Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
323154402
label
USSR 1989 [OA 8486] [1]
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
323154402
contentType
document
title
USSR 1989 [OA 8486] [1]
citationUrl
identifierLocal
13846-002
collections
Records of the White House Office of Speechwriting (George H. W. Bush Administration)
Speech Backup Alphabetical Files
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
323154402
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
875c543d3a7b7677
ocrText
Originally Processed With FOIA(s):
FOIA Number:
S
S
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the George Bush Presidential
Library Staff.
Record Group/Collection:
George H.W. Bush Presidential Records
Collection/Office of Origin:
Speechwriting, White House Office of
Series:
Speech File Backup Files
Subseries:
Alpha File, 1987-1991
OA/ID Number:
13846
Folder ID Number:
13846-002
Folder Title:
USSR, 1989 [1]
Stack:
Row:
Section:
Shelf:
Position:
G
26
23
3
3
36
I. BACKGROUND
2. The Forest
37
in the seventeenth century. Naturalistic figures and theatrical compositions
mausoleum of the mummified Lenin on the feast days of Bolshevism to
were introduced awkwardly and eclectically from Western models; older
review endless processions through Red Square.
icons vanished beneath metal casings and layers of dark varnish; and ser-
In the context of Russian culture this attempt to capitalize politically on
pentine rococo frames agitated the icon screen and seemed to constrict the
the popular reverence for icons represents only an extension of an estab-
holy figures they surrounded. The traditional chin of Muscovy had been
lished tradition of debasement. The Polish pretender Dmitry, the Swedish
replaced by the chinovnik ("petty bureaucrat") of Petersburg; and icon
warrior Gustavus Adolphus, most of the Romanovs, and many of their
painting as a sacred tradition, by icon production as a state concession.
generals had themselves painted in semi-iconographic style for the Russian
The icon is only "good for covering pots," proclaimed Vissarion Belinsky
populace.81 An émigré Old Believer-for whom all modern history repre-
in the 1840's,⁷ pointing the way to the new artistic iconoclasm of the Rus-
sents a foredoomed divergence from the true ways of Old Russia-looked
sian revolutionary tradition.
with indifference and even joy upon the transfer of the icon of Our Lady
Yet the spell of the icon was never completely broken. Nothing else
of Kazan from a cathedral to a museum early in the Soviet era:
quite took its place, and Russians remained reluctant to conceive of painting
as men did in the West. Russians remained more interested in the ideal
The Queen of Heaven, divesting herself of her regal robes, issued
represented by a painting than in its artistic texture. To Dostoevsky, Hol-
forth from her Church to preach Christianity in the streets.82
bein's "Christ in the Tomb" suggested a denial of Christian faith; Claude
Lorraine's "Acis and Galatea," a secular utopia. The print of Raphael's
Stalin added an element of the grotesque to the tradition of politically
Sistine Madonna over his writing desk was the personal icon of his own
debasing spiritual things. He introduced new icons and relics in the name
effort to reconcile faith and creative power. 79 The revolutionaries themselves
of science, then proceeded to retouch and desecrate them, before his own
looked with the eyes of icon venerators on the heroic naturalism of much
image and remains were posthumously defiled. The lesser figures on the
Soviet iconostasis had removed the central icon of Stalin enthroned, and
nineteenth-century Russian secular painting. Many found a call to revolu-
tionary defiance in the proud expression of an unbowed boy in Repin's
largely destroyed the new myth of salvation. But in the uncertain age that
famous "Haulers on the Volga." Just as the Christian warriors of an earlier
followed, lithographs of Lenin and giant cranes continued to hover over
age had made vows before icons in church on the eve of battle, so Russian
prefabricated concrete huts piled on one another much as the icon and the
Revolutionaries-in the words of Lenin's personal secretary-"swore VOWS
axe had over the wooden huts of a more primitive era
in the Tret'iakov Gallery on seeing such pictures."
Large-scale cleaning and restoration in the early twentieth century
helped Russians rediscover at long last the purely artistic glories of the older
Bell and Cannon
icons. Just as the hymns and chants of the church had provided new themes
and inspiration for early Russian iconographers, so their rediscovered paint-
ings gave fresh inspiration back to poets and musicians as well as painters
IF THE ICON AND THE AXE in the peasant hut became abiding symbols
in late imperial Russia. Under the former seminarian Stalin, however, the
for Russian culture, so too did the bell and cannon of the walled city. These
icon lived on not as the inspiration for creative art but as a model for mass
were the first large metal objects to be manufactured indigenously in the
indoctrination. The older icons, like the newer experimental paintings, were
wooden world of Muscovy: objects that distinguished the city from the
for the most part locked up in the reserve collections of museums. Pictures
surrounding countryside and fortified it against alien invaders.
of Lenin in the "red corner" of factories and public places replaced icons
Just as the icon and the axe were closely linked with one another, so
of Christ and the Virgin. Photographs of Lenin's successors deployed in a
were the bell and cannon. The axe had fashioned and could destroy the
prescribed order on either side of Stalin replaced the old "prayer row," in
wooden board on which the painting was made. Likewise, the primitive
which saints were deployed in fixed order on either side of Christ enthroned.
foundry which forged the first cannon also made the first bells; and these
Just as the iconostasis of a cathedral was generally built directly over the
were always in peril of being melted back into metal for artillery in time of
grave of a local saint and specially reverenced with processions on a re-
war. The bell, like the icon, was taken from Byzantium to provide aesthetic
ligious festival, so these new Soviet saints appeared in ritual form over the
elaboration for the "right praising" of God; and both media came to be
38
I. BACKGROUND
2. The Forest
39
used with even greater intensity and imagination than in Constantinople.
of melody rather than a precise indication of pitch; but the vivid pictorial
The development of the elaborate and many-tiered Russian bell tower-
impression created by the signs gave rise to descriptive names such as "the
with its profusion of bells and onion-shaped gables-parallels in many ways
great spider," "the thunderbolt," "two in a boat," and so on.87
that of the iconostasis. The rich "mauve" ringing of bells so that "people
Though even less is known about secular than sacred music in this
cannot hear one another in conversation"83 became the inevitable accom-
early period, there were apparently patterns of beauty in it, based on
paniment of icon-bearing processions on special feast days. There were
repetition with variation by different voices. The exalted "rejoicing"
almost as many bells and ways to ring them as icons and ways to display
(blagovestie) of the bells used an overlapping series of sounds similar to
them. By the early fifteenth century, Russia had evolved distinctive models
that which was used in the "many-voiced" church chant-producing an
that differed from the bells of Byzantium, Western Europe, or the Orient.
effect that was at the same time cacophonous and hypnotic.
The Russian emphasis on massive, immovable metal bells sounded by
Russians felt the same mixture of joyful religious exultation and ani-
metal gongs and clappers led to a greater sonority and resonance than the
mistic superstition in the ringing of the bells as in the veneration of icons.
generally smaller, frequently swinging, and often wooden bells of the con-
Just as icóns were paraded to ward off the evil spirits of plague, drought,
temporary West. Although Russia never produced carillons comparable to
and fire, so were bells rung to summon up the power of God against these
those of the Low Countries, it did develop its own methods and traditions
forces. Just as icons were paraded around the boundaries to sanctify a land
of ringing different-sized bells in series. By the sixteenth century, it has
claim, so bells were rung to lend solemnity to official gatherings. In both
been estimated that there were more than five thousand bells in the four
cases, spiritual sanctification was more valued than legal precision. As with
hundred churches of Moscow alone.⁸⁴
the icon, so with the bell, men valued them for their anagogical power to
Just as the icon was but one element in a pictorial culture that included
lift men up to God:
the fresco, the illuminated holy text, and the illustrated chronicle, so the
bell was only part of a torrent of sound provided by interminable chanted
The weak sounds of wood and metal remind us of the unclear, mys-
terious words of the prophets, but the loud and vigorous play of bells is
church services, popular hymns and ballads, and the secular improvisations
like the rejoicing of the Gospel, radiating out to all the corners of the uni-
of wandering folk singers armed with a variety of stringed instruments.
verse and lifting one's thoughts to the angelic trumpets of the last day.88
Sights and sounds pointed the way to God, not philosophic speculation or
literary subtlety. Services were committed to memory without benefit of
The forging and ringing of bells, like the painting and veneration of
missal or prayer book; and the "obedient listeners" in monasteries were
icons, was a sacramental act in Muscovy: a means of bringing the word of
subjected to oral instruction. Not only were the saints said to be "very like"
God into the presence of men. This "word" was the logos of St. John's
the holy forms on the icons, but the very word for education suggested
gospel: the word which was in the beginning, was revealed perfectly in
"becoming like the forms" (obrazovanie).
Christ, and was to be praised and magnified until His Second Coming.
The interaction between sight and sound is also remarkable. If the
There was no need to speculate about this unmerited gift, but only to pre-
iconography of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Russia drew special in-
serve intact the inherited forms of giving thanks and praise. There was no
spiration from holy singing, and the Russian icon came to be a kind of
reason to write discursively about the imperfect world of here and now
"abstract musical arabesque
purified, like music, of all but its direct
when one could see-however darkly-through the beauty of sights and
appeals to the spirit,"85 so the new method of musical notation that was
sounds a transfigured world beyond.
simultaneously coming into being in Muscovy had a kind of hieroglyphic
The importance of bells in lending color and solemnity to church pro-
quality. The authority of the classical Byzantine chant appears to have
ceedings was heightened by the general prohibition on the use of musical
waned after the fourteenth century-without giving way to any other
instruments in Orthodox services. Only the human voice and bells were
method of clearly defining the intervals and correlations of tones. In its
permitted (with an occasional use of trumpet or drum in such rituals as the
place appeared the "signed chant": a new tradition of vocal ornamentation
furnace show or a welcoming procession). The absence from early Muscovy
in which "melody not only flowed out of words, but served as the mold on
of polyphony or even a systematic scale made the rough but many-shaded
which words were set in bold relief. When written down, the embellished
harmonies sounded upon the bells seem like the ultimate in earthly music.
red and black hooked notes offered only a shorthand guide to the direction
Just as Muscovy resisted the contemporary Western tendency to introduce
40
I. BACKGROUND
2. The Forest
41
perspective and naturalism into religious painting, so it resisted the con-
current Western tendency to use bells to provide orderly musical intervals
taste by filling the ancient monasteries with votive baroque bell towers. By
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the older bell towers had been
or to accompany (with fixed tonal values and often in conjunction with an
largely displaced, restrictions placed on the excessive ringing of bells, and
organ) the singing of sacred offices.⁸⁹
their special position in worship services challenged by the intrusion of
The bell played an important part in material as well as spiritual
organs and other instruments into Russian liturgical music.
culture through its technological tie-in with the manufacture of cannon.
Already by the late fourteenth century-only a few years after the first
Yet the echo of bells lingered on. They ring again majestically at the
end of the coronation scene in Musorgsky's Boris Godunov; and the theo-
appearance of cannon in the West-Russians had begun to manufacture
cannon along with bells; and, by the sixteenth century, they had produced
logical hint of redemption offered by their "ringing through" (perezvon)
)
on the eve of festive days is recaptured by the little barking dog of that name
the largest of each item to be found anywhere in the world. So important
that leads Alyosha's youthful comrades to reconciliation at the end of
were these twin metal products to Muscovy that the largest example of each
Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov.
was given the title "Tsar": the bell, "Tsar Kolokol," weighing nearly half a
In the world of politics, too, the bell called up memories. Bells had
million pounds; the cannon, "Tsar Pushka," with a barrel nearly a yard wide.
been used in some of the proud, Westward-looking cities of medieval Russia
They represent the first example of "overtaking and surpassing" a
to summon the popular assembly (veche). The final silencing of the assembly
superior technology. But they illustrate as well the artificiality of the accom-
bell of Novgorod in 1478 ended the tradition of relative freedom from
plishment. For the bell was too large to hang, the cannon too broad to fire.
imperial authority and partial popular rule which until then Novgorod had
Technological accomplishments in both fields were, moreover, in good
shared with many commercial cities of the West. The ideal of non-despotic,
measure the work of foreigners from the time in the early fourteenth century
representative government impelled the early-nineteenth-century reformer to
when a certain "Boris the Roman" first came to cast bells for Moscow and
Novgorod.
If the bell predated the cannon as an object of technological interest,
the popular assembly
take myself in imagination I back to Novgorod. I hear the ringing bell of
throw the chains off my feet, and to the "Who
the cannon soon replaced it as the main object of state concern. Many bells
gorod!"93 goes there?" of the guard, I proudly reply: "a free citizen of Nov-
in provincial cities and monasteries were systematically melted down to
provide cannon for the swelling Russian armies of the late seventeenth and
and the romantic poet to
the eighteenth century; but innumerable bells remained in Moscow, the
skyline of which was dominated by the soaring 270-foot Bell Tower of Ivan
the Great, which Boris Godunov had erected on a hill inside the Kremlin at
celebrations and misfortunes.⁹
sound forth like the bell in the assembly tower in the days of the people's
the very beginning of this period. This tower was intended (like another
t
massive bell tower built by Patriarch Nikon just outside Moscow in the
latter part of the century) to be the crowning glory of a "New Jerusalem" on
When, a few years later, lyricism turned to anguish, Gogol gave a new,
Russian soil: a center of civilization built in partial imitation of the old
more mysterious quality to the image in one of the most famous passages in
Jerusalem, and with enough embellishment to suggest the New. The tower
all Russian literature. Likening Russia to a speeding troika (carriage with
in the Kremlin provided the shelter from which the fundamentalist Old
three horses) near the end of Dead Souls, he asks its destination. But "there
was no answer save the bell pouring forth marvellous sound."
Believers later hurled stones at official church processions.91 These defend-
ers of the old order resisted the cannon fire of government troops for eight
A prophetic answer came a few years later in the prefatory poem to the
years in their northern monastic redoubt at Solovetsk. After this last, storied
first issue of Russia's first illegal revolutionary journal-appropriately called
Kolokol (The Bell). The long-silent social conscience of Russia will hence-
bastion fell, they spread out to the provinces to watch for the approach of
forth-promised the editor, Alexander Herzen-sound out like a bell
the Tsar's "legions of Antichrist" from the bell towers of wooden churches,
whence they sounded the signal to set fire to the church and the true believ-
ers within.
until swinging back and forth with a tone which shall not cease to reverberate
The later Romanov tsars revealed both uneasy consciences and bad
man.95
a joyful, orderly, and quietly heroic bell begins to ring in every
42
I. BACKGROUND
2. The Forest
43
But Herzen's summoning bell was soon drowned out by the shrill sounds of
In a similar, but even more visionary vein, Nicholas Fedorov, an
the Nabat: the special alarm bell traditionally used in times of fire or attack
ascetic and self-effacing librarian in late nineteenth-century Moscow,
and the name of the first Russian periodical urging the formation of a
prophesied that a new fusion of science and faith would lead even to the
Jacobin recolutionary elite. Tkachev, the editor of Nabat, was vindicated
physical resuscitation of dead ancestors. Russia was to give birth in concert
by the eventual victory of Lenin's professional revolutionaries. But under
with China to a new Eurasian civilization, which was to use artillery to
Bolshevism, all bells fell silent-their function to some extent taken up by
regulate totally the climate and surrounding atmosphere of this world, and
the hypnotic sounding of machines, which announced the coming of an
thrust its citizens into the stratosphere to colonize others. His vision of
earthly rather than a heavenly paradise.
cosmic revolution fascinated both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and influenced
The enduring Russian fascination with cannon was evidenced in Ivan
a number of Promethean dreamers in the earliest Soviet planning agen-
IV's storied storming of Kazan in 1552; the shooting out of the cannon by
cies. 100 His most inspired followers fled, however, from Bolshevik Russia
a Moscow mob in 1606 of the remains of the False Dmitry, the only for-
to Harbin, Manchuria, to form a quasi-religious commune, which was in
eigner ever to reign in the Kremlin; the determination of Chaikovsky to
turn engulfed when the wave of Leninist, political revolution spread from
score real cannon fire into his overture commemorating the defeat of
their native to their adopted land.
Napoleon in 1812; and in the later tsars' use of a hundred cannon to
Russian history is full of such prophetic anticipations, just as it is of
announce their annointment during a coronation. 07 Stalin was neurotically
reappearing symbols and fixations. That which has fallen before axe or
preoccupied with massed artillery formations throughout the Second World
cannon has often buried itself into the consciousness, if not the conscience,
War; and his military pronouncements conferred only on the artillery the
of the executioner. That which is purged from the memory lives on in the
adjective grozny ("terrible" or "dread") traditionally applied to Ivan IV.98
subconscious; that which is expunged from written records survives in oral
Subsequent Soviet success with rockets can be seen as an extension of this
folklore. Indeed, one finds in modern Russian history much of the same
long-time interest. There seems a kind of historic justice to the interde-
recurrence of basic themes that one finds in the unrefined early traditions of
pendence in the late 1950's between the dazzling effects of cosmic
bell ringing and popular singing.
cannoneering and the renewed promises of a classless millennium.
It may be, of course, that these echoes from childhood no longer re-
The Communist world that had come into being by then corresponded
verberate in the adult Russia of today. Even if real, these sounds may be as
less to the prophecies of Karl Marx than to those of an almost unknown
enigmatic as the ringing of Gogol's troika; or perhaps only a dying echo: the
Russian contemporary, Nicholas Il'in. 00 While the former spent his life as an
perezvon that remains misleadingly audible after the bell has already fallen
uprooted intellectual in Berlin, Paris, and London, the latter spent his as a
silent. To determine how much of Old Russian culture may have survived,
patriotic artillery officer in Russian central Asia. Whereas the former looked
one must leave aside these recurring symbols from the remote past and turn
to the rational emergence of a new, basically Western European proletariat
to the historical record, which begins in the fourteenth century to provide a
under German leadership, the latter looked to the messianic arrival of a new
rich if bewildering flow of accomplishment that extends without interruption
Eurasian religious civilization under Russian tutelage. At the very time
to the present. Having looked at the heritage, environment, and early arti-
Marx was writing his Communist Manifesto for German revolutionaries
facts of Russian culture, one must now turn to the rise of Muscovy and its
refuged in France and Belgium, Il'in was proclaiming his Tidings of Zion to
dramatic confrontation with a Western world in the throes of the Renais-
Russian sectarians in Siberia. Il'in's strange teachings reflect the childlike
sance and Reformation.
love of cannon, the primitive ethical dualism, and the suppressed fear of
Europe, which were all present in Russian thinking. His followers marched
to such hymns as "The Bomb of the Divine Artillery"; divided the world
into men of Jehovah and of Satan (legovisty i Satanisty), those sitting at the
right and left hand of God (desnye i oshuinye); and taught that a new empire
of complete brotherhood and untold wealth would be formed by the follow-
ers of Jehovah along a vast railroad stretching from the Middle East through
Russia to south China.
NYT 5/15
A19
ESSAY
William Safire
Bush's 'New Path'
ATLANTA
ing the bases of hope ("we are ap-
E
mboldened by the success of his
proaching the conclusion of an historic
scheme to subvert NATO with a
postwar struggle") he proposed that
Russo-German Entente, Mr.
we move "beyond containment" to a
Gorbachev has just issued an ultima-
"new path" - one that will respond to
tum: Unless the Western alliance
realistic change in Soviet behavior
drops its intention to modernize the
where it most endangers freedom.
short-range missile that helps Eu-
"Promises are never enough," he
rope offset Soviet military superiori-
warned, and listed the means to earn
ty, the Soviet Union will violate the in-
trust: reduce the overwhelming Soviet
termediate-range treaty it signed
forces, free Eastern Europe, stop sup-
with such fanfare only last year.
porting terror in the Middle East and
How's that for blustering arro-
subversion in Latin America, and
gance? Unless he gets his way un-
"achieve a lasting political pluralism]
less we give up our right secured in
and respect for human rights."
previous treaties to maintain a cred-
This unsentimental better-safe-than-
ible local nuclear deterrent - then
sorry approach was not what Mr. Gor-
forget about Mr. Reagan's I.N.F.
bachev or the world's détenteniks,
deal. This "new thinking" is revealed
wanted to hear. They wanted a "bold
to be the same old duplicity: while the
new initiative" - specifically, a pre-
U.S. considers treaties to carry the
force of law, Mr. Gorbachev has just
vividly demonstrated he does not con-
sider his nation bound by treaty any
Not what
more than did his predecessors.
Does he expect to get away with
threatening unilateral abrogation?
détenteniks
Yes. He counts on his apologists in the
West's disarmament lobby: West Ger-
wanted.
many's devious Foreign Minister,
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who sees a
Fourth Reich rising from NATO's
ashes to dominate Europe's economy;
emptive concession to strip our forces
the grand old American negotiator
of nuclear arms and make it possible
Paul Nitze, whose ill-advised "walk in
for Mr. Gorbachev to maintain mili
the woods" would have given the Sovi-
tary superiority on the cheap.
ets what they later had to trade real
But the Bush Administration's pru-
missiles for in the now-threatened
dent strategy does not throw away con-
I.N.F. treaty; the brilliant Nitze biog-
tainment's gains. To his meat-and-
rapher and disciple, Strobe Talbott of
potatoes approach, he felt the need to
Time magazine; Democratic Senators
add an "open skies" sauce, which will
Sam Nunn and Joseph Biden, grabbing
be useful in verifying conventional
any device to whack at executive
arms cuts; the central thrust, how-
power; and asssorted old mutual-as-
ever, is to press for what is in the free
sured-destructionaries.
world's interest: free the captive na-
Adding to the weight of the Gorba-
tions and peoples, permit market
chev intimidation, and contributing to
forces to introduce prosperity and stop
the systematic snookering of Secre-
causing trouble around the world.
tary of State Baker in his foreign
The no-nonsense strategy, pre-
travels, is support for the Soviet no-
viewed in Mr. Bush's recent speechs:
nuke position from the ambush of
about Poland, drew on the thoughtful-
deep background by Ronald Reagan.
historical analysis made public April 1
The former President, irritated at the
by Robert Gates, deputy national se-+
contrast in style ostentatiously shown
curity adviser, who reminded us "for
by his hands-on, in-touch successor,
70 years we repeatedly have seen a
has let it be known that Mr. Bush is
system in crisis proclaim reform and
failing to capitalize on the momen-
turn to the West for help while the es-
tum of détente established in the Gor-
sential features of that system at the
bachev-Reagan embraces.
end of the day remained unchanged." the
Thus does the Long-trusting Left
I remember writing hail-détente
combine with the Newly-entranced
speeches for President Nixon; this
Right to squeeze the Sensibly-cau-
time around, I'm for Mr. Bush's "new-
tious Center. Resisting the stampede
path," requiring the steady earning
to denude our defenses, President
of trust.
Bush last week brought forth the fruit
Mr. Gorbachev has already suc
of his four-month strategic review in
ceeded in fraying the free world at its.)
an important speech at Texas A & M.
German edge, and Mr. Genscher is in-
"Containment worked," he said,
effect sending the Americans home.
crediting the recent Soviet reforms to
Good luck, Europe, on your next
internal contradictions and Western
treaty with the East: the Soviet dicta--
resolve rather than any Kremlin
tor has just reserved the right in ad-
change of heart. After dutifully touch-
vance to abrogate it at will.
Gelb account
If Winston Churchill had not already called Russia a riddle
wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, many Soviets might be
tempted today to use the phrase to describe their view of the
United States. In any event, they are striving mightily to
penetrate this veil of mystery to learn how America works. This
is a remarkable turn-around from the days when Soviet officials
claimed to know exactly how we operated -- the ruling circles
and the military-industrial complex squeezed profits out of the
hapless worker and that was that. Like a dead mackerel in the
moonlight, they said, capitalism shines and stinks.
While these canards are probably still quacking lustily over
some parts of the Soviet Union, I did not hear them from a wide
and diverse group of Soviet government and party officials,
intellectuals and cultural figures that I met with on my recent
trip. In fact, I heard the opposite.
First, that America "works." It works in the economic sense --
the standard of living is high, the stores are filled with
goods, there are no orchards in Central Park but somehow the
millions of people who live and work in Manhattan get orange
juice every morning. America also works in the political and
social sense. One Soviet put it this way:
There are things in America which you take for granted which are
burning issues for us. You have lobbyists and powerful interest
groups in your country and yet the voice of the people can
always be heard. How do you do that? You have a constitution
that has lasted more than two centuries with just a handful of
amendments. We're working on our fourth constitution in 72
years. How do you do that?
Second, although Soviets may always have had an abundance of
facts and figures about us at their fingertips, they have not
understood what makes it all hang together; they have not seen
the soul in the American body politic.
I have been impressed in my meetings, official and unofficial,
here and in Moscow and in Tbilisi, with Soviet willingness, even
eagerness, to do business with the United States. Whether the
field is educational exchange, agriculture, the working of
parliamentary commissions or the nuances of constitutional law
-- almost no American proposal is rejected out of hand. Soviets
are ready to talk, to discuss and very often to act in
surprisingly open ways.
Two threads run through all of the conversations and requests --
one is the need for information, the other is the need for
"know-how." Like people after a drought, Soviets thirst for
facts, data, figures -- for information -- about what is going
on in the world around them. Soviets want to know how we do
what we do. They ask for pamphlets, books, speakers, seminars,
exhibits, satellite television programs, radio programs -- every
possible means of communication -- to explain the basic
mechanisms and values of American society and politics. Many of
the most urgent calls are for assistance with "gut" issues --
food, housing, medicine. The Soviet Union has the same basic
resources we do -- they have arable land, they have timber for
houses, they have concrete factories without end, they have
physicians and scientists the equal of any. But Soviets look at
the end product and see in America a much higher standard of
living -- better housing, a better and more varied diet, better
and more sophisticated health care. Clearly, something
different is going on. It is this "something different" that
Soviets want to learn.
These trends -- openness to discussion, desire for information,
eagerness to learn -- are certainly positive. The sheer volume
of such requests, the eloquence with which they are stated and
the historical implications for Soviet society should not,
however, deafen us to several troubling notes that sound
throughout this dialogue.
First, of course, is that we have no interest in helping Soviet
authorities to merely modernize or streamline their control.
Our interest is and can only be in honest, permanent, systemic
change toward freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Second,
the danger continues of equating information with
understanding. The new, more accurate information ushered in by
glasnost still does not guarantee understanding or respect for
the American system, nor the variety of news and independence of
thought that identifies a healthy society.
I believe that many Soviets think that "how-to" information will
somehow magically make their troubles go away. As we Americans
know all too well, there is no magic wand. Americans have not
had it "easy," and American history is not a smooth,
uninterrupted procession of a nation from one triumph to another
and to ever higher levels of prosperity for all. It is not
enough for the people of the USSR to have the tools, they must
also understand the spirit that animates the craftsman and the
artist.
Without asking or expecting the Soviets to abandon their values
or traditions -- we must, nonetheless, ask and expect them to
begin to foster and appreciate the values of individuality,
freedom and entrepreneurship. In short -- the spirit of America
is what they must grasp.
We don't plan to sell them the legendary rope with which they
will hang us and we have no magic wand to wave over their
troubles and so dispel them -- what we can and are offering now
is our hand.
White House News Summary
Thursday, April 26, 1990 -- B-6
BLOCK
Jennings: Felix Block, the U.S. diplomat suspected of spying for
the Soviets, wants to find out what the State Department has on
him. The Department is trying to fire him. Block has now demanded
the government turn over to him all the information it has gathered
as a result of electronic surveillance.
(ABC-4)
XV-15 AIRPLANE
Jennings reports that the makers of the XV-15, a cross between a
plane and a helicopter, staged a giant photo opportunity in a bid
to drum up support for its successor, the V-22 Osprey.
(ABC-7)
PRESIDENT'S EYES
Rather: President Bush tried to make light of his eye problem
today as he headed off to the hospital to get a second opinion on
the recent diagnosis that he has the disease called glaucoma in his
left eye. Bush has been taking daily medication for it. The two
glaucoma experts who saw Bush today decided to take him off
medication, at least for now.
[TV COVERAGE of President Bush on the South Lawn, straining his
eyes at the camera, then smiling.]
White House officials say Bush's vision is not impaired and that
the President was not having side effects from the drugs. (CBS-6)
AIDS HOME TEST
Jennings: It soon may be possible to be tested for the AIDS virus
in the privacy of your home. The FDA today reversed its
longstanding idea of home test kits for AIDS and will now consider
approving them.
ABC's George Strait reports that the test costs about $15 and is
easy to perform. First a person pricks a finger then presses it
on specially coated filter paper. The sample is then sent to a
laboratory and identified only by a code number, no names. That's
a crucial issue for millions who have been reluctant to get tested.
It's because the FDA would like to see more people get early
testing that it changed its mind and will consider approving these
kits. The biggest issue now is counseling. A person would be told
test results and counseled over the phone. AIDS activists oppose
home tests because they believe a person needs face-to-face
counseling to fully understand the risks associated with AIDS.
Last month the FDA was sued because it had refused for more than
a year to even consider approving AIDS home test kits. The agency
denies that the suit had anything to do with its about-face, which
has opened the door to a billion-dollar market for AIDS home
testing.
(ABC-5)
-970m-
White House News Summary
Thursday, April 26, 1990 -- B-5
Andrews continues:
(Rep. Cox: "Only if Gorbachev wants to follow in Stalin's
footsteps does he have any right to be in Lithuania.")
The President was in no mood today to defend himself against the
attempted history lesson.
(President Bush in the Roosevelt Room: "I don't need any defense.
The policy stance I've taken has had strong support from the
American people, and that's who I work for."
Bush, in fact, sees Gorbachev as the opposite of Stalin or Hitler,
which is why his Administration today repeated it will not fight
for Lithuania if that risks the changes Gorbachev has allowed in
Eastern Europe.
