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Tony Snow Subject Files
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[Human Rights in Eastern Europe, 1988-1990]
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18
29
2
2
United States Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
'HUMAN RIGHTS IN EASTERN EUROPE"
Statement by Richard Schifter, Assistant Secretary for Human
Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, before the Committee on
Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Human Rights and
International Organizations, October 11, 1989
Between 1945 and 1949, Stalin's Soviet Union installed
Communist governments in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany. These governments,
put into place against the will of the people (as expressed
in free elections held throughout the area immediately after
World War II), remained in power for more than forty years.
In four of these six countries efforts to change the status
quo were brutally suppressed by Soviet intervention or, in
one instance, by the threat of Soviet intervention. These
efforts at change include the sometimes forgotten uprising in
East Berlin in 1953 as well as the better-known attempts at
change in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Poland
in 1980 to 1981.
At long last it now appears that a peaceful transition
to more open soci ties is finally coming to Eastern Europe,
with two of the countries moving appreciably toward the goal
of democracy.
Interestingly, the two countries, Hungary and Poland,
have traveled along different roads toward the objective
which they both seek. In Hungary, courageous dissidents kept
the cause of freedom alive through the dark years that
followed the brutal repression of November 1956. But when
change did come, it came from within the Hungarian Communist
Party. At the beginning, that change was almost
imperceptible, much of it focusing on the economy, on what
later, in the Soviet Union, became known as Perestroika. But
recently, since the advent of Glasnost in the Soviet Union,
remarkable changes have taken place in the outlook of the
Communist Party of Hungary on political reform to the point
of actually dissolving the party and recreating it as a
fundamentally altered organization. Sensing the mood of the
people, a younger generation of leaders took hold of the
party and is steering it and the country away from the forms
of political control and economic management which for
decades we have identified with Communism.
Thanks !
Dariy Dan!
- 2 -
That is not to say that democracy has now been
established in Hungary To be sure, there are no political
prisoners, freedom of expression is now respected, there is
increasing freedom of assembly and association, and there is
now freedom of religion. But a secret police with a long
history of violations of privacy is still in place. And the
country's present leadership, forward-looking though it is,
does not have a mandate from the people. There is reason to
hope, though, that the present plans for free elections will
be carried out and that before long, Hungary will indeed have
a government deriving its mandate from the consent of the
governed.
Poland, as I have already noted, traveled a different
route. There, a workers' movement, growing out of the
factories, mines and shipyards, but reaching out to all
segments of the population, was able to capture the support
of an overwhelming majority of the country's population. Its
efforts to wring political and economic concessions from a
recalcitrant, Communist government came to an end. in December
1981 when that government, threatened with the possibility of
a Soviet invasion, decided to invoke martial law and use
military force to repress the people.
There were times when there were some who thought that
the crackdown of December 1981, which continued into 1982,
1983 and beyond, would set Poland's freedom efforts back for
a long time to come. But Poland's party bureaucrats
ultimately proved no match for the popular Solidarity
movement and its charismatic leader, Lech Walesa, both
supported by most of the leadership of the country's
strongest institution, the Catholic Church.
The difficult economic circumstances in which Poland
found itself prompted the government into negotiations with
Solidarity for a comprehensive agreement and elections which,
even though stacked in favor of the Communist Party, were
nevertheless lost by it.
The upshot is that we have in Poland freedom of
expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly,
freedom of association, freedom of religion, and for the
first time in more than forty years, government by consent of
the governed. To be sure, its geographic location has
resulted in limits being placed on the country's freedom to
run its own affairs as it wishes, but it surely has come a
long way.
- 3 -
Nothing like the developments in -Poland and Hungary or,
for that matter in the Soviet Union, can be observed in the
four other countries which I have mentioned Though they
differ significantly from each other in history, culture,
experience with democracy, and popular attitudes, they all
continue to be governed by leaders who hold office as
successors to the regimes installed by Joseph Stalin, or, in
the case of Czechoslovakia, more recently by Leonid Brezhnev.
None of these countries respect such basic rights as freedom
of expression, of the press, of assembly, of association.
The secret police remains all-powerful in each of these
countries, able to intimidate the great majority of the
population into political silence. The only significant
change for the better to occur in recent years has been a
gradual relaxation in the repression of religion. East
Germany may very well have gone further than any of the
others in allowing major denominations to function without
oppressive government interference.
As far as expressions of popular dissent are. concerned,
Czechoslovakia stands out as the country which, next to
Poland, has the best-organized and most outspoken and
consistent opposition group. In spite of the Czechoslovak
Government's continuing efforts to suppress the organization
and the punishment of its leaders, Charter 77 continues to
function, as an inspiration to lovers of freedom everywhere.
In the GDR, as we have vividly seen in recent weeks,
large segments of the population have used their feet, their
cars, or whatever modes of transportation were available to
express their vivid dissent from the government imposed on
them. The message sent by these refugees to the Old Guard
Stalinist leadership as it celebrated the country's 40th
birthday was clear and unmistakable. And let me add an
important point: look at the age and the background of the
people who are now fleeing the GDR. These are men and women
who from childhood onward were indoctrinated with Communist
ideology, who went through years of membership in the FREIE
DEUTSCHE JUGEND, East Germany's youth organization. Also, as
East Germany is reasonably well off, when compared to other
members of the Warsaw Pact, residents have some earthly
possessions, such as an apartment and a car. They also have
jobs and the opportunity to a reasonably successful career.
They are not necessarily great crusaders for democracy. They
are simply people who are looking for breathing space, for a
chance to lead their own lives, rather than be guided by the
all-powerful state.
- 4 -
In Romania and Bulgaria, we note not only the
continuation of political repression, but also an effort by
the dominant ethnic groups in forcing the assimilation of
ethnic minorities. In Romania the brunt of cultural
repression is borne by the Hungarian ethnic minority, whose
independent cultural activities have been curtailed and whose
educational opportunities in their own language are being
limited. In Bulgaria the repressive measures against the
Turkish minority are severe. Names have been forcibly
changed from Turkish to Bulgarian. Turkish-language
newspapers and other publications have been suppressed. The
Turkish language has been outlawed as has been Turkish dress
and certain Moslem religious practices. It is no surprise,
therefore, that when two months ago the Bulgarian-Turkish
border was opened, about one-quarter of the ethnic Turkish
population of Bulgaria, a total of 300,000, left their
possessions behind and fled the country in which they and
their ancestors had lived for centuries. Although the
Bulgarian government has indicated that some of these
repressive measures will cease, we are still waiting to see
evidence of change.
Though severely repressed, there are brave souls even in
Romania and Bulgaria who speak up for the cause of human
rights. They, too, deserve our respect and recognition.
Those of us who were around at that time may remember
the early months of 1945 when it became clear that the
collapse of the Nazis was imminent. We thought that Europe's
nightmare was about to come to an end, that there would
indeed be a new birth of freedom on the European Continent.
For reasons which are clear in retrospect, the optimistic
assessment of that time was far off the mark. More than 44
years have passed since then. But now, at long last, there
seems to be a chance that change for the better will finally
come to those countries which lost out after Hitler's
defeat. With democracy on the march in Hungary and Poland,
and the Soviet Union turning over a new leaf, it is hard to
believe that East Berlin, Prague, Bucharest and Sofia will be
able to hold out indefinitely as the sites of regimes of
repression.
#
#
#
#
United States Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
AN INVENTORY OF SOVIET HUMAN RIGHTS DEVELOPMENTS
Statement by Richard Schifter, Assistant Secretary of State for
Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs at the Annual Meeting of
the International Bar Association in Strasbourg, France,
October 4, 1989.
On December 9, 1986, those of us concerned with human rights
conditions in the Soviet Union received the sad news that
Anatoly Marchenko, a well-known Soviet dissident, had died in
Chistopol prison. Throughout much of his adult life he had
been in and out of Soviet prison camps, repeatedly punished for
his outspoken criticism of the Soviet system. He had most
recently been on a hunger strike and now he was dead, one of
the latest of the millions of victims of Soviet totalitarianism.
Shortly before Marchenko's death, the third follow-up meeting
of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe had
convened in Vienna. Human rights conditions in Eastern Europe
in general and in the Soviet Union, in particular, were high on
the agenda of the Vienna meeting. The head of the United
States delegation, Ambassador Zimmermann, took the floor to
denounce this latest outrage. He was joined by many of his
colleagues from Western Europe. Note was taken of the fact
that a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had been in office in the
Soviet Union for close to two years, that there had been a
great deal of hope that he would inaugurate a new era of
greater liberality in the Soviet Union, but that the system of
repression had continued. The GULAG had not been liquidated.
The KGB continued to generate fear. And Andrei Sakharov, the
living symbol of the call for freedom and democracy was in his
seventh year of internal exile in the city of Gorky.
What I have just described was the state of affairs regarding
Soviet respect for human rights less than three years ago.
Then, shortly after Marchenko's death, a few workmen appeared
at Andrei Sakharov's door in Gorky. To his great surprise he
was told that a telephone would be installed in his apartment.
And then, a few days later, that telephone rang and when
Sakharov picked it up, there was the General Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union inviting him to return to
Moscow.
- 2 -
I must confess to you that when I heard of this interesting new
development, I thought that it was worthy of note but believed
that what we were witnessing was little more than a sop to
Western public opinion. It is clear to me now that I
underestimated the importance of that event. The phone call to
Sakharov ushered in a new approach to human rights by the
Gorbachev leadership. What was not announced and what only
became evident some time later was that toward the end of the
year 1986 a whole series of steps were taken by the Soviet
government which suggest that a basic high-level decision had
been taken to turn the corner on the issue of respect for human
rights.
There was no formal announcement of a fundamental shift in
policy. Only in retrospect did it become evident that around
the time in issue here, the end of 1986, the Soviet authorities
had stopped enforcing the infamous articles of the Criminal
Codes which inhibited political and unauthorized religious
activity. From that time onward no one was prosecuted for
"anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,' "defamation of the
Soviet system,' or unauthorized religious practice, all
violations of Articles 70, 190-1, 142, and 227 of the Russian
Criminal Code and corresponding sections of the Criminal Codes
of the other republics.
