans of 90 million dollars
from Japanese banks to finance the first
stage of this port development.
British projects. Other projects in
the works concerning Siberia:
Development of topper, zinc and
nickel by British and other European
firms; construction by Britain of a rail
freight-container system from Leningrad
to the Pacific Coast; building of a forg-
ing plant by Britain's GKN Company.
How far and how fast these ventures
will go, and how successful they will be
are still matters of conjecture among
Western experts. Officials specializing
In East-West economic affairs seem rea-
sonably optimistic about prospects for
deals involving 1 billion dollars or more
?provided Moscow gets the long-term
credit it wants and if payment is ac-
cepted in the form of raw materials or
semi-finished products.
Even so, there seem to be limits. A
recent study by the Geneva-based Eco-
nomic Commission for Europe (ECE)
showed that Russia in the decade ahead
will find a declining market for its farm
products, mineral fuels and industrial
materials compared with the 1950s and
1960s. Why? Western needs are not ris-
ing as fast.
Also: Russian products are often of a
kind and quality hard to sell in the
West.
? There are a few .exceptions. West
German industrial companies and re-
search institutes are using certain kinds
of Soviet isotopes because they come
cheaper than from the U. S. Russia sup-
plies automated welding equipment and
superhard tools to work on stress parts
of engines. Russia is to furnish equip-
ment and technical help for a large iron
and steel plant to be built in France.
An Italian company has purchased sev-
eral Yak-40 jet planes that can land and
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CPYRGHT
take off 'on beaten-earth fields. By and
large, however, the flow of technologir
cal goods is a one-way street, from West
to East.
The military drain. A question the:t
persists as the Russians look to the West
for more help is why a country oc':.
cupying one sixth of the world's larn,1
surface, so rich In natural resources,
has been unable to keep up with tht'p
rest of the industrialized world. From
Soviet experts in Europe and the U. SI'
come these explanations:
1. Defense and the space race have;
placed a 'tremendous burden on the Sc4
viet economy, sharply limiting resources
available for progress in other sectors
Says one expert:
"With a national income that is only',
about half that of the U. S., Russia is
trying to rival America as a military
power and in space. The strain produced
by this effort has been much greater
than for the richer U. S. economy."
,At the same time, both defense. and
space technology are surrounded by an
impenetrable security blanket. This has
retarded the "spin-off" that has helped
technological advancement in the West's
civilian sector.
2. Over the last decade, Soviet poli-
cy makers have been under rising pres-
sure from the people to transfer more
resources to consumer-goods industries
and to housing. Russia has not been
wholly successful in this?as Kremlin
leaders themselves have admitted?but
the effort has drained capital away from
the "growth inducing" capital-goods in-
dustries.
3. The traditional system of economic
planning from the center has created a
nightmare of ineptitude. Basic economic
decisions are made by a handful of "ex-
perts" in Moscow, many of whom are
neither experts nor planners, but Com-
munist Party faithful.
When the "experts" make a mistake,
there is no free market to correct them.
Since consumers have little say about
what is made, a flood of unwanted and
unneeded goods flows out of factories to
sit?unsold?on store shelves. Enterprises
which make these goods do not "go out
of business" until the planners order it
?so unwanted products keep pouting
out year after year despite criticism and
complaints.
4. Administrative barriers and red
tape hamper innovation. Managers of
state-owned plants have little incentive
to introduce different machines or other
improvements. For example:
To install new machinery, managers
would have to shut down production
lines, fall behind in their quotas, lose
possible benefits. Even if new machln-
Oty Wer iuQd ilf11 Wolik1
main. Fresh equipment means higher
production targets that could complicate
life for both supervisors and laborers.
Result: An attitude of "just getting
by" permeates the entire production
process.
Faults conceded. None of these fail-
ings has been entirely lost on Russian
leaders. Over the decades, Soviet offi-
cials have conceded major faults?as the
statements below indicate. In 1965 the
Kremlin decreed an overhaul of the pro-
ductive machinery. It failed. Two years
ago new changes were made in an effort
to deal with planning, prices, invest-
ment and incentives. Recent complaints
by Soviet leaders indicate that these
"innovations" also are not working.
A leading expert on Soviet economics,
Mrs. Gertrude E. Schroeder, visiting
professor of economics at the University
of Virginia, summed up the Russians'
drive to accelerate technology in the
periodical "Problems of Communism."
She said:
"The present thrust seems unlikely to
produce significant results even if given
a great deal more time. The main rea-
son for this conclusion is that the Soviet
leadership, as in the past, is still relyin
on administrative methods of resolvin
the problem."
With results falling far behind expec-
tations, odds are that Russian overture
to the West will continue to expand. I
the view of many Western observers,
they should be rebuffed, however.
Asks one: "Why should free-worl
capitalists come to the aid of Sovie
Communists?and in terms that are s
highly favorable to the Russians?"
What the West gives Russia, thes
observers continue, will not solve th
basic problems inherent in the Commu
nist system, but they will benefit Sovie
leaders as they seek to overtake the U.S
and narrow the technology gap.
One British political commentator pu
it this way: "It's sheer insanity that lead
Western countries to scramble for a
opportunity to help a nation that is stil
dedicated to their destruction."
.t.4
NEW YORK TIMES,
7 February 1971
Soviet Union:
Pi6kfrig:VBit ofO
capitalist

CP
1?0SCOW?,-The largest book
.
More .here - is Dom Knigh and
? o-n the; same: counter. : where
works "exposing" the . evils of:
capitalism are sold; a thick,
807-page volume extolling Amer-
ican business .methods 'Went on!
, sale the other day. r.,o(Pies were
quickly bought by eager custom-i
It NV3IS a Russian translation,1
hi abridged- form, of "Executive i
Leadership Course," which was
. originally published in the United!
States to aid American capital-
ists in running their concerns
; slang the most up-to-date paths.
And on Wednesday, ,Neues
eksei N. Kosygin, Politburo mem-
ber, 'Andrei P; Kirilenko and
other top officials were lending
their prestige to the formal open-
ing' of a new, high-level. school,
the? Institute for Management of
the National Economy. This es-
tablishment has all the earmarks
of turning into the Soviet equiv-
s alent of I.B.M.'s special insti-
tute for American executives, or
similar programs at Harvard,
MIT, or other places, - ?
The new institute, which Was
t, opened last Mondays has as its
goal the retraining of the veter-
,: an Soviet elite. The first-class
; of students, enrolled fer a three-,
.month session, consists of Min-
: isters, Deputy Ministers and oth-,
er industrial czars.
Among the courses being giv-
enat the institute are: '''The
Present7day' State. of ,the' Soviet
? Economy," "The Latest `Al:thieve,
melts In, and Prospects for Dn.'
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ireloping, the Scientific and Tech-
Jiieal Revolution" and "Progress
in Science. Technology and Pro-
duction in the Soviet Union and
Abroad."
' These developments underi
scored what has become, therms-
ingly . evident here in , recent
Years, namely the determination
of Soviet authorities ,to 'bend
their ideological anathema to the
!American way of life by borrow-
ing some of the management
'tools Used by American indue-
itry to make the United.Statta
!the world's leading economic
power.
Soviet officials have stressed,
and there is no reason, to guar-
, rel with them, that the ?decision
I
to use CC0110/Tiie levers and prac-
tices common ? hi the West in no '
way dilutes Russia's commit-
ment to a Socialist economy. The
, Soviet state still controls all
means of production and sets
prices and v,%ges, the main reg-
ulators.
I New 'Plan' Is Due
' The .attention now paid to
management is part of an over-
all Soviet effort to modernize its
economy and take advantage of
the technological revolution now,
sweeping the rest of , the world,
but which has had only a small
impact se far in Russia's civil-
! ian economy. The drive has par-
ticular impetus now because a
' new "Five-Year Plan" is sched,
uled to be announced in the
near future..
The results of the last such
plan, which ended on Dec. 31,
were' made public last week. Ai
expected, they indicated that
most of the targets set by Pre-
mier' Kosygin in 1966 were not
reached, priniarily because of
delays in construction, back-
ward' plants and shortages in
capital and labor investments.
Over-all, the Soviet economy
recorded a strong comeback in
1970, after a poor showing in
1969. Both industrial and Agri-
Cultural output showed signifi-*
cant gains, and officials have
-claimed a record grain harvest.
Russians are hoping that scl-;
ence and technology can be in-
troduced rapidly In order to ac-
celerate the ecOnomy's growth
and to tie the Soviet Union se-
ctirely to the computer age. Soe
Oat ?Melds have 'striven th,h.
terest Western concerns in sign- -
Ing long-term agreeinents to ex- -
pert new technology here,: and
seed young scientists have gone
abroad to study. New depart-
merits have been established in
a few universities to teach cy-
bernetics Russian's. '
But. officials have stressed that
the advanced technology will he ,
? wasted if ,the top leadership of ?
Soviet enterprises remains ignor-
ant, of its possibilities, or, through
'Misguided ideological vigilance,
opposes ita introduction in Min-
istries and enterprises.
A Soviet econornist with long
experience in the United States
once noted how surprised he
was, during a. visit th New Eng- ,
land, to ascertain: that. a shoe
manufacturer ? "an old-fash-
ioned capitalist" ? seemed ful-
ly aware of modern manage-
ment ideas, could 'discuss co-
gently the latest .compUters on
the Market and could. converse
with his arching engineers easily.? .
"Most of our older directors
are tinnier skilled workers with
little advanced training,' he said:
'They rose to important posts
under ,Stalin 'because they could
organize workers ' to Meet
planned output 'goals. They are ?
relatively unsophisticated and
know very little about modern
techniques.' We are trying to
change' their attitude, but it it
hard work."
"Knowledge of the methods ,
and techniques of management
today is necessary for the lead-
ers of the national -economy,"
said Vladimir A. Kirillin, chair
man of the State Committee for
Science and Technology, th n,
interview in Pravda last week. ,
"Without this, it is. diffietilt
to "raise" the efficiency of pro-
dUctiOn, and to use fully the':
aohievethents of ecienCe and ;
technology." ? ,
?BERNARD GWERTZMAN
WASHINGTON STAR
November 1970
VICTOR ZORZA
Restlessnessiin Soviet
cpyScientilk Circles
The ferment in the Soviet
intellectual community, par-
ticalarly among the scientists,
? is lempelling the Kremlin to
brill/ out into the open- the
pi nce of opposition which it
W4
W rather suppress. ,,Ifhe
fat st issue of Party Life !bids
Of the Lebedev Physic ' In-
ii
gfpa.ite in Moscow, one the
Soviet Union's leading n ear
res .larch centers, has been in-
fee.ed with "bourgeois" ideol-
010 ? V
an ce the institute counti
anung its associates such men
as Academician Sakharov, the
mad famous member of the
"scientific political opposi-
Him," the party journal's at-
tacx on it is no surprise. What
Is surprising is that it has been
so long delayed. Sakharov's
cal for the democratization of
the Soviet system, which be-
gar circulating through under-
groand channels in Russia
some two years ago, certainly
constituted sufficient provoca-
Um for the Kremlin, which
would normally have *gen.-
shol shrift to the chall er
!Ind his associates.