?[
(Secretary Baker: "It's in our interests and in the interests of
the free world that the Soviet Union is leading Eastern Europe.
?
We don't want to do anything that might adversely affect that
process.")
The White House says it is pushing the Soviets to negotiate with
Lithuania, but Soviet officials today grew tougher, not more
lenient, in their preconditions for holding talks. Landsbergis is
saying that after Bush decided not to move against Moscow history
could have predicted that.
(CBS-5)
TRADE AGREEMENT
Jennings: Another trade agreement with Japan. This one covers
U.S. wood products. The Japanese will change their laws, lower
their tariffs on imported wood, which could increase U.S. sales
there by at least $1 billion a year. The move makes it unlikely
the Bush Administration will now cite Japan as an unfair trading
partner.
(ABC-9)
CBS's Deborah Potter reports that Administration officials say
there's a new spirit of compromise in Tokyo, but on Capitol Hill
the reaction is skeptical.
(Sen. Bentsen: "The problem is with all these agreements that in
the past we've had the agreements and there's been no results. We
thought we came home with a so-called silver bullet agreement and
finally found out we were firing blanks.")
Even if today's agreement does hold up there are more complaints
about Japanese discrimination against other U.S. products, from
semiconductors to auto parts and recorded music. Some in Congress
want the Bush Administration to keep Japan on the trade hit list.
But indications are that won't happen.
(U.S. Trade Representative Hills: "I think Japan has moved further
this year than perhaps any other country.")
Administration officials fear that making new accusations of unfair
trading practices by Japan might undo all the recent progress. But
Japan still accounts for almost half the U.S. trade deficit, and
many in Congress believe this is no time to let up the pressure.
(CBS-7)
LAFONTAINE
Jennings: One of West Germany's leading socialist politicians has
been stabbed and seriously hurt. Oscar Lafontaine was stabbed in
the neck at a political rally. He's a candidate to be chancellor
of West Germany, running against Chancellor Kohl. The woman who
stabbed him was arrested by police who say they do not know her
motive.
(ABC-3, NBC-9, CBS-3)
Thursday, April 12, 1990 -- A-3
Bush Tells Fears On Baltic States
President Bush raised the image of the bloody Soviet crackdown
in Hungary three decades ago as he told leaders of Baltic-American
ethnic groups Wednesday that he cannot do more to back independence
movements in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
As if to underscore Bush's fears, Soviet President Gorbachev
warned in broadcast remarks Wednesday that secession movements
within the Soviet Union could lead to "such bloody carnage that we
won't be able to crawl out of it.
Any move to redraw boundaries "would pit all peoples and all
nations against each other and bring about a situation in this
society the likes of which has never been witnessed by our country
or by the world, " Gorbachev said.
(David Lauter, Los Angeles Times, A1)
SOVIET RADICALS ASSAIL PARTY CONSERVATIVES
MOSCOW -- Radical reformers within the Communist Party
responded angrily to efforts by the party leadership to oust them,
and some appealed to other members to join them in an immediate
break and the formation of a new party
"We call upon all Communists to leave the party, to stop
paying dues and to join the new party of the Democratic Platform, II
Igor Chubais, a leading member of the group said, urging radicals
to pre-empt the planned party action against them
Chubais contended that [an open letter from the Central
Committee attacking the Democratic Platform as opposing socialism]
showed that there had been "a conservative coup" led by Yegor
Ligachev
This meant in turn that "democrats should pull out
before they are purged, he said.
(L.A. Times, Washington Post, A38)
GORBACHEV SAYS RADICAL COMMUNISTS WANT CAPITALISM
MOSCOW -- Soviet President gorbachev has denounced a major
bloc of Communist Party radicals, accusing them of wanting to
restore capitalism
Gorbachev, in comments made to a Communist youth organization
meeting Tuesday and shown on television Wednesday, said radicals
in the Democratic Platform were essentially looking for a way to
further their careers.
"If you listen to these politicians who defend this platform,
one can realize they want to defend their political ambitions, he
said.
"They are calling us to a different social system, to
capitalism," Gorbachev said. "One should see that.'
(Jonathan Lyons, Reuter)
-more-
Thursday, April 12, 1990 -- A-4
GORBACHEV WANTS 'RADICAL REFORMS'
MOSCOW -- Thirty-eight of the participants in the World Media
Conference met with Soviet President Gorbachev Wednesday and heard
him promise that "radical reforms" will soon produce "real deeds.'
According to two participants, Gorbachev seemed surprised
by the passion and tone of the remarks, and replied that he agreed
that serious mistakes had been made.
The Soviet Union had fought for a Soviet revolution, but it
was not achieved, Gorbachev said. The only way for the Soviet
Union to go now was to a mixed economy, freedom of the press, the
rule of law and freedom of religion, [he said].
(AP, Washington Times, A1)
SOVIET GENERALS BLAMED FOR ARMS SHIFT
Restive Soviet generals, angered by concessions made in Moscow
and smarting over a range of domestic issues, pressured their
government into recanting two agreements in arms control talks last
week, a top Administration official says.
"We hear there was a fairly explosive military reaction, " the
official said, referring to understandings reached during Secretary
Baker's February talks in the Kremlin where the active duty
military was not present.
But, the official said, last week there was a never-before-
seen general from the Soviet General Staff in meetings in
Washington. At those sessions, the Soviets reversed ground on
positions taken in Moscow on air-launched cruise missiles and sea-
launched cruise missiles.
(William Beecher, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Washington Times, A5)
KISSINGER SAYS U.S. NOT WELL PREPARED
FOR EVENTS IN SOVIET UNION, EUROPE
PITTSBURGH -- Former Secretary of State Kissinger Wednesday
said the U.S. was not well prepared for recent events in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe because it was practicing old-time
diplomacy.
"If you compare what American leaders said in 1950 American
objectives were and what has happened, it is a spectacular
success, Kissinger said. "We have achieved practically everything
we set out to do. Maybe not for the reasons we set out to do it,
but we've achieved it.
"Now we are in a curious position, which is that the things
we did in the '50s fitted in very well with traditional American
expectations of how foreign policy should be conducted,' said
Kissinger. "As a result of our success, we now face a world for
which we are not particularly well-prepared."
Kissinger said he is not against how the Bush Administration
is handling the situation between the Soviet Union and Lithuania.
"I don't disagree with the Administration's approach," Kissinger
said. "I might not make every single statement they made, but
that's another tactical issue."
(Chuck Moody, UPI)
-more-
Essay
Charles Krauthammer
Don't Cash the Peace Dividend
T
he country, the Congress and the media are demanding a
Empire? Even when we do invade, whether it is Normandy
peace dividend. Papa Bush sternly refuses to give it to
or Panama, the first question to arise is always, When do we
them. For that he is assailed as being out of sync, out of touch,
get out? Luigi Barzini once observed that for America inter-
overprudent, weird even.
ventionism is often just an expression of "impatient isolation-
Papa Bush is right.
ism," wanting to get the job over with and back to, "in the
There is nothing wrong with a gradual reduction of Ameri-
words of Theodore Roosevelt (who deplored it vigorously),
can forces in response to the Soviet eclipse. There may even
'the soft and easy enjoyment of material comforts.'
be some merit to skipping one generation of weapons and in-
Americans like to think-they thought so in 1919, in 1945
vesting instead in research and development of the next gen-
and now again in 1990-that having conquered the great evil
eration (as suggested by former Assistant Defense Secretary
of the day, they have conquered evil, that having defeated to-
Richard Perle). Both of these approaches, however, rest on
day's mortal threat, they have banished threat.
the premise that the U.S. must maintain a large, technologi-
"Who's the enemy?" a reporter pointedly asked President
cally advanced, worldwide military
Bush at a recent press conference.
force. The logic of the peace dividend
The implication being, "If you can't
is the opposite: now that the cold war
name the enemy, there is none. And if
is won, it is time to demobilize.
ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY MARC ROSENTHAL
there is no enemy, why $300 billion for
Postwar demobilization is a very
defense?"
American idea. We have a penchant
for demobilizing the day after the war
It is true that no one can give a
precise answer as to where the next
is won. After World War I, we rapidly
threat will come from. That does not
demobilized and disengaged from Eu-
mean-as the peace dividenders of
rope. With no countervailing Ameri-
today loudly pretend-that there is
can force to contain the rise of the
none.
monstrous totalitarianisms of the '30s,
To assume that there is no threat
the way was cleared for World War II.
is to assume, first, that the Soviet
Which we also won. And after
threat is completely dead, that even a
which we demobilized again: 9 million
disintegrating Soviet empire, home to
men in the first year after the Japa-
25,000 nuclear warheads, will not dis-
nese surrender. Stalin was slower to
embrace the pleasures of civilian life.
turb the peace. History does not sup-
He kept 3 million men under arms,
port the proposition that collapsing
empires go quietly.
the U.S. half that number. Stalin kept
It is to assume, second, that the
a massive occupation force in Europe.
The U.S. decided this time that leav-
Soviet threat cannot be succeeded by
a Russian threat. A Russia shorn of
ing Europe entirely would be a mis-
take, so, having radically demobilized,
empire and taken over by embittered
nationalists could easily revert to the
we chose to stay on the cheap-with
kind of dangerous revanchism that
nuclear weapons, an expediency that
seized other defeated powers in this
kept the world on the nuclear preci-
pice for 40 years.
century, notably interwar Germany.
It is to assume, finally, that threat, even if banished from
We are now, once again but without realizing it, in an im-
the East, will not come from elsewhere. We simply have no
mediate postwar period. The cold war was world war in every
idea where Germany, China, Japan are headed. We don't
respect but one. It was a great struggle between two massive
know how the Balkans will evolve. We do know that with the
alliances conducted on every continent and at every level of
Soviet decline other forces will occupy the vacuum, among
struggle-economic, political and military-save one: the ex-
them long-dormant nationalisms and newly awakened Islamic
istence of nuclear weapons outlawed direct military engage-
fundamentalism, neither of which is necessarily friendly to
ment between the great powers. Which is why the cold war is
American interests or values. We also know that in a high-tech
not recognized for what it was-World War III. And in 1989 it
world, dozens of regimes are acquiring weapons of mass de-
ended just like the first two: we won.
struction (nuclear, chemical, biological) and the means to de-
Seeing the cold war as World War III is not just a meta-
liver them to almost any place on earth.
phor. It helps to explain the current rush to demobilize. We
It is naive and highly dangerous, therefore, to pretend that
are again in the grip of a postwar euphoria, and our instinct is
with the end of this latest war, war is abolished. Yet that is what
to do what we have always done: demobilize first, ask ques-
tions later.
we want to believe. In 1943 Secretary of State Cordell Hull re-
turned from the Moscow Conference that set the foundation
It is in the American soul. Contrary to the fantasies of the
recent left about an imperial Amerika, it is hard to think of a
for a United Nations and told a joint session of Congress that as
the provisions of the conference were carried out, "there will no
great power with less taste for empire than the United States.
Empire? The most universal response to the hegemony that
longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for bal-
our Asian and European alliances brought us is the chorus of
ance of power, or any other of the special arrangements
through which, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safe-
Washington voices demanding allied "burden sharing." For
guard their security or to promote their interests."
Americans, empire is a pain.
Sound familiar?
88
TIME, MARCH 26, 1990
YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1990
A31
ESSAY
William Safire
Baltics to Baghdad
WASHINGTON
dently decided that "peace for our
F
rom the Baltics to Baghdad, the
time" would best be achieved by
umbrellas of appeasement are
hearing only promises of no use of
unfurling.
force from Moscow and by ignoring
"Lasting change can come to the
the pleas for support of a small nation
Soviet Union," said a powerful Voice
struggling for freedom.
Illustrations by Janusz Kapusta
of America commentary on Feb. 15,
The newly empowered superczar,
"when citizens no longer need to fear
Mr. Gorbachev, ordered the Red
massive surveillance - and worse -
Army to arrest "deserters." We must
from the K.G.B. Secret police are also
refuse to accept Moscow's descrip-
Albany's Deficit
entrenched in other countries, such as
tion of these brave young Lithuanians
China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Libya, Cuba and Albania.
as deserters; on the contrary, they
are patriots resisting impressment
The rulers of these countries hold
by a foreign power, in the face of
is
not
that
states
sud-
whatever - can and will occasionally
power by force and fear," was the ac-
likely beatings, torture and worse.
multi-hundred-mil-
result in serious shortfalls.
curate message beamed by V.O.A.,
that
the
defi-
They should not assume that even the
"not by the consent of the governed.
Mr. Bush, supported by Jimmy
but
have
been
modest
rela-
best revenue forecasters will predict
But as East Europeans demonstrated
Carter and unopposed by Congres-
their
budgets:
less
these events or their revenue
so dramatically in 1989, the tide of
sional leaders, refuses to assert even
of
even
in
celebrated
history is against such rulers. The
moral support of the nonviolent Lith-
impact.
uanians.
that
to
Federal
defi-
1990's should belong not to the dicta-
The implication is that the state tax
mid-1980's, were 25 to
tors and secret police, but to the peo-
Russian tanks and helicopters are
system can't be enacted in Year 1 and
total
budget.
ple."
roaring through a nation that wants
the
deficits are excep-
frozen for the rest of eternity or for
These words were labeled a "call to
to
with.
a governor's hoped-for three terms
cope
In
many
revolution" by Saddam Hussein,
financing
of
public
(which may be the eternity that
serv-
dictator of Iraq. He conveyed his dis-
as
Federal
aid
has
counts). A state tax system with give,
pleasure through four cables from
Silence
and
local
that can be adjusted in increments
property
our Ambassador in Baghdad to, John
limited by the voters.
without political battles fought as if
Kelly, the diplomat who had run the
is also
Western civilization were at stake, is
Poindexter "back-channel" arms
necessary in a volatile world.
bribery of Iran, now elevated by
Within the adult memories of some
President Bush to run the State De-
a gamble.
people still alive today (that is, way
partment's Near Eastern bureau.
back in the benighted 1950's), it was
Mr. Kelly joined the King of Saudi
common for states like New York
Arabia in supporting Saddam's pro-
that levied a personal income tax to
test and denounced the V.O.A.'s truth-
only to be let alone; Moscow is order
set rates that were considered per-
ful words at a morning meeting on
ing out foreign observers, to prevent
manent. Each year, however, they
Feb. 17 chaired by Secretary of State
pictures of any crackdown. Young
enacted small percentage reductions
Baker. Our pragmatic Secretary told
Lithuanians are being dragged away,
by the occupying army - with thou-
or surcharges to assure a balanced
the U.S.I.A. representative at the
budget. People expected that these
meeting to bring the V.O.A. editorial-
sands more to be forcibly conscripted
adjustments would be temporary,
ists to heel.
into hated foreign uniforms in coming
even though the reduction or sur-
The hangman of Baghdad had rea-
weeks - and the U.S. Government is
son to be edgy. His nuclear missile
worried that any expression of sup-
charge did not change each and every
year.
program was set back by a huge ex-
port for the oppressed nation would
How would this work today in, for
plosion last Aug. 17 that sources tell
"inflame the situation."
spending cutbacks are
me may have killed hundreds of tech-
Spare us the apologia that nice-guy'
example, New York State? The state
than
ever.
nicians at Al Hillah, south of Bagh-
Mr. Gorbachev is being forced to use.
confronts a budget gap that may be
evels of government, the
more than $1.5 billion in the next fis-
dad. He also may have suspected that
force by his mean army leaders and
than a decade has been
his efforts to smuggle nuclear detona-
his unruly Baltic subjects. One man
the 60's and 70's, states
cal year. A 10 percent surcharge on
tors out of the U.S. were imperiled by
has assumed the power to rule by de-,
taxes
or
increased
individual and corporate income
the
U.S. Customs agents in California;
cree, and he has decreed that the
in
the
face
of
taxes (your liability under the tax
spend-
their trap was sprung this week.
Soviet empire will not give up its
and
economic
difficul-
rate structure, which includes a
The State Department, which could
Stalinist conquests.
eatened to produce defi-
scheduled reduction, plus 10 percent)
not have been ignorant of Iraq's at-
We cannot liberate the captive na-
no matter how activist
effective at the beginning of the fiscal
tempt to steal our nuclear secrets,
tions by force of arms, but we can
has been exempt from
year would raise about that amount.
has long sought to appease Saddam.
take a stand on the principle of self-
of
the
past
decade.
If the economy recovers swiftly
Accordingly, the dictator was as-
determination. Would it harm Mr.
vernors
or
legislatures
and revenue forecasts turn out to be
sured that no more such broadcasts
Bush's quiet diplomacy - his "mas-
of
recent
tax
cuts
as
pessimistic, the surcharge could be
would trouble him, and U.S.I.A. was
terly inactivity" - for him to publicly
feasible,
or
even
honora-
reduced later in the year, or in the
instructed to clear all editorials - in
praise the nonviolent stand of Presi-
with
deficits.
next fiscal year - or turned into a
writing - with State Department
dent Landsbergis? Would it really in-
way out? Yes. State gov-
percentage reduction, from the regu-
censors.
flame the Kremlin for the American
accept the fact that
lar rate schedule, for the next year.
The close supervision was extended
President to use the word "independ-
-
changes
in
com-
The point is that the basic tax struc-
to another area: the Baltics. "We
ence" in speaking about the goal of
gyrations
in
securities
ture has some permanence, while the
were told by U.S.I.A. that State
negotiations?
tax
legislation,
inevitable marginal variations in eco-
wanted no editorials at all on Lithua-
To Moscow and to Vilnius as well as
nomic conditions are accommodated.
nia," a Voice employee tells me.
to Baghdad, we should rebroadcast
Hardly a bizarre idea, but one that
(Richard Carlson, the Voice director,
the V.O.A.'s forbidden message:
ordinary people can understand, and
loyally insists no new pressure was
"The 1990's should not belong to the
live with.
applied.)
dictators and the secret police, but to
Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker have evi-
the people."
SUPPLEMENT: FRIDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 1989
DIPLOMACY
THE WILSON QUARTERLY
NEW YEAR'S 1989
Pg. 39
Soviets and Americans
Visiting the Wilson Center, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov re-
cently warned that back home Mikhail Gorbachev was amassing
personal power, seeking "democratic change through undemo-
cratic means." The eventual outcome, Sakharov added, was "any-
body's guess." Many Westerners have been more optimistic about
Gorbachev's reforms and their impact on East-West tensions and
arms control; Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sees an
end to the Cold War. Some American analysts are less sanguine,
noting that the Kremlin still seems bent on dividing the West even
as it promises troop cuts, and withdraws from Afghanistan. Here
our contributors look at the Soviet-American relationship, past,
present, and future, after four long decades.
IS THE COLD WAR OVER?
by Peter W. Rodman
U
nder Mikhail Gorbachev, there
ciliatory Soviet policies. In arms control,
have been extensive changes in
East and West are negotiating, or are about
the practice and theory of Soviet
to negotiate, a comprehensive agenda rang-
foreign policy.
ing from banning chemical weapons, to sta-
Two recent developments stand out. First
bilizing the conventional military balance
is the INF Treaty (signed at the Washington
in Europe, to controlling the proliferation
Summit in December 1987), in which the
of ballistic missile technology. We see the
United States and the Soviet Union have
Soviets not only committing to a with-
agreed not only to the unprecedented de-
drawal from Afghanistan, but also encour-
struction of an entire class of nuclear mis-
aging diplomatic compromises in Angola
siles but also to an equally unprecedented
and Cambodia, and engaging in a regular
system of highly intrusive on-site inspec-
dialogue with us on other Third World con-
tion. Second is the Soviet pledge to with-
flicts. We see them establishing relations or
draw from Afghanistan, and to reduce its
improving relations with countries that
armed forces by 500,000 troops by 1991.
used to be off-limits (the Republic of Korea,
But these are only the most dramatic as-
Israel, the Gulf Arabs); we see their foreign
pects of an expanding pattern of cooper-
minister visiting parts of the world (Latin
ative endeavors and seemingly more con-
America, Southeast Asia) where no prede-
B
1
SUPPLEMENT: FRIDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 1989
COLD WAR
CONTINUED
Last October, a senior foreign ministry of-
cessor had trod. Moreover, the Soviets now
ficial, Andrey V. Kozyrev, lamented Mos-
are showing more support for international
cow's aid commitments and other burdens
institutions they once mistrusted. In the
in the Third World: "[T]he aid itself is only
United Nations, they are not only paying
the tip of the iceberg," he wrote. "Our di-
their overdue bills but also praising the UN
rect and indirect involvement in regional
peacekeeping functions they once tried to
conflicts led to colossal losses, by increas-
block; they are even seeking to join the
ing general international tension, justifying
GATT and the IMF, and have established of-
the arms race, and hindering the establish-
ficial ties to the European Community.
ment of mutually advantageous ties with
Soviet pronouncements on foreign pol-
the West." Kozyrev questioned the wisdom,
icy speak of fundamental change. We read
for the Soviet Union, of using military in-
explicit renunciations of "class struggle" as
struments in support of "regimes which de-
the dominant Soviet theory of international
clare themselves to be progressive but
relations, now deemed inadequate in a
which far from always possess an adequate
world of increasing interdependence and
democratic base in the country."
nuclear danger. We read their own blunt
It is never easy for any government to
critiques of past errors, including Third
abandon unsuccessful policies. The new
World adventures and the military buildup
Soviet leaders deserve credit, at the very
of the 1970s, which provoked the sharp
least, for their decisiveness in acting on a
Western response of the 1980s. The Soviets
rational analysis of the costs and benefits of
talk, remarkably, about ensuring account-
some of Moscow's earlier efforts.
ability by such means as legislative over-
The Soviets seem to have concluded dur-
sight and a lessening of secrecy. Their dip-
ing the 1970s that what they call the "cor-
lomats, the younger generation, mostly, but
relation of forces" was shifting in their fa-
also some veterans, have a new style; they
vor. It was a time of American
are more sophisticated and easier to talk to,
self-absorption in the wake of Vietnam and
no longer tied up in the formulaic strait-
Watergate. French statesman Maurice
jackets of the past.
Couve de Murville, on the floor of the Na-
tional Assembly on May 6, 1976, warned
that this American abdication was destabi-
W
e in the West owe it to ourselves
to take advantage of the new
lizing the international system. Soviet
opportunities thus provided to
power was growing, he said, but this was
settle some outstanding issues and scale
not new; the more striking new factor was
back the military danger. Yet we must also
"the American crisis": the domestic loss of
ask ourselves how this all came about.
confidence and the executive-legislative
The Soviets' own analyses give us the
stalemate, which resulted in a paralysis of
clues. Embarked as they are on an ambi-
power. In addition, the West was reeling
tious program of internal reform, it is natu-
from increased oil prices-the "energy
ral, as they have said, to seek a period of
shock."
calm, a "breathing space" in the interna-
In response, the Soviets and their allies
tional environment. And, just as their inter-
overreached. A Cuban expeditionary force
nal reform is prompted by the failure of the
transported and advised by the Soviets
economic and political system, so a good
tipped the scales in the Angolan civil war in
part of the Soviets' "new thinking" on
1975 (after the U.S. Congress cut off aid to
world affairs is prompted by an explicit rec-
two non-Communist liberation move-
ognition of the failure of Moscow's previ-
ments). Cuban and Soviet forces later inter-
ous policies. Despite our big arms buildup,
vened in Ethiopia. Starting in 1977, the So-
the Soviets are saying, it seems the arms
viet Union deployed the triple-warhead
race cannot be won. Our deployment of SS-
SS-20 missiles targeted at both Europe and
20s only provoked a Western reaction. Our
Asia. A Communist coup in Afghanistan
own and our allies' attempts to win in Af-
served as prelude to Soviet intervention.
ghanistan, Angola, Cambodia were frus-
Hanoi's troops invaded Cambodia in 1978.
trated. The world's capitalist economy is
In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, who came to
too strong to defeat or ignore; we must link
power in 1979 as leaders of a broad coali-
up with it and seek to benefit from it.
tion against the dictator Somoza, began to
B
2
SUPPLEMENT:
FRIDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 1989
THE NEW REPUBLIC
23 JANUARY 1989
Pg. 8
THE SHOVEL GAP: "The Soviet Union has a nationwide,
pared and willing to withstand a nuclear exchange. The
long-standing, well-organized and funded civil defense
corollary to their argument, of course, is that we should
program under military control begins a 1988 pam-
beef up our own civil defense effort or, better yet, our
phlet issued by the U.S. Office of Civil Defense. That
own retaliatory forces. Maybe, maybe not. But the chaos
must be news to the Armenians, whose post-earthquake
in Armenia makes the slick reports like the Department
agony has been prolonged by a botched relief effort. For
of Defense's Soviet Military Power-which devotes three
years hard-liners in the United States have posited the
pages to descriptions and fanciful sketches of Soviet un-
existence of a massive Soviet civil defense effort, cit-
derground railways and shelters-that much harder to
ing it as yet more proof that the Soviets were both pre-
swallow.
COLD WAR
CONTINUED
(The drive for self-determination in Eastern
squeeze out all non-Communist rivals, in
Europe promises to be a crucial test of
classic Leninist fashion reminiscent of East-
Gorbachev's New Model foreign policy.) In
em Europe in the late 1940s.
Nicaragua, where the U.S. Congress has
Such a trend was bound to provoke a re-
now disarmed the resistance, the Soviets
action. America rearmed. NATO began to
continue a substantial flow of arms to the
deploy its own INF missiles in 1983, while
Sandinista military, now preponderant in
offering to negotiate their elimination on
Central America. The quest for unilateral
an equal basis. In the various Third World
advantage has not disappeared entirely
conflicts, indigenous resistance, with out-
from Soviet practice, whatever the theory.
side help, prevented the consolidation of
Yet, the "agonizing reappraisal" that So-
initial gains. The free-world economy re-
viet foreign policy has undergone in the
covered from the oil crisis and found itself
face of compelling realities should remind
on the threshold of a new industrial revolu-
us that we helped shape those realities. The
tion-the information revolution of
economic vigor, military strength, and geo-
supercomputers and telecommunica-
political resistance of the West have, be-
tions-which threatened to doom the So-
yond any doubt, helped bring us to this
viet Union forever to minor-league status.
point. Perhaps we now see the beginning of
By the late 1980s, then, balance had been
the vindication of "containment," as fore-
restored to the international system. On
shadowed by George Kennan in 1947-the
both sides, leaders had the wisdom to draw
gradual mellowing of Soviet power.
the right conclusions. It became a propi-
But have the Soviet Union's basic long-
tious time for diplomacy.
term aims truly changed? Fortunately, we
What of the future?
do not have to answer that ultimate ques-
A Western analyst cannot help but notice
tion today. If they have not changed, then a
the continuities that remain in Soviet pol-
policy of continued Western firmness is
icy, and the persistence of East-West com-
surely the right prescription. If, on the
petition in areas that have not been blessed
other hand, the Soviets are indeed at a his-
with diplomatic solutions. Foremost among
toric crossroads in rethinking their strate-
them is Europe. In Europe, Gorbachev-
gic interests, then it behooves us to help
like his predecessors-continues political
along this reappraisal by calmly sustaining
warfare against NATO cohesion and NATO
the conditions that have produced it, offer-
strategies, while rejecting a Western call to
ing the Soviets no temptations.
tear down the Berlin Wall and otherwise
This is our opportunity, and our respon-
end the artificial division of the Continent.
sibility.
Peter W. Rodman, 45, has served as director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff and as a
deputy assistant to the President for National Security Affairs during the Reagan administration. He
was a special assistant to Henry Kissinger during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Born in Boston,
Massachusetts, he received a B.A. (1964) from Harvard College, a JD. (1969) from Harvard Law
School, and an M.A. (1970) from Oxford University. The views expressed here are his own and not
necessarily those of the U. S. government.
B
3
Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988 / May 31
In the last few years, freedom for the arts
Remarks and a Question-and-Answer
has been expanded in the Soviet Union.
Session With the Students and Faculty
Some poems, books, music, and works in
at Moscow State University
other fields that were once banned have
May 31, 1988
been made available to the public; and
some of those artists who produced them
The President. Thank you, Rector Lo-
have been recognized. Two weeks ago, be-
gunov, and I want to thank all of you very
cause of the work of the Writers Union, the
much for a very warm welcome. It's a great
first step was taken to make the Pasternak
pleasure to be here at Moscow State Uni-
home at Peredelkino into a museum. In the
versity, and I want to thank you all for turn-
meantime, some artists in exile-the stage
ing out. I know you must be very busy this
director Yuri Lubimov, for example-have
week, studying and taking your final exami-
been permitted to return and to work, and
nations. So, let me just say zhelayu vam
artists who are here have been allowed a
uspekha [I wish you success]. Nancy
greater range.
couldn't make it today because she's visiting
We in the United States applaud the new
Leningrad, which she tells me is a very
thaw in the arts. We hope to see it go, fur-
beautiful city, but she, too, says hello and
ther. We hope to see Mikhail Baryshnikov
wishes you all good luck.
and Slava Rostropovich, artists Mrs. Reagan
Let me say it's also a great pleasure to
and I have seen perform in Washington,
once again have this opportunity to speak
perform again in Moscow. We hope to see
directly to the people of the Soviet Union.
the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pub-
Before I left Washington, I received many
lished in the land he loves. And we hope to
heartfelt letters and telegrams asking me to
see a permanent end to restrictions on the
carry here a simple message, perhaps, but
creativity of all artists and writers. We want
also some of the most important business of
this not just for your sake but for our own.
this summit: It is a message of peace and
We believe that the greater the freedoms in
good will and hope for a growing friendship
other countries the more secure both our
and closeness between our two peoples.
own freedoms and peace. And we believe
As you know, I've come to Moscow to
meet with one of your most distinguished
that when the arts in any country are free
graduates. In this, our fourth summit, Gen-
to blossom the lives of all people are richer.
eral Secretary Gorbachev and I have spent
William Faulkner said of poets-although
many hours together, and I feel that we're
he could have been speaking of any of the
getting to know each other well. Our dis-
arts-it is the poet's privilege to help man
cussions, of course, have been focused pri-
endure by lifting his heart, by reminding
marily on many of the important issues of
him of the courage and honor and hope and
the day, issues I want to touch on with you
pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice
in a few moments. But first I want to take a
which have been the glory of our past. The
little time to talk to you much as I would to
poet's voice need not merely be the record
any group of university students in the
of man. It can be one of the props, the
United States. I want to talk not just of the
pillars, to help him endure and prevail.
realities of today but of the possibilities of
tomorrow.