Also, beginning in February 1987 we began to hear that
long-term political prisoners had their sentences shortened to
the time already served. Pale, emaciated former residents of
the GULAG were, at long last, returning home. It was a process
which was to continue for approximately two years. By December
31, 1988, as far as we know, no person convicted solely under
Articles 70, 190-1, 142 and 227 was still serving a prison
sentence or a sentence of internal exile.
Though no longer enforced, the political sections of the
Criminal Code still remained on the books. This year, however,
Article 190-1 was repealed. We are also told that Article 227
is scheduled to be repealed. Article 70, dealing with
anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, was amended to provide
for the punishment of attempts to overthrow the government.
Article 70, more than any other provision of the Soviet
Criminal Code has symbolized the repressive nature of the
Soviet system. That is the Article in the Criminal Code under
which persons who speak or write words of which the government
disapproves could be sentenced to seven years of hard labor
plus five years in internal exile. That was the Article under
which Irina Ratushinskaya was, at the age of 28, sentenced for
the poetry she had written. Fortunately, the change in policy
- 3 -
occurred not long thereafter and she was released short of four
years. In her exit interview at her labor camp in 1986, the
KGB officer in charge expressed to her his profound
disagreement with the decision by his superiors to release
her. This expression of dissent was, I suppose, another side
of the new policy of Glasnost.
Twelve years out of a person's life is a heavy price to pay.
It is no surprise, therefore, that when the Soviet Union
embarked on an effort toward political reform, the issue posed
by Article 70 was high on the list of changes that reformers
wanted to effect even if the Article was, for the time being,
not enforced. The changes urged by these reformers were
drastic. They wanted to end the practice under which a citizen
could be severely punished for mere expressions of opinion, and
urged that the Article be re-written and should punish only
those who committed acts designed to overthrow the government
by violence. But, as it turned out, opponents of reform were
able to engage in an effective rearguard action. When, in
April of this year, Article 70 was amended, the changes were
far less substantial than had been expected. There was an
outcry from the reformers and, once the Congress of Peoples'
Deputies met, quite a number of them pledged themselves to
further amendment of Article 70. We are still awaiting such
action.
While the struggle over the text of Article 70 continues and
while the threat that Article 70 poses to free expression
should not be underestimated, we should nevertheless keep in
mind, in our assessment of Soviet human rights conditions,
that, as I have noted before, for close to three years no one
has been tried under Article 70 and that all persons previously
incarcerated under that provision of law are now free.
Incarceration, hard labor, and internal exile were not the only
forms of punishment meted out against political dissidents or
religious activists. The most severe and surely most
frightening form of punishment was the commitment of perfectly
sane persons to psychiatric hospitals for their political or
religious activities. This form of punishment was aggravated
by the administration of drugs that produced pain or serious
discomfort.
During the years now known in the Soviet Union as the "period
of stagnation" I believed that if we kept calling attention to
this most egregious violation of human rights, the abuse of
psychiatry, we would get to the point where the members of the
Politburo would turn to the head of the KGB and say: "Comrade.
It isn't worth it. Let's cut it out." As it
- 4 -
turned out, these stagnationists were impervious to criticism
from the outside. There was no change in this policy until the
Gorbachev reforms began in late 1986 and early 1987.
In January 1987, a retired Aeroflot navigator of Russian
ethnicity, who had insisted on emigrating from the Soviet Union
with his family and who had been committed to a psychiatric
hospital demonstrated in the streets of Moscow once again,
appealing for support of his request for permission to
emigrate. For Jews to want to emigrate from the Soviet Union
was apparently deemed understandable. But for an ethnic
Russian to want to leave his homeland was viewed as insanity.
So the navigator was once again detained and once again
committed. This time, however, a great deal of publicity
surrounded the event. And within a few days, the Soviet
authorities reversed themselves. The navigator was again set
free. Later that year he and his family were, without any
fanfare, allowed to emigrate. It was a high-profile reversal
of positions. It looked as if a low-level decision had drawn
the attention of persons at a higher level and had been
reversed.
Here, too, we did not recognize a change in policy
immediately. However, from the summer of 1987 onward we began
to hear official announcements of changes affecting the
operations of psychiatric hospitals. The feared special
psychiatric hospitals, we were told, would be transferred from
the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry
of Health. By the end of 1987, in the dialogue between Soviet
and United States officials on human rights, we began to be
informed of the release of patients from psychiatric hospitals.
Significantly, these names were given to us together with the
names of persons released from prison. There was no claim that
these ex-patients had undergone a miraculous mass cure. The
unstated message that was being conveyed was that the release
of patients from psychiatric hospitals was analogous to the
freeing of political prisoners as a consequence of "the new
thinking."
Throughout 1988 we received further information about
individuals who had been committed for political reasons and
were now being released from psychiatric hospitals.
Furthermore, in our US-USSR human rights dialogue the Soviet
side suggested that American psychiatrists come to the Soviet
Union and see for themselves whether the practices to which we
had so strongly objected were continuing. On our side, there
was, of course, concern about the possibility of a Potemkin
village tour. To avoid that possibility, the trip by an
- 5 -
American psychiatric group to which we agreed, was prepared
with extraordinary care. It took place in February and March
of this year.
There has been some controversy over precisely what it is that
the US psychiatric delegation found as to the state of Soviet
psychiatry. Let me state my own conclusions. First, I believe
that all available evidence suggests that abuse of psychiatry
as official government policy was abandoned in 1987. Second,
we know of only one person committed to a psychiatric hospital
prior to 1987 for what we believe are political reasons still
residing in a psychiatric hospital, although he was transferred
from a special to an ordinary psychiatric hospital. Third,
there are occasions when local officials fall back to the old
practice of trying to intimidate oppositionists by threatening
them with psychiatric commitments.
But the cases are few and are usually quickly resolved.
If the situation has changed so radically for the better why
should there be continuing controversy about the state of
Soviet psychiatry? My own impression is that the principal
reason is the understandable and fully justified resentment of
those who have in the past suffered abuse or have been
concerned with the abuse of Soviet psychiatry, over the Soviet
profession's failure to remove past abusers from positions of
leadership in their association.
Let me now move on to the issue of freedom of assembly.
Here, too, the year 1987 marks the watershed. In the summer of
that year hundreds of Crimean Tatars demonstrated in Moscow for
permission to return to their Crimean homeland from Uzbekistan,
to where they had been deported in 1944. They did not achieve
their goal and their demonstrations were ultimately broken up.
However, they were allowed to demonstrate for a period of weeks
and when they were ultimately detained, they were simply sent
back to their places of residence. A year or two earlier they
would have received years of punishment in Siberia.
After the Crimean Tatars came the demonstrations in the Baltic
States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, then the Armenians.
Though there were serious setbacks, such as the brutal excesses
of the special troops in Tbilisi, the general trend has been in
the direction of greater freedom of assembly.
To be sure, conditions as to freedom of assembly are somewhat
murkier than they are with regard to freedom of speech. This
is so because in addition to existing statutory restrictions,
demonstrators are confronted by informal policies and with
decisions made at the local level. It is the local militia
officials who decide when to break up a demonstration and how
- 6 -
much force to use. Local officials also determine afterward
whether a person will be punished "administratively" by serving
up to 15 days in prison. What is clear is that if the
demonstrations are peaceful, there are no subsequent serious
criminal proceedings and that, in many instances, what in the
past would have been prohibited, is now tolerated.
Freedom of the press remains severely restricted because all
the resources for the dissemination of information, be it print
or electronic, remain under government control. Sergei
Grigoryants, who scrounged around for paper and equipment, has
been able to make at least a slight dent in this government
monopoly. But there are clear limits to his impact.
A
greater impact since the lid of oppression on Soviet media
began to lift in 1987, has been made by the independent spirits
who are in some of the most influential media positions. These
persons, who for many years had borne the yoke placed on them
by the system, began to be increasingly aware of the fact that
they could now speak or write what was on their mind and get
away with it. The newspaper Izvestia and the magazine Ogonyok
are examples of the new freedom of the press, a freedom in
which views sharply deviating from Communist Orthodoxy are set
forth without fear of censorship or punishment.
One of the long-established hallmarks of a free society is
freedom of religion. It was one of the freedoms totally
repressed immediately following the Bolshevik revolution.
Atheism became the form of belief sponsored by the government.
And here, too, we have seen significant changes in attitude
since 1986. A new law is being prepared on what the Soviets
call "freedom of conscience." This new law seems to be more
controversial than had been originally anticipated, for, at
this stage, it is still under discussion rather than having
been scheduled for action.
But, as in other areas, here too, changes in practice have
occurred in anticipation of changes in statutory provisions.
At some time during the last 2-1/2 years the authorities stopped
interfering with adult religious gatherings which before then
would have been deemed unauthorized. More recently it has been
indicated that the law that permits religious education only in
the home and only by a child's parents would no longer be
enforced and that private homes may now be the place where
children from a number of families may gather to receive
religious instruction from a clergyman or other religious
teacher. The only religious denomination which to this date
has been denied the opportunity of exercising its religious
beliefs freely is the Ukrainian Catholic Church. But here,
too, there is now some expectation of change for the better.
- 7 -
One of the distinctive features of a totalitarian state is that
it restricts freedom of movement, that, generally speaking,
emigration is disallowed. The prohibition of emigration was,
indeed, for many decades the thoroughly established policy of
the Soviet Union. Under strong pressure from the United States
and clearly as part of an effort to advance detente, the
Soviets began to allow Jews, ethnic Germans, and Armenians to
emigrate in the early Seventies, only to end that policy when
detente came to an end with the invasion of Afghanistan.
As we all now know, there has once again been a drastic change
in Soviet emigration policy. More than 100,000 ethnic Germans,
Jews, Armenians, Pentecostals, Greeks, and others were given
exit permits in 1988. That figure is likely to climb beyond
200,000 in 1989. Most of the barriers to free emigration which
still exist are scheduled to be removed under a new law, a
draft of which has been submitted by the leadership to the
Supreme Soviet.