Bait to deal with the matter
with its customary firmness',
he Kremlin would have had to
risk alienating an important
sec in of the scientific con-
malty, without whose cooper-
stir* 'the system could hardly
bon
an viable for very long.
5'alstiarov was gradually de-
pth td of most of the positions
NeAeld, and an attempt was
ktasie to tighten up the ideolog-
' cid .. Iscipline in the scientific
?ROl without too much public
but, it now seems, to no
1.
t The criticism a the Lebedev
institute Is attributed in Party
...,if to the Central Committee
tsel, which means that akle-
.21si m has been taken at the
(lig est level to use the present
sttpck as an object lesson for
he country's scientific com-
ssuaity SS a whole. It is the
nstitutele party committee,
not just the non-party scien-
tists, which is said to have
failed to display "the neces-
sary staunchness in the strug-
gle with the unscientific and
idealistic conceptions of bour-
geois selenUsta."
But it is not foreign sclentif-
Ic ideas that the Kremlin is
concerned about. In the More,
the institute's party commit-
tee must ensure that the scien-
lists acquire "a Marxist-Len-
inist understanding of politi-
cal, socio-economic and philo-
sophical problems of the day."
It must further arouse among
them "an uncompromising at-
titude towards the ideological
concepts of anti-communism
and revisionism."
Behind the long words are
very simple ideas. "Revision-
ist" and "bourgeois" labels
have always been used by So-
viet leaders to decry and dis-
credit the demands made by
any section of the commnity
for basic freedoms. Among the
scientists, the rallying call is
increasingly for freedom of
communication with the out-
side world. They argue that
this must be granted to them
If Soviet science is to be truly
effective, that without it they
cannot produce the results
which the party needs to keep
up the power of the Soviet Un-
ion in relation to the West.
But they know, and the par-
ty knows, that once this free-
dom has been granted to sci-
entists, it could not be long'
withheld from the rest of the
nation. The free circulation of
Ideas, political as well as sci-
entific, that would inevitably
follow, would soon undermine
the party's monoply of politi-
cal wisdom and, therefore, of
political power.
Nor is the demand confined
any longer to outright rebels
like Saltharov. A debate in the
Ukrainian press on the basic
directions of science, which
soon spilled over into matters
of freedom, was recentV initi-
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eked by a 30-year-old physicist,
Vitaly Shelest, who had been
greatly impressed by what he
had seen in America. Young
Shelest's father Is the party
secretary for the Ukraine, a
nation 01 50 million people.
Ostensibly, Shelest was con-
cerned with the preference
given to the applied sciences
in the Soviet Union, and the
restrictions, financial and or-
ganizational, placed on the
basic sciences. But the basic
sciences include, for him. "the
history of the fatberland"?an
area the. is beset by tiboos
and censorship bans, te pre-
Vent the critical discussion of
Political ideas, and ef the pan-
ty's conduct during the 53
years it has ruled the country.
Articles by other scientists
In the Ukrainian Literary Ga-
zette soon took up, however,
the inevitable topic of foreign
contacts. This was absolutely
necessary if young scientists
were to develop their abilities
fully, "but, unfortunately, we
sent on such creative foreign
trips for the most part anyone
but those who are true scien-
tists."
Foreign travel permits were
governed by "a system of
questionnaires, personal files,
recommendations, and the
like, which has completely,
failed." Yet the system "still
exists and hampers progress."
The writer, himself a young
scientist, demanded that the
head of a scientific establish-
ment should alone be respon-c-
ble for deciding whether mem-
bers of his staff may travel
abroad.
This is the most direct and
daring discussion to have ap-
peared in the Soviet press so
far of the degrading system
of checks and Investigations,
administered by a special de-
partment of the Central Com-
mittee, which every Soviet cit-
izen must undergo before he
obtains a foreign travel per-
mit. Previously, the system
had only been criticized in lit-
erature circulated through un-
derground channels.
Another complaint voiced In
the Ukranian debate was that
"it is almost impossible to ob-
tain, on time, a journal or a
book from abroad." The au-
thor had inserted "on time"
for the censor's benefit, for his
readers will know of the great
number of books that are not
allowed into the country for
political reasons?even when
they deal with scientific top-
ics.
A study published Vficially
In Moscow last year concluded
that the efficiency of Soviet
science was greatly impaired
by restrictions on the circula-
tion of scientific literature and
- of the scientists themselves.
Foreign journals reached sub-
scribers with great delays, it
said, and it was "particularly
deplorable" that "the most
Important. of them" were
available .r.,y In the form of
photographic reproductions
made in the Soviet Union from
? foreign originals. (any "unde-
sirable" matter Is, of course,
deleted in the process of re-
production.)
The study laid particular
stress on the importance of
personal links between scien-
tists of different countries.
These were now increasingly
neczssary, because the high
degree of specialization and
the "Imformation explosion"
made such personal contacts
the most efficient way of ac
-
Turing much of the important
new knowledge. In the Soviet
Union, the book concluded,
"the delays in the movement
of new ideas through the chan-
nels of communication are imp
permissibly great."
Some of the Soviet leaders
are aware of the problem.
Dzherman Gvishiani, the dep-
uty chairman of the State Sci-
ence Committee, who is one of
the men most concerned in the
Soviet leadership with improv-
ing the utilization of science in
the interests of the national
economy and defense, has of-
ten stressed the importance of
foreign contacts.
Although he is the son of a
KGB general, Gvishiani hasp
worked so hard to extend Bus-
sin's foreign links that In some
quarters he is regarded as a
liberal. Perhaps he is. The off-,
spring, of KGB officials some-
times turn out to be remarka-
bly progressive.
As the son-In-law of Alexel
Kosygin, the prime minister,
he can afford to take risks?
although he also remembers,
no doubt, the sad fate of Mr.
Khrushchev's son-in-law, Alex-
ey. Adzhubey, who became a
"liberal" standard-bearer as
editor of Izvestia, and has
been last heard of as a report-
er on a picture magazine.
In a recent article, Gvishianl
raessed the "great impor-
? Ince" of studies designed to
oetermine the effectiveness of
Soviet science and scientists
who, with auxiliary personnel,
now amounted to more than
three million people. It Is an
army with considerable revo-
lutionary potential?and the
more the Kremlin does to
Im-
prove Its "effectiveness," the
more dangerous it will be.
COMA, -
NEWSWEEK
1 February 1971
CPYRGI-Dissent in Russia: The Thin Wedge
He lives alone in a two-room, red brick
bungalow on a country estate 25
miles west of Moscow, and his wants are
starkly simple. Occasionally, he receives
a visitor or relaxes by skiing in the soli-
tary silence of the nearby woods. But
most of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's waking
hours are poured into the neat, longhand
manuscript of his new novel, "August
1914," a ruthlessly candid portrait of his
homeland during the last days of czarist
rule. Yet for all his single-minded im-
mersion in the past, the present tugs
doggedly at Solzhenitsyn's elbow. In ever
more strident tones, the gov-
ernment-controlled press de-
nounces him as a scandalmon-
ger and a traitor, and only last
week his Nobel Prize was com-
pared to the mark of Cain."
One by one, his colleagues are
hounded from their jobs,
hauled off by the secret police politics. And like Dostoevski,
and, sometimes, sent away to who was trained as an engi-
rot in prisons. And although he neer, and Chekhov, a prac-
would prefer his world to be ticing doctor, Solzhenitsyn
bounded by the narrow, pa- uniquely spans the two strong-
per-strewn writing desk and est branches of traditional Russian lib-
the peaceful wohds outside, eralism: art and science. For although he
the clandestine chorus of So- has worked for much of his life as a
viet dissent nags him relent- mathematician, it is his fiction that has
lessly toward a role of moral brought him fame?as well as a painful
leadership. sense of responsibility to his country's
By now, Solzhenitsyn has tiny but courageously persistent dissent
come to accept his fate. "For movement.
a country to have a great writ- Protest: In his dual role as a man of
er," says a character in one of letters and a man of science, Solzhenit-
his novels, "is like having an- syn, 52, personifies a turning point for the
other government." In the Soviet Union. In recent months, a grow-
grand tradition of Dostoevski, ing number of prominent scientists have
Pushkin and other nineteenth- joined artistic dissenters in open protest
century Russian writers, Sol- against the Soviet repression of individu-
zhenitsyn has learned that he ality. And this union of the artistic and
. .
orever tfle scientific intelligentsia is the most im-
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dissent since the death of Joseph Stalin
eighteen years ago.
Like their artistic predecessors in the
movement, the newly vocal scientists
are concerned with civil liberties and
creative freedom. But most of them are
also motivated by the realization that
the dead hand of Soviet conformity has
throttled research and development, and
may ultimately consign their country to
technological backwater (box, page
32). Few of the dissenters are Western-
style democrats; what they seek is an
enlightened Soviet system. But even that
relatively modest demand confronts the
cautious bureaucrats in the Kremlin with
their gravest challenge of the post-Stalin
era. In all likelihood, the issue will not
be settled soon. But the government's
painful dilemma?whether to bend with
the winds of change or to crack down
savagely on dissent?may ultimately hold
the key to the success or failure of the
Marxist experiment in Russia.
In a sense, the father of current Soviet
dissent was Nikita Khrushchev. By in-
augurating the de-Stalinization campaign
in 1956, Khrushchev raised many hopes
and, quite unintentionally, sparked the
birth of a literary counterculture. Under
Khrushchev, Solzhenitsyn was permitted
to publish his novel "One Day in the Life
of Ivan Denisovich"?a searing indict-
ment of Stalin's prison camps. Even this
much dissent, however, alarmed the
gray bureaucrats who succeeded Khru-
shchev, and soon the government began
to crack down again. In early 1968, it
staged what was to become the Soviet
Union's Dreyfus case?the trial of writers
Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, both
of whom were sentenced to prison camp
for having sent "anti-Soviet" manuscripts
abroad for publication.