Thank you for having me here today and
for sharing your thoughts with me, and God
Standing here before a mural of your rev-
olution, I want to talk about a very different
bless you all.
revolution that is taking place right now,
quietly sweeping the globe without blood-
Note: The President spoke at 1:44 p.m. in
shed or conflict. Its effects are peaceful, but
the dining room at the A. Fadeyev Central
they will fundamentally alter our world,
House of Men of Letters. He was introduced
shatter old assumptions, and reshape our
by Vladimir Vasilievich Karpov, first secre-
lives. It's easy to underestimate because it's
tary of the board of the U.S.S.R. Writer's
not accompanied by banners or fanfare. It's
Union. A tape was not available for verifi-
been called the technological or informa-
cation of the content of these remarks.
tion revolution, and as its emblem, one
703
May 31 / Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988
might take the tiny silicon chip, no bigger
monosov, knew that. "It is common knowl-
than a fingerprint. One of these chips has
edge," he said, "that the achievements of
more computing power than a roomful of
science are considerable and rapid, particu-
old-style computers.
larly once the yoke of slavery is cast off and
As part of an exchange program, we now
replaced by the freedom of philosophy."
have an exhibition touring your country
You know, one of the first contacts between
that shows how information technology is
your country and mine took place between
transforming our lives-replacing manual
Russian and American explorers. The Amer-
labor with robots, forecasting weather for
icans were members of Cook's last voyage
farmers, or mapping the genetic code of
on an expedition searching for an Arctic
DNA for medical researchers. These micro-
passage; on the island of Unalaska, they
computers today aid the design of every-
came upon the Russians, who took them in,
thing from houses to cars to spacecraft; they
and together, with the native inhabitants,
even design better and faster computers.
held a prayer service on the ice.
They can translate English into Russian or
The explorers of the modern era are the
enable the blind to read or help Michael
entrepreneurs, men with vision, with the
Jackson produce on one synthesizer the
courage to take risks and faith enough to
sounds of a whole orchestra. Linked by a
brave the unknown. These entrepreneurs
network of satellites and fiber-optic cables,
and their small enterprises are responsible
one individual with a desktop computer and
for almost all the economic growth in the
a telephone commands resources unavail-
United States. They are the prime movers
able to the largest governments just a few
of the technological revolution. In fact, one
years ago.
of the largest personal computer firms in
Like a chrysalis, we're emerging from the
the United States was started by two col-
economy of the Industrial Revolution-an
economy confined to and limited by the
lege students, no older than you, in the
garage behind their home. Some people,
Earth's physical resources-into, as one
economist titled his book, "The Economy in
even in my own country, look at the riot of
Mind," in which there are no bounds on
experiment that is the free market and see
human imagination and the freedom to
only waste. What of all the entrepreneurs
that fail? Well, many do, particularly the
create is the most precious natural resource.
successful ones; often several times. And if
Think of that little computer chip. Its value
isn't in the sand from which it is made but
you ask them the secret of their success,
in the microscopic architecture designed
they'll tell you it's all that they learned in
into it by ingenious human minds. Or take
their struggles along the way; yes, it's what
the example of the satellite relaying this
they learned from failing. Like an athlete in
broadcast around the world, which replaces
competition or a scholar in pursuit of the
thousands of tons of copper mined from the
truth, experience is the greatest teacher.
Earth and molded into wire. In the new
And that's why it's so hard for govern-
economy, human invention increasingly
ment planners, no matter how sophisticat-
makes physical resources obsolete. We're
ed, to ever substitute for millions of individ-
breaking through the material conditions of
uals working night and day to make their
existence to a world where man creates his
dreams come true. The fact is, bureaucra-
own destiny. Even as we explore the most
cies are a problem around the world.
advanced reaches of science, we're return-
There's an old story about a town-it could
ing to the age-old wisdom of our culture, a
be anywhere-with a bureaucrat who is
wisdom contained in the book of Genesis in
known to be a good-for-nothing, but he
the Bible: In the beginning was the spirit,
somehow had always hung on to power. So
and it was from this spirit that the material
one day, in a town meeting, an old woman
abundance of creation issued forth.
got up and said to him: "There is a folk
But progress is not foreordained. The key
legend here where I come from that when
is freedom-freedom of thought, freedom
a baby is born, an angel comes down from
of information, freedom of communication.
heaven and kisses it on one part of its body.
The renowned scientist, scholar, and found-
If the angel kisses him on his hand, he be-
ing father of this university, Mikhail Lo-
comes a handyman. If he kisses him on his
Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988 / May 31
forehead, he becomes bright and clever.
will see children being taught the Declara-
And I've been trying to figure out where
tion of Independence, that they are en-
the angel kissed you so that you should sit
dowed by their Creator with certain un-
there for so long and do nothing." [Laugh-
ter]
alienable rights-among them life, liberty,
We are seeing the power of economic
and the pursuit of happiness-that no gov-
freedom spreading around the world. Places
ernment can justly deny; the guarantees in
such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore,
their Constitution for freedom of speech,
freedom of assembly, and freedom of reli-
Taiwan have vaulted into the technological
gion.
era, barely pausing in the industrial age
along the way. Low-tax agricultural policies
Go into any courtroom, and there will
in the sub-continent mean that in some
preside an independent judge, beholden to
years India is now a net exporter of food.
no government power. There every defend-
Perhaps most exciting are the winds of
ant has the right to a trial by a jury of his
change that are blowing over the People's
peers, usually 12 men and women-
Republic of China, where one-quarter of
common citizens; they are the ones, the
the world's population is now getting its
only ones, who weigh the evidence and
first taste of economic freedom. At the
decide on guilt or innocence. In that court,
same time, the growth of democracy has
the accused is innocent until proven guilty,
become one of the most powerful political
and the word of a policeman or any official
movements of our age. In Latin America in
has no greater legal standing than the word
the 1970's, only a third of the population
of the accused.
lived under democratic government; today
Go to any university campus, and there
over 90 percent does. In the Philippines, in
you'll find an open, sometimes heated dis-
the Republic of Korea, free, contested,
cussion of the problems in American society
democratic elections are the order of the
and what can be done to correct them.
day. Throughout the world, free markets
Turn on the television, and you'll see the
are the model for growth. Democracy is the
legislature conducting the business of gov-
standard by which governments are meas-
ernment right there before the camera, de-
ured.
bating and voting on the legislation that
We Americans make no secret of our
will become the law of the land. March in
belief in freedom. In fact, it's something of
any demonstration, and there are many of
a national pastime. Every 4 years the Amer-
them; the people's right of assembly is guar-
ican people choose a new President, and
anteed in the Constitution and protected by
1988 is one of those years. At one point
the police. Go into any union hall, where
there were 13 major candidates running in
the members know their right to strike is
the two major parties, not to mention all
protected by law. As a matter of fact, one of
the others, including the Socialist and Lib-
the many jobs I had before this one was
ertarian candidates-all trying to get my
being president of a union, the Screen
job. About 1,000 local television stations,
Actors Guild. I led my union out on strike,
8,500 radio stations, and 1,700 daily news-
and I'm proud to say we won.
papers-each one an independent, private
But freedom is more even than this.
enterprise, fiercely independent of the gov-
Freedom is the right to question and
ernment-report on the candidates, grill
change the established way of doing things.
them in interviews, and bring them togeth-
It is the continuing revolution of the mar-
er for debates. In the end, the people vote;
ketplace. It is the understanding that allows
they decide who will be the next President.
us to recognize shortcomings and seek solu-
But freedom doesn't begin or end with
tions. It is the right to put forth an idea,
elections. Go to any American town, to take
scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch
just an example, and you'll see dozens of
fire among the people. It is the right to
churches, representing many different be-
dream-to follow your dream or stick to
liefs-in many places, synagogues and
your conscience, even if you're the only one
mosques-and you'll see families of every
in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recog-
conceivable nationality worshiping togeth-
nition that no single person, no single au-
er. Go into any school room, and there you
thority or government has a monopoly on
705
May 31 / Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988
the truth, but that every individual life is
on human freedom. It comes, not from the
infinitely precious, that every one of us put
literature of America, but from this country,
on this world has been put there for a
from one of the greatest writers of the 20th
reason and has something to offer.
century, Boris Pasternak, in the novel "Dr.
America is a nation made up of hundreds
Zhivago." He writes: "I think that if the
of nationalities. Our ties to you are more
beast who sleeps in man could be held
than ones of good feeling; they're ties of
down by threats-any kind of threat,
kinship. In America, you'll find Russians, Ar-
whether of jail or of retribution after
menians, Ukrainians, peoples from Eastern
death-then the highest emblem of human-
Europe and Central Asia. They come from
ity would be the lion tamer in the circus
every part of this vast continent, from
with his whip, not the prophet who sacri-
every continent, to live in harmony, seeking
a place where each cultural heritage is re-
ficed himself. But this is just the point-
what has for centuries raised man above the
spected, each is valued for its diverse
beast is not the cudgel, but an inward
strengths and beauties and the richness it
brings to our lives. Recently, a few individ-
music-the irresistible power of unarmed
truth."
uals and families have been allowed to visit
relatives in the West. We can only hope
The irresistible power of unarmed truth.
that it won't be long before all are allowed
Today the world looks expectantly to signs
to do so and Ukrainian-Americans, Baltic-
of change, steps toward greater freedom in
Americans, Armenian-Americans can freely
the Soviet Union. We watch and we hope as
visit their homelands, just as this Irish-
we see positive changes taking place. There
American visits his.
are some, I know, in your society who fear
Freedom, it has been said, makes people
that change will bring only disruption and
selfish and materialistic, but Americans are
discontinuity, who fear to embrace the
one of the most religious peoples on Earth.
hope of the future. Sometimes it takes faith.
Because they know that liberty, just as life
It's like that scene in the cowboy movie
itself, is not earned but a gift from God,
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,"
they seek to share that gift with the world.
which some here in Moscow recently had a
"Reason and experience," said George
chance to see. The posse is closing in on the
Washington in his farewell address, "both
two outlaws, Butch and Sundance, who find
forbid us to expect that national morality
themselves trapped on the edge of a cliff,
can prevail in exclusion of religious princi-
with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the
ple. And it is substantially true, that virtue
raging rapids below. Butch turns to Sun-
or morality is a necessary spring of popular
dance and says their only hope is to jump
government." Democracy is less a system of
into the river below, but Sundance refuses.
government than it is a system to keep gov-
He says he'd rather fight it out with the
ernment limited, unintrusive; a system of
posse, even though they're hopelessly out-
constraints on power to keep politics and
numbered. Butch says that's suicide and
government secondary to the important
urges him to jump, but Sundance still re-
things in life, the true sources of value
fuses and finally admits, "I can't swim."
found only in family and faith.
Butch breaks up laughing and says, "You
But I hope you know I go on about these
crazy fool, the fall will probably kill you."
things not simply to extol the virtues of my
And, by the way, both Butch and Sundance
own country but to speak to the true great-
made it, in case you didn't see the movie. I
ness of the heart and soul of your land.
think what I've just been talking about is
Who, after all, needs to tell the land of
perestroika and what its goals are.
Dostoevski about the quest for truth, the
But change would not mean rejection of
home of Kandinski and Scriabin about
the past. Like a tree growing strong
imagination, the rich and noble culture of
through the seasons, rooted in the Earth
the Uzbek man of letters Alisher Navoi
and drawing life from the Sun, so, too, posi-
about beauty and heart? The great culture
tive change must be rooted in traditional
of your diverse land speaks with a glowing
values-in the land, in culture, in family
passion to all humanity. Let me cite one of
and community-and it must take its life
the most eloquent contemporary passages
from the eternal things, from the source of
Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988 / May 31
all life, which is faith. Such change will lead
It's my fervent hope that our constructive
to new understandings, new opportunities,
cooperation on these issues will be carried
to a broader future in which the tradition is
on to address the continuing destruction of
not supplanted but finds its full flowering.
conflicts in many regions of the globe and
That is the future beckoning to your gen-
that the serious discussions that led to the
eration.
Geneva accords on Afghanistan will help
At the same time, we should remember
lead to solutions in southern Africa, Ethio-
that reform that is not institutionalized will
pia, Cambodia, the Persian Gulf, and Cen-
always be insecure. Such freedom will
tral America.
always be looking over its shoulder. A bird
I have often said: Nations do not distrust
on a tether, no matter how long the rope,
each other because they are armed; they
can always be pulled back. And that is why,
are armed because they distrust each other.
in my conversation with General Secretary
If this globe is to live in peace and prosper,
Gorbachev, I have spoken of how important
if it is to embrace all the possibilities of the
it is to institutionalize change-to put guar-
technological revolution, then nations must
antees on reform. And we've been talking
renounce, once and for all, the right to an
together about one sad reminder of a divid-
expansionist foreign policy. Peace between
ed world: the Berlin Wall. It's time to
nations must be an enduring goal, not a
remove the barriers that keep people apart.
tactical stage in a continuing conflict.
I'm proposing an increased exchange pro-
gram of high school students between our
I've been told that there's a popular song
countries. General Secretary Gorbachev
in your country-perhaps you know it-
mentioned on Sunday a wonderful phrase
whose evocative refrain asks the question,
"Do the Russians want a war?" In answer it
you have in Russian for this: "Better to see
something once than to hear about it a hun-
says: "Go ask that silence lingering in the
dred times." Mr. Gorbachev and I first
air, above the birch and poplar there; be-
began working on this in 1985. In our dis-
neath those trees the soldiers lie. Go ask my
cussion today, we agreed on working up to
mother, ask my wife; then you will have to
several thousand exchanges a year from
ask no more, 'Do the Russians want a
each country in the near future. But not
war?' But what of your one-time allies?
everyone can travel across the continents
What of those who embraced you on the
and oceans. Words travel lighter, and that's
Elbe? What if we were to ask the watery
why we'd like to make available to this
graves of the Pacific or the European bat-
country more of our 11,000 magazines and
tlefields where America's fallen were
periodicals and our television and radio
buried far from home? What if we were to
shows that can be beamed off a satellite in
ask their mothers, sisters, and sons, do
seconds. Nothing would please us more
Americans want war? Ask us, too, and you'll
than for the Soviet people to get to know us
find the same answer, the same longing in
better and to understand our way of life.
every heart. People do not make wars; gov-
Just a few years ago, few would have
ernments do. And no mother would ever
imagined the progress our two nations have
willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial
made together. The INF treaty, which Gen-
gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.
eral Secretary Gorbachev and I signed last
A people free to choose will always choose
December in Washington and whose instru-
peace.
ments of ratification we will exchange to-
Americans seek always to make friends of
morrow-the first true nuclear arms reduc-
old antagonists. After a colonial revolution
tion treaty in history, calling for the elimi-
with Britain, we have cemented for all ages
nation of an entire class of U.S. and Soviet
the ties of kinship between our nations.
nuclear missiles. And just 16 days ago, we
After a terrible civil war between North
saw the beginning of your withdrawal from
and South, we healed our wounds and
Afghanistan, which gives us hope that soon
found true unity as a nation. We fought two
the fighting may end and the healing may
world wars in my lifetime against Germany
begin and that that suffering country may
and one with Japan, but now the Federal
find self-determination, unity, and peace at
Republic of Germany and Japan are two of
long last.
our closest allies and friends.
707
May 31 / Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988
Some people point to the trade disputes
Thank you all very much, and da blagos-
between us as a sign of strain, but they're
lovit vas gospod'-God bless you.
the frictions of all families, and the family of
Mr. Logunov. Dear friends, Mr. Presi-
free nations is a big and vital and some-
dent has kindly agreed to answer your ques-
times boisterous one. I can tell you that
tions. But since he doesn't have too much
nothing would please my heart more than
time, only 15 minutes-so, those who have
in my lifetime to see American and Soviet
questions, please ask them.
diplomats grappling with the problem of
trade disputes between America and a
growing, exuberant, exporting Soviet Union
Strategic Arms Reductions
that had opened up to economic freedom
Q. And this is a student from the history
and growth. And as important as these offi-
faculty, and he says that he's happy to wel-
cial people-to-people exchanges are, noth-
come you on behalf of the students of the
ing would please me more than for them to
university. And the first question is that the
become unnecessary, to see travel between
East and West become so routine that-uni-
improvement in the relations between the
versity students in the Soviet Union could
two countries has come about during your
take a month off in the summer and, just
tenure as President, and in this regard he
like students in the West do now, put packs
would like to ask the following question. It
on their backs and travel from country to
is very important to get a handle on the
country in Europe with barely a passport
question of arms control and, specifically,
check in between. Nothing would please
the limitation of strategic arms. Do you
me more than to see the day that a concert
think that it will be possible for you and the
promoter in, say, England could call up a
General Secretary to get a treaty on the
Soviet rock group, without going through
limitation of strategic arms during the time
any government agency, and have them
that you are still President?
playing in Liverpool the next night. Is this
The President. Well, the arms treaty that
just a dream? Perhaps. But it is a dream
is being negotiated now is the so-called
that is our responsibility to have come true.
START treaty, and it is based on taking the
Your generation is living in one of the
intercontinental ballistic missiles and reduc-
most exciting, hopeful times in Soviet histo-
ing them by half, down to parity between
ry. It is a time when the first breath of
our two countries. Now, this is a much
freedom stirs the air and the heart beats to
more complicated treaty than the INF
the accelerated rhythm of hope, when the
treaty, the intermediate-range treaty, which
accumulated spiritual energies of a long si-
lence yearn to break free. I am reminded of
we have signed and which our two govern-
the famous passage near the end of Gogol's
ments have ratified and is now in effect. So,
"Dead Souls." Comparing his nation to a
there are many things still to be settled.
speeding troika, Gogol asks what will be its
You and we have had negotiators in Geneva
destination. But he writes, "There was no
for months working on various points of this
answer save the bell pouring forth marvel-
treaty. Once we had hoped that maybe, like
ous sound."
the INF treaty, we would have been able to
We do not know what the conclusion will
sign it here at this summit meeting. It is not
be of this journey, but we're hopeful that
completed; there are still some points that
the promise of reform will be fulfilled. In
are being debated. We are both hopeful
this Moscow spring, this May 1988, we may
that it can be finished before I leave office,
be allowed that hope: that freedom, like the
which is in the coming January, but I assure
fresh green sapling planted over Tolstoi's
you that if it isn't-I assure you that I will
grave, will. blossom forth at last in the rich
have impressed on my successor that we
fertile soil of your people and culture. We
must carry on until it is signed. My dream
may be allowed to hope that the marvelous
has always been that once we've started
sound of a new openness will keep rising
down this road, we can look forward to a
through, ringing through, leading to a new
day, you can look forward to a day, when
world of reconciliation, friendship, and
there will be no more nuclear weapons in
peace.
the world at all.
708
Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988 / May 31
Young People
know each other, there would never be an-
Q. The question is: The universities influ-
other war. And I think that of you. I think
ence public opinion, and the student won-
that of the other students that I've ad-
ders how the youths have changed since
dressed in other places.
the days when you were a student up until
And of course, I know also that you're
now?
young and, therefore, there are certain
The President. Well, wait a minute. How
things that at times take precedence. I'll
you have changed since the era of my own
illustrate one myself. Twenty-five years
youth?
after I graduated, my alma mater brought
Q. How just students have changed, the
me back to the school and gave me an hon-
youth have changed. You were a student.
orary degree. And I had to tell them they
[Laughter] At your time there were one
compounded a sense of guilt I had nursed
type. How they have changed?
for 25 years because I always felt the first
The President. Well, I know there was a
degree they gave me was honorary.
period in our country when there was a
[Laughter] You're great. Carry on.
very great change for the worst. When I
was Governor of California, I could start a
Regional Conflicts
riot just by going to a campus. But that has
Q. Mr. President, you have just men-
all changed, and I could be looking out at
tioned that you welcome the efforts-settle-
an American student body as well as I'm
ment of the Afghanistan question and the
looking out here and would not be able to
difference of other regional conflicts. What
tell the difference between you.
conflicts do you mean? Central America
I think that back in our day-I did
conflicts, South East Asian, or South Afri-
happen to go to school, get my college edu-
can?
cation in a unique time; it was the time of
The President. Well, for example, in
the Great Depression, when, in a country
South Africa, where Namibia has been
like our own, there was 25-percent unem-
promised its independence as a nation-an-
ployment and the bottom seemed to have
other new African nation. But it is impossi-
fallen out of everything. But we had-I
ble because of a civil war going on in an-
think what maybe I should be telling you
other country there, and that civil war is
from my point here, because I graduated in
being fought on one side by some 30,000 to
1932, that I should tell you that when you
40,000 Cuban troops who have gone from
get to be my age, you're going to be sur-
the Americas over there and are fighting on
prised how much you recall the feelings you
one side with one kind of authoritative gov-
had in these days here and that how easy it
ernment. When that country was freed
is to understand the young people because
from being a colony and given its independ-
of your own having been young once. You
ence, one faction seized power and made
know an awful lot more about being young
itself the government of that nation. And
than you do about being old. [Laughter]
leaders of another-seeming the majority of
And I think there is a seriousness, I think
there is a sense of responsibility that young
the people had wanted simply the people to
people have, and I think that there is an
have the right to choose the government
awareness on the part of most of you about
that they wanted, and that is the civil war
what you want your adulthood to be and
that is going on. But what we believe is that
what the country you live in-you want it
those foreign soldiers should get out and let
to be. And I have a great deal of faith. I
them settle it, let the citizens of that nation
said the other day to 76 students-they
settle their problems.
were half American and half Russian. They
And the same is true in Nicaragua. Nica-
had held a conference here and in Finland
ragua has been-Nicaragua made a prom-
and then in the United States, and I faced
ise. They had a dictator. There was a revo-
them just the other day, and I had to say-I
lution, there was an organization that-and
couldn't tell the difference looking at them,
was aided by others in the revolution, and
which were which, but I said one line to
they appealed to the Organization of Amer-
them. I said I believe that if all the young
ican States for help in getting the dictator
people of the world today could get to
to step down and stop the killing. And he
709
May 31 / Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988
did. But the Organization of American
powers are. And it can have no powers
States had asked, what are the goals of the
other than those, listed in that document.
revolution? And they were given in writing,
But very carefully, at the same time, the
and they were the goals of pluralistic socie-
people give the government the power
ty, of the right of unions and freedom of
with regard to those things which they
speech and press and so forth and free elec-
think would be destructive to society, to the
tions-a pluralistic society. And then the
family, to the individual and so forth-in-
one group that was the best organized
fringements on their rights. And thus, the
among the revolutionaries seized power,
government can enforce the laws. But that
exiled many of the other leaders, and has its
has all been dictated by the people.
own government, which violated every one
of the promises that had been made. And
The President's Retirement Plans
here again, we want-we're trying to en-
Q. Mr. President, from history I know
courage the getting back those-or making
that people who have been connected with
those promises come true and letting the
great power, with big posts, say goodbye,
people of that particular country decide
leave these posts with great difficulty. Since
their fate.
your term of office is coming to an, end,
Soviet MIA's in Afghanistan
what sentiments do you experience and
Q. Esteemed Mr. President, I'm very
whether you feel like, if, hypothetically, you
much anxious and concerned about the des-
can just stay for another term? [Laughter]
tiny of 310 Soviet soldiers being missing in
The President. Well, I'll tell you some-
Afghanistan. Are you willing to help in their
thing. I think it was a kind of revenge
search and their return to the motherland?
against Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was
The President. Very much so. We would
elected four times-the only President.
like nothing better than that.
There had kind of grown a tradition in our
country about two terms. That tradition was
American Constitution
started by Washington, our first President,
Q. The reservation of the inalienable
only because there was great talk at the
rights of citizens guaranteed by the Consti-
formation of our country that we might
tution faces certain problems; for example,
become a monarchy, and we had just freed
the right of people to have arms, or for
ourselves from a monarchy. So, when the
example, the problem appears, an evil ap-
second term was over, George Washington
pears whether spread of pornography or
stepped down and said he would do it-
narcotics is compatible with these rights.
stepping down-so that there would not get
Do you believe that these problems are just
to be the kind of idea of an inherited aris-
unavoidable problems connected with de-
tocracy. Well, succeeding Presidents-many
mocracy, or they could be avoided?
of them didn't get a chance at second term;
The President. Well, if I understand you
they did one term and were gone. But that
correctly, this is a question about the in-
tradition kind of remained. But it was just a
alienable rights of the people-does that in-
tradition. And then Roosevelt ran the four
clude the right to do criminal acts-for ex-
times-died very early in his fourth term.
ample, in the use of drugs and so forth? No.
And suddenly, in the atmosphere at that
[Applause] No, we have a set of laws. I
time, they added an amendment to the
think what is significant and different about
Constitution that Presidents could only
our system is that every country has a con-
serve two terms.
stitution, and most constitutions or practi-
When I get out of office-I can't do this
cally all of the constitutions in the world are
while I'm in office, because it will look as
documents in which the government tells
I'm selfishly doing it for myself-when I get
the people what the people can do. Our
out of office, I'm going to travel around,
Constitution is different, and the difference
what I call the mashed-potato circuit-that
is in three words; it almost escapes every-
is the afterdinner speaking and the speak-
one. The three words are, "We the people."
ing to luncheon groups and so forth-I'm
Our Constitution is a document in which
going to travel around and try to convince
we the people tell the government what its
the people of our country that they should
710
Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988 / May 31
wipe out that amendment to the Constitu-
lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, no,
tion because it was an interference with the
come join us; be citizens along with the rest
democratic rights of the people. The people
of us. As I say, many have; many have been
should be allowed to vote for who they
very successful.
wanted to vote for, for as many times as
And I'm very pleased to meet with them,
they want to vote for him; and that it is
talk with them at any time and see what
they who are being denied a right. But you
their grievances are or what they feel they
see, I will no longer be President then, so I
might be. And you'd be surprised: Some of
can do that and talk for that.
them became very wealthy because some of
There are a few other things I'm going to
those reservations were overlaying great
try to convince the people to impress upon
pools of oil, and you can get very rich
our Congress, the things that should be
pumping oil. And so, I don't know what
done. I've always described it that if-in
their complaint might be.
Hollywood, when I was there, if you didn't
Q. Mr. President, I'm very much tanta-
sing or dance, you wound up as an afterdin-
lized since yesterday evening by the ques-
ner speaker. And I didn't sing or dance.
tion, why did you receive yesterday-did
[Laughter] So, I have a hunch that I will be
you receive and when you invite yester-
out on the speaking circuit, telling about a
day-refuseniks or dissidents? And for the
few things that I didn't get done in govern-
second part of the question is, just what are
ment, but urging the people to tell the
your impressions from Soviet people? And
Congress they wanted them done.
among these dissidents, you have invited a
American Indians
former collaborator with a Fascist, who was
Q. Mr. President, I've heard that a group
a policeman serving for Fascist.
of American Indians have come here be-
The President. Well, that's one I don't
cause they couldn't meet you in the United
know about, or maybe the information
States of America. If you fail to meet them
hasn't been all given out on that. But you
here, will you be able to correct it and to
have to understand that Americans come
meet them back in the United States?
from every corner of the world. I received
The President. I didn't know that they
a letter from a man that called something
had asked to see me. If they've come here
to my attention recently. He said, you can
or whether to see them there-[aughter]-
go to live in France, but you cannot
I'd be very happy to see them.
become a Frenchman; you can go to live in
Let me tell you just a little something
Germany, you cannot become a German-
about the American Indian in our land. We
or a Turk, or a Greek, or whatever. But he
have provided millions of acres of land for
said anyone, from any corner of the world,
what are called preservations-or reserva-
can come to live in America and become an
tions, I should say. They, from the begin-
American.
ning, announced that they wanted to main-
You have to realize that we are a people
tain their way of life, as they had always
that are made up of every strain, national-
lived there in the desert and the plains and
ity, and race of the world. And the result is
so forth. And we set up these reservations
that when people in our country think
so they could, and have a Bureau of Indian
someone is being mistreated or treated un-
Affairs to help take care of them. At the
justly in another country, these are people
same time, we provide education for
who still feel that kinship to that country
them-schools on the reservations. And
because that is their heritage. In America,
they're free also to leave the reservations
whenever you meet someone new and
and be American citizens among the rest of
become friends, one of the first things you
us, and many do. Some still prefer, howev-
tell each other is what your bloodline is. For
er, that way-that early way of life. And
example, when I'm asked, I have to say
we've done everything we can to meet
Irish, English, and Scotch-English and
their demands as to how they want to live.
Scotch on my mother's side, Irish on my
Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we
father's side. But all of them have that.
should not have humored them in that
Well, when you take on to yourself a
wanting to stay in that kind of primitive
wife, you do not stop loving your mother.
711
May 31 / Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1988
So, Americans all feel a kind of a kinship to
waited for somebody to get in front and
that country that their parents or their
drive us. [Laughter]
grandparents or even some great-grandpar-
ents came from; you don't lose that contact.