When the political prisoners arrived back from the GULAG in
early 1987, it did not take long for them to form themselves
into activist groups. But at the outset there were only a few
such groups and all of them experienced harassment by the
police. By the time we moved into 1988, these private
associations began to multiply rapidly while police harassment
declined substantially, in part, because there were too many
groups to keep track of and also because the country's
leadership probably had decided to surrender the monopoly on
organized group activity which since the early 1920's had been
held by the Communist party.
And that brings me to the very basic question of the gradual
devolution of decision-making authority from a tight,
self-selected leadership group to a much broader base. Here,
as in the other settings which I have described, there has been
no sudden break with the past. We cannot say that on a day
certain the dictatorship came to an end, to be succeeded by
government based on the consent of the governed. What happened
instead was that over a period of time, beginning in 1988,
power began to shift gradually from the party to organs of the
state. Then, within the state structure, a genuine legislative
body, the Supreme Soviet was created. And in March of this
year, for the first time since November 1917, Soviet voters
were given an opportunity to play a meaningful role in the
election of that legislative body. To be sure, in many
districts the electorate was simply not organized to take
advantage of this new opportunity, but in a surprisingly large
number of legislative districts, the rank and file voters were
- 8 -
offered a real choice and overwhelmingly cast their vote
against the old guard. The Communist party, to be sure, is
still the only recognized political party. But that statement,
true as it may be, masks the new reality. The Communist party
of the USSR ain't what it used to be.
Finally, the Soviet head of state today is a man who indirectly
and partially has a mandate from the people. As imperfect as
the process of selection may be from a democratic point of
view, it is still a first for the Soviet Union. So is the fact
that he has a limited term of office of five years, and a
constitutional limit on the number of terms he may serve, which
is two.
&
What I have said up to this point is upbeat. It reflects my
impressions on the positive changes which have occurred in the
Soviet Union since late 1986. But we need to note that there
is unfortunately no assurance that the trend which we have
recently witnessed will continue. There is a continuing danger
that it might be reversed.
For there is a deep division in the Soviet establishment and in
the general population on the issue of democratization The
top leadership is now dominated by reformers. But at lower
levels of the State and party bureaucracy there is strong
opposition to change. Continuing efforts at thwarting reforms
can be noticed. Also while the Intelligentsia strongly
supports reform, there are many Soviet citizens who are
basically conservative in outlook and concerned about
instability. They felt comfortable with the Soviet czars and
boyars and are troubled by the notion that their fate should be
placed in their own hands. Oddly we see a joining of forces
between Russian nationalists, who may still long for the
Romanovs, and Orthodox Communists, who long for Joseph Stalin,
all in opposition to what they view as Western-inspired
reforms. And then there is the great mass of citizens whose
primary concern is with the daily problems of life: with food,
housing and clothing. The principal objective of the present
Soviet leadership is necessarily to pull the country out of the
economic morass into which it began to sink in the Brezhnev Era.
President Bush has spoken for the American people in expressing
hope for President Gorbachev's success. Putting more food on
the table of the average Soviet citizen, making more consumer
goods available, finding ways of changing the country's
economic structure so as to begin to meet the people's needs
are the essential ingredients of such success. It is in that
way the human rights gains of the last three years can be
effectively secured.
- 9 -
But there is more to the task of securing human rights in the
Soviet Union. President Gorbachev has spoken of the goal of
establishing state based on the rule of law. Another leading
Soviet personality has said to me: "We need a legal culture."
I have thought about this last remark and have reflected on
what it might mean. Let me now offer to you the conclusions
with which I have come up, which would spell out the
institutionalization of human rights guarantees:
(1) Laws written with clarity and precision, including
cases which guarantee human rights;
£
(2) Administrative regulations written with equal clarity
and precision and made known to the public;
(3) A process available to the average citizen to assert
his rights against the government;
(4) A citizenry prepared to assert its rights through
legal process and able to do so without fear of
governmental retribution;
(5) Counsel available to the citizenry to provide legal
guidance in asserting these rights;
(6) An independent judiciary capable of rendering an
impartial judgment in a dispute between a citizen and the
government.
If the foregoing is a fair assessment of what still has to be
done, the task before the Soviet Union's legal reformers is
indeed daunting, but the benefits to be obtained, the rule of
law, is recognized by them as worth striving for.
# # # #
United States Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
HUMAN RIGHTS AND PERESTROIKA
Remarks by Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and
Humanitarian Affairs Richard Schifter at a Seminar sponsored by
the Helsinki Commission of the Soviet Friendship Societies in
Moscow, U.S.S.R., on February 1, 1990
This is the year in which we shall mark the 15th
anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act. It is a
document which has played an extraordinarily important role in
the changes which have occurred all around us in recent years.
And it can make a critically important positive contribution to
the future relations between the participating states. That is
why this meeting, on the role of public opinion in the context
of the human dimension of the Helsinki process, is of special
significance and the organizers, the Helsinki Commission of the
Union of Friendship Societies and Madame Tereshkova, do indeed
deserve to be congratulated.
It is not only the fact of the meeting and the timing which
are significant. It is also the place. Would such a meeting
have been called in Moscow in the year of the 10th anniversary
of the Helsinki Final Act? If it had been called, would anyone
have taken it seriously? I leave it to you to answer these
questions. But times have changed, changed significantly for
the better, and this meeting, as we can see, is taking place and
it is being taken seriously.
There was a time when it was argued that we have differing
ideas about the human dimension, that we have differing notions
as to what the words "human rights" mean. What many have come
to recognize and acknowledge is that we are all part of the same
civilization, that our notions about the ideal relationship
between governments and the people are quite similar, even
though they may not be identical.
We should not be surprised by this similarity. Cultural
exchange is not a new invention. Even though it was in the past
not run by government agencies, it did take place. It has taken
place for centuries. Irrespective of the religious label which
we affix to ourselves, including the label "atheist", we draw
our ethical values from the same religious tradition. We read
each other's literature. We benefit from each other's
contributions to science and technology. And we have also
exchanged political ideas. Ideas, as they say, do not know any
borders.
- 2 -
As I have earlier suggested, a meeting such as this one
would not have taken place in Moscow five years ago. But that
does not mean that the principles on which this meeting is based
were then foreign to this soil. To be sure, there were those
who contended that the ideas of freedom propagated by the
Enlightenment of the 18th Century were inappropriate for what
was called the Soviet social system. These defenders of the old
order, I submit, were betraying the heritage of this country's
great exponents of freedom, such as Pushkin and Tolstoy, and
denying to the Soviet people a role among those nations of the
world which were committed to social progress. What they
desired for the Soviet Union was the perpetuation of the social
philosophy of Ivan the Terrible.
I have mentioned Pushkin and Tolstoy because not only their
names but also their writings are part of the heritage of the
civilization to which we belong. But they did not stand alone
in their affirmation of a belief in a free and open society.
There are many others who kept the spark of a belief in liberty
alive even under the most adverse circumstances. It is,
therefore, appropriate on this occasion to pay tribute to those
courageous people, both in Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union,
who risked imprisonment and exile, who sacrificed their careers,
sometimes even their lives, to stand up for the principles of
liberty and against the rule of autocrats, both of the pre-1917
and the post-1917 variety.
And I also want to pay tribute to those who hold high
office in this country today, beginning with the man who has
captured the world's imagination, the Chairman of the Presidium
of the Supreme Soviet. Perhaps some historians will be able to
point out a similar set of circumstances. I, for one, do not
know of any other example in history in which a leadership group
in which absolute power and a capability of total repression was
vested, voluntarily relinquished its power and instead of
governing by coercion resorted to use of the power of persuasion.
It is probably fair to say that Kim I1 Soong and Fidel
Castro cannot be counted among the most fervent admirers of
Perestroika. There may even be a few other persons outside the
Soviet Union who hold similar views. But with these few
exceptions, the world outside your country fervently wishes for
the success of Perestroika. This, too, is a historic first. I
cannot recall another situation in which the world was so
unanimous in applauding the leadership of a country as it tries
to effect domestic change. One of the revolutions of recent
times has been the revolution in attitudes toward the Soviet
Union. You now have friends in many places.
- 3 -
One factor in this revolution of attitudes has been the
personality of Mikhail Gorbachev. But another factor has been
the policy change which he has effectd. The Soviet Union is
recognized in the world as a powerful military force. That is
why the world has responded so enthusiastically to Soviet
domestic changes which have logically gone hand in hand with
changes in foreign policy and which have thus caused the threat
of international conflict to recede significantly. As has often
been said, a government which is not a threat to its own people
is not likely to be a threat to its neighbors. But the opposite
is true as well. A country which mistreats its own citizens is
likely to be a threat to international peace.
Yet, we all must recognize that a basic change in approach
at the highest level of government is only the first step. It
is necessary for the "new thinking" at the highest level to
permeate the bureaucracy and for institutions to be created that
guarantee the operation of government on the basis of "new
thinking". Bringing the bureaucracy along is a challenge to any
government in any country and the Soviet Union is no exception.
It takes time. So does the creation of new institutions.
And that is not all. We have come to know the term
"command economy". We should also recognize that there can
exist a mind set of what we can term a "command society". What
is critically important is to help the average citizen move from
his role in a command society to the assumption of a role in a
voluntary society, in which he asserts his rights but also
voluntarily recognizes and discharges his responsibilities.
In all these undertakings, calling attention to the
problems of bureaucracy, building institutions to protect
individual rights, educating citizens as to their rights and
their moral responsibilities in a free society, nongovernmental
organizations can play an invaluable role.
I said at the outset that the people of the Soviet Union
have the world's good wishes for the success of Perestroika.
Good wishes, you might say, are insufficient in these difficult
times and you are undoubtedly right. Let me, therefore, say
that you also have the sincere willingness of others to
cooperate so as to help Perestroika succeed. President Bush has
pledged the cooperation of the Government of the United States.
But it is not only the Government that is willing to cooperate.
Over and over again do I receive inquiries from private groups
and individuals who want to know how they can be of assistance.
You would be truly amazed at how many people are interested in
giving tangible expression to their attitude of good will toward
- 4 -
the new Soviet Union, the Soviet Union led by Gorbachev. Here,
too, nongovernmental organizations can be of help by finding
ways for such volunteers to play a useful role.