Prison: Dissent did not approach its
present stage, however, until men like
Solzhenitsyn edged off the
sidelines. Solzhenitsyn's first
timid step into political in-
volvement?a series of wartime
letters to a friend in which he
criticized Stalin?had earned
him eight years in a labor
camp. And after his release, he
carefully avoided politics, set-
tling down to a quiet job teach-
ing mathematics in a provincial
city. But then Solzhenitsyn
turned to literature, and it was
his evolution into a novelist
of conscience that eventually
brought him back to criticism
of the regime. Thus, in 1967,
he wrote to the Writers' Union
demanding an end to the cen-
sorship that had "smothered,
gagged and slandered" his
novels 'The First Circle" Etnd
"Cancer Ward." The next year,
Andrei Sakharov, an illustrious
physicist who is known as one
of the "fathers" of the Soviet
hydrogen bomb, published a
liberal manifesto, in which
he declared: "Intellectual free-
dom is essential to human so-
ciety." And early last year,
Zhores Medvedev, a biologist
who had aiready marls a name
for himself by exposing Stalin's
crackpot court scientist, Trofim
Lysenko, lashed out furiously
at censorship of the mails.
At first, the new dissenters were un-
organized, if only because Soviet law
forbids the formation of anything that
resembles a political opposition group.
But events were soon to convince some
scientists that they would be better off
hanging together. Last May, when Med-
vedev was arrested and hustled off to a
mental institution. Solzhenitsyn joined
the vast public outcry that quickly won
the biologist his freedom and eventually
even a new job. And when a less re-
nowned scientist, Leningrad mathemati-
cian Revolt Pimertov, was slapped into
prison, Sakharov and two of his col-
leagues broke the organizational ice by
setting up a "Human Rights Committee.
In December, Solzhenitsyn himself
joined up as an honorary member.
Ilven though they were kept from the
attention of the average Russian, these
actions made waves that are still rippling
across the world of Soviet art and science.
Still other eminent figures have been
drawn into the fray. As the official press
heaped fresh abuse on Solzhenitsyn, the
cellist Mstislav Rostropovich?who had
taken the novelist into his country dacha
outside Moscow?leapt to his friend's de-
fense in an open letter to four Russian
newspapers. When the authorities re-
taliated by barring Rostropovich from a
scheduled conceit, two other distin-
guished musicians, violinist David Ois-
trakh and pianist Sviatoslav Richter, re-
fused to participate in the concert until
Rostropovich had been reinstated. The
battle, however, did riot end there, for
last week, Rostropovich's public appear-
ances abroad for the next six months
were canceled, and his wife, the soprano
Galina Vishnevskaya, was abruptly
dropped from a Moscow performance of
"Madame Butterfly."
? Yet for all their. ,fame, men like Ros-
tropovich, Oistrakh and Richter are not
vitally important to the bureaucrats who
rule the nation. "The Soviet regime can
get along perfectly well without its poets
or musicians," says one Western Kremlin-
ologist. "But it can't get along so well
without its technical elite." It is thus a
cause of considerable concern to the
men in th?e Kremlin that many Russian
scientists feel increasingly alienated from
their society. Ipartly, this estrangement is
due to the steady encroachments of neo-
Stalinism. "Some time ago, we scholars
lost our sense of personal security," math-
ematician Pimenov said shortly before he
was jailed. "For scientific work, one must
be certain of tomorrow.". No less im-
portant, scientific dissent is also fostered
by a growing awarenesa that censorship
and political orthodoxy are severe handi-
caps to Soviet research, as well as to the
,country's technological capabilities.
Perhaps the most common complaint
among Soviet scientists is that they are
often denied access to foreign scientific
books and journals and thus fail to keep
pace with developments abroad. Accord-
ing to various estimates, the Soviet Union
obtains considerably less than half of the
technical periodicals that are published
in the world each year. Even those pub-
lications it does subscribe to are slow in
reaching their destinations; Glavlit, the
state censorship agency, insists upon du-
plicating periodicals and removing cer-
tain advertisements, and this process
alone can take six months or more. In
many fields, furthermore, new develop-
ments are occurring so rapidly that the
journals cannot keep up with them; non-
Soviet scientists stay abreast through let-
ters and conversation 8 with foreign col-
leagues, but this possibility is not open to
most Russian. scientists. "We are even
encountering difficulty comprehending
some foreign publications we receive be-
cause we are not familiar with all the
long discussions that preceded articles in
them," admitted a study published in
Moscow two years ago. "Sometimes we
have to form special groups to 'decode'
these unintelligible reports ... All this
may take several years."
Refusal: Soviet scientists also have
scant oppOrtunity to attend conferences
in other countries, which are a gold
mine of news and ideas for researchers.
Russian delegations to these affairs are
usually small and closely guarded by the
KGB, the state security police, and they
generally consist of older executives,
rather than young innovators. In his
book "The Medvedev Papers," (which
will be published next June by Macmil-
lan), Zhores Medvedev describes how
his superiors frequently declined confer-
ence invitations on his behalf "due to
extreme overpressure of work." On one
such occasion the very day when he
was supposed to address a prestigious
gathering in Britain Medvedev's "prior
obligation" consisted of helping with the
potato harvest in the fields outside his
laboratory at Obninsk, in Kaluga prov-
ince. "Can we imagine a European sci-
entist, 50 to 60 years old, who has never
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ppruveu rur rwiectse
once traveled beyond the limits of his
own county, nor ever taken part in an
international =cling abroad, nor ever
once visited a foreign laboratory, even in
neighboring countries?" asks Medvedev.
"Of course we cannot imagine it; it
would be impossible in England, France
or Belgium. But in the U.S.S.R. this is
still true of most scientists."
Because of their isolation, Soviet re-
touchers waste much of their time. In
1961, Medvedev reports, 85 per cent of
the Soviet Union's inventions merely du-
plicated earlier foreign discoveries, and
there is no reason to believe that Russia
has closed the gap in subsequent years.
Thus, in the interests of efficiency, if
nothing else, the active dissidents in
Soviet science are eager to tear down
the mental iron curtain that surrounds
their laboratories. "The source of our
difficulties is not the socialist system,"
Sakharov, physicist Valentin Turchin
and historian Roy Medvedev (who is
Zhores Medvedev's twin brother) in-
sisted last year in an open letter to the
top Soviet leadership. "[The] source is
the anti-democratic traditions and norms
of public life which appeared dur-
ing Stalin's period and have not been
completely liquidated down to the pres-
ent time."
Factions: Despite their prominence,
the dissident scientists and their allies in
the arts have no monopoly on protest in
Russia; a whole spectrum of loosely
organized groups?ranging from clusters
of Ukrainian and Baltic separatists to
Jews, Baptists andChristian socialists?
are arrayed against the government. But
although these latter groups are gener-
ally dedicated to the overthrow of the
established order (or least to making
good their escape from it), it appears
that, apart from the Jews, their impact
pn Soviet society hardly extends beyond
the barbed-wire perimeters of its 1,000
prison camps. In comparison, the impact
A the dissident intellectuals is consider-
ible. Some foreign observers, however,
liscern a potentially damaging split in
the "respectable" opposition among the
_ntelligentsia. According to this theory,
one group?composed of influential men
like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov?hopes
to change Soviet society from within and
hews more or less strictly to legal forms
of protest. The other faction, made up of
younger dissenters?most of them artists
?is frustrated by a lack of influence and,
as a result, has moved into activities
at lie outside Soviet law.
"They fight the authorities," one Rus-
"an says of these mavericks. "They con-
front them directly. They do not have
the fear of the labor camp in their
bones." Thus, in addition to filing formal
protests, lending moral support when
their friends stand trial and signing the
petitions that play a time-honored role
in Russian dissent, these rebels stage il-
legal demonstrations, write articles, sto-
ries and poems in samizdat ("self-pub-
lished") form and pass around smudged
carbon copies of A Chronicle of Current
Events, the Soviet Union's principal
underground newspaper. "Thank you,
Party, goes a poem in ono issue of the
Chronicle, "for all you have done and
aro doim to nurture the hatred we fool
today. Thank you, Party."
Friends: Life is a hand-to-mouth busi-
ness for young dissenters on the fringe of
the intelligentsia. Most are unable to
obtain the kind of jobs for which they
were trained, and since unemployment
makes them vulnerable to imprisonment
or exile to Siberia as "parasites," they
take on menial work whenever they can
find it. (Ironically, it is useful to have
been ruled "insane" by the KGB; a num-
ber of quite lucid nonconformista?get
around the requirement that they must
hold jobs by drawing pensions for their
alleged mental disability.) But money is
the least of their worries, for in the free-
wheeling underground scene, a frugal
dissenter can live well enough if he op-
erates on the age-old Russian principle
that it is better to have 100 friends than
1,000 rubles.
Andrei Amalrik, the 32-year-old his-
torian whose book "Will the Soviet Un-
ion Survive Until 1984?" predicts that
his country will disintegrate into total
chaos, is in many ways typical of his
generation of dissenters. His last "recog-
nized" job was as an occasional feature
writer for the Novosti press agency in
1967, and until recently, when he was
sentenced to three years in a labor camp,
Amalrik applied for one marginal job
after another. Each time, the KGB
scared off prospective employers until
finally the young historian landed a po-
sition as a reader to a blind man. In a
material sense at least, Amalrik clearly
had little to lose. "A man like Sakha-
rov," observes a Western student of So-
viet affairs, "has reached his prime; he
can say: 'What can they do to me?'
Andrei Amalrik and those who are like
him have so little hope of anything that
they can say: 'What does it matter what
they do to us?'"
For all their cool determination, how-
ever, Amalrik and his friends?and even
Sakharov and his more influential col-
leagues?are nonentities to most Rus-
sians. The average Soviet citizen, in fact,
belongs to a "Silent Majority" of such
awesome docility that, by comparison,
the most conventional middle-class
American might almost be a Weather-
man. "This country has no tradition of
freedom," says a young magazine editor,
"and that's why there's not going to be
any." Adds another gloomy writer:
'Nothing will change this country in our
lifetime. The lower classes are unhappy,
sure, about things like the shortage of
meat. But they do have their vodka. And
the ruling classes?the apparatchikt?
will do anything to hold onto their power.
The younger bureaucrats are the worst
of all. At least the Old Bolsheviks had'
ideals."
Immunity: Like their less> tablissant un certain equilibre et une certaine cancer-
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lotion entre les politiques sovietique et americaine : cette nor-
malisation globale se manifeste certes par des interventions
diverses, plus on moms violentes selon les circonstances ; tcuttot
communes, tantat reparties selon one division des roles dans
les parties du monde qui e,chappent if la sphere d'intervention
commune. Quand, comme au Vietnam ou et Cuba, la lutte
heroique d'un people ou la victoire d'une revolution ne per-
met:tent pas a PU.R.S.S. de se soustraire a one caution ou a an
,appui, celle-ci exerce en contrepartie one pression ,et lin condi-
tionnement politiques ; quand la lutte armee a des origines
plus foibles comme au Cambodge ou en Palestine, les grandes
puissances s'accordent pour isoler et tenter de reduire a des
phenomenes marginaux ces minorites revolutionnaires. A l'in-
lerieur de chaque camp, les deux puissances se reconnaissent
un droit reciproque de police internationale : les Etats-Unis
accordent pea de gravite a l'intervention en Tche,coslavaquie,
freine in tulle arniee en Amerigue Latine ou an Mo yen
Orient et tonne contre cl'extremisme ? de in gauche revolu-
tionnaire en Occident.