[At this point, Rector Logunov presented
So, what I have come and what I have
the President with a gift.]
brought to the General Secretary-and I
That is beautiful. Thank you very much.
must say he has been very cooperative
about it-I have brought lists of names that
Note: The President spoke at 4:10 p.m. in
have been brought to me from people that
the Lecture Hall at Moscow State Universi-
are relatives or friends that know that or
ty. Anatoliy Alekseyevich Logunov was
that believe that this individual is being
rector of the university.
mistreated here in this country, and they
want him to be allowed to emigrate to our
country. Some are separated families.
One that I met in this, the other day, was
born the same time I was. He was born of
Toasts at a Dinner Hosted by the
Russian parents who had moved to Amer-
President at Spaso House in Moscow
ica, oh, way back in the early 1900's, and he
May 31, 1988
was born in 1911. And then sometime later,
the family moved back to Russia. Now he's
The President. Mr. General Secretary,
grown, has a son. He's an American citizen.
Mrs. Gorbachev, distinguished guests and
But they wanted to go back to America and
friends, it's a pleasure to host all of you
being denied on the grounds that, well,
tonight and to reciprocate, in a small way,
they can go back to America, but his son
the hospitality you lavished upon us yester-
married a Russian young lady, and they
day evening. While the General Secretary
want to keep her from going back. Well,
and I had already held three meetings
the whole family said, no, we're not going
before this one began here in Moscow, each
to leave her alone here. She's a member of
of those earlier encounters took place in the
the family now. Well, that kind of a case is
autumn. The days were growing short, the
brought to me personally, so I bring it to
weather ever grayer and colder. It makes
the General Secretary. And as I say, I must
for a bracing, delightful change to have this
say, he has been most helpful and most
meeting take place at the high point of
agreeable about correcting these things.
spring, a time of long, light-filled days.
Now, I'm not blaming you; I'm blaming
I know that Nancy found her springtime
bureaucracy. We have the same type of
visit to Leningrad earlier today both mag-
thing happen in our own country. And
nificent and moving. The play of light upon
every once in a while, somebody has to get
the rivers and canals added the special
the bureaucracy by the neck and shake it
splendor of the season to a city splendid in
loose and say, Stop doing what you're
any season. And everywhere, Nancy has
doing. And this is the type of thing and the
told me, there was a sense of history, espe-
names that we have brought. And it is a list
cially of Leningrad's immense courage and
of names, all of which have been brought to
sacrifice during the Second World War,
me personally by either relatives or close
surely one of the most stirring epics in the
friends and associates. [Applause] Thank
whole human story.
you very much. You're all very kind. I
Here in Moscow, I've been reminded a
thank you very much. And I hope I an-
number of times during this springtime visit
swered the questions correctly. Nobody
of a passage in a book about your country
asked me what it was going to feel like to
by Laurens Van der Post. Especially struck
not be President anymore. I have some un-
by the city's churches, Van der Post wrote
derstanding, because after I'd been Gover-
that when he caught his first sight of the
nor for 8 years and then stepped down, I
Moscow skyline he saw "the light of an un-
want to tell you what it's like. We'd only
usually pure evening upon it. That light was
been home a few days, and someone invit-
alchemical, and it transformed Moscow into
ed us out to dinner. Nancy and I both went
a city of gold. The tops of the spires and
out, got in the back seat of the car, and
pinnacles drawing the rigid forms of the
712
RNAL FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 1990
A Single Bullet
By MARK HELPRIN
the West-"now that Soviet threat no
many locked in de facto unification with
Most leaders who decide upon war do so
longer exists
accepts Mr. Gorba-
the Federal Republic, hell could break
amid what they report to have been the in-
chev's probity and permanence. American
loose as the NATO Germans suddenly dis-
eluctable compulsion of events with a life
intelligence appears to believe that he has
cover something for which they will lay
of their own. And when things get out of
replaced hostile elements of the armed
down their lives.
hand, it Is usually after a period of eupho-
forces. but the word on the street in Mos-
America faces these dangers with slo-
ria has masked the small signals of danger
cow is the opposite, and a noted Soviet par-
gans. Though "the end of history" and
that in later sobriety stand out with such
liamentarian told this newspaper in Sep-
"the peace dividend" make no more sense
melancholy force.
tember that "all the officers who support
than "tennis balls cause cancer" and "the
The lamps of Europe are burning bril-
perestroika have been discharged." In this
Arabian resuscitation." they are the intel-
liantly but out of control. Far too much
autumn of Eastern Europe, the Red Army
lectual foundation for habitual capitula-
rides upon Mikhail Gorbachev, for real
continued to speak its ancient language,
tionists who resent having to receive con-
power in the Soviet Bloc is still centralized
detaining American military observers and
cessions, because they are happy only
in him, and he alone holds back the per-
bayoneting tires, as if to signal that It is
when they are making them.
fectly intact mechanisms of repression.
not to be dismissed as an independent ac-
The facts suggest a major Soviet revanche
With no inkling of why Mr. Gorbachev
tor, and It is not. The KGB and the party,
with unpredictable consequences in and
may fall, they refuse to look closely at his
bent out of shape by Mr. Gorbachev, can
among the blocs. Not since Sarajevo or
crumbling economy, affronted military,
snap back.
Munich has so grave a peril been so unap-
slighted party and disintegrating empire,
The Soviet president will not magically
preciated by so many.
and seem to believe that the U.S., pros-
rid the military, the KGB and the party of
Though the press, intelligence agencies
institutional memory, because his infalli-
trate before the South Bronx, can pull
and shallow think tanks proffer triumpha-
these chestnuts from the fire with some
list analyses, this Is only because institu-
beltocentric puffery. Are these not the
tional needs take precedence over the
The Stalinists whom
same people who call the U.S. an impotent
blaze of individual genius and the simple
glant, who shrink at the thunder of Daniel
light of the truth, Institutional analysis
Mr. Gorbachev has
Ortega, and dare not set foot in Beirut? El
tells us that the shah rules the Iran that
stuffed into deep and un-
Salvador is too big a bite and should be left
conquered the Iraq that invaded the Saudi
to the locals, but the U.S.S.R. you do in the
Arabia that owns the America that, in the
pleasant buckets may
afternoon.
depression before the nuclear war, ran out
of resources just as President Dukakis vis-
burst from them as if shot
Vision is the word used by those who do
not comprehend what It is they do not have
ited Argentina, victor of the Falklands.
from a cannon.
to offer. Critics of President Bush's instinc-
And it tells us that Europe is safe.
tive caution, citing vision, have forced him
Consider nonetheless a short list of fun-
to compromise with negligence. One of the
damentals: the dissolution of the Soviet
bility is a wishful creation of the Western
"Wise Men" validating with his resume
Bloc, the centrifugality of the Soviet repub-
press: Though Mr. Gorbachev originally
America's insatiable desire to throw off its
lics, and the demise of the Soviet econ-
called for the dissolution of the blocs, he
burdens Is Robert McNamara, once a bur-
omy.
reversed himself when he saw what he had
den himself. Despite nearly undiminished.
A Red Line
wrought. Still, he says with baseless assur-
Soviet military capacity, he wants to cut-
ance that "the 1990s promise to become the
the U.S. defense budget in half. His reck-
Vadim Medvedev, the Soviet. Commu-
most fruitful period in the history of civili-
nist Party's chief of ideology, believes that
lessness is allowed the front page, as per-
zation," and I say that one must always
haps it should be, for as one of the chief-
divisiveness in Soviet society and seces-
question the probity and permanence of
sionist trends in the republics are enough
architects of both our gratuitous involve-
anyone whose stability depends upon in-
in themselves to cause "the end of peres-
ment in and unnecessary defeat by Viet-
creasing his velocity.
troika" and "our new role in the interna-
nam, Mr. McNamara should be closely
The Stalinists whom Mr. Gorbachev has
tional community." This is obviously a red
watched SO that the public may safely seek:
stuffed into deep and unpleasant buckets
the opposite of what he recommends.
line. and yet the country continues to
may burst from them as if shot from a
break apart not merely in protest of the
cannon. The smallest part of recent events
Gradually and Steadily
forced unity of natural differences but be-
in East Europe would have been, a short
Reduction of forces should be conceived
cause opportunity generates its own mo-
time ago, casus belli for the Soviet Union,
to take some strain off the Soviet economy
mentum.
justifying a full-scale Invasion. Moreover,
while neither imperiling Western defense
The Soviets are attempting to restruc-
the Soviets do not and cannot view German
(which a 50% cut obviously would) nor re-
ture a failed centralized economy by
reunification with America's careless indif-
quiring a change in the political structures
means of a centralized design-a strategy
ference.
It serves, for the preservation of NATO is
that needs no further comment-and they
Though the Franco-Prussian War and
essential not so much to meet contingen-
have no room for mistakes. no political or
two world wars were the result of heartfelt
cies as to deter them. The dissolution of
economic elasticity save their legendary
German ideals, slipshod European states-
empire in the East, the re-integration of
ability to suffer. If Western economies
manship. and unintended consequences,
Central with Western Europe, the diminu-
stumble in the near future. the privations
the Germans still believe that purity of In-
tion of orders of battle, and the shifting of
of economic transition in the East will be
tention can remake the world. The concert
alignments must occur gradually and
impossible to bear, in that the model for
of Europe that they wish to inspire Is not
steadily If they are to last and not turn
which the East has undertaken to suffer
impossible, but it is improbable, and ef-
shockingly bitter.
will appear, justifiably or not, to have been
forts to achieve it more often than not put
If perestroika succeeds too well, a clas-
an Illusion. Keep in mind that in the Soviet
disruptive strain upon the international
sic power rivalry will come into play, and
economy full employment comes first, and
system. This does not and will not matter
if It fails, ideological confrontation will rè-
that the national unemployment rate is
to them. for their ethos is not to under-
turn. What appears to some to be the con--
(unofficially) 17%. Mr. Gorbachev can
stand that the perfect Is the enemy of the
cert of Europe is merely a moment of re-
overcome all difficulties If he can deliver
good. but. rather, to pursue an ideal so
lief within a moment of hesitation. Because
the economy, but he cannot deliver the
tensely that it shatters.
half the continent is in thrall, the other half
economy.
They are at it again, having virtually
should seek gravity. stability and continu-
The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact is
unified. as daily reportage attests. The
ity. This means, among other things. rejec-
more acutely damaging to Mr. Gorba-
Schengen talks on European Community
tion of the premise and spur driving Mik-
chev's chances of survival than even the
open borders serve to query Bonn about
hail Gorbachev, who, to continue. must ac-
worsening consumer ice age over which he
reunification: and in refusing to control the
celerate. It means awakening to the falla-
presides. He was not helped when West
inter-German border, Bonn has stated its
cies of hope. It means that the policy of
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, on a trip
position unequivocally. If the counter-revo-
great nations and the fate of the West must
ostensibly to reassure the Poles, refused to
lution fails in the Soviet Union, either from
not be allowed to depend on the fortunes of
accept the immutability of the Polish-Ger-
lack of boldness or too much of it, the
one man alone, no matter how positive his
man border: Fundamental Soviet interests
counter-counter-revolutionaries may be ob-
effect, for If the fate of the West rests upon
guarantee that the rise of Germany will
sessed with German ascendancy and take
one man, it rests upon a single bullet.
force a reassessment of the disintegration
the plunge to reclaim strategic depth. The
of the pact and the loss of buffer states,
Brezhnev Doctrine did not die with Brezh-
and with reassessment may come a
Mr. Helprin is a novelist and political
nev. just as it was not invented by him.
change of personnel.
commentator. This is the latest of four ar-
Should a Soviet revanche include the re-
Nonetheless. conventional wisdom in
ticles that began in 1988 with "War in En-
repression of PA East Ger-
Thinking the Unthinkable
- 8 -
Q
Any independent information on Afghanistan about
what is going on there?
MR. FITZWATER: We don't have any information there that
can verify what's happening.
Q
Has the President, since we talked about this
yesterday, read Gephardt's speech? Do you have any reanalysis or
reappraisal of that point? (Laughter.)
MR. FITZWATER: Well, I don't know. That Gephardt. It's
hard to figure out what he's up to. I mean, the Soviet Union has
indicated that they don't want direct support. They have not made
economic reforms that would be able to use that kind of support.
Bill Bradley and other democrats, themselves, have said it would be
pouring money down a rathole. So, he's hard to believe. I mean,
it's like he's the Maxwell Smart of politics. (Laughter.) I mean,
can you believe he wants to raise taxes on the American people to
give money to the Soviet Union? I don't know what he's up to.
Q Oh, Marlin. (Laughter.)
THE PRESS: Thank you.
END
11:03 A.M. EST
#165/03-07
OBERLIN
January 10, 1989
Ms. Peggy Dooley
Old Executive Office Building, Room 111
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Ms. Dooley:
This is the paper on Communications Technologies by S. Frederick
Starr which you requested. As I mentioned it is included as a
chapter in a book on Soviet Science and Technology soon to be
published by the Harvard University Press in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Mr. Starr suggested that I might also include two
of his more recent articles.
If I can be of any further help, please do not hesitate to ask.
Sincerely,
Betoy young
Betsy Young
Assistant to the President
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
COX ADMINISTRATION BUILDING 201, OBERLIN COLLEGE
OBERLIN, OHIO 44074-1090
216/775-8400
FAX: 216/775-2460
TELEX: 3734492 OBRLN
ing in initiative, etc." Such people, he said, are incapa-
Feeling low at the Higher School.
ble of participating in a democracy.
The chairman of the "Department of Scientific Com-
munism" added a devastating historical dimension.
Down to the 1917 revolution, he argued, the Bolsheviks
were an illegal conspiratorial group with no notion at all
POOPED PARTY
of true democracy. Lenin's task after 1917 was to trans-
form this band of professional revolutionaries into a
democratic party. But as this early perestroika failed,
Lenin turned not to democracy but to the Chekha, the
notorious secret police. How can this anti-democratic
By S. Frederick Starr
failed reformer continue in his traditional role as na-
tional icon?
he Higher Party School in Moscow is to the Com-
T
Looming over this grim party was the memory of un-
munist Party what the Pontifical Institute in
told numbers of monstrous crimes, the full extent of
Rome is to the Catholic Church. Since Lenin's
which are only now becoming known to the Soviet pub-
day it has been codifying the Communist faith
lic. Who bears responsibility for this barbarism? The
and passing it on to new generations of leaders. So when
professors at the Higher Party School heard their rector
the scholars of the Higher Party School assembled on
draw a comparison between the U.S.S.R. and Hitler's
September 5 to debate "The Party and Perestroika," it
Germany. He went on to quote Karl Jaspers in defense
was an event worth noting. The meeting was confiden-
of the proposition that only by assuming full "metaphys-
tial, but a stenographer was there to record the proceed-
ical responsibility" for Stalin's crimes can today's Party
ings. Several participants were stunned by what they
hope to take responsibility also for the fate of perestroika.
heard and slipped a typescript to interested persons.
The text reveals that in the course of a few brief hours
hese are hardly the views one would expect from a
the Higher Party School all but declared bankruptcy.
The professors gathered amid profound gloom. An
T
senior official of a political party facing possible
humiliation at the polls in a few weeks. But the
economist estimated that it will take the U.S.S.R.
savage candor continued, with a young docent ar-
300 years to catch up with the United States in manufac-
guing that "if the people refuse to trust us, we have obvi-
turing and 600 years in agriculture. Professor Kuleshov,
ously earned it." Lest there be any doubt that disaster lies
a department chairman, spoke of maternity hospitals
just around the corner, the vice rector, N.M. Blinov,
without showers and toilets, clinics without medicine,
brought forward a recent survey showing that no more
and shops without goods. "I believe a worker [who sees
than five percent of voters would support candidates
all this] will not want to play around with definitions of
backed by the Party bureaucracy (as opposed to party re-
'capitalism' and 'socialism,' he declared. "He wants to
formers), and that Communists stand to be thrown out of
live in a society where people live well, regardless of what
office in two-thirds of the large cities of the U.S.S.R.
it calls itself. [He wants] a high standard of living, a de-
But what about Article VI of the Soviet Constitution,
gree of social justice, democracy, and humane social re-
which guarantees the Communist Party's "leading role"
lations. I doubt there is even one person in this hall who
in Soviet society, come what may? The rector assured his
would be so bold as to claim these exist in our country."
audience that today no mere law can guarantee a role for
The mood of crisis was general, but it focused partic-
the Party. A professor of industrial organization noted:
ularly on the Communist Party itself. One scholar spoke
"The experience of other socialist countries shows that
of "ritualized elections," another railed against the Par-
if the Communist Party tries to preserve [its privileges] it
ty's "totalitarian structure," and still another de-
will lose its leading role entirely."
nounced Soviet communism as "a social mutant with
Speaker after speaker took the podium to lay out a
many absurd and illogical structures." Secretive in its
path by which the Party could draw back from the brink.
operations and closed to public scrutiny, the Party "is
All called for an overhaul of the system, so that it might
not, strictly speaking, a political organization at all,"
actually reflect the views of workers. In planning this
announced the school's rector, V.N. Shostakovsky.
overhaul, the professors seemed to be guided not by
Speaker after speaker zeroed in on the Party's adminis-
Marx and Lenin, but by Max Weber, Talcott Parsons,
trative apparatus. Rigid and inflexible, this vast bureau-
and Claude Lévi-Strauss, all of whom they cited by
cracy serves not the people but itself; any ties with
name. The rector himself clinched an argument in favor
society are purely one-directional, from the top down.
of diversity of opinion by invoking the authority of "the
Perhaps, it was suggested, this isn't surprising, given
American founding fathers."
what the Party has to work with. The rector observed,
In defending their proposals, several speakers con-
"If one speaks of the type of [person who becomes a]
jured up likely scenarios. V.I. Mitrokhin, secretary of
Communist, about the typical member of our organiza-
the Institute's Party Committee, saw five possibilities:
tion, then one must acknowledge that
most are
the breakup of the Soviet Union into several dozen fully
conformists
ill-disposed to independence or non-
independent states; a federal system granting each re-
conformity, disinclined to criticize the leadership, lack-
public much control over its own fate; a humane form of
20 THE NEW REPUBLIC DECEMBER 4. 1989
socialism that "oul of political considerations" would
for the Communist Party, he asserted, is to become
not call itself either communist or socialist; capitalism;
"one of the bridges between civil society and the state."
or some combination of the above. Others posed the
So much for Lenin's heritage.
choice between driving the "radical" followers of
What bearing does this feast of iconoclasm have on
Andrei Sakharov and Boris Yeltsin out of the Party or
Gorbachev's reforms? Many speakers professed their
expelling the Party's traditionalist staff, the infamous
support for perestroika and Gorbachev. At the least, they
"apparal." No speaker accepted the radicals' seemingly
are willing to back him against the Party's own bureau-
unqualified embrace of individual interests as opposed
crats. However, the clear thrust of the entire exchange
to communal interests. Yet virtually all of them, includ-
at the Higher Party School was criticism of Gorbachev
ing several who submitted their statements in writing
on grounds that he lags behind the sentiments and
after the meeting, embraced the rest of the radical
needs of an increasingly democratic society.
program, including a multiparty system.
One speaker petulantly criticized Western writers for
But what about the middle ground, where Gorbachev
speaking of "Gorbachev's new thinking," when in fact
himself stands? As L. M. Ovrutsky, identified only as a
nearly all his ideas have been borrowed from others,
"publicist," put it: "The field of maneuver between the
and reluctantly at that. Dr. 1. M. Kliamkin, a guest from
conservative apparat and the radicalizing masses of Party
a related institute, ripped into Gorbachev on more
members is shrinking." In other words, the U.S.S.R. may
fundamental grounds. Citing chapter and verse from
soon have to choose between radicals and conservatives.
Gorbachev's speeches, he attacked the leader's unwill-
Many speakers called for full democratization, which
ingness to disengage the Party fully from the economy;
led them to try to define just what that would mean. On
if full disengagement is a "false thesis," as Gorbachev
many points, there was a surprising amount of agree-
claims, then "all talk of democratization is empty
ment. "Bottom up" democracy requires protection of
words." Kliamkin also criticized Gorbachev's conten-
minority rights; after all, the rector reasoned, minority
tion that private property is "unacceptable" in the
views are often "the most constructive and bold." All
U.S.S.R.; if so, the country will never have efficient light
wanted to throw the apparat out of the Party. (Even
industries or a functioning service sector. Above all,
though, as Ovrutsky acknowledged, this could give rise
Kliamkin took aim at Gorbachev's opposition to a multi-
to a separate party of neo-Stalinists and anti-Semites.
party system, claiming that the president's position on
The platform for such a party "already exists," he
this was more appropriate to the 20th (i.e., Stalin's)
warned without elaborating.) Once emancipated from
century than to the 21st.
its own bureaucracy, the Communist Party will then be
free to pull back from day-to-day supervision of the
1 is hard to convey in a few lines the mood of
government and of the economy. The speakers argued
that it is the failure of the economy above all that is
I
desperation that emanates from the stenographic
report of this discussion. The rector set the tone at
driving workers away from communism, and this failure
the beginning when he noted that "we fear terms
can be traced directly to oafish meddling by Party bu-
like 'political pluralism,' 'private property,' and 'con-
reaucrats, who have killed competition and destroyed
federation, but for some reason we don't fear the col-
the market mechanism.
lapse of the economy, crime waves, and moral erosion;
The importance and inevitability of political pluralism
nor do we fear the fact that everyone lives badly in our
was virtually taken for granted. Gorbachev has strug-
society except speculators and thieves." From this point
gled to confine the emerging pluralism to the Commu-
it was downhill all the way. N. I. Travkin, a deputy to the
nist Party, but, as several speakers agreed, this is no lon-
new congress, warned that "we are talking about the
ger possible. Other parties already exist, de facto if not
preservation in this country of a Communist Party as
de jure. A department head named I. A. Malmygin lame-
such. Will it justify itself or not?"
ly proposed that the Communist Party divide itself into
Toward the end of this solemn conclave of professors,
three new parties, red, orange, and green, and then
an elderly doorkeeper named Claudia Timofeeva asked
close up shop. Not one speaker held out hope that the
for the floor. She explained that she is a simple worker,
U.S.S.R. could remain a one-party system.
far from the world of learning. But she is loyal to the
Party, which she joined in 1942. She had listened with
his is precisely the point at which these solid
T
interest to all the talk of how the Party should evolve. But
members of the nomenklatura revealed their sym-
the plain truth, she asserted, is that "the Party today has
pathy for the radicalism of Yeltsin and Sakharov.
lost its authority. You hear this on every street corner."
As Shostakovsky put it, one-party rule con-
Presumably, the purpose of the meeting at the High-
demns the monopolist party to stagnation; the only way
er Party School was to reverse the erosion she de-
the Communist Party can now revitalize itself is through
scribed, to help the Party regain its authority. As news
the stimulation that comes from competition.
gets out on what was actually said, though, Party loyal-
Virtually every speaker understood that the U.S.S.R.
ists in Donetsk, Minsk, or Novosibirsk must surely feel
is groping toward becoming a "civil society" even
abandoned. But by then maybe no one will care.
though, as the rector acknowledged, the very idea of
civil society remains terra incognita for many Russians.
S. FREDERICK STARR is the president of Oberlin
The tempo of change is rising, however. The sole future
College.
DECEMBER 4, 1989 THE NEW REPUBLIC 21
THE
WALL
STREET
DECEMBER
19,
1989
Gorbachev's Slipping Grip
By S. FREDERICK STARR
barely be restrained.
absolutely clear their intention of moving
Nor is the movement to disestablish the
toward full sovereignty. Armenia. too. has
One week ago Mikhail Gorbachev beat
Communist Party confined to the non-Rus-
moved fast in this direction. The Azerbai-
back a move in the Congress of Peoples
sian areas of the Soviet Union. The coal
jan Popular Front has also raised the ban-
Deputies to consider the abolition of Arti-
miners who went on strike last summer
ner of sovereignty. as have several groups
cle VI of the Soviet Constitution. the clause
may have been hungry but their first de-
within the republics of Georgia. Moldavia.
which protects the Communist Party's mo-
mand was not for consumer goods but a
Uzbekistan and the western part of the
nopoly in politics. Among the supporters of
multi-party system. A few weeks ago a
Ukraine. This unsettles Russian settlers in
the motion was Andrei Sakharov. who died
new "Russian People's Front" was
these regions. Many Russian and other Sla-
three days later. while drafting a further
launched in the ancient Russian city of
vic immigrants to Moslem Central Asia
speech on the same issue. Mr. Gorbachev's
Yaroslavl. where representatives of eighty
have begin moving back home. and up to a
victory. his Soviet and Western backers
local popular fronts gathered to decry the
third of the Russians living in the Baltic
claim. frees him to sort out the country's
communists' opposition to pluralism. On
republics are expected to repatriate them-
economic mess. Reformist experts and
Nov. 20 a new "USSR All-Union Student
selves in the next few years.
technocrats will now be able to work their
Forum" issued a similar call for political
Far from seeing the efforts of the non-
wonders without the messy intrusion of
pluralism. as well as true self-determina-
Russian peoples as part of a worldwide
democratic politics.
tion for all the peoples of the Soviet Union
movement towards self-determination and
Such a view is wishful thinking. Mr.
and the unrestricted right is travel abroad.
popular sovereignty. many of Mr. Gorba-
Gorbachev had to make crucial conces-
In the same spirit. the Russian head of Ko-
chev's admirers in the West view them as
sions. On many occasions before now he
mosomol, the party's feeder organization
an irksome threat to the orderly process of
has declared that-the Communist Party's
for youth. has pleaded for the abolition of
change being fostered from the Kremlin. If
monopoly of power is non-negotiable. The
his group's monopoly status. to slow the
only the hotheads in the non-Russian re-
Soviet Union can have all the pluralism it
mass resignations now occurring.
publics would understand Mr. Gorbachev's
needs. he has argued. merely by permit-
At one level. the entire debate over the
intentions. It is argued. they would moder-
ting greater diversity within the commu-
constitutional protection of the commu-
ate their demands. But these movements
nists' vast organization. Mr. Gorbachev
has now had to permit the decriminaliza-
tion of alternative parties at least to be dis-
As long as independent political movements were
cussed. if only "at some later date. His
ideological chief. Vadim Medvedev. has
a cheering section for his faction in the party. Mr. Gorba-
also acknowledged that the subject of polit-
ical pluralism IS no longer "taboo."
chew egged them on. But he no longer trusts the public.
Only Three Votes
Had it not been for the large bloc of ex-
nists' monopoly of power is beside the
are not led by ethnic zealots-they are led.
officio members of party organizations in
point. De facto. other parties already exist
quite often. by communist reformers and
the Congress. Mr. Gorbachev would have
in every major city and republic of the So-
honest democrats who seek nothing more
viet Union. Some are devoted to environ-
than their own room in Mr. Gorbachev's
lost outright. A similar motion last month
mental issues. others focus on economic.
"common European home."
in the Supreme Soviet. the Soviet legisla-
ture's upper house. failed by only three
cultural or religious goals Sociologist Ta-
It is worth noting that the Lithuanian
votes. And that shm electoral margin ap-
tiana Zaslavskaya and other members of
parliament that denied the party its "lead-
pears doomed: Elections to local councils
Mr. Sakharov's "Inter-regional Group" in
ing force" role a week ago Thursday is
are impending. Article VI has become the
the Congress of Peoples Deputies still
still dominated by its Communist Party
great test issue everywhere. Numerous
claim It is premature to move toward es-
members. Their opposition to Article VI IS
polis. including one reported to the party
tablishing a separate party. Nonetheless.
eminently reasonable: If the Party insists
own Higher Party School. predict cataclys-
they are establishing newspapers. building
on retaining its legal monopoly of power in
mic defeat for old-line party candidates.
a funding base and setting up support or-
their republic it will lose everything. Only
Should this happen at the local level. it will
ganizations. indistinguist.able from those
by agreeing to play on a leve! field with
be impossible to hold the line in Moscow.
of an independent political party.
other parties can the communists hope to
Only a few days ago Mr. Medvedev
Given the surging numbers and growing
survive. Mr. Gorbachev offers no adequate
boasted smugly that Kremlin leaders
power of unsanctioned political groups in
response to this argument from his fellow
"don't have to act under the pressure of
the Soviet Union. why is Mr. Gorbachev
communists and reformers.
emotional public gatherings.' Strange
trying to hold back the tide? The answer is
Still less does he have a response to
words. When the Lithuanian parliament
that he no longer trusts the public. As long
those communists in the non-Russian re-
voted last week to remove Article VI from
as independent political movements were
publics who want to separate their parties
the constitution of that republic. the vote
simply a cheering section for his faction
from that of Moscow. for similar reasons
was preceded and followed by large and
within the party. Mr. Gorbachev gladly
of self-preservation. The Latvian commu-
emotional public gatherings. While Mr.
egged them en. Now that they have moved
nists have pointed out that communist par-
Gorbachev was meeting President Bush at
beyond him. he is trying to rein them in.
ties are more likely than any alternative
Malta, huge demonstrations against Arti-
Mr. Gorbachev champions change in order
party to retain links with Moscow, but that
cle VI took place in the Armenian capital
to save the Communist Party and its sys-
these non-Russian communists have no
of Erevan. The Armenian parliament
tem. not to destroy it.
chance-of winning at the polls unless they
seized the opportunity to drop both "So-
are both independent from Moscow's direct
viet" and "Socialist" from the name of the
For several years Mr. Gorbachev wor-
control and freed from the taint of monop-
Armenian Republic. Not to be outdone. the
ried mainly about the Stalinist opposition
oly created by Article VI.