But, as we all know, the success of Perestroika will
ultimately depend not on outsiders but on the energies and the a
veteran of World War II, I am well aware of the fact that you
spirit of the people of the Soviet Union themselves. As
have triumphed in times of adversity before. I am confident
that in this peaceful struggle for a better life you will
triumph again. Your goal, as the goal of all of us, is in
Pushkin's words,
Narodnov vol'nost i pokoy.
[People's liberty and peace. ]
#####
United States Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
"SOVIET REFORM EFFORTS: CATCHING UP WITH REALITY"
Remarks by Richard Schifter, Assistant Secretary of State for
Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, at a Conference
sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies & the
USSR Academy of Science, at the University of California at
Berkeley, August 10, 1989
For many decades, the Soviet Union's political drama was
played off-stage. There would be an occasional public
announcement as to the final moments of a particular scene,
such as news of the death of a General Secretary, but neither
the potential domestic nor the foreign audience knew what was
really transpiring. All we knew was that the cast performing
in this drama was small and highly select.
And now, it would seem, we are treated to a truly public
spectacle, much of it in living color on television. The cast
is one of thousands, with the audience joining the act.
The response to this spectacle outside the Soviet Union has
been varied. There are those who, like Fidel Castro, view
these developments as a betrayal of the cause. Other
apologists for the ancien regime prefer to avert their eyes or
to offer some embarrassed and incomprehensible explanation for
this most recent turn of events in the motherland of
socialism. At the other end of the political spectrum are
those who say it is all a farce, a huge Potemkin Village
designed to mislead the West, to cause it to end its vigilance
against Soviet aggressive designs.
To lay the foundation for another interpretation of current
developments in the Soviet Union, let me take you back to the
year 1903. A relatively obscure group of Russian
revolutionaries holds a convention in Brussels. It styles
itself as the leadership of the Russian Social Democratic
Party. Concerned about the scrutiny of the Belgian police, it
recesses and reconvenes in London. Like other Social
Democratic Parties throughout Europe, the Russian Social
Democrats are inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx. Like
these other Social Democrats they have internal disagreements
and argue over the proper interpretations of Marxist
teachings. But unlike the others, their differences are so
-2-
profound that they divide the Party. It is a split that will
cast a. shadow over the remainder of the century:
In spite of all the blood and thunder in the writings of
Karl Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels, Europe's Social
Democrats were, by and large, a rather benign lot. Though
committed to end the rule of the bourgeoisie, they had wished
to do so in keeping with the principles of social organization
developed by the Enlightenment, that is by majority vote and
with respect for the rights of the individual.
But the Russian Social Democratic Party leadership had a
member who marched to a different drummer. Vladimir Ilyich
Ulyanov, whom the world came to know as Lenin, did not believe
that the better world envisaged by Karl Marx could be attained
if Marxists played by democratic rules. Iron discipline, the
total disregard of what he referred to as bourgeois morality,
the seizing and maintaining of control by force, and the
imposition of dictatorial rule, both in the party and the
Socialist-led state were his prescription for the attainment of
the Marxist utopia of a just and fair society.
Lenin's theses divided the Russian Democratic Party in 1903
and, after the Bolshevik accession to power in Russia, the
world Socialist Movement. It is the sharp difference in the
evolution of the two wings of world socialism in the last
eighty years which may shed light on the recent developments in
the Soviet Union.
It was as long ago as 1908 that the term "revisionism" was
coined to describe the modifications in Marxist precepts
advocated by German Social Democrats such as Kautsky and
Bernstein. To see how far revisionism has taken the Social
Democrats, we need only to take a look at today's France.
France is, after all, governed by the Socialist Party, the
ideological descendants of the men and women who in 1903 were
the comrades of Russia's Mensheviki.
What revisionism has meant has been the continual testing
of doctrine and principle against experience and reality. When
reality taught that nationalization of the means of production
and distribution did not necessarily improve a society's
productive capability, it was abandoned. So, ultimately, was
any identification with the teachings of Karl Marx. What
remained of the original program was a commitment only to the
ultimate objective to use the state to advance the general
welfare of the population. This goal came to be shared with
other democratic parties. Today, programatic differences
between Social Democrats and non-Socialist parties are over the
extent of state involvement in economic management, not over
-3-
fundamental principles concerning the basic relationship
between the state and the individual
The other wing of the movement, by contrast, remained
frozen in time. Lenin's precepts became immutable doctrine.
Their elaboration took on the form of articles of faith.
Leninism developed its own hierarchy, its own rituals, and
committed itself to total intolerance of all other beliefs.
There are those who contend that this is not what Lenin had
envisaged, that there is evidence that toward the end of his
life he wanted to steer a somewhat different course, that his
new economic program is evidence of his pragmatism. But Lenin
was incapacitated by a stroke in 1923 and died in 1924.
Whether he would have modified his prescriptions is an
interesting question for students of Communist history, but
objectively speaking, irrelevant. It is in his name and on the
basis of his theories that the Soviet Union has for decades
maintained a system of government and economic management which
has not only been brutally repressive but also increasingly out
of touch with the reality of worldwide economic and social
development.
There were past efforts to break out of this iron mold.
The first of these is associated with the name of Nikolai
Bukharin. The second with Nikita Khrushchev. Both efforts as
we know, failed. And now, I submit, we are dealing with the
third attempt to align the precepts governing the politics and
economics of the Soviet Union with events in the real world.
Today's gap between the stubborn convictions of the
Communist Orthodox and the generally-accepted understanding of
what works in the field of economics and politics and what does
not is far greater than it was during the days of Bukharin and
of Khrushchev. Bukharin was a believer to the very end. So
was Khrushchev, who predicted that the communist system would
"bury" the capitalist. That is no longer the prevailing
sentiment.
Much of the recent change in the Soviet Union is, of
course, associated with the name of Mikhail Gorbachev. And
rightly so. His most significant role, to date, can be equated
with that of the young child in the fairy tale of the "Emperor
and His New Clothes." He came forward to say bluntly that the
command system had failed. Those who knew all along that the
Emperor had no clothes but were afraid to say so, are now
speaking up. And others who had talked themselves into
believing that the Emperor was wearing clothes or that they
were not seeing too well, are now joining the chorus. (In this
analogy, I have, to be sure, omitted the role of the
-4-
dissidents. But the general Soviet public began to pay new
attention only when the General Secretary started to say what
Andrei Sakharov had been saying for decades.)
As the reformers among Soviet political scientists and
economists now seek to break out of the Marxist-Leninist mold
in which they had been encased, they resort to differing verbal
formulas. But they all seem to have the same idea in mind.
What most of them are fully aware of is that mere tinkering
with the system will not do, that a total overhaul is
required. The term which has been used to describe this
commitment is "radical perestroika." Critics of radical
perestroika contend that the reformers are abandoning socialism
and are intent on reconstructing the Soviet Union in the image
of the West. As far as one can tell, the reformers have
stopped arguing the point. They have also stopped using
old-time terminology. They have clearly discarded old-time
doctrine. They are looking around to see what works. With all
its problems, its warts and its blemishes, the democratic West
works. And that is what these reformers see and what now
guides their thinking.
Leninist theory did not see any inherent good in the
dictatorship by a single leader or a small group and in the
suppression of human rights. These were all means to an end,
the end being the Communist Workers' Paradise. Now that it has
become clear that the road traveled these last 72 years did not
lead to that end, there is clearly no justification for the use
of the means employed heretofore. Thus, we see Soviet
reformers aligning their views with those of ours whose notions
on the role of government are founded on the ideas of the
Enlightenment, as reflected in such documents as our own
Declaration of Independence.
But these reformers are by no means home free. The Soviet
population is in many respects socially conservative. The
challenge to authority, sense of uncertainty, and the increase
in criminality which are associated with the reduction in state
authority is unsettling to a great many Soviet citizens. There
is also fear of a private-incentive system by those who believe
that they will not be able to hold their own if the state stops
guaranteeing employment for all. All of these supporters of
the status quo form the natural base of support for those in
leadership positions who do not want to surrender their power
and their privileges.
And so the drama is acted out, the contest between the
reformers and the standpatters, or to call a spade a spade
between democrats and adherents of Communist orthodoxy.
-5-
Much has been accomplished during the last two years in
loosening the shackles of Soviet citizens. Political prisoners
have been released. There is now greater freedom of expression
than at any time in more than 60 years. The campaign against
religion is being brought to an end. And last spring we
witnessed in some parts of the Soviet Union honest-to-goodness
free elections.
But, regrettably, political reform has not as yet been
accompanied by economic reform of the kind that would really
matter. The goal, the introduction of a market economy, is
clear, but how to get there is not. Effecting the changes
which make a sluggish system of production function efficiently
has proved far more difficult than the advocates of perestroika
initially believed. Yet, success in improving the performance
of the economy is of critical importance if the political moves
toward a more open society are to be sustained.
Whether the Soviet reformers will succeed is not at all
clear. What is clear is that if they do, it will bode a better
future for the Soviet people, for the United States, and given
our respective roles in the world, for the rest of humanity.
#
#
#
United States Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
A PERSONAL REVIEW OF THE SOVIET CHANGES
Statement by Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and
Humanitarian Affairs Richard Schifter to a Conference sponsored
by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, on November 29, 1988,
in Washington, D.C.
I need to emphasize at the outset that these remarks are
not intended to be a statement of official position. I am here
to share with you my own thoughts as to developments in the
Soviet Union in the course of the last two years.
To underline the highly personal nature of my remarks, let
me share with you my thoughts as I stood in line, exactly two
weeks ago, in Red Square, about to enter the Lenin Mausoleum.
I was travelling with a Congressional delegation and it was the
entire delegation that had arranged for this ceremonial visit.
As the line moved along, I could not help but think that my
father and mother would have disapproved of my presence there.
Living in Eastern Europe at the time, they had followed Lenin's
rise to power and had been strongly opposed to the Bolsheviks.
I recall being told, while I was still a small child, a
story involving relatives of my mother's. During the war of
1920 between the Soviet Union and Poland, as it was related to
me, the Soviets had occupied a Polish town, in which one of the
relatives, a young woman, was placed in charge. Before long,
she received a visit from her brother, who called her attention
to the fact that their father had been imprisoned. He asked
for her help. "A Bolshevik has neither father nor mother,' was
her response.