Cette orientation conduit a un ,aboutissement &gigue : soit
les partis communistes disparaissent en tont que forces poli-
liques reelles (dans les pays sous-developpes) soil disparais-
sent en taut que force revolutionnaire (conune en France ou en
Finlande).
Car, a trovers l'expe,rience tcltecoslovaque, cc qui est en
cause et Rolls concerne ,directement, c'est bien le projet de
societe a construire et la nature de in strategic qui y conduit.
El la question decisive doit anjourd'hui etre nettement
posee : quelle est la nature de la crise du mouvement comma-
niste, s'agit-ii fondamentalement d' ? erreurs? de directions
sclerosees, d'une 4: deformation opportuniste et bureaucratique?,
00, au contraire, d'une degenerescence profonde caracteris-
tique de l'ensemble du mouvement. Au fond, on serail tente de
repreadre la vieille formale ?reforrne ou revolution? ; pour
noire part, nous ne croyons pas a la reforme possible des
appareils staliniens, ici aussi line revolution est a faire.
anssi pourquoi nous pensons qu'il faut tout
faire pour sortir do cercle vicieux dans lequel est crujour-
dhui bloquee la gauche revolutionnaire entre un parti comma-
niste impuissant de degager de Pinterieur one nouvelle force ;
et de nouveaux militants incapables de s'unifier pour devenir
un point de reference exterieur. tine extraordinaire force
potentielle est ainsi gaspillee. ,C'est pour quoi nous pensons
qu'une reconstruction du mon vement communiste est fleets-
saire et qu'et terme la formation d'une nouvelle force poli-
lique ne pourrci etre evitee.
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CPYRGHT
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MESSAGE du
BUREAU NATIONAL DU P.S.U.
Le Porti Sochititle U nit ill, c voulu s'associer ce soir, comme iis'y
est associe de toutes ses forces mtlitantes, en 1968, a la ,protestation
que des militants du mouvement communiste international elevent
contre le maintien de l'occupation militaire russe en Tchecoslovaquie
et contre la repression qui continue de se developper contre les mili-
tants revolutionnaires tchecoslovoques, don't le tseul crime est de
jeter a to face des occupants le vieux mot d'ordre du mouvement
socioliste international : ? Un peuple qui en opprirne un outre ne
sou roit etre un ,peuple libre ?.
Les ,evenements qui se sont &routes en Europe depuis 1968 ont
demontre l'inanite des arguments invoques par le Parti Communiste
de l'Union Sovietique pour justifier ['intervention des forces armees
du Pacte de Varsovie contre la Tchecoslovaquie socialiste. Que l'on
se souvienne que le pretexte de ['invasion fut Ia volonte pretee aux
dirigeants tchecoslovaques de renouer des relations diplomatiques avec
la Republique Federate Allemande ; que Von s'en souviennen cores la
signature du Pacte Allemagne Federale-U.R.S.S. et du pacte germano-
polonais.
En realite, nut ne s'est trompe sur les mobiles reels de l'inter-
vention sovietique : c'est le jour oU la Republique Populaire Tcheco-
slovaque a commence de s'orienter irresistiblement vers 'organisation
des consents ouvriers, de la base au sommet ; a commence, dans l'en-
thousiasme de tout le peuple tchecoslovaque, de batir cette democratie
des producteurs sans lesquels ii n'est que des caricatures de socia-
lisme, que l'armee sovietique a lance ses blind& contre les ouvriers
tcheques et slovaques.
Et nous n'oublions pas que, comme un signe premonitoire, la
presse officielle sovietique a desapprouve en termes identiques ceux
de nos gouvernants capitalistes, le grand mouvement revolutionnaire
frangais de mai 1968.
La restauration de la democratie socialiste en Tchecoslovaquie,
l'evacuation des troupes sovieticoes est une necessite absolue pour
le developpement des mouvernents revolutionnaires dans les pays capi-
talistes d'Europe occidentale.
La coexistence pacifique des puissances imperiales de l'Est et de
l'Quest est la Sainte-Alliance des rois contre les peuples. Ensemble,
nous la briserons.
N.D.L.11. Par suite d'une defectuosite d'enregistrement,
nous n'avons pa reproduire le terte de l'interventien de
M. Livio Labor, militant chretien italien, coordinateur
national du ? Mouvement Politique des Travail leurs
d'Italie ?. Nous nous en excasons vivement et insererons
son texte dans le prochain !tamer? de ? Write Tcheco-
slovaque ?.
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EN GUISE DE CONCLUSION
Vous venez de vivre ? ou de revivre ? ce meeting
de solidarite internationale a nos camarades tcheco-
slovaques et comprenez la necessite de ne pas laisser
le voile de l'oubli tomber sur l'oppression dont us sont
victimes.
C'est vrai que, pour les larges masses, l'affaire tche-
coslovaque s'estompe et que des evenements nouveaux,
dramatiques sont mis en avant, imposes par l'actualite
politique, comme Burgos, Gdanzk et Gydnia, le proces
de Leningrad, etc. Mais la protestation contre les denis
de justice, la repression meurtriere, les atteintes aux
libertes des peuples ? dans lesquels malheureusement
des pays socialistes tiennent aussi la vedette ? ne dolt
pas nous faire oublier un instant les freres ,< norma-
lises >, de la Tchecoslovaquie occupee ; le combat pour
leur independance, pour leur droit de democratiser le
socialisme, est inseparable des autres luttes que nous
avons a mener.
Justement, parce que les staliniens d'U.R.S.S. et
de France, d'accord sur ce point avec l'imperalisme inter-
national, veulent qu'on ne pane plus de la Tchecoslo-
vaquie; qu'on considere cette occupation et ses conse-
quences comme un fait acquis, nous devons sans cesse
mobiliser les partisans du socialisme, alerter l'opinion :
c'est le seul moyen de saisir aux poignets les neo-
stalintens et d'empecher que la normalisation >, s'etende
a des arrestations, a des proces, a des condamnations
de dirigeants elus par les instances regulieres de leur
Parti et approuves par la quasi unanimite du peuple
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tchecoslovaque, C'est aider la resistance tchecoslovaque
A stopper la ? normalisation et A preparer la recon-
gate de l'independance.
1200. citoyennes et citoyens, parmi lesquels plus de
600 membres du Parti Communiste Francais ont signe la
0 Declaration du 5 janvier 1970 0, c'est bien parce que
jamais nulle petition de ce caractere n'atteignit un tel
resultat. Mais c'est peu parce que des dizaines de
milliers de partisans du socialisme, en France, sont pour
le retablissement de la souverainete de la dernocratie
populaire tchecoslovaque.
II faut done que le meeting du 26 novembre soit le
point de depart ? et non l'aboutissement ? de notre
campagne faites signer la Declaration du 5 janvier
des centaines de camarades dans les entreprises, les
chantiers, les universites, les bureaux, les quartiers, les
immeubles. Des qu'une dizaine de signataires peuvent
etre reunis, constituez un Comite du 5 janvier, qui entre-
prendra son propre travail de propagande, pour que nos
freres tchecoslovaques ne soient pas oublies, pour que
la protestation mondiale, resistant A l'estompage du
temps, les aide dans leur action pour une Tchecoslovaquie
libre et socialiste.
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SIGNEZ !
FATES SIGNER!
La declaration du 5 Janvier
CPYRGHTivour une Tchecoslovaquie libre et socialiste
Le 5 janvier 1968, le Comite ventral au Pant Communtsle
de Tchecoslouaquie evinectit de sa direction le group e stali-
nien de Novotny et .uotait de premieres resolutions qui firent
mitre finunense esperance dii ?Printemps de Prague >.
A l'occasion du 2e anniuersaire de cet emenement 'capital,
les soussignes renouvellent leur condrunnation de l'interuention
armee .menee en aoht 1968 contre la Tchecoslovaquie, contre
sa classe ouvriere et contre son Para Communiste, afin d'em-
pecher l'application des resolutions de januier et de celles
qui suivirent.
Les soussignes considerent (pie la desapprobation de roc-
cupation de .1a Tchecoslovaquie, formulee en aoat 1968 par
une partly import ante du monument communiste a constitue
a ce moment-la un acte positif.
Cependant, pour sauver durablentent dans la conscience
des travailleurs, l'espoir qu'ils peuvent mettre clans l'avene-
ment d'une sociele uraiment socialiste, cette desapprobation.
sous peine d'apparaitre comme tin geste inconsequent et plato-
nique a l'usage des (nitres partis de gauche et de Popinion
publique, devait se prolonger par la condamnation, .dans noire
pays, d'une pretendue norjlwli3ation actuellement imposee
par les arinees etrangere.s a an pays dont 87 % des habitants
auaient ,approuve l'orientatiozz politique vers un ?socialisme
a visage huntain 5).
Approuvant les decisions essentietles de janvier 1968 qui
tendaient .et informer largement les masses travailleuses,
former .stir leurs itspirations et a les entrainer a la gestion
de l'Etat socialiste, les signataires denoncent les tentatives
actuelles tendant a dissimuler, a minimiser ou a faire oublier
en France les eflIels de l'intervention militaire contre la
Tchecoslovaquie socialiste. Its reaffirment done leur solidarite
avec cellx qui tenterent de creel iwe societe socialiste oh le
pouvoir des mains des bureaucrates passe aux mains des tra-
vailleurs.
Ps .s'efforceront de faire connaitre en France la verite
sur k Tchecoslovaquie, et notronment le contemn des .declara-
Pons des dirigeants destitues par ordre de l'occupant et mis
actuellement clans rimpossibilite de presenter publiquement
tear defense.
Ecrine a Rene DAZY - 25, rue d'Houteville 75 - PARIS-10'
? 45
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LISEZ
VERITE
TCHECOSLOVAQUE
BULLETIN DU
COMITE DU 5 JANVIER
e rr 2 est paru
I/
numero contient le texte integral de l'
a< Appel du ,numvement socdaliste des caucus
tchecoslovaques 2,, des documents de l'instruc-
lion des proces politiques, une interview de
fir! Pelikan, et ,d'autres documents inedits.
l'exemplaire : 1 F
10 exemplaires : 7 F 50
DIFFUSEZ LA BROCHURE
Le Meeting du 26 novembre
10 exemplaires : 15 F
Correspondance a :
Rene DAZY, 25, rue d'Hauteville - 75 - Paris-109
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lmprimerie Gutenberg - 17, rue des Cloys - Paris-18'
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JPRS S2501
1 March 1971
TRANSLATIONS ON WESTERN EUROPE
No, LI)
MEETING OF INTERNATIONAL DISSIDENT COMMUNISTS ON CZECHOSLO\4KIA
1ty
JOINT PUBLICATIONS RESEARCH SERVICE
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NOTY
Unless otherwise indicated items are complete
textual translations of the original.