Azerbaijanis also demonstrated for the le-
within the Party. Sensing an alternative
power base in the elective organs. he
Since Lenin's day. the Soviet Union has
galization of their Popular Front as a polit-
flirted for a year with the Congress of Peo-
nominally been a federation, but one ruled
ical party. as did supporters of the fastest-
growing political organization in the
ples' Deputies and the newly elected Su-
by a monopolistic Communist Party. As a
Ukraine, "Rukh." Most of the public meet-
preme Soviet. Then. as he lost the political
former regional party chief, Mr. Gorba-
ings and vigils associated with these
initiative to an ever more radicalized pub-
chev despises the Moscow-based minis-
moves have been peaceful. But not all of
lic. he cooled to popular sovereignty.
tries, whose mismanagement of the econ-
omy he believes has brought the country to
them. When a large crowd of young Molda-
To make matters worse. Mr. Gorbachev
ruin. So bitterly does he dislike the central
vians demonstrated outside party and mili-
must bear Russia's fatai heritage of em-
ministries that he has assented to the
tia headouarters in Kishinev. they could
pire All three Baltic republics have made
sweeping program for economic decentral-
ization worked out in Estonia and now be-
ing applied to several other republics.
But what is acceptable for the economy
is not yet deemed appropriate for the polit-
ical system. In his simultaneous defense of
economic decentralization and continued
political centralization Mr. Gorbachev ap-
parently hopes to distinguish the political
"superstructure" from the economic base.
It is highly unlikely that this astonishingly
un-Marxist ploy will succeed. The decision
this week to create for the first time a sep-
arate Communist Party organization for
the Russian Republic indicates that the
same breezes are blowing in politics as in
economics. and among Russians as non-
Russians. The result. whatever Mr. Gorba-
chev may wish. will likely be either a
looser federation or a confederation of
fully independent states.
Tradition of Federation
Is this an impossible dream? Not really.
for despite the Russian chauvinism that
first appeared in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Russia has far more of a tradition of
decentralization and even federalism than
many suspect. For more than a century
the czars permitted the entire Baltic area
virtual autonomy in legal and economic ai-
fairs. Many Russian thinkers have also
been drawn toward true federalism as an
alternative to their unitary empire. Rus-
sia's first revolutionaries. the so-called
"Decembrists" of 1825. wanted to break up
the empire into thirteen states. modeled af-
ter the new American federation. So popu-
lar was the idea of decentralized federal-
isn: at the time of the Bolshevik revolution
that Lenin had no choice but to adopt the
term into his program even as he sub-
verted its meaning
Today. groupings of loosely confeder-
ated states are being planned in many
parts of the world. notably Western Eu-
Most are built on the principle that
only those things which cannot readily be
accomplished by the local powers should
be assigned to the center. Totalitarian cen-
trainsm IS dying everywhere. but at the
same time modern communications and
trade are breaking down the idea that any
country can be an economic or political is-
land unto itself. Why should the Soviet Un-
ion be immune to these developments?
The Soviet radicals are right: the only
way the Communist Party can preserve a
significant role for itself is to compete
openly and actively with other legally con-
stituted parties. Once this happens. the
path will be open for whatever balance be-
tween autonomy and integration is desired
by the various peoples who now comprise
the Soviet Union. Mr. Gorbachev-and the
West as well-has more to lose if he at-
tempts to thwart this natural development
than if he permits it to take place. As
Marju Lauristin of the Estonian Popular
Front said on Tuesday. Article VI is "obso-
lete." Its deletion from the Soviet constitu-
tion is the sine qun non to the success of
the social and economic emancipation un-
derway in the Soviet Union today.
Mr. Starr is the president of Oberlin
College and a specialist on Societ affairs.
NEW COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES
AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE USSR
S. Frederick Starr
I. The Problem.
Few aspects of Soviet life today are untouched by change. Social
organization, administrative structures, basic principles governing the
economy, cultural values, and media of expression are all in the midst of
apparently fundamental transformations. The rapid pace at which all this is
occurring, combined with the participatory nature of the process, 1 suggests
that the very nature of change in Soviet life is changing.
Communications stand prominently among those areas undergoing
transformation in the USSR. Taking both the complex and simple technologies
into account, it is evident that in communications in general the USSR lags
far behind other advanced industrial societies, especially in computerization
but also, to a lesser extent, in telecommunications. 2 It is undeniable that
this lag holds great importance for the future. Yet to concentrate on it to
the neglect of other developments in communications, let alone of the
inevitability of eventual computerization in the USSR, is to severely
undervalue the changes that have occurred. Telephone, radio, television,
photocopiers, print journalism, audio and video cassette recordings,
automobile transport, international travel, and trans-border transmissions of
various sorts are among the many areas of Soviet communications in which rapid
development has occurred. The purpose of this essay is to identify those
changes and determine their likely impact on the political system.
A rich body of theoretical literature can be brought to bear on this
topic. As early as 1957 Karl W. Deutsch studied the process by which
communications stimulate the integration of societies. 3 Lucien W. Pye
subsequently presented a body of theoretical writings on Communications and
Political Development 4 Marshall McLuhan stimulated thought on the media as
such through "The Medium is the Massage, and literally hundreds of
writers have pondered the question, posed by Oswald H. and Gladys Gantey, of
whether the tendency of the new media is To Inform or To Control?
Nearly all of these writers tend toward deterministic views on the impact
of communications on politics. However, few bother to analyze closely the
question 7 of just how deterministic communications technologies might actually
be. Daniel Lerner offered an important caution on
this point in his essay "Toward a Communications Theory":
The mass media, as a distinctive index of the participant
society, flourish only where the mass has sufficient skill in
literacy, sufficient motivation to share "borrowed experience,"
sufficient cash to consume the mediated product
1
Many forces besides communications are fostering political change in the
USSR. Indeed, the capacity of that country to assimilate and exploit new
conduits of information is arguably as much the effect as the cause of change
in other areas of the society. Undeniably, communications and overall social
change are closely bound up with one another. At the least, developments in
communications are a good index of social transformations
We will therefore ask a range of questions, by no means all of which can
be answered conclusively. Is the Soviet communications system made up of
multiple simple systems, or is it moving toward fewer, more complex and
integrated systems? How interactive are Soviet communications? Are the new
technologies more readily controlled by the state than the old? Do they
protect or erode Soviet notions of national sovereignty? Above all, does the
evolution of communications foster vertical or horizontal human networks in
the USSR?
This last question, posed by Deutsch a generation ago, provides the
backbone of the following analysis. 9 It presupposes that autocratic and
authoritarian regimes one-sidedly develop vertical communication links
("transmission belts," in Lenin's phrase), while democratic societies require
elaborated horizontal networks, as well as vertical ones. These requirements
are not absolute, since all societies need multiple links in both directions,
and since both types of linkage are more fully developed in complex societies
than in simple ones. Our objective, then, must be to determine whether
vertical or horizontal integration is proceeding more rapidly in the USSR.
The evolution of communications in Western Europe and the United States
provide an inevitable context for such a study. Yet the level of development
in such countries is so far in advance of the USSR that comparisons minimize
the importance of incremental change on the Soviet side. To avoid this
problem, developments in the Soviet Union today will be presented in the
context of the earlier history of communications in Russia itself. The
initial section of this paper briefly characterizes that development over
several centuries. The proposed periodization lays great stress on the
exceptional character of the specifically Soviet phase of that process as it
has existed until recently. Against this background, it will be proposed that
in communications, as perhaps in other areas, current developments in the USSR
contribute principally to the strengthening of horizontal communication, and
hence foster the development of a civil society in that country.
2
II.
The Vertical Tradition of Tsarist Communications
Beginning in the eleventh century, written chronicles recorded and
standardized the deeds of Russia's church and state leaders. Because they were
maintained for centuries, chronicles systematized history over time; since
copies were made and preserved in various towns, the chronicles imparted
regularity to important data over geographical space as well. At the most
local level, village church bells provided a simple signal system, while in
the ancient Russian city of Novgorod birch bark "papyri" were employed to
document commercial transactions. The latter are particularly important as an
early example of non-governmental horizontal communication in society. The
fact that channels for such communication did not significantly expand until
the advent of modern technologies attests to the extent to which vertical
communication dominated in both Kievan Rus and Muscovy.
Movable type printing and hand-carved wood block broadsides (lubki), both
of which appeared in Russia in the sixteenth century, present an interesting
contrast of vertical and horizontal linkages. In Western Europe, as Marshall
McLuhan reminds us, moveable 10 type printing fostered for pluralism,
individuation, and autonomy.
The Muscovite state's exclusive patronage of
Ivan Fedorov, Russia's first printer, and its subsequent suppression of all
publishing outside of the central Printing Court (pechatnyi dvor) indicates
the very different function the same technology fulfilled in Russia. It is
revealing that one of the first uses to which moveable type printing was put
in Russia was not to publish locally edited Bibles for a literate public, as
occurred in Germany, but to issue authorized service books in great number so
that priests in the isolated parishes across the newly-conquered 11 Tatar areas
of the upper Volga basin would not fall into heresy.
Notwithstanding this
effort, freshly edited scriptural texts issued in the seventeenth century by a
handful of independent presses in the Ukraine gave rise to a major schism in
the Orthodox church. However, by the end of Peter I's reign these presses,
too, were muzzled and print technology limited to the dissemination of acts of
state, official documents, scientific treatises, and Orthodox Christian
liturgical books in forms approved by the state-church.
Contrasting to the state's domination of the "high technology" of
moveable type printing, independent firms in Moscow and elsewhere dominated
the "low" technology of wood block printing. Technologically primitive, lubki
by the late seventeenth century were nonetheless established as an important
conduit of horizontal communication in Russian society, disseminating the
first printed satires, 12 alphabet books, folk stories, popular religious tales,
and pornography.
Thanks to its technological simplicity and portability,
lubok technology was virtually uncontrollable and came eventually to flourish
in the very shadow of the Kremlin, at the Lubianka.
Postal service was established in the late-seventeenth century with the
help of Swedish and German experts. While postal messengers were able to
transmit letters between Moscow and Kiev or Arkhangelsk in something over a
week, their services were used exclusively by the court and bureaucracy.
13
By
contrast, the development of roads and canals facilitated
autonomous economic and social intercourse. Following the French pattern, the
Russian government established a state engineering school to prepare
3
specialists in bridge, road, and canal construction.
14
The canal system
begun by Peter I linked the major European Russian waterways and was designed
according to the needs of commerce at the time. Roads, by contrast, were
designed first to meet the state's 15 military needs, and only secondarily to
enhance private communications.
Typically, the first macadamized road in
Russia was built in 1816 by Count Arakcheev as a purely military venture.
Military considerations also figured large in Nicholas I's decision to
engage American engineers 16 to build the first railroad link between St.
Petersburg
and
Moscow.
The objective in this case was to move troops
quickly between the two capitals should further crises like the 1825
Decembrist revolt occur. To be sure, the first Russian railroad between St.
Petersburg and the Summer Palace had been privately constructed and the St.
Petersburg-Moscow line itself was built by foreign concessionaires.
Nonetheless, the state's deep suspicion of this new channel of communication -
- both Baron Toll, supervisor of the Directorate of Communication, and Count
Kankrin, the Minister of Finances, opposed railroads as "democratic" 17
assured that railroads would remain firmly under state control, if not
ownership. Military considerations figure large in the design of the rail
grid, even if the decision to use the broader American gauge was made to
facilitate speed rather than security, as is often claimed. 18 The slow
development of steamboat transport in Russia -- there were only 97 steam-
propelled crafts in 1850 19 -- can probably be traced to the disinterest of the
military in this technology and to the slow development of internal commerce.
No substantial and autonomous medium of communication developed in Russia
before the mid-nineteenth century. Pressed by a depleted treasury, Catherine
II had opened the door to private publishing in the 1760s. 20
But even the
nominally independent entrepreneur who responded to her call used mainly
state-owned presses and was subjected to heavy censorship. Further progress
was slow. When private printing began to expand in the early nineteenth
century, censorship laws were extended in order to regulate it. Moreover,
publishing devoting to lateral communication, e.g. private printing, remained
technologically backward. Whereas in Great Britain the first steam press had
been introduced by the Times of London, it fell to the tsar's 21 Ministry of
Internal Affairs to introduce that technology to Russia.
Thus, down to the mid-nineteenth century the Russian state provided the
main locus for technological innovation in communications. Naturally, its aim
was primarily to provide systems that met its own military and administrative
needs, and only secondarily to develop society locally or to link its
components horizontally. Suffice it to say that the Provincial News
(provintsialnye vedomosti) published by the government in each administrative
district were 22 conduits mainly for official information, much to the chagrin of
local society. Only when urban society itself began to develop in the late-
nineteenth flourish. century did pluralism and horizontality in communications begin to
4
largest circulation in Russia between 1900 and 1917.
29
The kinds of mass
entertainment literature that had earlier been produced only on broadsides now
spewed forth from presses in the form of penny newspapers and fugitive
journals, with little or no effective state control. 30 Only when local self-
governing councils (zemstva) tried to link horizontally their separate
printing activities 31 did the government intervene harshly by imposing strict
censorship.
In much the same way "societal organizations" today frequently
enjoy extensive freedom to publish but have only recently gained limited
rights to disseminate their magazines and journals beyond the immediate
district in which they are licensed.
The telegraph and telephone are among the nineteenth century's most
sophisticated new communication technologies and Russians played a prominent
role in the development of both. 32 P.L. Schilling, a German from Russia's
Baltic provinces, invented electric telegraphy before Morse; B.S. Jacobi in
1839 invented the "writing telegraph"; E.Ia. Slonimskii was the first to send
two telegraphic messages over the same line, in 1858; S.M. Berdichevskii-
Apostolovyi invented the first automatic telephone switch in 1895; and
Alexander Pavlov constructed a working radio telegraph in 1895. Russians had
also established the longest optical telegraph line in the world in the 1840s
and the longest telegraph line in the world, in 1871. 33
Notwithstanding these achievements in research, the practical development
of both telegraphy and telephones was retarded in Russia. Governmental
offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg could not communicate with one another by
telegraph at the time of the Crimean War, and in 1863 there were fewer than
three hundred telegraph stations in the entire empire. 34 As late as 1900 the
Russian telegraph 35 system was only half as long as Germany's and a third that
of England.
Again, the cause was a shortage of capital, which also accounts
for the decision to grant private telegraph concessions to the public.
Seeking to maintain control over what it did not actually own, the government
passed a telegraphic charter which imposed strict punishments against those
transmitting anything deemed threatening to life and health, and the death
sentence for telegraph agents who willfully violated the code. The
Directorate of Communications also hosted an international convention in 1875
which endorsed punishments against those transmitting across national borders
telegraphic messages "hostile to the interests of states, against the laws,
the social order, and morality. 36 By such means the state tried its best to
regulate strictly the individuating aspects of telegraphy, even when it did
not own the systems.
A similar process occurred with the telephone, but in the decades after
1880 in which that technology developed the 37 state was willing to allow
concessionary firms to dominate the field.
It was widely held that
privatization sped the development and lowered the cost of telephone services.
Such arguments no doubt served to justify the fact that the entire local
systems in Odessa and other cities were privately owned.
38
Railroads, telegraphy, and telephones developed in chronological
sequence. Comparing them, one notes the nationalization of railroads before
1913, the steady but not increasing role of the state in telegraphy, and the
prominent role of private and concessionary ownership in telephones. Besides
6
the growing privatization of their ownership, all three technologies
increasingly served horizontal communication in society. Usage soared when
semi-constitutional rule was instituted after the Revolution of 1905. Between
1903 and 1913 the number of telegraph stations grew by almost as much as it
had in the entire forty years previous, while the 39 number of telegrams
transmitted increased by an even greater figure.
Between 1900 and 1910 the
number of inter-city telephone lines quintupled, with still larger growth in
the following half-decade. 40 The new technologies assumed a role in the new
politics. The reactionary politician Konstantin Pobedonotsev listed his phone
number in the St. Petersburg directory by 1900 as did the newly-formed
political parties a few years later; during the revolutions of both 1905 and
1917 the public 41 at large used telegrams to communicate its demands to the
government. Private publishing also grew phenomenally in these years, the
number of titles nearly quadrupling between 1907 and 1913 alone.
42
A Yiddish proverb reminds us that "An example is not a proof.
Nonetheless, such instances, multiplied by hundreds, suggest the way in which
Russia's developing society seized upon new technologies to enhance both
horizontal communication among its members and vertical communication upward
from society to the state. The evidence does not permit us to ascribe the
rise of constitutional rule in Russia to a prior growth in horizontal
communications, nor does it prove the reverse. What is clear is that they
arose together before 1917 and that each fostered the other.
7
The result of these various policies was to restrict severely all areas
of horizontal communication. It is worth noting that this process was well
advanced even before Stalin's Cultural Revolution completed the task. The
growth of urbanization required an absolute expansion of communication
facilities in the 1930s, but the USSR ended that decade relatively even
further behind the West than ten years before. During the post-War era the
decline became absolute as well as relative. The number of both letters and
packages sent by Soviet citizens in 1950 was less than in 1940, while the
slight increase in inter-city telephone calls can be traced to official rather
than private use. By contrast, since the content of books and newspapers
could readily be controlled, their production was allowed to increase.
Along with controlling existing technologies of communication, the Soviet
regime tried to exploit new technologies to enhance vertical top-down
communication. Loudspeakers, introduced in the late-1920s, were well-suited
to this purpose and were produced in quantity. Lenin had a keen appreciation
for the potential of film, but insisted that this technology, too, be closely
controlled from above. Private filmmaking collapsed during the Civil War,
53
to be replaced by the State Film Agency (Goskino later Sovkino).
The Bolshevik government also seized on radio technology. Introduced
first by the Imperial Navy to improve communications during the Russo-Japanese
War, radio remained a military monopoly down to the revolution, by which time
there were twenty stations in Russia, all under the navy's control. By the
end of the 1920s there were nearly sixty stations 54 broadcasting in the USSR and
plans were afoot to build millions of receivers.
Authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century are said to lay special
importance on controlling and developing communications technology. This
certainly occurred in Hitler's Germany and in Mussolini's Italy.
35
Russia's
centralizing leaders, too, were determined to place the various new
technologies of communication in the service of their cause. Lenin and a host
of practitioners in various media developed an impressively detailed body of
theoretical writings to undergird their hopes. State control of existing
communications developed rapidly and steadily throughout the 1920s. New
technologies like radio, film, and loudspeakers were exploited to strengthen
the regime's ability to transmit messages downward to the populace. Such
potentially individuating technologies as private automobiles, international
telephones, and sound recordings were suppressed or limited. The result was a
thoroughly authoritarian and even totalitarian system of communications, in
which the state controlled both the conduits of information and the messages
carried by those conduits.
Acknowledging this, one cannot help but be struck by the relatively
primitive fashion in which the Soviet state developed and exploited
communications technologies. For all their monopoly in film, the regime's
filmmakers achieved far lower levels of public saturation than were achieved
by Hollywood or the leading studios of the major western nations. Not
surprisingly, Goskino was chronically under-funded and had to rely on receipts
from popular foreign films for its revenue. Moreover, there existed only 900
projectors 56 in the entire country in 1925, half of these being broken and hence
idle.
Only in the 1930s did the production and distribution of Soviet films
9
begin to meet public demand, and then only imperfectly.
Having gained a monopolistic position in radio, the regime again failed
to exploit its new position. Notwithstanding a 1932 plan to build fourteen
million receivers, only 3.5 million were in operation in 1937, or a mere
twenty-five receivers per thousand population. 57 A key retardant of radio
communications was the USSR's inability to produce vacuum tubes in the
quantities needed. As a result, production of popularly-priced models like
the EChS-4 (1934) and SUD-9 (1939) fell far short of targets. 58
This,
along with the desire to restrict access to the open airways, led to the
extraordinary development of cable ("wired") radios with fixed tuning to the
two official stations. As late as 1952 two out of three radio receivers in
the USSR were of this type, with fewer than six million wave radio receivers
available for the entire Soviet population.
59
Only in the technologically less innovative areas of book and newspaper
publishing did the regime achieve distinctively high levels of production.
Hence, Professor Peter Kenez did not exaggerate when he concluded that "Soviet
leaders had much to learn from Westerners in the field of mass communications
and almost nothing to teach them.
60
It is clear that state-dominated "top-down" communications were vastly
strengthened under Soviet rule, and at the expense of horizontal communication
in society. However, this was achieved as much through the vigorous
suppression of the latter as through the intensive development of the former.
It is striking that in the years between the Bolshevik Revolution and the
death of Stalin in 1953 Soviet citizens achieved no breakthroughs in
communication technology comparable to the earlier achievements of Jacobi,
Schilling, or Popov. Lacking them, a regime that placed great theoretical
emphasis upon communication became a consumer of other nations' technologies
rather than an innovator itself. This stands as clear evidence of the
relatively conservative record of the Soviet government in the field of
communications, its claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
It goes without saying that the content of messages transmitted over
the vertical media strongly supported the regime. However, two qualifications
must be introduced. First, a cursory review of the Soviet press and of Soviet
films of the 1930s and '40s suggests that while virtually nothing anti-Soviet
in character was transmitted, only a part of the production focused directly
on regime goals. Far from the relentless bombardment of propaganda
anticipated in Brave New World, much of the content was comprised of
ideologically bland and even unassimilable data. Second, at least as much
attention was devoted to what was not communicated as to what was. Stated
differently, Soviet communications policy under Stalin emphasized more the
suppression of data judged harmful than the effective dissemination of
positive messages. As in the communications system as a whole, far more
concern seems to have been devoted to the elimination of autonomous horizontal
channels than to the full exploitation of vertical channels. Closer
comparisons with fascist Germany would be instructive on this point.
10
For all the force Stalin devoted to suppressing horizontal
communications, he never managed to destroy the ideal of a more pluralistic
communications culture like that which had begun to appear on the eve of the
revolution. As soon as the harshest controls began to be relaxed in the 1950s,
horizontal channels of communication, both official and unofficial, came once
more to the fore.
11
V.
Toward a Horizontal Information Culture
The post-Stalin era has been the victim of hyperbole. Dubbed "The Thaw"
after the title of a novel written before any thaw had occurred, the early
years of dramatic change are said to have given way to torpor and
"stagnation," to use Mr. Gorbachev's self-serving term. In terms of social
change, however, the evolution was both more steady and more basic than either
supporters or critics admit. Collective farmers constituted almost half of
the population on the eve of World War II but had shrunk to a fifth by 1971, a
smaller percentage 61 than that constituted by members of the white collar
intelligentsia.
The number of post-secondary students soared, from 6.2
million in 1957-58 to 25 million in 1964-65.
62
Corresponding changes occurred
in the rates of literacy and urbanization as the population grew younger and
geographically more concentrated. Such shifts, accompanied by the USSR's
steadily improving technological capacity, prepared the way for a fundamental
change in social communications. The fact that the law governing
communications was extensively revised as early as 1954 suggests that leaders
themselves understood change to be impending.
63
As will be seen, changes in communications occurred both through the
addition of new technologies and the expansion and alteration of older
technologies so as to make them capable of fulfilling new functions.
Together, these shifts brought about a transformation far more extensive than
is evident by examining only the separate parts. On the one hand, they
extended and strengthened vertical channels of communication in Soviet
society. However, they also rendered those channels more interactive than
formerly and gave them a stronger role in horizontal communications. More
important, they vastly expanded the ability of individuals and groups to
communicate directly with one another, unmediated by the state. All of these
changes presupposed a reduction, albeit partial, of the Stalinist controls on
horizontal communications. As soon as these controls were cut back somewhat
in the 1950s, Soviet society showed itself eager to exploit existing and new
technologies of communication, as indeed it has ever since.
We will consider the implications of these changes for the Soviet polity
in the concluding section of this essay. For now, let us review the elements
contributing to the new horizontality of Soviet communications.
A.
The Expansion and Alteration of Old Technologies
The Soviet postal system provides a good example of the impact of social
change on communications. Between 1940 64 and 1974 the number of letters grew
from three to nine million per annum.
The number of packages quadrupled in
the same period. Most of this expansion was concentrated in the late 1950s
and early 1960s, coinciding with 65 a phase of rapid urbanization, increased
literacy, and greater openness.
Increased efficiency also stimulated public
use of the mails. Today, when sixty percent of Soviet mail is shipped by air,
the volume of letters has grown SO 66 rapidly as to cause a shortage of postmen
and an increase in postal theft.
12
Communication by telephone has also soared. Twice the number of new
phones were installed between 1965 and 1974 as between 1940 and 1965, with the
number of urban telephones trebling in the period.
67
Nearly all the new urban
phones were automatic and thus increased privacy. Today there are 24 million
telephones in the USSR, half the total being in urban apartments By
contrast, only two million private rural residences have phones. 68 The nearly
two billion intercity calls made annually today and the seven-fold increase of
international calls in the decades 69 before 1974 attest to rapidly changing
public access to this medium.
As the USSR became less of an "information poor" society, the content of
communications grew less readily controllable. The sheer growth in the number
of phone calls makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the state to monitor
their contents, just as the quantity of private mail has rendered it
impossible for the KGB to maintain former levels of surveillance over that
medium. It is no surprise that persons in many fields as early as the 1970s
came to regularly use both domestic and international telephone lines for
unofficial and purely personal purposes. Among such users were those with
agendas different from the state's. As one student of the subject put it,
The international telephone, despite continued control that amounts to
persecution, has given Russia's dissidents the means for immediate
direct contact with the outside world, 70 something quite unthinkable not
much more than twenty years ago.
The growth of mail and telephone usage facilitated horizontal
communication. The rapid growth of publishing and the press, by contrast,
benefitted both vertical and horizontal linkages. The number of periodicals
nearly doubled between 1958 and 1965, 71 with Pravda
going from a four-page format to six pages in 1970. The central press grew
with particular speed, with nearly all major Moscow 72 newspapers being printed
simultaneously in thirty-five cities by 1966.
If such changes served uniformity and "top-down" communication, other
changes in traditional print media enhanced interaction. The much-heralded
rise of "letters to the editor" columns indicate that Soviet newspapers were
becoming vehicles for interactive communication from bottom to top, providing
feedback to the government in the process. Moreover, the appearance of job
ads, lonely hearts announcements, and other forms of personal notices in
various local newspapers reflect the public's growing interest in exploiting
traditional print technology to enhance horizontal linkages among individuals.
Radio, too, gradually became more interactive. Rare is the student of
Soviet affairs who cannot regale friends with a few "Radio Armenia" jokes.
Few pause to realize these have their origin in programs begun in the 1960s in
which listeners were invited to call in their questions. Such programs, aired
on most Soviet domestic stations, constituted the first sign of "bottom-up"
use of the vertical medium of radio, and provide the same kind of feedback to
the regime as letters columns in newspapers.
So much has been written about the USSR's failures in the mass
dissemination of personal computers that it is easy to forget the dramatic
13
increases that have been registered in many other electronic media of
communication, 73 particularly in the 1960s. Nowhere is this more striking than
in radio.
For all the emphasis on top-down communications in the Stalin
era, there were 74 only 17.5 million radios in the entire USSR in the 75 year before
Stalin's death.
By 1968 this number had risen to 89.5 million.
While the
ratio of cable to wave radio in 1952 had been approximately 2:1, by 1968 the
ratio slightly favored wave sets.
The proliferation of wave radios in the population at large during the
1960s made it all but inevitable that the public should become interested in
receiving international as well as domestic broadcasts. Short wave
transmissions had greatly multiplied since the early 1950s, with stations in
the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Iran
beaming broadcasts to the USSR. Receivers capable of tuning in such
broadcasts were constructed in large numbers by amateurs, while others were
imported unofficially through diplomatic channels. Transistors enabled such
equipment to be miniaturized during the 1970s and made it readily importable
through informal channels. By the end of the 1960s Radio Liberty could claim
that 27 million radios in the USSR were capable of receiving its broadcast.
76
Even if this figure is exaggerated, as seems likely, the number was great
enough for the Soviet government to decide that it should itself manufacture
such equipment so at least to co-opt what it could not control. Selective
jamming limited access to certain foreign transmissions, but the manufacture
of short wave radios indicates the government's acceptance of trans-border
broadcasts as an unavoidable feature of modern communications.
B. The USSR's Mixed Record in New Major Technologies of
Communication
No less important than the expansion and transformation of existing
channels of communication are the major new media introduced in the past
twenty years. Among these, television is the most prominent. Developed by a
government confident in its ability to control the social impact of the
medium, Soviet television burgeoned quickly 77 expanding from 2.5 million sets
in 1958 to 30 million sets a decade later.
By the end of the 1970s
television was all but universal in Soviet households. During the decade
ending in 1974 the number of transmitters trebled. 78 Cable television, by
contrast, has made very slow progress in the USSR, partly because it requires
such great investments but doubtless also because it introduces a greater
element of choice than the government is yet prepared to reckon with. 79
That
the latter consideration is significant is suggested by the fact that the USSR
did not shirk from the large investment required to transmit its few channels
by satellite, which it has done since 1967.
80
In contrast to the Soviets' wholehearted acceptance of television, their
attitude towards the private automobile has been more ambiguous. On the one
hand, production grew from 64,000 cars in 1965 to over 1.3 million in 1982,
and would have grown still more had the Kama River Truck Works not gobbled up
more than half 81 the rubles designated for the motor vehicle industry in the
late 1970s.
On the other hand, retail prices were set extra-ordinarily
high, and were only reduced in 1985. 82 Frequent articles in the press have
14
warned of the negative social impact of private automobiles, leading to
charges that more than simple inefficiency lies behind the refusal of
ministries to provide the necessary infrastructure for private automobile
owners. Only in 1984 did the government announce plans to increase the number
of gas stations for private cars from 1200 to 3000. 83 However,
this
more
positive attitude has since spread rapidly, extending to the expansion of
partial 85 credit programs for car-buyers, 84 reductions in the prices of certain
models,
86 and even to discussions of possible sports cars for Soviet
citizens.