This was the message impressed on a youngster at the same
time that he was taught, in keeping with the precepts of his
culture, that what in the Jewish religion is known as the Fifth
Commandment, to honor thy father and thy mother, is by far the
most important rule governing one's life. As you can see, I
came to my anti-Communism early.
As I observed developments in the Soviet Union over the
decades I have time and again been struck by the validity of my
parents' early assessment of the Bolsheviks. At the same time,
I have asked myself, as so many others have: "How long will it
last?"
I remember putting this question about 20 years ago to an
acquaintance of mine who is one of Israel's outstanding
Sovietologists. His answer was that change would come only
when the post-Stalin generation would ascend to the top level
of the Soviet hierarchy.
-2-
I thought back to that exchange in March 1985, when that
event finally did occur. I wondered then whether the Soviet
Union would now, at long last, break out of the totalitarian
mold in which it had been cast for so long. But as the months
passed, we heard appeals from the new leadership of the Soviet
Union for harder work, for greater efficiency, and above all,
we witnessed a campaign against "demon rum" worthy of Carrie
Nation.
But nothing else changed. Those who did voice dissent
continued to be sent off to the Gulag, religion remained
repressed, abuse of psychiatry continued, and the exit doors
remained closed to those who had years earlier given up all
contacts with the society in which they lived in the forlorn
hope that they would be allowed to depart.
There was no doubt that the Soviet Union's new leader was
energetic and assertive, but there was no indication, as he
completed his first year in the office of General Secretary of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, that he was committed
to fundamental change in the Soviet system. Some day we may
perhaps find out what Mikhail Gorbachev's frame of mind was at
the time he ascended to the Soviet Union's highest office. Did
he at that time believe that it was inherently wrong to send a
person to Siberia for 12. years for the mere expression of
dissenting views? Did he consider it wrong to commit a sane
person to an institution for the mentally ill because of his
religious activism? Did he come to these realizations later?
If so, what caused him to begin to view matters differently?
Does he, today, consider it morally wrong for a person to be
deprived of freedom of expression, or of the freedom to
practice his religion? Or does he consider it merely
inexpedient for such repression to take place, as it
interferes, on the basis of the evidence, with economic
progress or with the Soviet Union's standing in the world?
Perhaps we shall find out in due course what it is that
caused Gorbachev to bring about a significant change of course
in the Soviet Union in the second year of his leadership.
Perhaps we shall never know.
The first whiff of change came to be noticed in 1986.
When we first heard of Glasnost, it seemed that it was a device
to strengthen Perestroika. As long as mistakes of lower-ranking
officials, inefficiency, corruption, drunkenness were all swept
under the rug, the leadership seemed to have recognized, it
would be unable to bring about improvements. Only if the
average citizen were enabled to speak up, to expose wrong-doing
by low-level officials would the leadership be made aware of
the problems that required correction. This very pragmatic
objective of letting the leaders know about defects in the
operations of the system seemed to be the principal reason for
-3-
Glasnost but also seemed to set its limits. Questions reserved
for decision by the leadership were not going to be the subject
of discussion by the general public.
As Gorbachev's second year in office began to draw to a
close, Glasnost seemed to sprout new wings. In December 1986
there came the startling news that Andrei Sakharov had been
allowed to return to Moscow. A few weeks later, the wholesale
release of prisoners of conscience began. Plays and films
critical of the Stalinist past were now shown and there were
reports that literary works which had heretofore been
proscribed would soon be printed. And, as another indicator of
change, the number of exit permits issued to would-be emigrants
began to rise. As we entered Gorbachev's third year in office
the conclusion that a good many of us had reached was that
Gorbachev had committed himself to strip once again from the
Soviet system those elements of repression and brutality
associated with the name of Josef Stalin. For the second time,
the ghost of Stalin was to be exorcised.
Those of us who welcomed this development as a step in the
right direction warned, however, that all that the Soviet
leadership was trying to achieve was to return to the approach
to government which characterized the Soviet Union prior to the
rise of Stalin, the system of rule put in place by Lenin. And
Lenin, we pointed out, had not acquired fame for his espousal
of civil liberties and government by consent of the governed.
In fact, we noted, it was Lenin who laid the foundation on
which Stalin built his despotic rule.
As we settled down with our new explanation of developments
in the Soviet Union, we began to note in the second half of
1987, something that we had not seen in Soviet society for
close to 60 years: an increasingly open division of opinion in
the country's leadership. There had, of course, been splits
before, but we used to find out about them only after the
losers had been removed from office. Now we noted different
signals from different incumbents in leadership positions. The
General Secretary was all in favor of Perestroika, Glasnost and
democratization, But if you listened carefully to what his
colleague, Mr. Ligachev, had to say and if you also paid
attention to the views of the head of the KGB, Mr. Chebrikov,
you could note, that these gentlemen were all in favor of
Perestroika, but that is where their enthusiasm stopped.
Which way, observers both inside and outside the Soviet
Union asked themselves, was the wind going to blow? When, in
the fall of 1987, Boris Yeltsin made his fervent plea for
greater openness and found that that cost him his leadership
position, it seemed that we had reached a new plateau in the
Soviet Union's development toward a more open society, a
plateau on which the Soviets were going to stay for quite a
-4-
while. In fact, it seemed as if the advocates of greater
openness were now in retreat. That impression was confirmed
when, on March 13, 1988, the newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya
printed a purported letter from a Leningrad schoolteacher
critical of the new liberalizing trend and calling for a return
to the old verities associated with Leninist, and possibly
Stalinist orthodoxy. It sounded like an authentic statement of
policy, reflecting a return to "old thinking.'
From what I heard afterwards, many Soviet citizens,
including those in responsible governmental position, were
holding their breath at that time. Was it all going to come to
an end after only three years? Was there really no hope for a
better future?
And then, on April 5, 1988, in the pages of Pravda, came
the counterblast, a strong reaffirmation of Glasnost and a
commitment to further progress toward a more open society.
There followed, in June, the 19th Party Conference, with its
resolutions on such subjects as the rule of law, and then, in
September, we witnessed the retirement of Gromyko and the
sidelining of Ligachev and Chebrikov.
It is in the course of this year, I must confess to you,
that I finally began to take the Gorbachev changes seriously.
It seemed significant to me that the leadership had split and
that those who had opposed further openness had evidently
lost. Increasingly, our human rights concerns were discussed
seriously in the Soviet Union, not just to be rebutted or to be
accommodated for the sake of an improved international image,
but because at least some persons with leadership roles in
Soviet society seemed to recognize that we were making valid
points, that Soviet society had to reform itself for its own
sake. And as we look at the statements which have emanated
from high places this year, we are beginning to see deviations
from Leninist doctrine.
Though Lenin continues to be revered, though the speeches
of Soviet officials continue to be sprinkled with quotations
from him, though the changes that are now being effected
continue to be justified by citing one or the other of Lenin's
precepts, the approach to the relationship between government
and the governed seems no longer to reflect the core of
Leninist teachings. What he would have derided as bourgeois
liberalism is beginning to take hold in Soviet society.
Will it last? That is something that none of us can
predict. What we can do is observe the changes that have come
about. We can also take note of what has not changed. Though
the KGB appears to be under instructions to behave differently
from the way it did heretofore, that organization has not been
dismantled and still wields a great deal of power. It also
-5-
continues to intimidate a great many people, particularly in
regions distant from Moscow. I have frequently heard of
warnings issued by KGB personnel to those who act or speak more
freely than the KGB deems appropriate, warnings that the
country's leadership will change again and that the KGB will
then "get" those who made use of the freedoms now allowed.
There is no doubt that if the Soviet leadership truly wants to
turn the corner, wants to reassure the people that the present
course will continue, it must begin to dismantle the apparatus
of internal repression, the Secret Police.
That organization, incidentally, has been in existence for
close to 300 years, having been established by Peter the Great
in 1702, when it was called the "Secret Office." Known as the
Okhrana under the last Romanov Czars, it was abolished after
the democratic revolution of 1917, only to be reestablished in
December of that year, following the Bolshevik coup.
The KGB remains undoubtedly a powerful force in today's
Soviet Union. Its domestic arm is probably needed in the war
against corruption. To allow it to function in a manner which
advances the goal of clean government and yet have it respect
civil liberties is the challenge faced by the Soviet Union's
reformers.
Given the relatively recent origin of the Soviet Union's
move toward greater openness, given the limits of the success
achieved thus far, and given the powerful anti-Glasnost forces
at work, we cannot say that the Soviet reform movement is bound
to succeed. But those of us who believe that "governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed" in keeping with what Thomas Jefferson
called "the laws of nature and of nature's God," should view
the trends now in evidence in the Soviet Union as natural,
understandable, in the interest of the Soviet people and, in
fact, in the interest of people throughout the world. What is
now critically important is that we try to follow developments
in the Soviet Union, that we recognize the forward movement
that is taking place while, at the same time, being aware of
its limits.
It is in this context that we also need to ask ourselves
how we can be of help. In 1987, we saw, for the first time in
years, that Soviet dissidents were no longer prevented from
functioning, at least on the fringes of Soviet society --
harassed, but not prevented from functioning. We applauded
them. We gave them moral encouragement. Now in 1988, we see
reformers operating within the Soviet system, persons in
position of authority sticking their necks out to enlarge civil
liberties, to respect religious belief, to institute the rule
of law. We need to extend a helping hand to these reformers,
conscious of the fact that we must avoid lording it over them,
-6-
conscious of the fact that we must avoid lording it over them,
that we must respect their dignity. As I heard one Soviet
official put it: "We are prepared to learn, as long as we are
not being taught."
Whether or not the Soviet Union will ultimately join the
world's democracies will be decided within the Soviet Union and
not outside it. But to the extent to which we can encourage
that highly desirable result, we should surely do SO. Just how
we can effectively provide encouragement for democratic change
in Soviet society is the question with which we need to concern
ourselves in the period ahead.
#
#
#
Richard Schifter
Current
The Soviet Constitution:
Policy
No. 994
Myth and Reality
United States Department of State
Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, D.C.