The contents of this pnhlication in no way
represent the policies, views, or attitudes
of the U.S. Government.
PROCUREMENT OF PUBLICATIONS
JPRS publications may be ordered from the National Technical
Information Service, Springfield, Virginia 22151. In order-
ing, it is recommended that the JPRS number, title, date and
author, if applicable, of publication be cited.
Current JPRS publications are announced in U.S. Government
Research 64 Development Reports issued semi-monthly by the
National --
Technical Information. Service, and are listed in
the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications issued
by the Superintendent or Docum-nts, U.S. Government
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Correspondence pertaining to matters other than procurement
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JPRS 52501
1 March 1971
TRANSLATIONS ON WESTERN EUROPE
No. 190
MEETING OF INTERNATIONAL DISSIDENT COMMUNISTS ON CZECHOSLOVAKIA
[Selected speeches from booklet edited by "Committee of 5 January";
Paris, Le Meeting du 26 Novembre 1970 -- Discours et Messages,
French, pp 3-9, 11-14, 16-33, 36 and 43-45]
CPYRGHT
P 31
On 26 November 1970, the Great Hall of the Mutual Insurance
Building in Paris was filled with the partisans of socialism,
both young and veteran, students, workers, white-collar em-
ployees, civil servants, cadres, and intellectuals with
various leanings.
For the first time, a meeting was being held for the renewal
of sotialism -- this was therefore not an anti-Soviet or
anticommunist meeting -- and against the deviations which
disfigure it, such as the armed intervention against
Czechoslovakia and the ensuring "normalization."
While the bureaucratic distortions and those responsible
for them were being denounced, the socialist regime was
exalted there and the presence of foreign communists, of
noncommunist supporters of socialism, on the speaker's
platform reflected at once the spirit of international-
ism and union in which the "Committee of 5 January," the
organizer of this event, had prepared the meeting.
The speeches and messages read from the speaker's rostrum
have been collected and constitute this modest brochure
which each reader is invited to publicize or disseminate;
the purpose is to leave a record of this important event
which undoubtedly will have its aftereffects.
For a socialist and independent Czechoslovakia; for the
renewal of socialism.
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[pp 5-8]
Speech by Charles Tillon
I want to thank you for coming to this meeting organized by
the Committee of 5 January for a free and socialist Czechoslovakia
with the support of organizations inspired by these same feelings.
I deeply appreciate the honor which was bestowed upon me in
having me preside over this assembly before you, side by side with
the men of high conscience and great merit whom I salute in your name.
They will speak tonight in a Paris that is faithful to its duty and
to its proudest traditions. In a Paris which thinks of Prague, a
Paris which is Paris only in the fight for liberty.
We have gathered here to assert our brotherly and active soli-
darity with the people of Czechoslovakia but also for the purpose of
giving this solidarity a new impetus, worthy of the history of the
French working class and of all currents of thought which aspire to
socialism in France.
On this rostrum, I salute -- in your name, with respect and
affection -- the presence of our Comrade Jiri Pelikan, by right the
irrevocable member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia, which was to meet at its regular congress on the eve
of the very day when tanks, with misled soldiers perched on them,
restored a brand of barracks socialism in Prague. We have gathered
here to proclaim that, though some people may have to leave their
country so that they will not have to shut up, there are no expat-
riates for a communist because there is not just a single Fatherland
of socialism but rather a whole world to be won, for all socialists.
We have gathered here to recall that it was Marx who proposed the
universal declaration of the rights of socialist man, which confounds
all of its adulterers. We have gathered here in the name of those
who, in our country, share the same feelings, the same determination
to address our virile and brotherly homage to the Czechoslovak people,
and our duties as fighters for socialism with a human face, since
a pleonasm has become indispensable in our language so as to dis-
tinguish that which has perished from that which remains most noble
for the future of all mankind. It is under this sign that our meet-
ing tonight assumes its international significance of solidarity
with the Czechoslovak people and with all peoples who are fighting
for their liberty and their independence.
Everything we know about the outraged Czech people makes us
feel its indignation, its sufferings, and makes us admire its un-
quenchable courage. But the thing we are most concerned with now,
the thing that you expect from this assembly, is that which will
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CPYRGHT
help us do something useful, in other words, anything that can help
wipe out the consequences of the crime which was committed against
an entire people. One thing we are sure of and that is that the
cause of socialism in Prague Is invincible and that there will be no
more resignation of conscience on the part of the supporters of soc-
ialism and liberty in our country.
That would just about conclude my remarks here if I had not
felt the need.personally to bear witness here to the irrepressible
love of the Czechoslovak people for liberty by telling you in a few
words what I think about its past trials and tribulations. First of
all I might recall the Prague I knew once upon a time, in 1938, in
the very heart of all of the torments of a Europe threatened by
Hitler. Above all, I want to tell you why I think as I do. Amid
all of the blood shed in two wars, we think back first of all to the
first of these wars, which was called the "War of Right" because we
were made to believe that we were fighting for the freedom of peoples
to settle their own affairs! This is not the story of a veteran
fighter, a story which helps make the young people laugh at the ex-
pense of the past while this veteran is offered -- by way of the
future -- only the political gerontology of the men in power or their
compliant allies.
It was during this first world war -- and my communist heart
still beats joyfully as I think of this -- that an immense people won
its freedom to settle its own affairs through a triumphant revolution
in October 1917! It was then that the partisans of socialism through-
out the world had the duty to join ranks to defend the country of
the Soviets.
In France, moreover, we faced the duty of confronting the gov-
ernment in order to smash foreign intervention against the first coun-
try which had joined battle for a socialist way. There were communists
-- who at that time were not card-carrying because there was no party
-- who asserted themselves in action against their own government by
proclaiming "that a people which oppresses another people cannot be
a free people." I say this in order not to cast the shadows of the
present over the past. I say this also because, after more than 50
years, it is up to all peoples to judge socialism in each country in
terms of what it has taught them. When we see the genius of Soviet
scientists animate their fantastic robot on the moon, we admire them.
When these same scientists -- on the land on which they live -- demand
simple respect for the rights of man as proclaimed by the French
Revolution 180 years ago, we are not engaging in anti-Sovietism
in holding that the time has come to revise that Sovietism there.
But it is only Prague which I want to remember here now, the
Prague whose firm friends we can count here tonight, I am sure, in
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CPYRGHT
AnnrnirI Fnr Rplpacp lcicicanci/f19 ? CIA-R111D711-fIl1cutAnnnnnn19nnn1_n
much groaLor numbers than there are cobblestones on its streets.
It was a few days before Munich in 1938. I had gone there as a memher
ot a doiegatton from the Centrai Committee of the French Communist
Party, chat-IA(1d with assuring the Czech party of our active solidarity
In the common defense of the cause of peace. Prague and Paris at that
time looked as much alike as a couple of sisters. But Prague daily
lived submerged in the popular mass that had come from all over the
country to express to its government its determination to support it
so as to preserve liberty and independence which were in peril.
Suddenly the news arrived from Paris that France was mobilizing
the first reserves of its army in order to confront the aggression
which was feared at the time. In just an hour, before our very eyes,
the city, at first fever-swollen, was emptied of all of its able-bodied
men. Then night fell on an entire people, resolutely determined to
make the greatest sacrifices. On that day in Prague I saw the un-
forgettable resolution of a great people.
On his return to Paris, Daladier had himself acclaimed by a
crowd -- still the same crowd, the crowd that turns up whenever there
are great social fears -- acclaimed because, with Chamberlain, he had
decided that they would abandon Czechoslovakia to its tragic fate.
That was a betrayal of the interests of everyone and you know what mis-
fortunes followed this.
I owe it to history to say that only in France did the Communist
deputies and two or three others refuse to forget about the liberty
of the Czech people and vote against the crime of Munich. This duty
is the honor of a party.
When the Germans occupied the Sudetenland, I had to go to Prague,
in the name of the International Red Cross, to help organize solidar-
ity with the revolutionary militants who had to flee before the in-
vader. One day I was slowly crossing St Charles Bridge, accompanied
by a Prague comrade, when a Czech Army officer, who had heard us talk
French, turned around and walked toward us. He clicked his heels.
This soldier expressed his disgust over the fact that France had be-
trayed his country. He was one of those men of duty, whose face I
see again and again, under the occupation, when we dreamed of liberty
for all nations.
Finally, when the people had defeated fascism -- and we must
not forget the measure of sacrifice made by each people -- I had the
tremendous joy, in Prague, in 1947, on the occasion of a memorial
ceremony, to run into the old comrades of the FTP [Franctireurs of
the Fatherland] who were among the best who had fought in the French
Resistance. But my happiness quickly gave way to pain as I thought
of those who had suffered under torture or who were assassinated
during the term of office of Novotny, the normalizer before January...
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The Czechoslovak people rallied around the Communist Party,
which at last produced its popular and creative air, by driving him
and other persecutors out. This, then, is the place for the glory
of the Prague Spring, its drama and the struggle that remains, a
struggle to which we give our determination and our strength. For us,
Czechoslovakia remains in the very heart of the struggle for a peace
which we really want without any strings attached. But it also has
no liberty in the center of a Europe where -- through it is fortunately
true that the forces of social progress have, in West Germany, driven
back those who still feel sorry about having lost the war -- on the
other hand the spirit of Munich has reappeared in the shadow of Yalta,
with the abandonment of the Czech people who are political prisoners
and prisoners of a certain war potential -- in a word, delivered up to
the political and military subversion of an occupation which, before
all the world, is but the denial of socialism.
In France, unfortunately, we cannot teach anyone any lessons
in socialism. For that, we tend to forget too often that the people
are also responsible for their rulers. But our experience in 1968 will
not be distorted by those "who try to wash away the stains with dirty
hands." We assert our confidence in the struggle that will enable
France to have a socialist, democratic, and independent future, a
struggle for the action alliance of all partisans of socialism through-
out the world.
This is the way we want to make our friendship and our soli-
darity with the people of Czechoslovakia effective in this trial from
which it will emerge victorious.
[p 9]
Messaae of Edward Goldstucker, Member, Central Committee, Czechoslovak
Communist Party
Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, dear comrades.
I would have liked to greet you in person but since I am un-
able to do so, permit me to tell you something, in a few words, which
I have always wanted to bring to your attention.
I am convinced that the 1968 Prague Spring, that is, the effort
of the Communist Party and the people of Czechoslovakia to establish
a socialist democratic regime corresponding to the needs, the level
of development, and the traditions of this country, will -- in the
history of socialism -- be considered as a historical event and ex-
perience comparable to the glorious Paris Commune.