Since the retarded growth of computerization in the USSR has been widely
discussed in the western press, it is not necessary to repeat the story here.
Suffice it to say that while microchip technologies have made substantial
progress in the military sphere and in certain areas of industrial planning,
they have made little headway at the crucial level of desktop personal
computers. With no modems, few printers, and inferior floppy disks, this
situation in the USSR will not change rapidly. 87 Networking of all sorts is
proceeding slowly at best, 88 even though a system linking institutes of the
Academy of Sciences in three cities is now in place.
The introduction of a single "gateway" for all computerized data entering
the USSR reflects the government's concern to control information transmitted
for use by this new medium eighty percent of all data bases, after all,
originated in the US. 89 Resistance to demand-based systems stems from a
similar concern to maintain at least some central control. However, the
adherence of the USSR to international architectural standards in computing,
the rapidly declining costs of transmitting data within the USSR, 90 along with
the great and positive publicity given to the interactive nature of the
Academy of Sciences' new network, suggests that an environment more hospitable
to the computer revolution is beginning to emerge, albeit slowly. Even the
ideal of a single "gateway" in Moscow for computerized data from abroad may
prove so clumsy or so difficult to enforce that it will eventually have to be
abandoned.
The record of the USSR in adopting the major communications technologies
of private automobile, television, and computing is mixed. Television, the
most vertical and hence controllable technology, has progressed most rapidly,
while the private automobile and personal computer have made only slow
advances, development of the former having been retarded by more than half a
century and the latter by at least a decade. Yet this is not to say that the
advance even of these technologies will be permanently thwarted. The Soviet
government has officially committed itself to rapid advances in both
automobile and computer production, which will have the effect of stimulating
public demand. In the concluding section of this paper it will be argued that
such demand is becoming increasingly difficult to resist.
C. The Inexorable Advance of New "Small" Technologies
No journalistic account of Soviet life today seems complete without tales
of VCRs, home movies, and black market audio and video tapes. Rarely, though,
do such accounts go beyond the level of anecdotes. Yet the "small
15
technologies" of the past generation are uniquely suited to foster horizontal
communications, just as film, radio, and loudspeakers represented new means of
facilitating vertical communications in the 1920s and 1930s. The history of
such "small technologies" dramatically highlights the fundamental changes
occurring in Soviet communications over the past decades.
The rise of such minor technologies as home photography, cassette
recording, ham radio, and video cassettes share certain common features. All
benefitted greatly from public demand, which in turn was stimulated by the
public's knowledge of how the given medium was being exploited abroad. All
gave rise to simple networks of officianados, and all became the object of
official efforts at co-optation. Eventually, all gained legitimate places in
Soviet society as a whole. To see these patterns in action, let us review
more closely the copying and transmission of static visual images;
reproduction of sound; and the replication of movie images.
Various stencil, xerography, and ditto systems existed in the USSR prior
to the 1960s. All were considered printing presses in law, however, and hence
could not be owned privately. In practice, access to stencils was widespread,
and materials as diverse as music and architectural drawings were being
unofficially reproduced for select private audiences as early as the mid-
1950s. As is well known, the USSR maintains strict controls over all xerox
machines, including the cumbersome domestically-produced models. However, in
the 1960s and 1970s a number of samizdat publishers in various fields gained
access to such machines, and used them extensively. The example of the
Voronezh engineer Iurii Vermenich is typical, in that he succeeded in
reproducing translations 91 of several dozen books on jazz on primitive machines
owned by his institute.
Many voluntary (obshchestevnnye) organizations beginning in the late
1960s gained official permission to issue informal newsletters and magazines
for local distribution; most of these publications, such as the Leningrad
quarterly Kvadrat, were reproduced on photocopying machines. The independent
Ukrainian journal Ukrainsky visnik and the religious journal Vybor are both
reproduced in the same semi-legal fashion today.
Attempts to control access to xerox machines have failed to repress the
demand for horizontal print communication. Private photography was always
available to fill the gap. An article in the autonomous journal Svobodnaia
mysl in 1971 presented detailed instructions on how inexpensive and widely
available 92 photographic equipment could be used as a surrogate printing
press.
Such techniques were made readily accessible by the excellent and
inexpensive single-lense reflex cameras manufactured in the USSR with
equipment taken from the Zeiss factories in Jena, the Zenit-E being the model
of choice for unofficial printing on account of its high close-up resolution.
Negatives were easily transmitted by mail and could be read with the help of a
lense for viewing filmstrips available in children's stores for 35 kopeks.
Countless manuscripts, reports, poems, lyrics and other documents were
independently transmitted throughout the USSR by this means.
The spread of radio stimulated interest in recording. Wire recorders
were manufactured in the USSR in the 1940s but were rarely available to
16
private citizens. Instead, amateurs constructed simple machines capable of
recording sound or the emulsion of discarded x-ray plates. Such recordings
were of poor quality and had a short life expectancy but had the double
advantage of being inexpensive and readily transmittable through the mails.
By the early 1950s this "Roentgenizdat" was widely exploited for recording
both music and voice, leading eventually to a 1958 law making it illegal "to
produce home-made records of the criminal trend. 93 Meanwhile, Soviet-made
open reel tape recorders appeared in the 1950s with the large El Fa-6 model,
which was followed before 1960 by the lumbering Dnepr-3 and Spalis models.
More compact foreign-made cassette machines entering the country in great
numbers in the early 1960s forced the authorities to choose between losing all
control over the technology or attempting to co-opt it by producing a home-
grown portable product. They chose the latter course. Sales of Yauza series
tape recorders reached half a million by 1965 and over one million by 1970.
94
The social impact was enormous. The late Anatolii Kuznetsov described the
situation:
Soviet ideological organs, busy in the field of radio production
completely failed to pay attention to such a seemingly innocent
technical branch as the production of tape recorders. A demand
existed and it was satisfied, and when at last ideological firemen
discovered the catastrophic breakthrough, it was too late. Now it is
a rare home without a tape recorder, 95 and an evening party or get-
together without one is unthinkable.
Cassette tape recordings, shipped through the domestic and international
mails, provided a channel of horizontal communication that was at once
inexpensive, legal, and virtually beyond control. Ham radio operators seized
upon another means of sound transmission that was 96 equally efficient, equally
inexpensive, and nearly as difficult to control.
It is estimated that there
were up to twenty thousand licensed radio amateurs in the USSR in the late
1960s. According to Gayle Hollander, the number of illegal operators
increased dramatically in the 1960s, when a do-it-yourself handbook for
amateur radio operators was published. While details of this medium are
lacking, it is known that ham radio operators in the Ukraine warned of the
Soviet troop build-up on the eve of the Czech invasion of 1967, that hams in
the Ukraine spread lurid reports at the time of the Chernobyl disaster and
helped force the government to release authoritative information, that a ham
operator in Vilnius was given three years incarceration in the early 1970s,
and that 97 more than a thousand hams in the Donetsk region were detained in
1974.
Photography, tape recording, and ham radio were all exploited by Soviet
citizens to create more adequate horizontal conduits for information than
official media could provide. Much the same process is going forward today
with video cassette recorders. Great quantities of these inexpensive and
compact instruments were being unofficially imported into the Soviet Union by
the late 1970s. Crew members of a Soviet cruise ship that made frequent stops
in New Orleans were known to purchase several hundred VCRs at a time from
dealers in that city, to be resold on the Odessa and Leningrad black markets.
Dubbing machines, essential if the medium is to respond to market demands,
were bringing 1000 rubles at Riga commission stores visited by the author in
17
September, 1986.
What Izvestiia terms the "currently fashionable passion for videotapes"
led police in Riga to confiscate 415 imported and domestically-produced videos
depicting "cruelty, violence, mysticism, and superstition" that were being
shown by independent operators to paying audiences of local students. The
operators of this library were charged under an article of the Latvian civil
code that banned the distribution of videotapes "harmful to the state or to
public order, health, or morals
98
The analogous law in the Russian
Republic was invoked 99 to punish a Moscow piano teacher caught trading in video
tapes and equipment.
VCRs by 1986 had spread so far that it would have been impossible to
reign them in completely. Instead, the government limited its intervention to
co-opting the medium and policing its most objectionable excesses.
100
The
worst danger lay in the seemingly uncontrolled nature of trans-border
communications. Dish receivers have until recently been all but nonexistent,
and any that might find their way into private hands could easily be
controlled. Video tapes, by contrast, are as disrespectful of national
borders as audio cassette tapes. Because they are so readily imported,
reproduced, and disseminated, they effectively destroy the state's autarkic
control over both television and film production.
101
Whether or not Soviet
citizens produce their own original videos, the exercise of independent choice
over what is imported and disseminated creates a kind of video samizdat. It
is for this reason that the Soviet government began producing its own
"Elektronika VM-12" VCR. Reportedly costing from twelve to fourteen hundred
rubles, the Soviet machines may be less expensive than imports but have the
overriding disadvantage of being unable to play standard western tapes without
modification. It is doubtful that more than 10,000 Elektronika VM-12 units
had been manufactured before the end of 1986.
102
A second attempt to preempt the video import boom was the decision in
1985 to produce large numbers of video cassettes in the USSR. Manufactured at
the same Elektronika plant in Voronezh which produced the VM-12, the Soviet
video cassette library consists mainly of mainstream popular music (Pugacheva,
Vysotskii, etc.) and old films, mainly Soviet. By the end of 1985 the library
included 450 titles which were distributed mainly at electronic stores in such
ports of entry as Riga, Moscow, Odessa, and Tallinn, where the black market in
foreign tapes was most active. Production remained low, however, because the
only source of tape was the Soviet film industry (Soiuzkinofond), which
jealously hoarded all videotape to meet its own needs. 103 Moreover, the Soviet
press candidly admitted that many customers were buying the local product
solely to re-record imported films and programs for their own use.
104
No
wonder that private video traders have concluded, as the official press
acknowledges, 105 "that, for the time being, there is no threat of
competition.
With the exception of audio tape recording, all of the "small
technologies" of communication that have appeared in the USSR remain by
western standards, fairly limited in their reach. Yet together the VCRs, ham
radio stations, audio cassettes, photographic labs, and xerographic machines
touch the lives of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. Responding to market
18
demand, these media have expanded rapidly in recent years and will doubtless
continue to do so. Inevitably, this produced a strong reaction in the form of
efforts to co-opt and control. None of these attempts have met with success,
however, for the "small" technologies are too decentralized for their use to
be more than marginally shaped from above.
D.
Toward an Information Revolution in the USSR
The USSR's stagnant economy, coupled with its stumbling approach to
personal computers, have caused observers there and in the West to conclude
that in the 1970s and 1980s it missed out on the information revolution. The
foregoing overview of the expansion and transformation of old technologies,
the emergence of major new large-scale conduits of information, and the rise
of small technologies suggests this generalization is overstated. However
stagnant the Soviet economy as a whole, the realm of communications has been
steadily, radically, and irreversibly changed those otherwise stagnant
decades.
To be sure, different groups and regions of the USSR have sharply
different levels of access to the transformed or new media. As has been
noted, urban families 106 are three times more likely to have telephones than
rural families,
while major cities and international points of entry have
far greater access to new communications than secondary and interior cities.
Overall access to public media correlates closely with the differing level of
economic development among the republics.
Whatever their unevenness, the changes are profound and show every sign
of continuing. Repeated statements by Gorbachev from his arrival in office
heralded his hope of increasing investment in telecommunications and
computing. Moreover, there is ample evidence of a suppressed demand for
communications so great that it can scarcely be avoided. Twelve million
citizens were waiting for telephones to be installed in their homes in 1985,
with a quarter million more waiting to receive long distance service. 107 The
total of twenty-five million civilian phones in the Soviet Union compares with
170 million for the less populous United States, suggesting that even the
addition of twelve million more phones may eventually not be enough.
108
With
only thirty-two automobiles for every thousand Soviets, as compared with 471
for Americans and nearly the same ratio for West Germans, there is a clear
likelihood that demand in that area, too, will continue to rise. 109
Only in
computing has the Soviet state escaped market demand, and this is bound to
change as a core of civilian computer buffs is formed.
Together, these many changes are beginning to create a horizontal
information culture in the Soviet Union, supplementing but not replacing the
vertical structure inherited from the Stalin era. At the same time, that
vertical structure itself is being revived and altered as more messages flow
both downward and upward through it and as the number of interactive or
feedback elements increase. Indeed, one of the most important innovations
that can be traced directly to Mikhail Gorbachev is the infusion of new
vitality into the heretofore moribund sphere of vertical communications, both
downward and upward.
19
Needless to say, strengthening of horizontal communications has evoked
concern in some quarters. Mr. Chebrikov of the KGB denounced the exploitation
of Soviet citizens by foreign media conspirators, 110 while he and other Soviet
commentators have singled out as evidence of such manipulation the nationalist
demonstrations held in the Baltic republics in June, 1987, as well as the
larger protests in Armenia and the Baltic states in the first half of 1988. 111
To check such untoward occurrences, Stalinist traditionalists mounted efforts
to influence the drafting of new laws so as 112 to limit the right of assembly and
suppress independent publications as well.
Compared with the extraordinary tenacity and initiative shown by Soviet
citizens seeking greater access to modern communications, however, such
accusations and measures seem quite tame, mild rearguard actions rather than a
serious campaign of suppression. The failure of efforts to maintain the old
controls raises the question of whether horizontal communications could
actually have been suppressed in the late 1980s? Of course they could, but as
we will see, only at a very high price. For now, it is worth noting that the
Gorbachev government through 1988 took no drastic measures against any medium
deemed subversive, even though it moved against single publications in several
instances. Until the government makes such a counter-threat and until it
succeeds, it is reasonable to conclude, first, that a kind of communications
revolution is under way in the USSR; second, that that revolution is modifying
the received communication culture by stressing horizontality and interaction
among and across levels where "top-down" verticality once reigned
unchallenged; and, third, that the new communications order in the USSR
benefits from the government's acquiescence, if not approval.
20
VI.
TECHNOTRONIC GLASNOST" AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE USSR
The Soviet newspaper Literary Gazette in 1987 carried a long article on
"The American and the Computer," in which the author charged that Americans
want nothing better than for the USSR to wallow in the same "technotronic
openness" (glasnost') that exists in the United States. 113 Information,
he
admitted, is power. For the USSR to suspend all controls on information would
be to weaken the country for no better purpose than to satisfy the demands of
Americans. In spite of such grumbling, a kind of "technotronic glasnost"
already exists in the Soviet Union and will have profound implications for the
political culture of that country.
We have characterized this new information culture in terms of the rise
of horizontal links and systems. While acknowledging that vertical conduits
not only continue to exist but have been strengthened by new technologies and
the new leadership, we have stressed the relatively greater impact in the USSR
of the new horizontal communications in recent years. In many ways this
recalls the situation in late nineteenth century Russia, when fresh
technologies also stimulated horizontal communication within society. Today's
developments in horizontal communication outstrip those of the past both in
the diversity of new channels and in the number of people affected. It is
therefore important to evaluate the impact of these developments on political
life. This impact can be detected in at least six areas.
A.
Privatized Information Stimulates the Formation of Public
Opinion.
Far more information is available to the Soviet public than ever before.
The public's capacity to acquire, preserve, and transmit information has grown
sufficiently to enable one to speak of at least partial privatization in this
area. Stated differently, improved horizontal communications and advances in
education have almost certainly increased the percentage of all Soviet
information that is now generated outside the Party and state and circulating
freely in society.
This means that the regime must reckon with more numerous and more
diverse sources of inputs than formerly. At the least, this more pluralistic
situation places greater burdens on "the attention-giving, information
processing, and decision-making capabilities of administrators, political
elites, [and] legislatures. "114 No wonder that in 1988 the Gorbachev
government moved to establish two new institutes for the systematic study of
Soviet public opinion.
B.
Information in the Soviet Union is Increasingly
Internationalized.
Both high and "small" technologies foster communication across the
borders of the USSR. This is true of both unofficial and official channels.
At the level of popular culture, contraband songs by the emigres V. Tokarev
and A. Rozenbaum gained great popularity even during the late Brezhnev era
through tapes widely distributed at sanatoriums and vacation spas.
115
21
Similarly, nearly forty percent of all films showing in the provinces are
foreign-made, while the percentage of VCR films from abroad is even higher.
116
Telephone calls, letters, and trans-border radio all attest to this
internationalization of information.
A century-and-a-half ago, the notorious French traveller, the Marquis de
Custine, wrote that "the political system of Russia could not survive twenty
years' free communication with the west of Europe. 117 Clearly, de Custine's
observation overstates the case today. But if the regime has survived greater
trans-border communication, it has increasingly to respond to information from
abroad, the importation of which it can no longer control. No longer willing
to pay the price necessary fully to control international conduits, the state
attempts merely to minimize the negative impact of the information they
convey. Implicitly, it acknowledges that the internationalization of
information is inevitable.
C.
Communications Technology Induces Individuation and Turns
Subjects into Citizens.
Much has been written about the way cassette recorders, VCRs,
photography, and other "small" technologies not only privatize communications
but individuate the communicators. Such individuation is one of the strongest
currents in Soviet society today, and helps explain phenomena as diverse as
the rising prestige of careers in writing and the burgeoning fashion industry.
Existing "small technologies" in the USSR foster individuation because
they enable people to exercize choice of the oral and visual sources from
which they draw information. Desk top personal computers have the same impact,
since they enable people to choose and, if necessary, generate data pertinent
to their personal interests.
Individuation extends even to such "top-down" media as television.
Viewing a movie in a theater places limits on one's response. Viewing the
same movie at home frees the individual to react actively and independently.
While it is true that all three Soviet television stations still air the news
program Vremia (Time) at the same time, this practice has been attacked
publicly in the Soviet press on the grounds that it suppresses choice. 118
Similarly, the state controls nearly all newspapers and periodicals, but their
sheer proliferation enables readers to seek out what interests them, again
expanding the realm of choice.
The exercise of choice over information emancipates the individual from
his surroundings. A cassette tape of a foreign pop tune that finds its way
into the hands of some provincial teenager may conjure up the existence of an
alternative life, of some "other" world where freedom and eros are
untrammeled. Suddenly, his immediate environment becomes nothing more than
the drab setting from which the taped tune emancipates him.
Choosing among the welter of information carried over new technologies, a
subject is transformed into a citizen, eager to exercise broader choice over
all life decisions. Eventually, the political system must accommodate that
citizen and the individuated personality which is his essence.
22
D.
New Conduits Foster the Growth of Networks and Groups.
Amateur builders of outlandish home-made aircraft held a convention at an
airport outside Moscow in September, 1987. Convened at the urging of
scientists in the capital, these inventors and their craft attested to the
existence of a nation-wide network of Soviet Rube Goldbergs, most of them
known to one another and communicating through the mails, telephones, and
personal travel.
Such networks exist in hundreds of fields in the USSR. Those interested
in unusual sports, various forms of collecting, and virtually every marginal
field of culture have organized themselves into informal lateral networks with
little or no support from the state and often wholly independent of it.
Hundreds of groups are chartered as societal (obshchestvennye) organizations.
Others thrive without official recognition. While less institutionalized than
the major formal organizations, they have the advantage of being sustained by
the members' genuine enthusiasm. The proliferation of such organizations owes
much to social and educational change, but it could not have occurred without
vastly improved conduits of horizontal communication.
119
This mode of self-organization is ideally suited to those promoting
special interests. When Moscow's city planners Posokhin proposed to cut the
new Kutuzovskii Prospekt through the historic core of the city, opponents
organized the now-notorious Memory (Pamiat) group. Over the fifteen years of
its existence, Memory has gained branches in Leningrad and Novosibirsk and
maintained informal communication on issues pertaining to historic
preservation through inter-city telephones and open mails.
120
Similar groupings in the ecological field have existed for years, only
the best-known of which deal with the problems of Lake Baikal. In a typical
effort at co-optation, the Leningrad Komsomol organized the association BER,
which quickly aligned itself with a coalition of unofficial youth groups
publishing a samizdat journal and advocating, among other projects, a monument
to the victims of Stalin. The Moscow Perestroika Club made similar demands,
and in August, 1987, had the opportunity to express them at a convention of
similar self-initiated organizations held in 121 the capital under the patronage
of the Moscow branch of the Community Party.
Unlike the 19th-century zemstva, whose efforts to federate nationally
were easily thwarted, the new groupings can proliferate and federate easily,
albeit informally, simply by using the networking potential of the new
communications media. In their informality, their horizontality, their
openness to all supporters of a given cause, and in their participatory
character made possible by the telephone, such groups contrast sharply with
both the Communist Party and the organs of state. As such, they pose a
fundamental problem to the Soviet leadership. In the autumn of 1987 V.M.
Chebrikov, chairman of the KGB, delivered an astonishing and measured
assessment of these organizations:
A characteristic feature of our time is the marked increase in the
Soviet people's social activeness, clearly manifested, in particular,
23
in the creation of independent associations whose participants seek to
contribute to the development of this or that aspect of public life.
The CPSU regards the activity of such associations as a concrete
manifestation of socialist democratism.
122
The KGB chief then went on to decry the fact that "extremist elements" have
penetrated the leadership of certain of these associations, "taken to the
streets to make unwarranted protests in public, advanced provocative demands,
and fulminated against those who disagree." Yet while he charged that these
extremists were under the sway of "foreign subversive centers," the KGB head,
like the Leningrad Komsomol, seems to have accepted the inevitability of
autonomous organizations. Indeed, by mid-1988 Communist officials advocating
Gorbachev's reforms were themselves proposing the establishment of mass
organizations independent of the Party as a means of strengthening their
cause. Such entities were actually created in Latvia and elsewhere and
represent the Communist Party's acknowledgment of the existence of change in
the nation's political culture.
E. Proliferating Communications Technologies Thwart
Surveillance.
Governmental surveillance of private communications was simple in a
society in which potentially significant communications were limited to a few
educated people using a limited number of public technologies. Now the
numbers of communicators has soared, and numerous private technologies serve
their individual and group needs.
Even before Chernobyl there was ample evidence that an autonomous and
internationally-linked communication culture had grown up among the Soviet
people. To be sure, this culture has not broken through a number of barriers
which in Poland were penetrated early by the Solidarity movement. It has not,
for example, created its autonomous radio beyond the level of ham operators;
it has not launched publishing efforts on the scale of Poland's NOWA
enterprise; it has not exploited videotape and film to the extent done by
Video NOWA; and it has not managed to establish an independent newspaper on
the scale of Poland's Robotnik, with a national circulation of 20,000.
123
Nonetheless, the autonomous communications culture of the USSR has shown
sufficient strength for officials to deem it unwise to attempt to destroy it.
For such an effort to succeed, it would have to cut back much of the
officially-sanctioned communications system as well. Since jamming cannot
blot out all international broadcasts, legally acquired short-wave receivers
would have to be banned. The use of inter-city telephones and mails would
have to be severely restricted, and inter-city travel sharply reduced so as to
thwart the transmission of independently reproduced sound, video, and print
data. All this could be done, but it would require vast expenditures in money
and manpower to reach anything like the former level of surveillance. The
economic cost of this would be staggering, while the price the regime would
pay in terms of public support would be greater still, particularly if it
resorted to force, as would probably be necessary.
24
f.
New Communications Have Undermined the Party's Role as
Culture-Maker.
Such considerations suggest that the new communications culture is
largely irreversible, even if the Soviet regime would wish to abolish it. And
who would staff a Party or government that would undertake such an effort?
The same process of individuation and pluralization that has affected society
at large has been felt among those running official media. When the volunteer
civil defense organization DOSAAF recently ecried the erosion of Communist
values, it attacked not the independent "small" technology media but the
entire television, film, and radio industries of the Soviet state. 124
In
effect, it acknowledged that the masters of these official conduits had come
to share the same individuated and pluralistic values that permeated the
broader culture. This being the case, there would appear to be too few
Bolshevik traditionalists "Stalinists," in the reformers' terminology -- to
staff the input end of Lenin's conveyor belts today.
No careful reader of the Soviet press in recent years would be surprised
by this assertion. As early as 1982 Soviet cultural leaders were publicly
debating "mass culture." It is clear, declared the staunchly Leninist head
of the Moscow Union of Writers, that mass culture is unrelated and even
hostile to Socialist 125 culture and the Socialist way of life "it is it's
polar opposite.
Yet in the course of the 1982 debate it became clear that
mass culture was already a reality in the Soviet Union, and that this more
independent and market-related 126 phenomenon represented a loss of the Party's
cultural leadership.
By no means everyone did considered this bad. One
writer saw the freer operation of market mechanisms in publishing as likely to
benefit good literature as much as bad, 127 since they provided an alternative to
the moribund bureaucracy in publishing.
Through such debates, Soviet commentators struggled toward accepting the
new reality of public opinion. Their conclusion can be easily summarized:
that "mass culture" is not controllable "from above"; that many, if not most
Soviet citizens are drawn to it; and that such attraction is the obverse of
the public's 129 alienation from those cultural values promoted by the Communist
Party.
This 1982 debate came increasingly to focus on the new technological
media as such. In the process, the position of the old intelligentsia came
very close to that of conservative Party leaders, for both feared the way
their status as shapers of public values was being eroded by television and
film. Both understood that the vanguard role which the Russian revolutionary
movement had assigned variously to the intelligentsia and the Party was being
eroded by the new technologies. Writer Andrei Bitov's fulminations against
mass culture thus paralleled those of Party apologists, although they began
from radically different 130 premises. Both look to the age of democratization
with deep skepticism.
This is not to deny that intellectuals, especially
those of the generation that reached maturity in the late 1950s, have played a
central role in Gorbachev's reform movement. But the very nature of the
changes they advocate will eventually broaden the degree of public
participation in political life and hence weaken their own role, as has in
25
fact occured in the younger generations in the USSR. This helps explain the
frequent attacks on the young by reformist intellectuals who realize that
popular culture is incompatible with their own role as an independent source
of values.
That the realm of culture and values has gradually gained independence
from Communist Party edicts in the Soviet Union is evident from recent
developments in virtually every field of expression. What remains to be seen
is the extent to which the Party will accept this reality by reducing its
expectations of control.
What if it fails to do so? It can attempt to reimpose Stalinist controls
on horizontal communication, which we have acknowledged to be possible but
only at an exceedingly high price. Alternatively, it can simply adapt
received institutions to deal with it. This, too, seems unlikely, for such a
policy, carried to its logical limit, would deeply undermine the position of
the Communist Party in Soviet society. Admittedly, this is the effect of
various proposals put forward by Gorbachev at the June, 1988 Party conference,
but he balanced them by calling for the strengthening of the central executive
power. Finally, it can choose to move neither backward or forward, in which
case state and society will remain at loggerheads, as was the case prior to
Gorbachev.
Given both the need for change and the strong opposition to it in some
quarters, some combination of the first two variants seems most likely, with a
strong movement towards accepting the new realities limited by the Party's
commitment to maintaining as much initiative and power as the changed
circumstances allow.
26
VII.
CONCLUSION
This overview of communications in Russian history suggests several
conclusions. At the least, it demonstrates the close relationship in Russia
between political development and the state of communications technology. In
most eras the two have been closely connected, with progress in one
inseparable from progress in the other. Many anomalies in Russian social
development -- the slow appearance of an urban elite in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries; the isolation of the peasantry from politics in the
nineteenth century; and the diminished role of the bourgeoisie from 1917 down
through the 1950s -- are reflected in, and amplified by, the communications
system. This history suggests an answer to the question of whether the Soviet
Union's large new technical and managerial class will develop communications
technologies capable of serving its own needs, as distinct from those of the
Communist Party. Against the background of earlier history, the burden of
proof would lie on the side of anyone claiming it would not.
Our overview of Russian and Soviet history from the standpoint of
communications technologies suggests the need to revise accepted notions of
several important eras in this century.
First, the march of communications technologies in the late imperial era
contrasts sharply with historians' arguments about the internal decay of the
social structure that supported semi-constitutional government in Russia.
There is no evidence that the emerging communications system of the period
1900-1917 was collapsing from within and ample evidence that it was
burgeoning. The present era appears as the lineal descendant of the late
imperial phase, after two missing generations.
Second, it is hard to view the era of the New Economic Policy as
representing something wholely separate from the Stalin era in the sphere of
communications, as is often claimed in the area of political philosophy. The
abolition of private printing, film, and record production, the cessation of
private automobile production and the thwarting of telecommunications at both
the inter-city and international levels all went forward as rapidly as the
Party could promote it, the process beginning under Lenin himself. The pace
at which the Party severed horizontal communications was defined less not by
philosophical or legal limits than by raw power. While a careful review of
Lenin's writings may reveal differences between his and Stalin's approach to
communications technologies, their actions differ more in degree than kind.
Third, the reconstruction of horizontal communications and development of
feedback systems and interactive media after 1953 proceeded steadily
throughout the Brezhnev era. Whatever stagnation might have occurred in the
broader economy, modern horizontal communications continued to develop rapidly
down to Brezhnev's death. Indeed, the pronounced breakdown of vertical
communications in the late Brezhnev era actually stimulated the development of
horizontal links within society and hastened the creation of the situation
existing today. What is taking place today can thus be seen as the
fulfillment of changes begun in the 1960s and 1970s, rather than their
refutation.
27
What, finally, is the essence of this fulfillment? The expansion of
communications technologies in the USSR has fostered both horizontal and
vertical links. In terms of social impact, however, the horizontal have
predominated, and are reinforced by the increasingly interactive nature of the
old vertical ties. This has created a kind of information pluralism in the
Soviet Union quite unlike anything existing since 1917. Old monistic models
of Soviet politics seem less and less appropriate as new patterns of
communication deepen. Each network and group arising from the new pluralism
boasts its own body of information and each is therefore capable of providing
an independent input to the political process. Together, these changes are
creating what is recognizably a "civil society" in the USSR.