Following is an address by Richard
Next, I would drop down to Article
preted in light of the writings of the
Schifter, Assistant Secretary for Human
39, which states:
Soviet Union's Founding Father. That
Rights and Humanitarian Affairs,
Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and
person is, of course, Vladimir Ilyich
before the American Bar Association
freedoms must not be to the detriment of
Ulyanov, whom the world has come to
(ABA), San Francisco, California,
the interest of society or the state
know as Lenin.
August 10, 1987.
In using the term Marxism-
I would round out these quotations
Leninism, we often lose sight of the in-
If we were asked to identify the
from the Soviet Constitution with Arti-
dividuals to whose teachings we thus
passage or passages in the Constitution
cle 59, which reads as follows:
refer. They were, in fact, persons who
of the United States that best charac-
Citizens' exercise of their rights and
differed markedly from each other. Karl
terize the nature of our government, I
freedoms is inseparable from the perform-
Marx was a theoretician, who pro-
would assume that a good many of us
ance of their duties and obligations.
claimed to the world his purportedly
would point to the Bill of Rights, par-
Citizens of the U.S.S.R. are obliged to
scientific analyses of economics and
ticularly the First and Fifth Amend-
observe the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. and
history and who predicted future
ments. If the same question were asked
Soviet laws, comply with the standards of
historic trends on the basis of his
with regard to the Soviet Constitution,
socialist conduct, and uphold the honor and
I, for one, would select four key
dignity of Soviet citizenship.
analyses.
Lenin, by contrast, was an activist.
provisions.
His writings are free of abstruse
First and foremost, I would direct
The Role of Lenin
theory. They are how-to-do-it kits on
attention to Article 6, which states:
The Soviet Constitution is a lengthy
seizing and holding power. To be sure,
The leading and guiding force of Soviet
document, containing altogether 174 ar-
these writings were not entirely
society and the nucleus of its political
ticles. A number of them would, at first
original. Their basic theses can be found
system, of all state organizations and public
blush, remind us of guarantees of in-
in Machiavelli's The Prince, written
organizations, is the Communist Party of the
dividual freedom which are the
close to 400 years before Lenin put pen
Soviet Union
The Communist Party
determines
hallmark of basic charters in true
to paper.
the course of the domestic
democracies. To understand their mean-
After having become familiar with
and foreign policy of the U.S.S.R., directs
ing and significance in the Soviet set-
Marx's writings, Lenin committed
the great constructive work of the Soviet
ting, we need to comprehend fully just
himself to helping history along by
people, and imparts a planned, systematic
and theoretically substantiated character to
what the role of a constitution is in the
seeking to establish first in Russia and
their struggle for the victory of communism.
U.S.S.R. and how constitutional provi-
then throughout the world his own no-
I would then move back to Article 3
sions must be read in the context of the
tion of Marx's vision of an ideal society.
Soviet Union's basic notions of the rela-
With single-minded devotion to his
and note the following words:
tionship between the governing and the
cause, he applied himself to the goal of
The Soviet state is organized and func-
governed.
taking power in Russia, a goal which he
tions on the principle of democratic cen-
reached in the fall of 1917.
tralism
Democratic centralism combines
In seeking to construe our own
Constitution, we often refer to the
Lenin, we must note, had competi-
central leadership with local initiative and
Federalist Papers and other writings of
tion among the revolutionaries who, like
creative activity
the Founding Fathers. Similarly, the
he, tried to depose the czar and
Soviet Constitution should be inter-
Russia's ruling aristocracy. His com-
petitors included advocates of capitalist
democracy as well as leftwing revolu-
The Soviet Constitution as an
which in Soviet practice means speak-
tionaries, some of them fellow Marxists.
Educational and Propaganda
ing unpleasant truths, is presumed not
What distinguished most of them from
Instrument
to strengthen the socialist system.
Lenin was that, in one way or the
We must understand, therefore, that
Let us take a look at another con-
other, they subscribed to the ideas of
the role of government and of the digni-
the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. is not,
stitutional provision dealing with civil
ty of the individual which were the
like our Constitution, a document that
liberties. Article 52 reads as follows:
essence of the teachings of the
spells out the powers and form of
Citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed
government as well as its limits and the
freedom of conscience, that is, the right to
Enlightenment. These teachings, let us
inalienable rights of the individual. In a
profess or not to profess any religion, and to
recall, are, indeed, the teachings to
Leninist state there are, by definition,
conduct religious worship or atheistic
which our Founding Fathers subscribed
and which provided the ideological base
no limits to the power of government.
propaganda.
on which our system of government is
There are no inalienable rights of the
Indeed, in the Soviet Union today,
individual. Law is made and altered at
built.
anyone may profess a religion. But
Lenin rejected these teachings,
will by the leadership. The powers of
nothing in the Constitution prohibits the
the leadership cannot be limited by an
derisively referring to them as
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
"bourgeois liberalism." His basic
overarching document that would
from banning anyone who professes
precepts were that the power of the
deprive a leadership group of its
religion from its membership and,
freedom to act as it sees fit. Nor can
state must be seized and held by an
therefore, from advancement to any
elite group, which he viewed as "the
the assertion of the right of an in-
position of leadership and responsibility
vanguard of the revolution." That
dividual stand in the way of the leader-
in Soviet society. Furthermore, while
vanguard was the Bolshevik faction of
ship's determination of what is good for
the right to conduct religious worship is
the Russian Social Democratic Party,
society.
guaranteed, this phrase has not been
which later renamed itself the Com-
The Constitution of the U.S.S.R. is,
construed to mean that any group of
munist Party. Not long after the
therefore, an educational and propagan-
citizens may conduct religious worship
Bolsheviks had taken power, one of
da instrument. Any provisions con-
at any time in any place of their choos-
Lenin's disciples and a principal leader
tained in the Constitution which might
ing. Laws have been promulgated which
facially suggest that freedom of the
of the new Soviet state, Grigory
allow religious associations to form and
kind that we know exists are effectively
Zinoviev, had this to say in his report
register with the authorities of the
to the 11th Congress of the Soviet
modified by the key phrases in Articles
state. If they are registered and if they
3, 6, 39, and 59 to which I referred
Communist Party:
do receive permission to use a house of
earlier.
worship, worship in that place at times
[W]e constitute the single legal party in
Let me offer an illustration of what
authorized therefor is permitted. Any
Russia;
we maintain a so-called monopoly
I mean. The equivalent of our First
group which worships without appro-
on legality. We have taken away political
Amendment is contained in Article 50
priate authority can be and often is
freedom from our opponents; we do not per-
of the Soviet Constitution, which reads
mit the legal existence of those who strive to
punished severely.
as follows:
compete with us. We have clamped a lock on
How does all of that comport with
the lips of the Mensheviks and the Socialist
In accordance with the interests of the
the constitutionally guaranteed right "to
Revolutionaries. We could not have acted
people and in order to strengthen and
conduct religious worship"? The Soviet
otherwise, I think. The dictatorship of the
develop the socialist system, citizens of the
answer would be that the right to con-
proletariat, Comrade Lenin says, is a very
U.S.S.R. are guaranteed freedom of speech,
duct religious worship exists. The
terrible undertaking. It is not possible to in-
of the press, and of assembly, meetings,
Constitution, they will say, does not
sure the victory of the dictatorship of the
street processions and of demonstration.
guarantee a right to unregulated
proletariat without breaking the backbone of
Starting from our notions of civil
religious worship.
all opponents of the dictatorship. No one can
liberties, we might read this article to
To understand how religion may be
appoint the time when we shall be able to
revise our attitude on this question.
mean that citizens of the U.S.S.R. are
practiced in the Soviet Union, we, as
guaranteed freedom of expression and
American lawyers, should think of the
Within the party, decisionmaking,
that that grant of freedom accords with
way the securities industry functions in
according to Lenin, was to be concen-
the interest of the people and
the United States. Just as you may
trated at the very top. As semantic
strengthens the Soviet Union's system
practice religion in the Soviet Union,
games are often played by the Soviets
of government. But that is not the way
you may engage in the securities
and as the term "democracy" is as-
Article 50 is understood in the Soviet
business in the United States. But to
signed an important role in that con-
Union. The way Article 50 is applied,
engage in the securities business in our
text, let me share with you the follow-
freedom of speech, of the press, of
country, you must operate within the
ing quotation from Lenin:
assembly is granted only if it accords
regulations issued by the Securities and
Soviet socialist democracy is not in the
with the interest of the people and if it
Exchange Commission. If you act out-
least incompatible with individual rule and
strengthens and develops the socialist
side the regulations, you may, indeed,
dictatorship.
What is necessary is in-
system. And who is to decide what is in
be punished: That is the way it is with
dividual rule, the recognition of the dic-
the interest of the people and what
the practice of religion in the Soviet
tatorial powers of one man.
All phrases
strengthens and develops the socialist
Union. If you act within the regulations
about equal rights are nonsense.
system? The answer is, of course, found
laid down by the Religious Affairs Com-
It is against this background that
in Articles 3 and 6 of the Constitution.
mission, you will not run into any prob-
we must read the term "democratic cen-
What is in the interest of the people is
lems. If you act outside these regula-
tralism," as it appears in Article 3 of
decided by the Communist Party and
tions, you violate Article 227 of the
the Soviet Constitution. It means that
ultimately by the central leadership, the
criminal code of the Russian Federated
the people in the central position call
Politburo. That is why a law that makes
Soviet Socialist Republic or the cor-
the shots. Lenin made no bones about
defamation of the socialist system a
responding code sections in the criminal
his intention to establish a dictatorship.
crime is constitutional. Defamation,
codes of the other republics. Article 227
2
makes it a crime to participate in a
are to be relaxed. The petty tyrannies
greater freedom of expression now
group which "under the guise of
of local officials are to be ended, as ef-
allowed in the Soviet Union is not
preaching religious doctrines and per-
forts are made to have the lower levels
guaranteed, it is permitted, and permis-
forming religious rituals is connected
of the bureaucracy operate under the
sion can at any time be withdrawn.
with
inciting citizens to refuse to do
rule of law. But, and this is a point that
Though the Soviet leadership does
social activity or to fulfill obliga-
must be kept in mind, there are to be
not appear to have any present inten-
tions.