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To all those who fight for socialism, to all those who would
like to see a just and free social order emerge from the threatening
crises of our times, the Prague Spring -- in spite of its brutal sup-
pression -- will serve as an indication of the real possibility of
socialism with a human face, that is, a socialist regime that
springs from the revolution, that introduces the guarantees of the
fundamental rights and freedoms of the citizen into its structure,
and that thus creates conditions under which all production forces,
all creative energies of society may be mobilized to attain its goals.
This is why the Czechoslovak effort in 1968 everywhere, among
socialists and democrats alike, triggered such great interest and
this is why its suppression is not a "family affair" between Moscow
and Prague, as the "normalizers" insist in picturing it as, but
rather a vital issue for the destiny of socialism throughout the en-
tire world.
Do not forget, dear comrades and friends, no matter where you
are, that it is your cause which is at stake today in that little
country in the center of our continent.
[op 11]
Message from Communist Party_ of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia unequivocally maintains its
position on 21 August 1968, that is, that the occupation of Czecho-
slovakia by the armed forces of the USSR and the other four powers
of the Warsaw Pact was unjustified and unjustifiable.
On 5 January 1968, the Czechoslovak Communist Party had adopted
a new course toward a socialist democracy and toward worker self-
management. This new support received massive popular support from
the workers, peasants, intellectuals, and students in the Czech and
Slovak parts of the country. The Australian Communist Party hailed
this as one of the most important developments for the future of the
world revolution.
The reasons given to justify the occupation were wrong and un-
founded. The occupation has struck at the very cause of socialism in
Czechoslovakia and in the entire world and it has moreover tarnished
the prestige of the Soviet Union and the other countries implicated
in this.
The events which occurred in Czechoslovakia afterward neither
repaired, nor mitigated the misdeeds that had been committed; on the
contrary, they reduced the chances of socialism in that country.
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The only possible outcome is that which comes from the soc-
ialist principles in the matter of international relations, such as
they were established by Marx and developed by Lenin: immediate
withdrawal of all occupation troops, restoration of national inde-
pendence and of the autonomy of the Czech and Slovak nations, of their
communist parties, of their labor unions, and of all their mass organ-
izations, so that they may resume their own road toward a renewal of
socialism and progress toward democracy.
For the Executive Commission: Laurie Aarons, National Secretary.
[pp 12-14]
Address by a Young Czechoslovak Revolutionary Socialist Woman
I am happy to be able to speak at this meeting on the basis of
communist positions. As a matter of fact, until very recently the
Stalinists were able to block any criticism coming from the left-wing
opposition. The very fact that this meeting could be held, shows that
we have turned another page in history.
We have witnessed the process of renewal in Czechoslovakia in
1968 and the "Prague Spring" has become a famous word throughout the
world. Today, after 2 years, we can better appreciate its develop-
ment and its rapid fall.
In 1968 the economic and social crisis reached such a degree
that a change in the political concept became a necessity for the
majority of the ruling bureaucracy itself. The discontent of the
workers and their aspiration for a change also played a great role.
But this process had to be imposed against the will of the
conservative and Stalinist wing which held dominant positions in the
party and government machine, positions gained during the fifties.
The changes to come thus fundamentally threatened their personal in-
terests.
This meant that the Dubcek win had to obtain support from cer-
tain groups outside the party, groups which criticized the Novotny
leadership.
The change which appeared in the beginning as a purely internal
affair within the party, soon -- thanks to the mass communications
media -- became the affair of the entire people. The reaction to
this change was quite a bit more spontaneous than the new leadership
had anticipated. The ceaselessly growing activity of the masses in
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the implementation of these changes sprang from the working class's
aspiration to participate in the management of the state.
The reformist wing had been incapable of taking the lead in
this activity and becoming a real worker vanguard.
This leadership instead tried to channel this activity in an
artificial manner. This led to Sik's conception of the worker coun-
cils and, shortly afterward, the almost identical official proposals
revealing the ideological and political roots of the liberal wing in
Stalinism.
In none of the official concepts -- coming either from the
labor unions, or from the different variants of the government proj-
ects concerning socialist enterprise -- do we find the idea of the
political centralization of the councils and the resultant creation
of new power structures of the working class and all other working
people. In other words, the institution of the direct power of the
workers. This was a technocratic conception, entailing a real danger
that these councils might degenerate, as we saw in Yugoslavia.
Material incentive was emphasized, first and foremost, and the
emancipation of man and his participation in the constant changes in
society only played a secondary role.
in spite of this, this evolution triggered fears in the Kremlin
whose propaganda increasingly emphasized the danger of counterrevolu-
tion which supposedly existed among us.
In spite of the inability of the reformist wing to become an
authentically Marxist vanguard, we must emphasize the fact that it
remained a guarantor against a possible restoration of capitalism on
the political level and on the government level. Those who dared talk
of such a danger in Czechoslovakia in 1968 are the same who identified
the Novotny regime with socialism.
Bourgeois propaganda did not really have any outlook in Czecho-
slovakia. The biggest example of bourgeois propaganda which the Krem-
lin could cite -- and while I was in Czechoslovakia I became sure that
they did everything they could do along those lines -- is the Manifesto
of 2,000 Words which urges the workers to organize themselves in
worker councils.
One of the most positive aspects of this evolution was that,
for the first time in 20 years, there developed a broad political
discussion on the contradictions of our society as well as an in-
creasingly consistent criticism of the past.
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Only the upsurge in the activity of the masses could guarantee
their true advance. Its most progressive manifestation was the spon-
taneous constitution of the worker councils. That was the beginning
of a true revolutionary process whose fundamental aspect was not
understood by the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
There is however no doubt that Dubcek's policy was able to
prepare the ground for the development of socialism, that is to say,
of a society which would exclusively be based on the activity of the
organized masses.
It seems to us however that this process could onlyhave been
managed better, in terms of all of its consequences, by a new
vanguard which politically and ideologically was not weighted down
by the distortions of the past. This new vanguard is neither a pro-
duct of our thought, nor an attempt to import tendencies from capi-
talist countries into Czechoslovakia.
It was primarily in the eyes of the younger generation that
the Czechoslovak Communist Party was unable fully to satisfy its needs.
Its policy did not guarantee the new generation any sufficient pros-
pects. This distrust on the part of the younger generation has mani-
fested itself many times -- especially in August 1969 -- and is be-
ginning to take on specific organizational forms. This is not a con-
flict between the generations but rather the establishment of a new
revolutionary concept which would install a government of the workers,
organized at the base, in the place of the power of the bureaucracy.
The antibureaucratic movement and the aspirations of the Czecho-
slovak workers to manage their own affairs themselves however can be
realized only under the condition that there be a new revolutionary
Marxist party which, tying in with recent and comparable experiences,
would fight for proletarian democracy.
We cannot condemn the intervention of the five Warsaw Pact
powers only on the basis of moral positions and because the funda-
mental rules of international law were violated. The intervention,
which was designed to prevent the counterrevolution, in fact had to
defend the interests of the bureaucracy.
Its consequence is an even greater blot on socialism in the
eyes of the broadest strata and especially in the eyes of the younger
generation.
Likewise we must condemn the fact that the activity of the
workers and especially of the working class in the enterprises was
wiped out to a great extent by this act.
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We will under no circumstances accept this state of affairs.
The conscious elements of the Czechoslovak working people and espec-
ially we of the younger generation will fight against this.
We believe that this struggle for a true proletarian democracy
in Czechoslovakia is a part of the international socialist revolution.
Liberty for the socialist opposition in Czechoslovakia!
Long live the antibureaucratic revolution!
[p 16]
Message of Ernst Fischer
Dear friends and comrades:
I am very sorry that my poor health does not permit me to
attend this meeting with you.
The democratic revolution of the Czechs and Slovaks and the
birth of a socialist democracy in Europe were more than just a his-
torical interlude: they furnished proof that a socialist democracy
was possible, that it was the best way to arm the people, to give it
initiative, to bring to bloom friendship, solidarity, imagination,
and the full awareness of what was beginning to be born there.
We entertain no illusions: the defeat of socialism in Czecho-
slovakia has not been imposed for just a short period of time. But
the agreement among peoples in the struggle for their liberty, in
Indochina, in Latin America, in Spain, and in Greece is inseparable
from the struggle for liberty in Czechoslovakia, a struggle which is
not over because the irresistible force of the people will wind up
by putting an end to the "big-power" policy.
[pp 16-17]
Speech by Vercors
It is possible that the date of 21 August 1968 will go down in
history as the darkest day in the second half of the 20th century.
The extent of a human catastrophe is not necessarily measured by the
blood that was spilled, by the number of dead, but by the gravities
of the immediate and the more distant repercussions. The intervention
in Budapest, 14 years ago, had already rudely hurt revolutionary
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C onsciences. The Red Army had rived upon the people: That is where it
lost its innocence. At least we learned later on that the danger ot a
counterrevolution, followed by the danger of a third world war, had not
been negligible. Armed intervention found an excuse there, in the ab-
sence of justification. We know without the slightest shadow of a doubt
that no such danger accompanied the Prague Spring. That, on the contrary,
this spring gave the communist parties of the entire world an audience which
they had never had before. At the very same time after the May Barri-
cades, the French bourgeoisie were no less afraid of this glimmer to the
East which seemed to build a bridge of revolution in truth and joy between
Paris and Prague. The intervention of the Soviets served to reassure it,
much more so than the intervention of the CRS [Republican Security Com-
panies]. Order prevailed in Prague and order prevailed in Paris
One could once again sleep peacefully. Especially so since the impact
that had been felt throughout the world by the sister parties had so shaken
these parties that they could not stop disintigrating. And so it was rather
with the help of the Soviet government that the walls fell, as if after an
earthquake
For a long time the bourgeoisie no longer had reason to fear
that a revolution might spring from these walls which were crumbling.
The important thing thus was to rebuild them. But we entertained no
illusions: this is a long-term job. Especially since it must not
and cannot be undertaken against the existing parties which still have
the confidence of the majority of the workers. The thing now is to
get everyone to become aware of what is going on because this aware-
ness will serve as the rallying point for this reconstruction.
The ideal thing would be for the criminal error of 21 August
to be revealed in all of its gravity as a cataclysm, if not to those
who committed it and who certainly would never agree that they were
wrong, then at least to the most honest and the most clear-sighted
elements in Moscow and Prague.
This is why I personally believe that we must never put an end
to our protests, that we must never abandon ourselves to resignation
and fatigue. The future of socialism undoubtedly will cost us that
price.
[pp 17-19]
Address by Franz Marek, member, Politburo, Austrian Communist Party,
1945-1968
Dear comrades:
In talking to Czechoslovak friends, especially those who live
In their country, you sometimes hear a remark -- which is tantamount
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to a reproach -- to the effect that they feel somewhat forgotten.