As has been noted, this "technotronic glasnost" still lags far behind
what exists in Poland, which in turn remains far removed from the style of
communications prevailing in the parliamentary democracies of Western Europe,
North America, and Japan. Nonetheless, it is far closer to these prototypes
than to anything existing in Russia since 1917 and may eventually lead to a
very different type of political order than has heretofore existed. Gorbachev
acknowledges as much when he speaks of democratization not as a goal but as a
fact. He also affirmed it when in the spring of 1988 he appealed to the
public to support his reforms in the face of opposition of many in the Party
and state. Under such a new order, society may remain partially controlled,
but it in turn exercises control of its own, thanks to the existence of
autonomous channels of communication. Such circumstances impose absolute
limits on absolute power. They limit the government's ability to shape
society and introduce the possibility of society shaping government.
This situation exists today only in embryo. However, even in its present
form it exhibits many characteristics commonly associated with the notion of
"civil society," e.g. the free flow of information within society; the ability
of individual groups to articulate their demands; a government subject to
control by the governed; and the existence of rights against the state as well
as duties to it. "Technotronic glasnost" does not itself create these
conditions, but it provides fertile soil in which they can grow, and therefore
represents a profoundly significant source of change in Soviet politics in the
waning twentieth century.
28
FOOTNOTES
1s. Frederick Starr, "The Changing Nature of Change in the USSR," in
Change in the Soviet Union and American Foreign Policy, Seweryn Bialer, ed.,
New York, 1988, Ch. 1.
2"The USSR Confronts the Information Revolution," proceedings of a
conference held at Airlie House, Virginia, 12-13 November 1986, U.S.
Government, Directorate of Intelligence; "Communications and Control in the
USSR," research memorandum, 24 November 1986, United States Information
Agency; Alex Beam, "Atari Bolsheviks," The New Republic, March, 1986, PP. 28
ff.; Hans Heymann, Jr., "Commentary: A Note on the Critical
Telecommunications Lag," 27 April 1987, The Hudson Institute; Richard W. Judy,
et al., Soviet Informatics Project Phase I draft report, H.I. 3884-DP, 12
February, 1987, The Hudson Institute; Loren Graham, "The Computer Revolution
is Bypassing the Soviet Union," The Washington Post, 2 April 1984, pp. 24-25.
3 Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community in the North Atlantic Area,
Princeton, 1957, p. 54.
4
Lucien W. Pye, ed., Communications and Political Development, Princeton,
1963.
5
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York,
1964.
6 Oswald H. and Gladys Gantey, To Inform or To Control? The New
Communications Networks, New York, 1982.
7
Among exceptions are C.F. Margorie Ferguson, ed., New Communications
Technologies and the Public Interest, Beverly Hills and London, 1986, p. 53.
Cf. also Daniel Bell, "The Social Framework of the Information Society," The
Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View, M.L. Dertouzos and J. Moses, eds.,
Cambridge, 1979.
8 Daniel Lerner, "Toward a Communications Theory," Communications and
Political Development, P. 328.
9 Deutsch, Political Community p.51.
10
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, New York, 1962, PP. 141, 220,
240, 246; also Walter J. Ong, S.J. The Presence of the Word, New Haven and
London, 1967, p. 64.
11
A. S. Zernova, Nachalo knigopechataniia v Moskve i na Ukraine, Moscow,
1946, Ch. I-III; M.N. Tikhomirov, Nachalo moskovskogo knigopechataniia,
Moscow, 1947, Ch. I-II.
12
Iurii Ovsiannikov, Lubok; russkie narodnye kartinki XVII-XVIII VV.,
Moscow, 1967, pp. 24 ff.
13 I. P. Kozlovskii, Pervye pochty i pochmeistery V Moskovskom
29
gosudarstve, 2 vols., Warsaw, 1913, I, Ch. 1-4.
14
Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk razvitiia i deiatelnost' vedomstva Putei
soobshcheniia za sto let ego sushchestvovaniia 1798-1898, St. Petersburg,
1898, pp. 13-30.
15
Ibid.
16 S. A. Urodkov, Peterburgo-moskovskaia zheleznaia doroga; istoriia
stroitelstva 1842-1851, Leningrad, 1951, PP. 34-35.
17
William L. Blackwell, The Beginnings of Industrialization, Princeton,
1968, pp. 273-74.
18
Ibid., p. 283, 294.
19
Ibid., P. 269.
20
D.D. Blagoi, Istoriia russkoi literatury XVIII veka, 3rd ed., Moscow,
1955, PP. 212 ff.
21
400 let knigopechataniia, A.A. Sidorov, ed., 2 vols, Moscow, 1964, I,
Ch. 4.
22
S. Frederick Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia
1830-1870, Princeton, 1972, p. 333-34.
23
Michael T. Florinsky, Russia: A History and an Interpretation, 2
vols., New York, 1968, II, p. 937.
24
Ibid., II, p. 789.
25
Ibid., II, p. 937.
26
Ministervstvo vnutrennykh del za sto let, St. Petersburg, 1901.
27
Donald W. Treadgold, The Great Siberian Migration: Government and
Peasant in Resettlement From Emancipation to the First World War, Princeton,
1957.
28 M. Lemke, Epokha tsenzurnykh reform 1859-1865, St. Petersburg, 1904;
also Charles A. Ruud, The Russian Censorship, 1855-1865: A Study in the
Formation of Policy, Ph.D. dissertation, Berkeley, 1966.
29
Charles A. Ruud, "Russian Entrepreneur: The Publisher Ivan Sytin of
Moscow, 1851-1934," unpublished MS.
30
Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular
Literature, 1861-1917, Princeton, 1985.
31 Starr, Decentralization pp. 333-34. Franking privileges were
suspended in this situation as well.
30
32
On Russian investors of this era see V.S. Virginskii, Tvortsy novoi
tekhniki V krepostnoi Rossii, Moscow, 1962, PP. 298-317.
33
Bolshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. XVIII, 1974, p. 451.
34
Razvitie sviazi V SSSR, N.D. Psurtsev, ed., Moscow, 1967, P. 26.
³⁵F.A. Brokgauz, I.A. Efron, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar, St. Petersburg,
vol. XXXII, 1901, p. 793.
36
Brokgaus, Efron, vol. XXXII, P. 793.
37
Psurtsev, p. 31.
38
Brokgauz, Efron, vol. XXXII, pp. 814-15.
39
Psurtsev, p. 26.
40
Ibid., P. 33.
41
Marc Ferro, The Russian Revolution of February, 1917, J.L. Richards,
trans1, Englewood Cliffs, 1972, PP. 87 ff.
42
V. V. Uchenova, Partiino-sovetskaia pechat; vosstanovitelnogo perioda,
Moscow, 1964, p. 5.
43
V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., Moscow, 1967-70, vol
V, 39-41.
44
Cf. Richard R. Fagan, Politics in Communications, Boston, 1966, p. 34.
45
Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass
Mobilization 1917-1929, Cambridge, London, 1985, p. 254.
46
Psurtsev, p. 82. For a stimulating analysis of Russian telephones in
the 1920s see Steven L. Solnick, "Soviet Telephones, 1917-1927: An Early Case
Study in Modernization and Economic Reform," unpublished MS, SSRC Summer
Workshop on Soviet Domestic Politics, University of Toronto, 1988.
47
Jeffrey Brooks, "The Breakdown in Production and Distribution of
Printed Material 1917-1927," Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the
Russian Revolution, Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez, Richard Stites, eds.,
Bloomington, 1985, PP. 151 ff.
48
Kenez, P. 101.
49
Brooks, "The Breakdown
"
pp. 155-66.
50
Kenez, p. 104.
51
Psurtsev, P. 178.
31
52
Ibid., p. 66.
53
Kenez, PP. 105 ff.
54
Psurtsev, pp. 38, 188.
55
Lilian-Dorette Rimmele, Der Rundfunk in Norddeutschland 1933-1945: Ein
Beitrag Zur Nationale Organizations-Personal-und Kultur-Politik, Hamburg,
1977; Franco Monteleone, La Radio Italiana Nel Periodo Fascista, Venice, 1976.
56
Purtsev, p. 221.
57
Ibid., PP. 222-27.
58
Ibid., pp. 222-23.
59
Narodnoe khoziaistvo V 1962 godu, Moscow, 1963, P. 422.
60
Kenez, p. 252.
61
Gayle Durham Hollander, "Political Communication and Dissent in the
Soviet Union," Dissent in the USSR: Politics, Ideology, and People, Rudolf L.
Tokes, ed., Baltimore and London, 1975, P. 251.
62
Ellen Proffer Mickiewicz, Soviet Political Schools: The Communist
Party Adult Instruction System, New Haven, 1967, PP. 8 ff.
63
Ustav sviaz SSSR, Moscow, 1954.
64
Bolshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. XXIII, 1976, p. 94.
65
Psurtsev, p. 269, table 26.
66
R. Volkova, Pravda, 18 March 1985, p. 7, in Current Digest of the
Soviet Press (CDSP), 1985, no. 11, P. 20.
67
Bolshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 23, 1976, p. 93; also
Psurtsev, pp. 268 ff.
68
Sziaz sluzhit vsem," Pravda, 28 May 1984, P. 1.
69
International Telecommunications Union, Yearbook of Common Carrier
Telecommunications Statistics, cited in Heymann, P. 5.
60
Gerald Stanton Smith, Songs to Seven Strings; Russia's Guitar Poetry
and Soviet "Mass Song," Bloomington, 1984, P. 94.
71
Psurtsev, p. 269, table 26.
72
Ibid., p. 331.
73
Psurtsev, P. 273.
32
74
Narodnoe khozaistvo SSSR V 1962 godu, Moscow, 1963, p. 422.
75
Narodnoe khozaistvo SSSR V 1968 godu, Moscow, 1969, p. 506.
76
Lewis Feuer, "The Intelligentsia in Opposition," Problems of Communism,
vol. 19, no. 6.
77
Narodnoe khozaistvo SSSR V 1968 godu, Moscow, 1968, p. 506.
78
Psurtsev, p. 94 ff.
79
Aleksandr Petrov, Izvestiia, 3 September 1985, P. 2 (CDSP, XXXVII, no.
35, p. 27.)
80
Psurtsev, pp. 94 ff.
81
Russian Cars," The Economist, 3 December 1983, P. 79.
82
Izvestiia, 10 January 1985, P. 2.
83
N. Tolstova, Izvestiia, 1 August 1984, P. 3 (CDSP, vol. XXXVI, no. 31,
p. 23.)
84
Reply to a letter to the editor, Sovetskaia Rossiia, 9 April 1985, p.
3.
85
Izvestiia, 10 January 1984, P. 2.
86
Photographs and accompanying captions, Sotsialisticheskaia industriia,
14 January 1985, p. 4.
87
S. E. Goodman and Alan Ross Stapleton, "Microcomputing in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe," Abacus 3, 1985, no. 1, pp. 6-22.
88
Ivan Selin, "Trip Report," unpublished MS, 2 April 1984, P. 2; also
"Update," unpublished MS, 6 January 1986.
89
Ganley and Ganley, p. 85.
90
E. Jakubitis, "Po puti tekhnicheskogo progressa," Trud, 21 June 1986,
P. 2.
S. Frederick Starr, Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet
Union, New York, 1983, pp. 263, 278.
92
K. Glukhov, "Fotografiia kak sposob reproduksii
" Svobodnaia
mysl, 20 December 1971.
93
Quoted by Timothy Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc, New York, 1988, p. 00.
94
Narodnoe khoziaistvo, Moscow, 1970, P. 251.
95 Talks by Anatole Kuznetsov," Radio Liberty, no. 17, March 10-11, 1973.
See also Gene Sosin, "Magnitizdat: Uncensored Songs of Dissent," Tokes, ch.
33
8.
96
The best accounts of this phenomenon are F. Gayle Durham, Amateur Radio
Operation in the Soviet Union, Center for International Studies, MIT,
Cambridge, 1965. See also Gayle Durham Hollander, "Political Communication
and Dissent," pp. 262-263.
97
Ibid. Also Smith, P. 95; and anon. "Radiozdat," Russkaia mysl, 6
February 1975, p. 5.
98
Iu. Kishchik and E. Vostrukhov," Izvestiia, 15 October 1986, P. 30.
(CDSP vol. XXXVII, no. 41, p. 25.)
99
D. Pilipenko, Komsomolskaia pravda, 20 September 1986, p. 4. (CDSP vol.
XXXVII, no. 4, p. 23.)
100
Radio Liberty, "Video in the Soviet Union: Trouble with a Capricious
Step-child," no. 129-86, 21 March 1986; Viktor Yasman, "The Collectivization
of Videos?," Radio Liberty, no. 335-86, 22 September 1986.
101
Cf. Chuck
Anderson, Video Power: Grass Roots Television, New York, 1975.
102
Communications and Control in the USSR," P. 3.
103
K. Abaiev, Izvestiia, 23 June 1985, p. 6 (CDSP vol. XXXVI, no 25,
1985, July).
104
Kishchik and Vostrukhov, p. 3.
105
Sovetskaia kultura, 10 June 1986, quoted by Yasman, p. 3.
106
Aleksandr 107 Petrov, "Medlennyi progress," Izvestiia, 3 September 1985,
P. 2.
Ibid., p. 2.
108
Yearbook of Common Carrier Telecommunications Statistics, quoted in
Heymann, p. 5.
109
"Russian Cars," The Economist, 3 December 1983, p. 79.
110
V.M. Chebrikov address on the 110th anniversary of the birth of F. E.
Dzherzhinskii, Pravda, 11 September 1987, p. 3.
111.
M. Vulfson, in Sovetskaia Latviia, 18 June 1987, p. 3. (CDSP, vol.
XXIX, no. 27).
112
Mark D'Anastasio, "Soviets are Preparing Measures to Stop Expansion of
Independent Publishers," The Wall Street Journal, 9 September 1987, p. 29.
113
Vladimir Simonov, "Amerikanets 1 kompiuter," Literaturnaia gazeta, 24
June 1987, p. 14.
114
Deutsch, p. 41.
34
115
E. Zlain, Komsomolskaia pravda, 18 October 1985, p. 4 (CDSP vol.
XXXVII, no. 44).
116
Liudmila Kazymova, Sovetskaia Rossiia, 18 July 1985, p. 2 (CDSP vol.
XXXVII, no. 4).
117,
Marquis de Custine, Russia, New York, 1854, P. 83.
118
"Vremia na ekrane," Pravda, 19 May 1986, p. 3.
119
Cf. Fagan, P. 39.
120
Bill Keller, "Soviet Political Clubs on Unofficial Stage," New York
Times, 9 October 1987, P. 4.
121
V.M. Chebrikov, P. 3; Also Jonathan Steele, "Moscow Opens the Door to
Reform Groups," The Guardian, 12 September 1987, p. 1.
122
V. M. Chebrikov, P. 3.
123
Reinventing Civil Society: Poland's Quiet Revolution, 1981-1986, The
US-Helsinki Watch Committee, New York, 1986, pp. 43, 53 ff., 71-78.
124
Dolg kazhdogo grazhdanina," Pravda, 14 September 1987, p. 1.
125
Feliks Kuznetsov, "Kultura: narodnost' i massovost', Literaturnain
gazeta, 5 January 1983, p. 3.
126
Vladimir
Simonoy 127 "Khaiping i ego iznanki," Literaturnaia gazeta, 23
June 1982, p. 15.
Vladimir Soloukhin, "Skazki mogut i umeret,"
Literaturnaia gazeta, 22 September 1982, p. 3.
129
These views are conveniently summarized in Stanislav Kunyaev, "Ot
velikogo do smeshnogo," Literaturnaia gazeta, 9 June 1982, p. 3.
130
Andrei Bitov, "Net! Nikogda ia zavisti ne znal. Literaturnaia
gazeta, 7 July 1982, P. 3.
131
See Jerry F. Hough, The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory,
Cambridge, London, 1977, p. 234.
35
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
October 31, 1989
PRESS CONFERENCE
BY THE PRESIDENT
The Briefing Room
10:02 A.M. EST
Dec. GONB.
THE PRESIDENT: I have a statement and then be glad to
take a few questions.
President Gorbachev and I will meet December 2nd and
December 3rd aboard U.S. and Soviet naval vessels on alternate days
in the Mediterrean. Our discussions will cover the current
international situation and developments in U.S.-Soviet relations.
And in view of the full-scale U.S.-Soviet summit to be held in the
United States during the late spring or early summer of 1990,
President Gorbachev and I have agreed that an interim informal
meeting at this time would be appropriate.
Our talks will be informal in character, designed to
allow us to become better acquainted with one another and to deepen
our respective understanding of each other's views. Neither
President Gorbachev nor I anticipate that substantial decisions or
agreements will emerge from this December meeting.
Q Mr. President, what do you hope to accomplish with
this? I mean, is the economy going to be one of the main parts of
the agenda or do you have -- arms control? What do you think is
really going to be -- you're going to talk about?
THE PRESIDENT: I think there'll be talk of a wide array
of subjects without a specific agenda, and this is what I proposed to
Mr. Gorbachev several months ago after I returned from the Paris
economic summit. We've been working on this all that time, and --
Q
It sounds like you were stampeded into this because
it wasn't in the works and you had projected --
THE PRESIDENT: You mean -- since July it's been in the
works.
Q Has it?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, you just haven't been told.
Q
You're right.
THE PRESIDENT: Since July, and I made the proposal to
Mr. Gorbachev. And I'll say this. They immediately and
enthusiastically -- he did -- thought this was a good idea.
Q
And did you also?
THE PRESIDENT: I made the proposal.
Q
Mr. President, there's been some speculation that a
meeting of this type might be intended for ideas to revamp the Soviet
economy. Are you trying to get some ideas together to go to this
meeting with some type of proposal like that?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm sure that now that the meeting
MORE
- 2 -
is announced, there will be an awful many suggestions as to the
subjects we should discuss, but there's not going to be an agenda or
a meeting to be seen to fail or succeed on whether we make agreements
of this nature. That's not what this meeting is about. And so
President Gorbachev will have been in Italy and it seemed like a very
convenient way to do this, but there's not going to be there's
nothing off the table and nothing on it. It's not going to be an
arms control meeting. Clearly the summit will drive the arms control
agenda.
Q Let me ask you, how do you assess Mr. Gorbachev's
reforms? Do you think he is in trouble?
THE PRESIDENT: I want to talk to him about their
economy, our economy -- a wide array of subjects. And we've -- I've
said over and over again, we want to see perestroika succeed. And
they know this. There hasn't been a disconnect. As I answered
Helen, we've been talking about this meeting since July.
Q How come we didn't know about it?
THE PRESIDENT: Because I'm trying to do something so --
to give everybody a little room so you can negotiate without getting
it all up here in a lot of turmoil.
Q Now that it's out, sir, could you tell us a little
bit about the steps that led to this -- your proposal, how and when
it was made, and so forth?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I did say that I made the proposal
-- I believe it was in July -- in writing to the President. And then
got a very prompt response and then we've been going back and forth
at that level. And then it's been discussed by the Secretary of
State and Mr. Shevardnadze -- the details worked out.
Q When was it agreed upon?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, a month ago, I'd say.
Q
Mr. President, since July, several of your very top
officials have said publicly, that they didn't see any value in
having a summit if it couldn't be carefully prepared, absolute
guarantee of success, with some kind of a serious outcome. You're
saying that's off. This is just to discuss --
THE PRESIDENT: No. The summit is on.
Q Well, but what if they said no meeting unless --
THE PRESIDENT: No, I -- who said that?
Q I don't want to point a finger, but he's standing
over here to the side. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Well, they weren't speaking for the
President. I've told you what I think. You know there was one time
when I felt that such a meeting wouldn't be productive. And I think
it is going to be productive. But it's not going to be an agenda.
We first set an agenda meeting we first set the summit. That will
drive the arms control agenda. That's out there with a date on it --
rough time frame on it. And so and the other is rapid change going
on. I now have a much clearer view of how our allies feel on
East-West relations. We've got problems in this hemisphere that I
want to discuss. And so the two are not inconsistent, Lesley.
Q
Mr. President, the last time there was a summit like
this was in Reykjavik, and it evolved into a rather free-wheeling
arms control negotiation that caused consternation in Europe, because
at one point we were talking about eliminating all nuclear weapons,
which Europeans felt would give --
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
MORE
- 3 -
Q
-- the Soviets an advantage because of their
preponderance of conventional superiority. What guarantees are there
that that won't happen at this meeting?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, because neither side thinks it's
going to happen. And we have a summit -- an arms control summit --
a
summit which will be dominated by arms control issues already
established -- separate and apart. And the Soviet leader and I both
understand the kind of meeting we want to have. So I don't think
there's any conflict there at all.
Q Mr. President, is one of your purposes in having
this meeting to give Gorbachev a political boost at home?
THE PRESIDENT: No. I hadn't particularly thought about
that. If it does, fine. I mean, there -- as I said, we want to see
perestroika succeed.
Q Even though you say you don't have an agenda for
this meeting, can you tell us what do you think are the most pressing
issues that you want to raise with Mr. Gorbachev? What are the
things that are most important in your mind that you feel need to be
raised and discussed at this early date?
THE PRESIDENT: A wide array of regional issues of this
hemisphere, Eastern Europe -- be sure I understand from him as
clearly as possible his aspirations for perestroika. There's all
kinds of subjects that we'll be discussing. I don't see a limit, but
it's -- again, I come back -- there isn't a set agenda in my mind.
Q
Mr. President, to what extent have the events in
Eastern Europe caused you perhaps to want to accelerate this, or will
that be major factor in your discussions?
THE PRESIDENT: I expect there will be a lot of
discussion of that. But as I indicated, the genesis of this was in
July when there were certainly change -- we'd just come back, as you
recall, from Poland and Hungary. And there's been a lot of dramatic
change since then -- Germany, some movements in Czechoslovakia. So
things have moved. But I can't say that the meeting was predicated
on the change in Eastern Europe solely.
Q Well, if not predicated, has it been a factor in the
discussions in arranging to have this meeting? Has there been
something that has been discussed that East Europe --
THE PRESIDENT: No, there's no arrangement. There's no
subjects. I want to be very clear on that. And any exchange I've
had with Mr. Gorbachev and I believe in Baker-Shevardnadze
discussions there hadn't been any discussion of agenda items, or
something we're going to take up.
Q You say this pre-summit summit is not meant to bail
out Mr. Gorbachev politically. How about yourself? You've been
criticized by the Democrats as being too timid toward Eastern Europe
and toward Gorbachev, helping him with perestroika. Do you think it
will help you?
THE PRESIDENT: That's not why we're doing it, but if
that should be the fallout, so be it. We've known what we're doing.
We've been on this track for some time. I've elected to remain very
quiet in the face of a good deal of sentiment that we were missing an
opportunity. And that hasn't perturbed me because we've got good
people that know what we're doing in terms of the Soviet Union. And
if people see that a little more clearly now, so be it; that's a
plus.
Q
It seems as though you're going there without any
initiatives. We're trying to read between the lines here -- if
timid? that's the case, aren't you going to be accused once again of being
MORE
- 4 -
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I'm sure somebody would politically
accuse me of anything. But that's not the point. I can tell you one
thing: Our allys will be delighted about this. They've just been
informed this morning. And I guarantee you there will enthusiasm
through much of the free world and a lot of the rest of the world.
But look -- I don't expect to have everybody that's been
firing away at me up there jump up with joy. But we've just briefed
the congressional leaders and they seem to be quite enthusiastic
about this. They had not known about it. And I'll let them speak
for themselves, but some who have not been overly supportive in the
last few days seem to feel this is a very good thing to be doing.
Q Mr. President, you said a few weeks ago you thought
there was a good chance to complete a START agreement by the time the
real summit in the spring or summer comes around. Are you still
holding to that feeling, are things on track? And will this meeting,
though it's not an arms control meeting, push that process along?
THE PRESIDENT: I don't think this meeting will push that
process along, but I'm still holding to that feeling.
Q Mr. President, you've said repeatedly that you'd
like to see perestroika succeed.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q What plans, if any, does the administration have to
make sure that happens in terms of any kind of economic assistance or
anything of the sort?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we haven't been asked for any
economic assistance, and maybe this is one of the items that we will
be discussing.
What I want to make clear to Mr. Gorbachev - and I have
done that and I don't think there's been a disconnect with the
Soviets is that we do want to see it succeed. But we'll be
discussing that.
Q
Let me ask you -- are you also concerned that the
forms in the Soviet Union may be moving too quickly and it could
result in a government crackdown a la China?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, some have suggested that I am --
they use a different word for it -- but a little too much on the
cautious side. I think there is reason to be cautious. And I've
said that over and over again. Substitute the word "prudent" if you
want. But I think at this meeting -- after this meeting, I'll be
better able to answer your questions. I know Mr. Gorbachev to be a
very frank individual just from the contacts that I've had with him,
which have been not as many as some, but more than most. And I think
that I'll be able to give you a better answer to that because that's
one of the things I want to I don't want to have two gigantic
ships pass in the night because of failed communication.
Q
Mr. President, right before and right after the
Wyoming meetings, the guidance from your closest advisors here was
that there was not going to be a pre-summit summit. And they were
specifically ruling out a meeting of this sort anytime this year.
Now, were we being deliberately misled? And assuming that we
weren't, what changed?
THE PRESIDENT: That's one of the dangers of not telling
what you know to everybody. There could be some disconnect in that.
But faith. one of the benefits is that the Soviets see we're dealing in good
Q
Was there a feeling on your part, Mr. President,
that perhaps waiting for spring and summer was a little bit too long,
too tenuous, since no date has been set for spring or summer?
MORE
- 5 -
THE PRESIDENT: No, because I think they're two separate
kinds of meetings. One of them, announced as it is, will drive the
arms control agenda, and the other one is the kind of meeting I
talked about. So I don't it's not a question, Saul, of thinking
if we didn't have this meeting, too long would go. I remember in
1984, people kept saying, well, Ronald Reagan hasn't even sat down
with the Soviet leaders. They were admittedly changing pretty fast
in those days. But he said that and people were the critics were
on him about it. I don't feel that that had anything to do with it
-- well, we've got to do it sooner because we won't see each other
until the summer spring or summer, if that was your question.
Q
Mr. President, but then what changed your mind?
Because this is exactly the kind of meeting that you and your aides
have been saying for months you did not want. And it seems exactly
the kind of meeting that Gorbachev, given his domestic troubles,
needs very, very much. What changed your mind, and why were you the
one to propose it?
THE PRESIDENT: I'll tell you what changed my mind on it,
was consultation with our allys. The rapidity of change in Eastern
Europe, the emergence of democracies in this hemisphere and this
concept that I just didn't want to, in this time of dynamic change,
miss something -- something that I might get better firsthand from
Mr. Gorbachev.
Q Mr. President, what made you decide to meet on the
ships? Pull your ship beside his ship and --
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we can do it without too much
fanfare. We can do it without -- where there is a relatively few
number of people, not a lot of crush of bodies out there, and a
chance to put our feet up and talk in the kind of meeting that I've
just described for you. And it will I think it's easy
logistically for both sides.
Q How much time do you think you'll spend
face-to-face?
this feeling?
In your mind, what do you think it will to take to get
THE PRESIDENT: A lot. A lot. And I can't tell you in
hours, but we're going to have small numbers of participants on both
sides. Maybe I'm getting a little ahead of the power curve there,
but I know that's my intention and I think the Soviet side has agreed
to that. And it will by doing it in this manner, we can have, I
would say, more time without the press of social activities or
mandatory consumption. joint appearances -- things of that nature -- for public
Q Between hemispheric summits and drug summits and
Gorbachev summits and economic summits, you're doing a lot of
mountaineering. Let me ask you this --
THE PRESIDENT: This one isn't a summit, so scratch this
one off your list of things to worry about.
Q Base camp.
THE PRESIDENT: I've got to make that point over and over
again. Summits take on a definition -- an expectation of grand
design and grand agreements. And that's not what this is.
Q
Let me ask you about this expectation then. About
six months ago, you proposed your conventional force reductions for
Europe. If something came through on your six-month deadline,
presumably you'd want a summit with Mr. Gorbachev to sign it. Are we
months? going to have a third Gorbachev summit in 1990 or the next couple of
THE PRESIDENT: No anticipation of it, but, look, we'll
meet as often or as little as we need to.
MORE
- 6 -
Q
Well, how is that going? How is the conventional
forces thing going?
THE PRESIDENT: Reasonably well. We still have to keep
driving for the best we can, our Alliance, to be sure we keep moving
forward to meet a rather ambitious time frame.
Q
Mr. President, one of the criticisms that has been
made is by the Democrats particularly is that this is a really
unique time for you; that after 40 years of calling for free markets
and an open society that you have a chance to perhaps cement some of
these changes in the Eastern bloc, in Europe, and in the Soviet
Union. Do you have some kind of plan or vision for getting that
accomplished? Is this part of it?
THE PRESIDENT: We're seeing it move, aren't we? We're
seeing dynamic change and I want to handle it properly. I want to do
whatever the U.S. can do to facilitate these kinds of changes. You
heard what I had to say yesterday -- some of you all did -- in terms
of Poland and the group we're sending over there to help solidify the
changes that are taking place. And I've got a good group of people
working with me in this administration knowledgable about Europe that
assures me that we can move this whole process forward properly.
Some things have to -- the United States can't wave a wand and say
how fast change is going to come to Czechoslovakia or to the GDR.
Q Mr. President, you say there will be no agreements
at this meeting. Is it possible, however, that you might firm up the
dates for the meeting next year for the official summit?