The penalty imposed upon
limits to the relaxation. Nothing is or
tion of abandoning the basic precepts
violators is customarily 3 years of
will be allowed that might threaten the
on which its system of government
deprivation of freedom. For leaders of
control of the state by the party, as
rests, that does not mean that no
such a group, it is 5 years.
guaranteed by Article 6 of the Constitu-
change will ever occur. Having gotten
tion. Gorbachev and his colleagues re-
in recent months at least a whiff of
ject, as did Lenin before them,
greater freedom, some Soviet citizens
Gorbachev and Glasnost
"bourgeois democracy." Their goal is to
might be willing to learn how other
In light of the news that has come out
return to the practices of the Soviet
societies go about the task of assuring
of the Soviet Union within the last 8
system in the early 1920s, in the time
respect for individual rights. And who
months or so, you might ask whether
of Lenin and the years immediately
would be better equipped to talk to
we cannot expect some fundamental
after his death. Their notion is to live
them about this subject than those
changes in the roles of the party and
by Lenin's precepts, not to abandon
whose professional responsibility it is in
the state under Mikhail Gorbachev and
them.
a democratic country to see that the
glasnost. My answer to this question
It is important to note in this con-
rights of the individual are protected?
would be "no." Gorbachev is deeply
text that Stalinism is now being
It is for that reason that I want to
committed to carry on in the spirit of
stripped from the Soviet system for the
end my remarks with an appeal to you.
Lenin and, as I noted at the outset,
second time. It was initially exorcised
If the ABA/Association of Soviet
dominance of the state by a single
by Nikita Khrushchev, back in the
Lawyers agreement is renewed, I
party, control of the party by a self-
1950s. It evidently sprouted again after
sincerely hope that American par-
perpetuating leadership group, and
Khrushchev's removal, even though not
ticipants will try to learn how the
subordination of the individual to the in-
driven by paranoia of the same intensi-
Soviet system works, will learn to
terests of the state, as defined by the
ty as under Stalin. What the Soviets
understand the facade which the Soviet
leadership, are the essential elements of
really should ask themselves is whether
Constitution presents, a facade behind
the teachings of Lenin. In fact, Gor-
a Leninist system, without any checks
which any Politburo directive can
bachev made precisely that point in his
and balances, will inevitably, over time,
supersede any alleged constitutional
statement to the Communist Party's
develop Stalinist features and whether,
guarantee. I hope that American par-
Central Committee Plenum in January
therefore, in the absence of fundamen-
ticipants will not be shy about explain-
of this year when he emphasized that
tal change, Gorbachev's glasnost is not
ing to the Soviet lawyers they meet the
"the principle of the Party rules under
likely to go the way of Khrushchev's
difference between a constitution which
which the decisions of higher bodies are
thaw, with the country returning to
a country's political leadership can
binding on all lower Party committees
another form of despotic rule.
manipulate at will and one which with
remains unshakeable."
As I have noted, the Soviet govern-
the help of an independent judiciary
What Gorbachev and his friends are
mental system is characterized by an
can, indeed, shield the individual citizen
attempting to strip from the operations
absence of checks and balances, by an
against oppressive government. In
of the Soviet system, in the name of
absence of a constitutional framework
responding to you, a good many of your
glasnost, are the features of oriental
which guarantees individual rights
interlocutors will parrot the party line,
despotism initially imbedded in the
against the highest state authority. It is
but deep down they will understand
Leninist construct by Joseph Stalin.
for that reason that the operation of
what you are talking about.
These include severe punishment for
the entire system is SO critically depend-
the mere expression of dissenting opin-
ent on the outlook and attitude of the
Published by the United States Department
ions, rigid limitations upon allowed
person or persons who at any one time
of State
Bureau of Public Affairs
literary expression, state control over
control the principal levers of power in
Office of Public Communication Editorial
all other forms of artistic endeavor,
the Soviet Union. As Dr. Koryagin-the
Division
Washington, D.C.
August 1987
punishment for criticism of any state of-
Soviet psychiatrist who has recently
Editor: Colleen Sussman This material is
ficial or any official action, etc. Under
been released from prison-has had oc-
in the public domain and may be reproduced
glasnost all of these Stalinist controls
casion to observe, the somewhat
without permission; citation of this source is
appreciated.
3
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THE SOVIET UNION IN TRANSITION
Remarks by Richard Schifter, Assistant Secretary of State for
Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, before the Kennan
Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Woodrow Wilson Center,
Washington, D.C., April 16, 1990.
It started with a knock on the door of an apartment in
Gorky. As Yelena Bonner opened the door, she faced two
workmen. They explained that they had come to install a
telephone.
Neither the workmen, nor Ms. Bonner, nor her husband,
Andrei Sakharov, nor the rest of the world, which soon heard of
this remarkable occurrence, realized then that Mikhail
Gorbachev had just made his first move toward the dismantling
of the Soviet Union's totalitarian system. As a matter of
fact, Gorbachev himself may not at that time have been fully
aware of where the process that he had just initiated would
lead.
Speaking of totalitarianism, let me share with you an
experience which I had only a few days ago. I had listened to
a talk in which it was suggested that in light of Russian
history it would take a long time for democratic thinking to
take hold in that country. After the speaker had finished, I
asked whether he had not been unduly pessimistic. I pointed to
Spain, which, in spite of its very brief exposure to democracy,
was now a fully vibrant democratic state. In response, the
speaker became most emphatic. We must remember, he declared,
the fundamental difference between authoritarianism and
totalitarianism. Franco's government, he noted, was fairly
benign. It allowed people to go their own way as long as they
did not interfere with what the government wanted to do.
Communist totalitarianism, on the other hand, had sought to
control all aspects of life through the tentacles of the party
bureaucracy, which reached into every community throughout the
Soviet Union. Totalitarianism, the speaker added, had
destroyed all elements of a civil society, which will now have
to be reconstructed, a task which will take time.
- 2 -
The person making this sharp distinction between
authoritarianism and totalitarianism was not Jeane
Kirkpatrick. He was a Soviet academic. And he was not an
emigrant or dissident, but a man holding an important position
in the Soviet international affairs academic establishment.
The speaker had not only confirmed the validity of the
distinction made by Jeane Kirkpatrick and those who wrote on
that subject before her, the distinction between
authoritarianism and totalitarianism. He had also presented us
with evidence of the fact that now, in April 1990, a Soviet
academic can denounce the product of Communist rule in his
country without fear of any retribution. He would not have
dreamed of doing so three years ago. He would not have dared
to do it two years ago. He would have had his doubts about
doing it a year ago. I consider it truly amazing how quickly
the spirit of freedom has taken hold in, at least, the urban
areas of the Soviet Union.
That is not to say that all is well, that the Soviet Union
has transformed itself into a freedom-loving country on the
model of, let us say, Switzerland. It is far from that. Nor
can we be sure that the course on which the Soviet Union
embarked in late 1986 will not be reversed. But it is
important for us to recognize that Mikhail Gorbachev picked up
where the Provisional Government left off in November 1917,
bringing the principles of the 18th Century Enlightenment to
the Soviet Union, the principles which both the Romanovs and
the czars of the post-1917 era sought to fend off.
Some of my Soviet friends tell me that almost immediately
following Gorbachev's succession to power they felt that a new,
fresh breeze was blowing through Moscow. But that breeze was
not felt in the GULAG, nor had the KGB or the OVIR (the office
dealing with applications for emigration) received new
instructions. Gorbachev had become General Secretary of the
Communist Party in March 1985. Not long thereafter, in
November of that year, the first Reagan-Gorbachev Summit took
place in Geneva. President Reagan and others who met the new
Soviet leader were impressed by his personality, and hopes were
high that we would now see change regarding the observance of
human rights. But as the months passed, we saw nothing in the
way of change. On the contrary, the infamous articles of the
Soviet Criminal Code, those which made anti-Soviet agitation
and propaganda or the defamation of the Soviet system felonies
continued to be enforced. There was continuing evidence of the
abuse of psychiatry. The unauthorized practice of religion was
still a punishable offense. Emigration remained restricted,
and the same old tired slogans, the same old misrepresentations
of reality filled the media, both electronic and print.
- 3 -
Then came that knock on the door which I mentioned earlier,
the installation of the telephone, the call from the General
Secretary to Andrei Sakharov, and Sakharov's return to Moscow.
A publicity stunt, we said -- no indication of real change.
But then, in early in 1987, about the time that Gorbachev was
rounding out his second year as General Secretary, pale and
emaciated men with close-cropped hair began to arrive in Moscow
and other cities in the Soviet Union, the prisoners of the
GULAG, who had had their sentences commuted to time already
served. Only later did we discover that something else had
happened late in 1986 or early 1987. A directive appears to
have been issued not to prosecute anyone any longer under the
political articles of the Criminal Code: 70, 190-1, 142 and
227.
There were other changes noticeable in 1987, in Gorbachev's
third year in office: we were told by the Soviet authorities
that psychiatric patients, about whom we had inquired, were
being released. Our Soviet interlocutors were not suggesting
that these people had been miraculously cured of their
"illnesses. The unstated premise was that they had indeed
been committed for their political or religious activities.
Furthermore, Armenian, German, and Jewish emigration began to
rise and, responding to the announced policy of glasnost,
Soviet citizens and the media began to speak out. Their
language was still cautious. There was no criticism of
fundamental policy. But citizens were now expressing
themselves freely on bureaucratic inefficiencies within the
Soviet system.
Also, in the summer of 1987, a truly unheard of event took
place in Moscow: Crimean Tatars, who had been expelled from
their homeland in 1944, demonstrated in Moscow for permission
to return to Crimea. They were finally dispersed by the
police, detained, and sent back to Uzbekistan, where they had
been forcibly settled 43 years earlier. But they had been
allowed to demonstrate for weeks and when they were finally
detained, it was only to return them to Uzbekistan. None of
them was put on trial and then sent to Siberia, as would surely
have been their fate if they had engaged in the same kind of
activity a year earlier. By the fall of 1987, even the most
dubious of us Soviet watchers had to agree that the changes
taking place in the Soviet Union with regard to respect for
human rights were significant.