Not just in the diplomatic sense but also forgotten by us, their
friends, those of us who are forced to confront the problems we
face each day in our lives.
One could reply to this quite legitimate concern by paraphras-
ing the formula of Jaures, changing just one word in it:
"If we look at events in progress in a superficial manner, we
actually overlook Czechoslovakia; but as we look into them, in depth,
we always run into Czechoslovakia."
The thing that links the unsubjugated of Prague to the sacri-
fices of Annam is that Yaltatization of world policy, the policy of
blocs which actually blocks the policy of the progressive movements.
And the thing that unites the ousted comrades in Prague and
Bratislava to those in other normalized parties is that very process
of "normalization" which tends to cement all that which is abnormal
in the worker movement.
We must thus pose for ourselves the problem of solidarity
with Czechoslovakia in a general framework. I would like to contri-
bute something to this by emphasizing two aspects of the problem here
today:
In our meetings with true socialists from the Soviet Union
and from the people's democracies, we sometimes had trouble finding
a common language. It so happens that they do not understand what
is going on in the Left in the Western countries. The problems of
the national liberation movements in the forgotten continents do not
preoccupy them as much as they concern us. Haunted by the specter
of Stalinism, they often repeat -- when the subject of China comes
up -- the formulas presented by the official propaganda of their
countries, although they detest it. We must clearly understand the
difference in the points of departure: the documents which reach
us from over there sometimes look a little bit too liberal to us;
and those which reach them from us seem a little bit too democratic
to them. One could say, by way of simplification: because they as-
pire to a true socialism, they speak above all of democracy; whereas
we, who call for true democracy, speak above all about socialism.
I know very well that this is an oversimplification, for what
it may be worth, but I use it to bring out the specific nature of
the conditions complicating attempts to find a basis of agreement
and understanding with our friends from these countries.
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Now, it seems to me that thLs is a prime necessity and that
a revolutionary perspective, which would not take this necessity into
account, would be nothing but a Leftist variant of the bloc policy.
It is here that the experiences of Czechoslovakia and the knowledge
of our Czechoslovak friends could help us find a link.
For example, let us take the great idea of direct democracy
of the producers which, in Czechoslovakia, found expression once
again in the worker councils, in spite of all of their limitations.
Today we often hear the phrase about the "Spring" according
to which the issue was to make a synthesis between democracy and
socialism in a socialist democracy. Presented by people who were
nostalgic for democracy such as it was between the two wars, this
formula cannot satisfy us. The synthesis of a socialism, which is
not one with a democracy that was not one, could not lead to a soc-
ialist democracy.
It is the return to the idea of direct democracy -- which
penetrated the worker movement during the 10 days that shook the world
-- which made the Czechoslovak worker councils so important during
the 7 months that filled the worker movement with hope.
This great idea, which was buried during the time of Stalin,
shows the road to a true socialist democracy. The revolutionaries of
East and West can meet thus from different points of departure.
Here., it is the establishment of the fact that bourgeois demo-
cracy stops, at the entrance to the factory or the workshop. Over
there, they already have the experience that, if self-management stops
at the exit. of the factory or the workshop, if direct democracy is
not extended to all areas, then self-management loses its life blood
and we do not arrive at the State our classical authors describe as
no longer existing in the true sense of the word.
And we will then have to say: while young Marx wrote that
the so-called Christian states are not a government expression of
Christianity, one could add today that the so-called socialist "states"
are not yet a government expression of socialism.
Let me say it again: in the ideological crisis that pervades
the worker movement in Europe we must place the question of soli-
darity with Czechoslovakia within the framework of an agreement of
the progressive forces of East and West. The idea of direct demo-
cracy should permit us to find common ground.
Now a few words on the second aspect of our solidarity with our
Czechoslovak friends. We have recently observed certain interesting
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signs in that country, especially the open polemic between the leader-
ship team that was imposed and the Stalinist extremists -- attempts
at seduction to regain a party of technicians, postponement of trials
that had been announced, release of a comrade who had been under
arrest, etc. We know very well r:hat this is not a democratization
of the "normalized" regime, not even a liberalization, and that this
is not the time to proceed to an analysis of this mini-new-look, of
its relationships with certain diplomatic negotiations, with economic
difficulties, etc. However, one cannot make politics without taking
into consideration all the nuances and it may be that, within some
time, w c w 1 1 1 have posters announcing a debate meeting in the
Lucerna Hall in Prague on the topic: "Tell me, Mr Bilak!" That is
possible...
But that changes nothing in the problems raised by 21 August
1968 which are still with us, just as the questions taken up in the
action program of the Czechoslovak Communist Party adopted in April
1968 are still with us and just as we retain our conviction that fires
were lighted, during that memorable year of 1968, in Paris and in
Prague which one must not allow to go out.
[pp 20-25]
Speech by Roger Garaudy
We must speak out here today because others must keep silent.
The thing that was crushed by normalization in Prague is the
historical initiative of an entire people and its Communist Party to
build a model of socialism that would correspond to the requirements
of their country. This is not an external event: this is a blow
which directly strikes each one of us, each one of those who, through-
out the world, want to build socialism.
There is no valid argument for remaining silent.
The principle of noninterference in the affairs of another party
is sometimes mentioned in this connection.
But when the Soviet leaders -- in excommunicating Yugoslavia
-- openly called upon the Yugoslav people to rise against the state
and the party of their country, nobody said anything about noninter-
ference; people rivaled each other in hurling insults to justify
Soviet interference.
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When the Soviet leaders -- in an effort to exert political
pressure against China -- broke all their contracts in order to
disorganize its economy, many communist parties behaved as if they
had no duty of proletarian internationalism toward the Chinese Com-
munists. Far from invoking no interference, they engaged in the
worst slander to justify Soviet interference once again.
When the Soviet leaders -- in the name of "normalization" --
imposed the Stalinist model upon Czechoslovakia, the same parties
kept silent and this silence has the same purpose as the vocifer-
ations against Yugoslavia or against China. This was not, a matter
of respecting the principle of no interference but rather of once
again being an accomplice to Soviet interference.
Some people also at length bring up the argument
that any protest would only nurture anti-Soviet and anticommunist
campaigns. But the thing that feeds anti-Soviet and anticommunist
campaigns is the failure to denounce these crimes and the fact that
one is an accomplice in them. It was not anti-Sovietism to denounce
the crimes ?of Stalin; and it is not anti-Sovietism to denounce those
of Brezhnev. On the other hand, one is only playing the game of all
anticommunists when, through our silence, one approves a "normaliza-
tion" which gives communism a repugnant face.
Finally we are told: "normalization" in Czechoslovakia is an
external problem which does not concern the French people. This
is another lie because the thing that was crushed in Czechoslovakia
is the socialist future of France.
From January to August 1968, the Czechoslovak communists showed
that socialism is not the suppression of the conquests of bour-
geois democracy but is on the contrary the destruction of its limitations.
At first, they ended censorship, political trials, the crime of
expressing an opinion, all of the "formal" liberties which the capi-
talist countries no longer guarantee, as the recent political trials
in the United States and France prove.
Then they began to create the agencies of socialist democracy:
a direct democracy, not a delegated and alienated democracy. In the
capitalist countries, each worker, on one day every 3 or 4 years, is
gladly given the title of sovereign individual on election Sunday,
when he delegates and alienates all of his powers in one day; but on
the next day, on Monday morning, he once again finds the monarchy of
the bosses at the gates to his factory. Bourgeois democracy is thus
based on a double lie: a political lie because, on this level, it is
nothing but a delegated, alienated democracy; an economic lie because,
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on the economic level, democrncy is rodicnily excluded. The ntLempt
at direct democracy represented by the worker councils marks the
break with this capitalist system of the double lie and of the double
abdication as well as the break with the model of a bureaucratic and
authoritarian socialism where everything is decided "topside," by the
party and government machines, speaking in the name of the working
class, without the latter really becoming involved in the decision.
With the creation of worker councils, Czechoslovak communists
embarked upon the road of socialism as defined by Marx: a "free
association of workers;" they embarked upon the road of socialism, as
defined by Lenin when, before his death, he detected the first bureau-
cratic distortions and recalled that the Soviets could not only make
socialism for the people but make it through the people; they embarked on
the road of a socialism whose first concern was to release the histor-
ical initiatives of the masses, even though the conditions and the
means may be very different: The initiative of the Paris Commune and
of worker control during the October Revolution, the initiative of the
Yugoslav self-management program and of the people's communes in China.
Like the Paris Commune, like the Soviets in 1905, the worker councils
in Czechoslovakia are a creation of the rank and file. The moment the
party put an end to the system which had prevented the new generation
from fully exercising its creative aptitudes, the impetus came from the
bottom up, from the workers themselves: at the Wilhelm Pieck machine-
building plant the first initiative to create democratic economy manage-
ment agencies appeared. The real "Prague Spring" above all was that effort
to set in motion the vast masses of the people who had been depoliticized
by despotism and who were again becoming the true subject of history by
passionately participating in the creation of their own future.
The merit of the leaders is that they understood this and that
they helped this movement develop. Now, from that point on, what are
the mistakes which they could commit and which one inevitably makes
when one embarks upon a new road, the moment these leaders have accom-
plished the first duty of any revolutionary leader: the duty of de-
tecting the direction of the great historical initiatives of the masses,
helping them take shape and develop instead of imposing prefabricated
frameworks upon them. Henceforth, in every enterprise, all of the
workers, both manual and intellectuals, directly (and not through
delegation to bureaucrats) decided everything that concerned the
life of the enterprise.
The worker council draft, prepared by the workers at the Wil-
helm Pieck plant, received the official support of the party and the
State.
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Thus hundreds of enterprise councils sprang up. On the basis
of this living experience, the government published the draft of a
basic law for the establishment of worker councils. That was in
July 1968; the discussion and the voting were scheduled for the end
of August; but the tanks crushed this hope during the night of 20
August.
Under Soviet occupation, at the 7th congress of the Czecho-
slovak labor unions, in March 1969, Karel Polacek, chairman of the
Central Council of Labor Unions, came back to the concept of labor
unions as held by Lenin who in 1920 said: "Our State is such today
that the totally organized proletariat must defend itself and we must
use these worker organizations in order to defend the workers against
their State so that the workers may defend our State." One of
the essential tasks of the labor unions, added Lenin, is "the struggle
against the bureaucratic distortions of the Soviet apparatus."
Vlastimil Toman, president of the Metal Workers Federation,
told the same congress, in the name of 1 million metal workers, that
his federation "was not inclined to pay for appeasement at the price
of sacrificing civil rights and freedom of the press."