THE PRESIDENT: Could be, could be. And I don't want to
say -- I guess, maybe, I ought to retreat a little and say -- not
saying there will be no agreements. The meeting is not being set up
to achieve agreements. I would hope we'd see eye to eye on certain
things when we get through and maybe more narrowly more precisely
define what differences we have.
Q
Are we to believe that the leader of the United
States and the leader of the Soviet Union will get together and there
will that play?
will be no discussion of arms control? Or what role in this meeting
THE PRESIDENT: I don't know, but there's not an arms
control meeting.
Q You keep talking about the rapid change in Eastern
Europe. If Mr. Gorbachev would suggest that the United States be
more generous in aid to Hungary, to Poland, perhaps even to East
Germany, how receptive would you be to that idea?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we've got an aid package and
program and I'd welcome his ideas. But I don't think we would
respond to his charge on that. I think we'd have to do what we felt
was the right way to do it -- and exactly what I have been doing.
Q
Mr. President, over the past several months, you've
had exchanges of letters with Mr. Gorbachev. Could you tell us if
there's been a change in your evaluation of him as a person or how
you're feeling about him?
THE PRESIDENT: No change. As I've indicated, I have a
positive view of him to begin with. But I haven't felt any changes
there. I will say that when I made this proposal, there was a very
prompt response. And the only reason it's taking time between the
July initiative on my part and his very prompt response that I think
was fired back in August has been just working out where and how to
do this. So I've not had occasion to change my view.
But as you look at the different meetings and if you look
at the way this relation is developing, there are a lot of positive
signs. We all go back in one capacity or another to times when the
MORE
- 7 -
rhetoric was much tougher, where you had a lot of well, you had a
very different approach to openness in the Soviet Union than you do
now. So I think the relationship is moving in the right direction.
But I still when I say cautious or prudent -- I think that's the
way we ought to do it. And I will have an opportunity to explain
that when I see Mr. Gorbachev.
Q
You believe the motivation is what he says it is?
THE PRESIDENT: You mean, do I question his word?
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: I think he's committed to reform.
Absolutely.
Q
Mr. President, Secretary of State Baker has
mentioned the possibility of technical assistance and advice on the
state of the Soviet economy. How far would you be willing to go with
that kind of thing?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, again, I don't know how far they
want to go. And this is one of the subjects we'll be discussing.
Q
Mr. President, there's been a lot of talk around
town about the survivability of Gorbachev, especially going into the
winter months and the prospect of strikes in the Soviet Union and so
forth. When you say you would like to see perestroika succeed in the
Soviet Union, do you equate that with the success of Gorbachev
personally?
THE PRESIDENT: I think it's tied up in that right now.
yes.
Q And do you think if there is anything that you could
do to help strengthen his position in the Soviet Union that you would
do it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we've got to know what "it"
is. But this is the kind of discussion we can have. I will say
this: I don't think you base the foreign policy of a great power
like the United States on one personality; I don't think you do that.
I don't think that is a prudent way to approach it.
Q
Mr. President, how about a domestic summit on some
domestic problem, like health care -- the high cost of home health
care?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm getting criticized for having
too many summits as it is.
Q
No, you need one on domestic issues. We've spent a
long time here talking about things when we have a vital, crucial
situation out there. Catastrophic illness is nothing. It would not
take care of the situation. We had a press conference here all day
yesterday where the Canadian government officials got up and said, in
the United States you only have health care for the rich, not for the
poor. Why can't we have a good system like that, and why can't we
have a summit on health care?
THE PRESIDENT: I think what we've got to do is educate
the Canadians if they feel that way, because that's not true. That
is not true. And to suggest that it's true that our health care
system is only that simply shows -- I don't know who those
Minister. officials were, but it was never raised with me by the Prime
Q Well, the Health Minister of Canada --
lot of problems.
THE PRESIDENT: We've got a lot of problems. We've got a
MORE
- 8 -
Q
-- over and over again that you only have health
care in this country for the rich and not for the poor.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that's a point I'd argue.
Q
Mr. President, turning to Nicaragua for a minute,
today or yesterday President Ortega now suggests that Reverend
Jackson be used as an intermediary to talk about redirecting the U.S.
humanitarian aid so it can be used to demobilize the Contras. What
would be your thoughts on having Reverend Jackson involved between us
and Nicaragua? And are you in any way thinking of refocusing the
aid?
THE PRESIDENT: That suggestion has limited appeal to me.
(Laughter.)
Q Mr. President, I wonder if you might hope to enlist
Secretary Gorbachev's support in encouraging reforms in some of the
more reticent Eastern European states, like East Germany?
THE PRESIDENT: Want to discuss it with him. Again, I'm
not suggesting, given his public statements, that he is going to be
the one that controls what happens in every detail in Czechoslovakia
or East Germany. But it is a subject that we should discuss, just as
I'm sure he'll want to discuss changes in this hemisphere here --
others. So I think that will come up.
Q
Would you expect him to look favorably upon your
request for a little help, a little pressure, maybe?
THE PRESIDENT: A little pressure on what?
Q
A little pressure on the leaders of East Germany,
perhaps, to lighten up on people who want to leave?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we'll have a chance to discuss all
those things. And that's one of the good things about it. There
will not be a certain agenda on it. We'll simply sit down, and I'll
give him my views on the changes that are taking place in Eastern
Europe and certainly I'm most interested in getting his.
Q Mr. President, a two-part question. First of all,
after you meet Gorbachev, will you take the opportunity since you'll
be in the region to then meet with and brief allied leaders and
solicit their comments? And secondly, why did you hold this
deliberation so tightly? You said you wanted to show the Soviet
Union's good faith, but why not involve the bureaucracy? Your
administration, as you know, has been criticized --
THE PRESIDENT: Because I knew exactly what I wanted to
do. And I knew how I wanted to go about doing it. And that's why I
didn't need the advice of others in this particular subject matter.
I knew how I wanted to do it; I knew that I wanted to get the arms
control summit set. And I also knew that I wanted to, after the
discussions I told you about, to go forward with this. And I wanted
to deal in good faith with the Soviets because, until it was firmly
locked, I should not be in the mode of committing them to this kind
of a meeting.
And I think all that worked. And I hope what we've done
is to develop a certain confidence in the Soviets as a result of
these negotiations. Confidence is important. If you're going to
have frank exchanges, then you have to have a certain degree of
confidentiality. But on this one, I told you who was involved in it.
I was getting good, sound advice. How they got the information upon
which to advise me, why, that's their business. But I felt no
deprivation of being deprived from information at all.
Q
How about the first part, though, sir? Meeting with
the allies afterward?
THE PRESIDENT: No plans to do that. This is going to be
MORE
- 9 -
done, if you look at the calendar, like over a weekend. And, of
course, we'll be in full contact with them after that, but I don't
plan to jump from country to country after the meeting.
Q
Mr. President, one of the summits -- capital "S" --
on your agenda is the economic summit. Have you made a decision?
And are next week's elections in Houston in any way a factor in why
you haven't announced it so far?
THE PRESIDENT: No, those elections have no relevance to
the decision. And no, the decision has not been made.
Q
Mr. President, you say you have confidence in the
Soviets. What assurances do you have that you won't be surprised by
something Mr. Gorbachev might bring to the table? It's widely
believed that President Reagan was somewhat sandbagged in Reykjavik.
THE PRESIDENT: He's free to bring anything he wants;
there's no agenda. But the idea that arms control, we might be
surprised on arms control, I don't worry about that because we've got
an understanding that the already-announced summit meeting will
handle those items.
Q
Do you have any indication he has anything in
particular he wants to bring?
THE PRESIDENT: I think he's anxious to do what I'm
anxious to do right now.
Q
Would you handle any arms control issue he might
raise by simply trying to defer it right at the spot?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm just referring to what we've decided
is going to be the matrix of the meeting.
Q
Well, basically you were trying to put it off until
--
THE PRESIDENT: I don't expect, other than in a very
broad way, these questions to arise because we have a summit set to
address ourselves to those.
Q Daniel Ortega was supposed to decide today whether
to end the cease-fire. If he does, in fact, end the cease-fire, are
you prepared with some sort of response?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I said down there, I'm not going
to go into that hypothetical situation at this time, but I tell you,
I've never seen a meeting where all the participants were so united
against the outrages of one. And we're still getting messages in
about the outrageous performance of Daniel Ortega -- reached a new
embarrassing proportions to stepping on it.
Q Is renewed military aid to the Contras, though,
needed? still a viable option now? Is that something you could consider if
THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I indicated down there, I would
reevaluate the situation in a minute if this cease-fire is broken.
Q
Mr. President, were you upset at all by Secretary of
him not to give a hard --
State Baker squelching the resident Sovietologist, Mr. Gates, telling
THE PRESIDENT: I've discussed this matter with Mr.
Baker, Mr. Gates, Mr. Scowcroft -- even discussed it with Marlin
Fitzwater and -- (laughter) -- don't say I don't reach out.
(Laughter.) And John and these stories -- who's up, who's down,
who's winning, who's not, who's going to be a hard line -- we've got
a good strong team coping with these problems. And the degree to
which Bob Gates and the Secretary of State are together and Brent and
John Sununu, why, it's -- we've been very lucky. And so I don't get
MORE
- 10 -
all exercised about that kind of thing. I know everybody else does
around here, but I don't.
Q
He did acknowledge that he stopped Gates from giving
a hard-line speech.
THE PRESIDENT: It wasn't a hard-line speech and he
didn't say that. And maybe now we'll understand a little more of
what is happening out there as a result of what I'm talking to you
today about.
Q
On a related question, Vice President Quayle has
taken a very hard-line position. Is he out of sync?
THE PRESIDENT: No, he's totally in sync. And I had a
chance to discuss this with one of the outstanding reporters for The
New York Times the other day who had a feeling he was out of sync.
And he isn't. And I just everybody's looking for nuances, and
that's fine, that's your business. But I think we've been blessed in
this administration by this: The President can sit in there and get
conflicting ideas and then we don't have to go out and sound like
there's disarray. So when some see one statement that may sound a
little different, then I can understand running with that ball
because I know how this place works.
But that's -- the main thing is, I feel that we are
together on these issues. And that goes for the Vice President and
the Secretary of State and my very able national security team. So I
don't sense this -- one being tugged one way or tugged another.
Q Where are you going to put the press?
THE PRESIDENT: Helen, you've already had three
questions.
Get out of there.
Q
In the middle of the Mediterranean? (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: I hadn't thought about that.
Q Where are you going to stay?
Q Mr. President, on the environment --
THE PRESIDENT: That will come up with Mr. Gorbachev.
Q
So I thought.
THE PRESIDENT: I think.
Q
You have some people going to the Netherlands next
week who, some say, are appearing to go without an agenda. It looks
like the United States is not going to play a leadership role in
global warming, though you promised that during your campaign.
THE PRESIDENT: We will play a leadership role in global
warming, and it will be based on the finest, most up-to-date science
possible. And we will fulfill that role. And I think most
countries, in spite of where they are on some conference, look to the
United States for that kind of leadership in science. And we will
fulfill it. And you see both our Science Advisor and the head of the
EPA in sync going over there -- I think that's good.
Saul.
Q Hey.
him. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Did he have one before? I derecognize
Okay, back here.
Q
-- conflict with Congress on capital gains. What
MORE
- 11 -
are you prepared to do about that? And will you accept a full year
of sequestration in lieu of that?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we've indicated that that's the law
and we will live by the law. And we're going forward with that
mandate because of the way the Congress has moved on this. I don't
think I need to repeat my view on capital gains as something that is
good for growth, something that is good for investment, something
that is good for jobs. And we hear some shrill comments to the
contrary, but in my view, that matter was debated fully, my position
was made clear, and I plan to continue to fight for my position.
Q
On minimum wage, is your original proposal still
your first and final offer or would you be willing even to link it
with something like capital gains, which you --
THE PRESIDENT: We're not in the posture of trying to
tell the Congress how they ought to resolve these difficulties. We
sent up clear proposals on the anticrime package, on the minimum
wage, on the capital gains. And it has gotten so confusing up there
that they ought to move now. But I'm not going to suggest. Why do
we need to do that? We've told them what we want. And I wish they'd
get some action going on the proposals that I have put forward. I
think the American people are entitled to that. I think the American
people see that it is this Congress that is frustrating getting the
deficit down. And so they ought to move and move promptly. But I
can't sit there and fine-tune for them, well, if you'll only throw
this one issue in with that one, why, you can do your business. I
mean, we've tried.
Q
So you're saying package deals are out?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm not saying in or out; I'm
saying let's get going. We know what the administration position is.
I've said it. Send it down the way I said it and we've got harmony
and light. Send it down differently and I'll take a look at it.
Send it down with some things in it that I can't take and I'll send
it right back to you. And I don't know how more frank I can be with
the Congress.
Q
Mr. President, as recently as this summer some of
your senior advisors dare I say some in this room -- were
expressing doubts that Gorbachev would survive all of his internal
political difficulties. Did you ever share those views? And has
anything happened what has happened to turn you around?
THE PRESIDENT: Look, we are looking at everything we can
regarding the rapid changes that are taking place, not only in
Eastern Europe but in the Soviet Union. And we've got very
thoughtful people outside the government that give me their opinions.
And I don't think anybody has a corner on all the wisdom, but I can't
speculate on that question.
What I can say is we're not basing the foreign policy of
the United States on any individual. We've got to look at broad
changes, we've got to look at commitment from all elements of
leadership in the Soviet Union, where they come down fascinating
meeting the other day with Mr. Primakov here -- and assess all of
this and spell out as clearly as you can what's in the interest of
the United States and the Alliance. And this meeting will help in
that regard. But it's not predicated, our whole arms control agenda,
on Mr. Gorbachev. Similarly, I don't think they do that on a U.S.
president at the time.
Q But, sir, you wouldn't be meeting them, of course,
if you thought he was a goner. (Laughter.) Did you at any time have
any doubts in that regard?
THE PRESIDENT: A goner? No, I don't -- (laughter) --
that word never entered my mind. (Laughter.) You hear a lot of
cross-currents about how successful perestroika's going to be. But
one thing you get from all the Soviet leaders is, look, the clock
MORE
- 12 -
isn't going to be set back and we -- "we" -- are going to go forward
with perestroika. Whether it's Mr. Yeltsin when he was here or Mr.
Gorbachev's statements and visits with Shevardnadze, visits with Mr.
Primakov and then others meet with other layers of the Soviet
bureaucracy. And you get the distinct feeling that the clock is not
going to be set back to square one. And then you go forward. Well,
here's how this will interact with U.S. policy.
But I'm looking forward to this meeting. I think it's
the right thing to be doing. As I say, there was a time when I
wasn't sure that it was, but with this rapidity of change, I don't
want to miss something. And the way we've got it set so there will
be no firm agenda, where we can do it in a setting without a lot of
public pressure from other governments, I think it's going to be a
productive meeting. And I was very pleased with the reception that
it got from the congressional leaders.
As I say, I expect we'll get a strong, positive response.
I know I will from the allied leaders. And I really can't think of
any country that is going to see objection to this because the fate
of a lot of countries are wrapped up in how the United States and the
Soviet Union get along and how the changes in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union are managed.
And when I come back from this meeting, I and my top
advisors -- and we are going to keep our traveling squad down, I say
-- will be able to have a much clearer perception of motivations
behind Mr. Gorbachev's pronouncements. I think it's worthwhile.
Thank you all very much.
END
10:40 A.M. EST
The Rosenstiel Distinguished Lecture Series
From Glasnostto Metanoia:
The Moscow Summits Challenge
Ambassador Edward L. Rowny
I
WISH TO SPEAK today about the challenge
remember sitting in a back seat at Cabinet
of moving from what is called glasnost
meetings early in the President's first term and
toward metanoia. You all know what glasnost
hearing Cabinet members say, "Mr. President,
is - it is the breeze that is blowing in the
you cannot spend all this money on defense.
Soviet Union, bringing along some freshness
You have double-digit inflation, you have high
and some so-called new thinking, some of
unemployment." And so the arguments went.
Look, the President replied. "providing
which is really new. As to metanoia, it is a
for defense is the best thing I can do for this
biblical Greek concept, the word for a change
country. It is the most important of our social
of heart or a conversion. The question is, "Is
programs, for it ensures our freedom and the
there really a move today in the Soviet Union
right to hold our heads high in the world
toward conversion?" We hope there is, al-
without fear of encroaching communism."
though it is early, maybe too early to tell. But
The President also began early to formulate
as with the man who went to the moon, the
the intellectual underpinnings for his new
first step must be taken before one can con-
policy for dealing with the Soviets. He first un-
template going further.
veiled it in the 1981 commencement address
Of one thing I am certain, though, and that
at the University of Notre Dame. In it the Presi-
is that the renewal of U.S. strength and self-
dent moved beyond the theory of George
confidence has had an impact on Soviet offi-
Kennan who believed that containment alone
cial behavior. In 1981, the year President
would lead to better international relations
Reagan came to office, he found a country that
and greater U.S. security. "The West will not
was very deficient in its military posture. The
contain communism," the President said, "it
Soviets knew it, and we knew it. Following
will transcend communism."
more than a decade of neglect, we were in no
The President's first-term priority of
position to deal with the Soviets, because the
rebuilding our defenses, including the historic
Soviets. as I have learned from some fifteen
Strategic Defense Initiative announced in
years of negotiating with them, deal only from
1983, was resoundingly approved by the
strength. They don't share our ethics, they
voters in 1984. This factor - our strength -
don't have our value system, they don't look
is without doubt why the Soviets returned to
for good example. As a matter of fact, they dis-
the Geneva bargaining table in 1985. With the
dain any show of example. One of my most
advent of Mikhail Gorbachev - a new kind of
difficult times as a negotiator was when I
Soviet leader, with whom it was possible, in
worked for President Carter. My Soviet col-
Margaret Thatcher's words, "to do business"
leagues denigrated the President for not un-
- the stage was set for renewed U.S.-Soviet
derstanding them. They said he tried to deal
summit meetings.
with them from what they called "decadent
Before the 1985 Geneva summit, the Presi-
Christian values."
dent announced that U.S. Soviet relations no
President Reagan rebuilt U.S. strength at a
longer would be centered primarily on arms
time when it was very unpopular to do SO. I
control. Instead, the relationship would be
1
built on a foundation of four pillars: (1) resolu-
last Soviet leaders to have served in the
tion of regional conflicts. (2) advancement of
Second World War."
human rights, sprovement of bilateral ties
"No," he said. "You are wrong. It was the
such as trade and cultural exchanges. and 4)
Great Patriotic War "All righ I said, "have
a pursuit of stabilizing, effectively verifiable
your way. You were in the Great Patriotic
arms reductions.
War."
When the Geneva summit was scheduled,
"Da," he said, "ya poslednyy iz mogikan (I
President Reagan said it would follow the
am the last of the Mohicans)."
broad, "four-pillar" agenda. The Soviets did
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
not agree, but said each side would be free to
"It's an old Russian expression," he said
bring up items of importance to it. During the
with a wry smile.
time planned for discussion of human rights,
With Akhromeyev willing and authorized
President Reagan spoke about human rights.
to do business, we worked all night. We made
Gorbachev listened, but then proceeded to
two breakthroughs. One was to agree in prin-
speak about arms control. When the President
ciple to the plan President Reagan put forward
raised the matter of regional conflicts, Gor-
in his Eureka College speech in 1982 - fifty
bachev again responded with words about
percent cuts in strategic offensive arms. The
arms control. And so it went, too, when the
Soviets accepted much of our formula, for in-
President sought to discuss bilateral matters.
stance, counting the things that really matter
Finally, when the meeting reached the time
- warheads instead of launchers. The second
planned for discussion of arms control. both
breakthrough was to agree to go to zero INF
men talked about arms control and nothing
(intermediate-range nuclear forces) in Europe
but arms control. In the end, the Geneva sum-
and to agree, at least in principle, to some on-
mit was covered in the media as an arms con-
site inspection.
trol summit, the Soviet agenda.
The INF Treaty was ready for signing at the
A year later in Reykjavik, the President
third summit in Washington, in December
sought again to draw the Soviets out on
1987. It provides for global elimination of U.S.
regional issues. This time they obliged some-
and Soviet INF missiles, and as such is a tribute
what. They were damant, though, against en-
to allied solidarity not only in Europe but also
gaging on human rights. "This is an internal
in Asia. We agreed on effective verification
affair," they said. "You are interfering with our
measures, including on-site inspections and
political and social structure."
monitoring that many believed unthinkable
Reykjavik proved to be another arms con-
just a few years ago.
trol summit, albeit a dramatic and productive
Verification is the key. As the President said,
one. The catalyst for Soviet movement was
we should "trust but verify." The American
Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of the
people understand this. They want arms
Soviet general staff. To our surprise he ap-
reductions with the So riet Union, but they
peared in our arms control discussions as the
don't trust the Soviets. They know the Soviet
head of the Soviet team. Akhromeyev has
record of violating such agreements - the
great presence. He can speak with complete
chemical/biological warfare convention,
candor when he wants to, and he
SALT I, and now the ABM Treaty. The
demonstrated that he has Gorbachev's con-
American people insist on very strict, effective
fidence and an ability to overrule all others.
verification.
It was interesting that night that
Beyond the achievement in arms reduction,
Akhromeyev was the only one on the Soviet
the Washington summit marked new progress
side who spoke no English, and I, the only one
for the President's broad agenda. On that OC-
on our side who spoke Russian. During one
casion, the Soviets talked in some depth about
of our breaks I found he has a sense of humor.
regional conflicts such as Afghanistan. They
I said to him "Marshal, you must be one of the
were apparently coming to the decision that
2
they should withdraw their Red Army invasion
part Anatoly Adamishin, Soviet Deputy
force from that country. There were signs. too,
Foreign Minister. The Soviets say they have the
of possible movement on Angola.
same goals as we have in that part of the
The Soviets became somewhat engagedon
world. They say they want to help right the
human rights, too. They decided it was some-
situation. We want to see if they an sincere
thing they could talk about, after all - al-
about this. We are trying to get United Nations
though their side of the discussion still left
resolution 435 on Angola finally implemented
much to be desired. They feel they always
by September 29, its tenth anniversary date.
have to have a riposte. When President
What we are waiting for are signs that the
Reagan, for instance, faced Gorbachev and
Soviets are truly serious about moving their
asked, "Why don't you tear down the Berlin
client state, Cuba, to get its 45,000 troops out
Wall," Gorbachev replied he would be willing
of Angola.
to do so if we opened up our borders with
On Cambodia, the Soviets ask us why we
Mexico to unlimited immigration. It's a non-
don't back their client state Vietnam's
sensical comparison, of course, trying to draw
proposal to withdraw fifty percent of its
a parallel between their refusal to let people
troops. We reply we want a one-hundred per-
leave their country and our unwillingness to
cent reduction. In Ethiopia, the scandal con-
let unlimited numbers of immigrants enter our
tinues that the Soviet-backed regime there is
country. Still, it seems the Soviets feel inade-
allowing millions of persons to be threatened
quate unless they have a counterpart to every-
with starvation. Humanitarian gifts of food
thing we say. When we criticize them for
from the Free World are allowed to rot without
keeping innocent people in Gulags and in
reaching the people who need it. On issues in
psychiatric wards, they whip back at us that
the Middle East and Persian Gulf, there was
we permit capital punishment of minors and
some talk at the summit but not much move-
practice racial discrimination.
ment.
Several weeks ago, we had round four -
With regard to Central America, the Soviets
the Moscow summit. In our talks on human
would not budge. They want an unfair, un-
rights we made some progress, although most
even deal. They say they are willing to stop
of it was procedural. A large number of
sending arms to the Sandinistas - but not
divided spouses and families were reunited.
small arms. And this they would be willing to
But there is still a long way to go. More people
do only if we stopped all of our aid - military
are allowed to leave the Soviet Union now
and humanitarian - throughout Central
than at any time in seven years. Still, a statis-
America. Thanks to our Congress, it is pretty
tician calculated that at the rate they are leav-
clear the Soviets do not have an incentive to
ing, it would take a hundred years for
pull back from their promotion of war and
everyone who wants to depart to do so.
communism in Central America.
At the Moscow summit there were exten-
On arms control we pushed the ball for-
sive talks on regional conflicts - about Af-
ward somewhat in Moscow, largely by our in-
ghanistan, Cambodia. Ethiopia, and Angola.
itiative on air-launched cruise missiles and
And last, but not least, Central America.
land-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In Afghanistan, the Soviets are getting out,
There was no progress on the issue of sea-
but not as fast as we would like. They are
launched cruise missiles, however, where the
blaming it on the Pakistanis. "Your clients,
verification problems are almost insurmount-
your friends," they say, "are interfering with
able. Nor was there movement on questions
our leaving."
about the Strategic Defense Initiative and the
There has been major diplomatic move-
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Here our purpose
ment on Angola now, and, significantly, the
is to move forward with SDI and in no event
Soviets have invited my colleague, (Assistant
let the Soviets succeed in their diplomatic
Secretary for African Affairs) Chester Crocker,
campaign to cripple our efforts to find defen-
to the Soviet Union to meet with his counter-
ses against ballistic missile attack.
3
In any case, the SLCM and SDI questions
West won't contain communism, it will
must not be singled out as obstacles to com-
transcend communism
pleting a START Treaty. The START talks will
I don't believe it has been adequate ly recog-
necessarily continue to move slowly because
nized how consistent this is with the
of many inherent difficulties in reaching an
President's thinking throughout his tenure.
equitable, effectively verifiable treaty.
Consider, for instance, his speech re; orting on
Both leaders said at the end that they
the December 1987 Washington Summit. On
wanted to keep the arms control process
that occasion he said:
we
are
saying
that
moving forward through the remainder of
the postwar policy of containment is no longer
President Reagan's term of office. This is en-
enough; that the goal of American foreign
couraging. We will try to move it ahead. The
policy is both world peace and world
freedom
"
ball is largely in the Soviets' court. If they bring
Akhromeyev back again - and they did bring
Later, in Moscow, Ronald Reagan directly
him to the negotiations two weeks ago, which
showed Soviet citizens what "transcending
is why we made some progress - we will be
communism" means. He demonstrated this in
dealing with a man of authority and may be
his historic meetings with church leaders at the
able to move farther ahead.
Danilov Monastery, with refuseniks and
How shall I draw together my reflections on
human rights activists at the American
the progress over four summits from Geneva
ambassador's residence, and with students at
to Moscow? Much credit has been given to
Moscow State University.
Mikhail Gorbachev as a new kind of Soviet
President Reagan said in Moscow that the
leader, with whom it is, to be sure, easier to
Soviet leaders must go beyond glasnost and
deal. As I already have acknowledged, there's
perestroika to metanoia. We acknowledge
some truth in this. Meanwhile, though, Presi-
that there is ferment and flexibility in
dent Reagan often has not been given enough
Gorbachev's leadership. We even acknow-
credit for being a new kind of U.S. leader in
ledge that there is some "new thinking." But
approaching the problems of communism
as yet we have not discerned the profound
and Soviet power.
new thinking that is needed. Thinking about
There's a tendency in some of our political
profound change is required if there is to be a
journalism to patronize the President on the
true human rights revolution. We need to see
matter of our improving relations with the
comparable openness and honesty in defense
Soviet Union. Some see the improving rela-
matters SO that there can be a good START
tions as evidence that Ronald Reagan has un-
agreement. Beyond this the Soviets need to
dergone a philosophical transformation -
drop their hypocrisy on strategic defense so
their patronizing term is that he has "grown,"
that we both can move forward toward a safer
that is, become soft on communism.
balance of offenses and defenses.
I submit that Ronald Reagan's philosophi-
We are not without hope. But we must ex-
cal approach to Soviet communism has
ercise patience to learn whether the Soviet
remained consistent since the beginning of his
leaders have truly beg to free themselves
presidency. I mentioned earlier his first major
and their people from their ideological con-
foreign policy address as President, at the
fines. Prudence directs that we take our time
University of Notre Dame commencement in
in discerning whether the Soviets are indeed
1981, where he said: "The years ahead are
changing their old habits of repression at
great ones for this country, for the cause of
home and aggression abroad.
freedom and the spread of civilization. The
4
Celebrate the Differences
At the 40th anniversary of NATO we should pause to celebrate the fact that
there are strong, free democratic societies in Western Europe that have very
independent voices. It is healthy for free countries to have open honest
debate. No one should mistake honest open debate on surface matters for a
difference in the basic principles of freedom. No force in the world will
be stronger than when someone tries to subjugate people that have tasted
freedom and the benefits of a free society. All the surface differences
will rapidly disappear and be replaced by a united will to preserve peace
with freedom.
Reflect for a moment back to the late 1940's. The hope of the American
people was that the Western Europe could partake of the broad based freedom
and economic fruits of free people for which the United States was blessed.
The hope of the American people was to make Western Europe self sufficient.
The hope of the American people was that eventually all people would be free
and at peace.
With vision and purpose we set out to help the Western European societies
rebuild themselves. Though their hard work, U.S. aid and encouragement, in
less than a generation Western Europe was rebuilt-it is at Peace and the
people are free.
The goals and dreams of the American people have been fulfilled many times
over. The Western Europe countries are strong and now reflect the sovereign
wishes of their people. As we come closer and closer to the ultimate dream
of peace and freedom for all people (witness the recent events in China) -
there will probably be even more surface difference instead of being
frustrated - we should celebrate the differences. The differences of
opinion over nuclear matters reflect the different perspective of sovereign
people and their elected representation. Ringing the toll bells over NATO
is without foundation. On the real issues there is unity.
Contrast this growth and stability of free people with the Soviet Union and
Warsaw Pact - they are third world powers in all but military might.