But, some of us said, let us remember Khrushchev's "thaw."
We had high hopes then of fundamental change taking place in
the Soviet Union. We were then talking about the genie being
out of the bottle. Yet, after Khrushchev's fall, the genie was
stuffed right back into the bottle. We had to see what would
happen next.
- 4 -
Indeed, by the fall of 1987 it became increasingly clear
that the forward movement which we had identified earlier in
the year had ground to a halt, that there seemed to be tension
among the Soviet leaders and differences of opinion about the
pace of glasnost and perestroika.
Then, in early 1988, a letter to the editor appeared in the
newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya. It was signed by a Leningrad
school teacher, whose name has since then become a household
word, Nina Andreyeva. The letter denounced the liberal trend
in the Soviet Union and called for a return to the old
Stalinist verities, for discipline, for pride in the country
and the Communist system. It also injected an element of
anti-Semitism into the debate.
Let us note again the time frame within which we are
working. The event which I have just described took place a
little over two years ago. My Soviet friends tell me that they
found this occurence truly frightening. Letters of this kind
were, in Soviet tradition, statements of official policy. Was
the Andreyeva letter the new line, they asked each other. Had
the Gorbachev thaw come to such a quick end?
Then, a few weeks later came the response. It appeared in
Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party. It was
an editorial, which emphatically rejected the Andreyeva thesis
and restated the Soviet leadership's strong commitment to
glasnost and perestroika, by then well-known terms which stood
for the leadership's commitment to the opening up of Soviet
society. Years of experience of reading the tea leaves offered
by the Soviet media left the public without doubt as to what
the official line was: a Pravda editorial trumped a letter in
Sovietskaya Rossiya any time of the day.
Following this brief interruption, the march toward a
society respectful of freedom and based on democratic values
continued. But it was now clear that the leadership, the
Party, and the country were divided. Nina Andreyeva was indeed
not an isolated individual. Sovietskaya Rossiya had made a
correct editorial judgment in printing her letter. The letter
was a statement of belief within a significant segment of the
Soviet leadership and of Soviet society. It so happened, as
the Pravda editorial revealed, that it did not reflect the
viewpoint of the dominant group. The monolith shown to the
outside world since Stalin had consolidated his power was
gone. The differences of opinion were there for all to see.
The process of doing away with what we in the West
considered the most egregious human rights violations now
continued. By the end of 1988, all persons convicted of
anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda or defamation of the
Soviet system and all persons convicted for the unauthorized
- 5 -
practice of religion had been set free. By the summer of 1989,
all persons whom we had identified as improperly committed to
psychiatric institutions had been released. Emigration figures
continued to rise, political demonstrations were increasingly
tolerated. The discussion of public issues became increasingly
unfettered.
During the first year and one-half of glasnost it seemed as
if the leadership's goal was to purge all aspects of Stalinism
from the Soviet system for the second time, to pick up where
Khrushchev had left off, and to try to return the country to
what were viewed as the ideals of Lenin.
Those of us who come from a traditional anti-Bolshevik
background were quick to point out that, while the rejection of
Stalinism constituted a significant step forward, Leninism,
though it espoused a less brutal form of dictatorship,
nevertheless stood both for dictatorship and for brutality.
It was, therefore, with a great deal of surprise that I
read an article in a Soviet publication not long after the
Pravda editorial had appeared which seemed to deviate from
Leninist doctrine. Shortly thereafter, I encountered the
author, Fyodor Burlatskiy, in the United States and confronted
him with that observation. I did not get a vehement denial
from him. Instead he shrugged his shoulders and said
enigmatically: "Lenin wrote different things at different
times."
Let me interject, at this point, that about two months ago,
on my most recent visit to Moscow, I tuned in Moscow Radio and,
by what was indeed a strange coincidence, heard Burlatskiy, who
is now the editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta, being interviewed
and asked whether the Soviet Union still adhered to Leninism.
He now had a more complete answer to this question. He said
something to the effect that the Soviet Union had brought
itself in line with the thinking of the early and the late
Lenin. What he failed to say is that it was the middle Lenin
who had produced Leninism. The early Lenin is presumably the
20-year-old idealist who joined the Russian movement for
democracy and freedom. The late Lenin is the man significantly
incapacitated by a stroke who sent futile messages to his
colleagues, criticizing the acts of brutality for which Stalin
was responsible and warning them against letting Stalin take
over, a man who may very well have had serious doubts not only
about the monster he had created but about the entire monstrous
system.
Other writers recently have been more outspoken on the
subject of Lenin than Burlatskiy has been. The point is
increasingly made in Soviet publications that Stalinism was
built on the foundation laid by Lenin.
- 6 -
Though Leninism has not as yet been formally repudiated, it
is increasingly clear that the Burlatskiy article, which I had
noticed in the spring of 1988, did indeed signal the beginning
of a second stage of the Gorbachev reforms. The period of
de-Stalinization, which began in late 1986 or early 1987,
gradually merged by the middle of 1988 into a period of
de-Leninization. The first step in this second phase was the
Nineteenth Party Conference, which met in the summer of 1988.
Let me pause, at this point, to define my terms. By
de-Stalinization I mean the release of political prisoners, the
end of prosecutions for the mere expression of dissenting
views, and the lifting of the climate of fear which repressed
the entire country. By de-Leninization I mean an end to the
rule of the country by a single party, an end to rule of that
party by a self-selected and self-perpetuating leadership
group, and the substitution therefor of government with the
consent of the governed -- thus the institution of democracy.
To be sure, Gorbachev had begun to speak of demokratizatsia
in early 1987. A good many of us thought at that time that he
did not really know what the term meant. But the Nineteenth
Party Conference led to changes in the Soviet Constitution
toward the end of 1988. This in turn, led to elections in
1989, which in many parts of the Soviet Union were truly
democratic. They were the first democratic elections in the
country since November 1917, when the Bolsheviks lost, but when
the result was simply set aside by Lenin. Whereas Lenin's
theory of government had called for the Party -- the Communist
Party -- to control the State, thereby effectively cutting the
bulk of the population out of the governmental process
entirely, Gorbachev began, after the March 1989 election, to
dismantle the Party in which he served as General Secretary.
Power was transferred from the Party back to organs of the
State. And within the State, new organs of power and authority
began to function: the Congress of People's Deputies and the
new Supreme Soviet. They turned out to be real legislatures,
in some respects independent of the executive branch of
government.
And in 1990, Gorbachev asked the legislature to create a
new office of President, with significant executive authority.
Gorbachev was sharply criticized for that move. His
critics pointed out that the powers vested in the new
Presidency were vast, and that he had not submitted himself to
the voters as a candidate for President.
The criticism that Gorbachev was not elected by the people
is, of course, valid. Note should be taken, however, that the
Soviet Union now has a leader serving a fixed term of office,
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who, under the existing law, must return to the people if his
mandate is to be extended. As for the powers of the
Presidency, they are not significantly different from those of
the President of France under the De Gaulle Constitution. Most
importantly, the institution from which the powers were taken
that are now vested in the presidency is the Politburo, most
assuredly not a product of the democratic process. The
creation of the Presidency was merely another, and a most
significant, step in the transfer of power from the Party to
the State. So were the recent local elections, which have had
the effect of sidelining the Party bureaucracts in some of the
Soviet Union's major cities.
When the Communist Party finally, a few weeks ago, agreed
to give up its monopoly on political organization, it was doing
little more than acknowledging a development which had already
occurred. Political organizations which did not call
themselves parties had sprung up all over the Soviet Union.
The official candidates for public office supported by the
Communist Party were in many instances faced by opponents who
put together personal organizations, which did not call
themselves parties but which won elections. The Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, I submit, is not leaving the scene
with a bang but with a whimper.
That is not to say that democracy in the Soviet Union has
clear sailing ahead. Communism, as a political and economic
totalitarian philosophy, may very well be damaged beyond
repair. But that fact, by itself, might not prevent the
reinstitution of an authoritarian regime.
As I noted earlier, from the fall of 1987 onward, we have
seen a clear split in the Soviet leadership between reformers
and opponents of reform. Since then we have seen the reformers
divide between radical reformers, who believe that Gorbachev is
too slow in his moves toward democracy and a free market, and
Gorbachev and his supporters, who believe that reforms should
move at a slower pace, which they believe is necessary to
maintain the support of the average citizen. Arrayed against
the reformers is a strange mixture of groups espousing what in
the Soviet Union are viewed as conservative ideals. They point
out that now that authority, including the police, has lost
respect, the crime rate is rising. They reject what they view
as loose morals. They are also concerned about the decline in
the Soviet Union's stature as a world power. As Russian
nationalists, they are concerned about the independence
movements in the Baltics and the Caucasus.
These opponents of reform are a strange amalgam of
Neo-Stalinists, Russian nationalists, and monarchists. Their
ranks are augmented by those who have a personal axe to grind
against the reformers: party officials who have lost or are in
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the process of losing their jobs and privileges, and military
officers, some of whom will be required to retire if the army
is cut back in size. The influence of the latter group, of
Army officers concerned over military cutbacks and a decline in
the projection of Soviet power, should not be underestimated.
It could be the single most important threat to the Soviet
Union's political reform effort.
In support of reform is the great majority of the
intelligentsia, which is no longer an inconsiderable force in
Soviet society. But the ultimate decision on whether the
Soviet Union moves toward reform or returns to its
authoritarian moorings will be made by the great mass of
average citizens, whose principal concern is, quite
understandably, their standard of living.
In the absence of economic incentives, the Soviet economy
operated during the Stalin era and thereafter on the basis of
fear, fear of punishment for not doing what one was expected to
do. But that fear is gone now, and that fact has undoubtedly
contributed to a decline in production and a further decrease
in the efficiency of the economy. The desperate need at this
point is to introduce the incentives which cause the economies
in the West to function, which make the Soviet black market
function, and which worked wonders for the Russian economy in
the period between 1890 and the outbreak of World War I and
during the years of Lenin's New Economic Policy. It should be
possible for it to happen again. And if it does, there is
indeed a chance for the cause of democracy in the Soviet Union.