Strougal, the Czech Politburo representative at that congress,
made himself the spokesman of the Soviet occupiers when he demanded
that the worker councils be dropped. His motion was rejected by the
congress which represented more than 5 million workers.
After that, by the will of the occupier, collaborator Strougal
became chairman of the council, whereas Karel Polacek, chairman of
the Central Council of Labor Unions, and Vlastimil Toman, president
of the Metal Workers Federation, who had been reelected by the Con-
gress of Labor Unions, were stripped of their functions in November
1970. A few weeks later the Soviet occupier ordered its "collabor-
ators" to abrogate the right to strike. "Normalization" is primar-
ily this: the systematic repression of any attempt on the part of
the workers or the intellectuals to decide their own destiny for them-
selves.
This is why all this is not just the affair of the Czechoslovak
people. It is the affair of all of us. This is why we have not come
here today at this sad moment in history, to ruminate on the past.
The most manly way to assert our solidarity with the Czechoslovak com-
munists, who are victims of normalization, is to reflect upon the sig-
nificance of their "Spring" and to revive it here in France by work-
ing out -- with all those who want socialism, without any discrimina-
tion whatsoever -- the ways, the forms, and the model of a socialism
that will correspond to the needs of our country.
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First of all because the march toward a renewal of socialism
is not blocked only in Prague by tanks. When a Communist Party
refuses to be silent in the face of this crime against socialism,
as represented by normalization, the Soviet leaders do not hesitate
to encourage or create a split so as to be able to have at least one
fraction available which unconditionally accepts their orders, as
happened in a particularly noticeable manner against the communist
parties of Greece, Spain, Finland, Austria, Great Britain, Portugal,
Australia, and quite a few others. The crisis in the International
Communist Movement has sprung from the determination of the Soviet
leaders to impose their bureaucratic and Stalinist system as the
only model of socialism. Each party henceforth must choose: it can
either become the propagandist of this imported model or it can de-
nounce it as a caricature of socialism, if it wants to be among the
builders of socialism in its own country. Any party that agrees to
become the propagandist for the Soviet model by keeping silent in the
face of its perversions and crimes condemns itself to powerlessness
and sterility.
It is not a coincidence of history that, after the October
Revolution, all peoples who achieved socialism by their own means,
did so outside the schemes of Stalin and Brezhnev, in China, Vietnam,
Yugoslavia, or Cuba.
The march to socialism is also blocked by the importing of
outdated schemes which enable us to understand neither the develop-
ments of capitalism at the end of the 20th century, nor those of the
working class, nor those of the forces which, side by side with the
working class, are the standard-bearers of the future. Silent "nor-
malization " stifles living revolutionary thought and action.
We rise against it, tonight, for the renewal of socialism.
In our struggle for socialism, we are no longer facing the
capitalism of the steam engine or the flintlock, but rather the cap-
italism of the computer and the intercontinental missile. And this
requires a new analysis and a new strategy.
The forces that are the standard-bearers of the revolution
are not oniy those that are excluded from consumption but also those
that are excluded from the decision-making process: first of all the
working class and, with it, the millions of intellectuals and students
who are moving toward it and who increasingly constitute a bloc with
it, as demonstrated by the eruptions of May 1968. And this calls
for a new concept of unity.
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The conditions of the revolutionary struggle for socialism,
in our country, are not those of a predominantly agricultural coun-
try, where the working class was a minority in an uneducated mass,
where it was forced underground and into an organization run on
army discipline, where, consequently, a professional apparatus
speaks and commands in the name of the class.
In France, socialism cannot be forced upon our people from
the outside but, on the contrary, must be born of its most profound
aspirations and must spring from the rank and file initiatives of
the working class and the intellectuals who have adopted its histor-
ical perspective as their own. And that calls for a party of the new
type.
Such is the basic triptych for the renewal of socialism in
France: new analysis of class relations and new strategy; new con-
cept of unity; new-type party.
We have no enemies among those who pursue such a goal: neither
among the communists, who are beginning to be aware of the sterility
to which the observance of the Stalinist schemes of Brezhnev has led
them, along with silence on the sordid anti-Semitism which is develop-
ing in Poland and in the Soviet Union, nor among the socialists of
all shades who are becoming aware that a socialist party, wherever
it was in power, has never built socialism, nor among those who are
called "Leftists" and who have become aware of the powerlessness of
reformism and the powerlessness of the many tiny little groups that
only had speculative links with the working class, nor among the
Christians who, after having experienced the evil-mindedness of the
"Christian parties" throughout Europe, with good reason aspire to
political expression.
The issue is not -- neither tonight, nor tomorrow -- to create
a center of opposition to the French Communist Party, nor to any other
force of socialism in France, but everywhere to bring to life centers
of impetus, of common search and action. To release the historical
initiative of the rank and file, along the example of the Prague
Spring, and to search for and create the conditions of unity and
effectiveness of all of .those who want to build socialism in France.
The only problem is to find out whether, beyond all of our
disagreements, we can choose between barbarism and socialism, as
Rosa Luxemburg put it.
Socialism, the hope of everyone, can only be the work of every-
one: of those for whom socialism has the face of Jaures or of Lenin,
the face of Trotsky, the face of Mao Tse-tung, or the face of Camillo
Torres.
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The problem is to unite the class and the bloc, all those who
do not wish to be fenced in by the limitations of the capitalist
system, all those who refuse to be integrated into it, all those
who fundamentally challenge its direction, values, and ultimate
purposes.
This is not an eclectic rally without principle. On the
contrary, with a clear awareness of our disagreements, and without
wishing to claim any kind of leadership role, without pretending to
create a group, a party, or an international that could only divide
the movement even further, the important thing now for everyone is
to ask ourselves about the model of socialism which we want to build,
about the conditions of our unity and our effectiveness.
A youth who today lives in the age of the apocalypse of
Hiroshima and the Chinese Revolution, a youth who has embarked upon
a conscious road between the irreversible challenges of the
20th congress of the Bolshevik Party and Vatican Council II,
such a youth could not conceive a defensive socialism, a socialism
that fearfully entrenches itself behind walls, tanks or censor-
ship, but rather an offensive socialism, sure of its own significance.
The important thing now is not to provide alibis for those who
do not recoil before the barbarism of genocide in Vietnam, against
which we demonstrate together, tonight, from the Bastille to the Re-
public; but rather to cast away the masks which, by disfiguring soc-
ialism, weaken the common struggle against imperialism and for Viet-
nam.
From the Caribbean to the Andes mountain range and from Guinea
to Vietnam, victories are being won against the common enemy in var-
ious forms. Let us not reject any of the lessons or possibilities
emerging from them -- not to import them or to imitate them, but to
use them to help us solve our own problems by inventing perhaps un-
heard-of means.
It is up to us now to turn the extinct volcanoes on and make
them roar.
Beyond the outdated schemes, we must find ways to recover the
elan of what all of the nascent socialist revolutions were; let us
find ways to revive the spirit of the Paris Commune and of the October
Revolution, of the Chinese Long March, of the epic of Vietnam, and the
Prague Spring; let us find ways to recover the initiatives of thought
and action of Rosa Luxemburg and of Antonio Gramsci.
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This way, and only this way, will we be present today not at a
wake but rather at a birth, at the beginning of our common long march
for the recovery of hope.
[pp 26-33]
Speech of Jiri Pelikan
Dear comrades, dear friends.
I would first of all like to thank, with all my heart, the
organizers Of this meeting, the Committee of 5 January, the organiza-
tions and comrades who participated in its preparation, the foreign
comrades who have come or who have sent messages from different coun-
tries, and you all who are here tonight, at the Mutual Insurance
Building, to express your solidarity with the struggle of the Czecho-
slovak people against the occupation and "normalization," for an in-
dependent, democratic, and socialist Czechoslovakia.
Your gesture is all the more important since the present regime
imposed upon Czechoslovakia by the occupation is trying to crush the
resistance of the popular masses by asserting that they are isolated
and abandoned and that there is nothing left for them to do but to
accept this so-called new reality. As if they had forgotten that we
all became communists and socialists not to accept "reality" but,
precisely, to change it.
Your gesture is all the more important since our people can
observe, with a certain degree of concern and bitterness, the depress-
ing hesitation and silence on the part of many of those to whom we
are linked by the same goals of socialism and who, though they con-
demned the military intervention in August 1968, are gradually be-
ginning to reconcile themselves to its consequences.
This is why your presence here is a concrete confirmation
for our people that there are communists and socialists, that there
are revolutionaries who are not abandoning their comrades in arms,
even if they suffer blows and wounds, and who consider the struggle
of our people to be their struggle.
We come back today to that magnificent movement of 1968, known
under the name of "Prague Spring," because, in spite of its particular
features, it expressed the objective problems, the contradictions, and
also the possible solutions of a new development in all socialist
countries, in the entire socialist movement, especially in the in-
dustrialized countries. This is because the Prague Spring was neither
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a palace revolution, nor a liberal movement, nor a chance explosion.
It had been maturing for a long time within a socialist society, as
a consequence of the contradictions between the ideals and the prac-
tice of socialism, as a consequence of the inability of the bureau-
cratic system successfully to solve the many problems of political,
economic, and cultural development, and to assure a democratic par-
ticipation of the people in the development of policy.
The study and analysis of all of the documents of the party
and government agencies, of thousands of resolutions emanating from
different organizations and from the demands of the citizens, pub-
lished at the time of the Prague Spring, convincingly confirm the
fact that this entire movement had a socialist character, that the
idea here was not to weaken but, on the contrary, to strengthen soc-
ialism.
Can one say that the renewal and enlargement of all civil,
democratic rights, especially the right of free expression, was
"antisocialist"?
Can one say that the principle of self-management of the enter-
prises by the workers and of government agencies by the citizens was
"antisocialist"?
Can one say that the autonomy of the labor unions and of other
mass organizations, cooperation -- on a basis of equality -- between
different political groups and interests around a socialist program
was "antisocialist"?
If these aspirations had to be considered antisocialist and
counterrevolutionary -- as official government propaganda in Prague
and Moscow claims -- then one would have to exclude from the Commun-
ist Movement the majority of the leaders and the members of the Italian,
Spanish, British, French, and other communist parties who included
these points in their fighting program for a socialist society!
Of course, one can criticize the Prague Spring in connection
with certain errors. On this subject, I would like to emphasize that
we ourselves, the Czechoslovak communists, who participated in this
movement and who are today faithful to its ideas, are not uncondi-
tionally defending everything that was done, said, or written, because
such a democratic movement cannot be carried out without extremist
positions and, above all, we do not intend to picture it as a "model"
for the others. But one must not forget under what internal and ex-
ternal objective conditions this movement was born and developed. One
must not forget that it was only the liquidation of personal power
in the party and government leadership, in January 1968, which opened
the road to political and ideological activity and which, in the course
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