Capitol Ideas/Reagan, Armand, Gorby & Cockburn
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS REAGAN, ARMAND, GORBY & COCKBURN D eaders of this column should beware of predictions about U.S.-Soviet affairs. At one point I reassuringly promised that President Reagan would...
...At one point I reassuringly promised that President Reagan would sign no arms control agreements, at another that he most assuredly would never go to a Moscow summit...
...The Nation itself has editorially taken an innocuous "good liberal" position: "We can only hope that the conciliatory tone of Reagan's speech signals a U.S...
...Cockburn mocked Soviet "detenteniks" who are "ready to sell out world revolution anytime for the sake of a cocktail party at the Council on Foreign Relations...
...Keller quoted a writer in Novy Mir as implicating Lenin himself in "the Soviet legacy of terror and repression," adding that the Communist system, "with its concentration of power in one party and state-ownership of all income-producing property, tends to produce tyrants...
...Gorbachev as their smiling front-man so that by Tom Bethell Commerce Secretary William Verity and his contingent of useful idiots keep the credits flowing...
...Court of Appeals, D.C...
...Esther Kingston-Mann, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, worried in In These Times that the Soviet reformers "cannot ignore the troubling possibility that their 'newly liberated' entrepreneurs might acquire wealth and power beyond their numbers and go on to subvert the social security provided to the (continued on page 12) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 9 majority of the population...
...The most forthright attack on what's been happening comes from Alexander Cockburn in the Nation...
...But even as his article appeared, Bill Keller reported in the New York Times that Soviet intellectuals were "on the verge of official heresy—the idea that Stalin was no accident, that something in Corn1 THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY The Constitution and Federal Criminal Law September 9th and 10th The Mayflower Hotel Washington, D.C...
...The main goal of the Communist party conference could be summarized this way: Keep the New York Times happy...
...On the one hand we have Cockburn, Ligachev, anonymous Soviet bureaucrats, assorted "conservatives" of the CPSU...
...At the same time, of course, it is becoming harder and harder to disguise the fact that Communism is a materialistic system that doesn't deliver the material goods...
...Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit Mr...
...Rumors from CIA hands hint that the late, great Bill Casey may very well have cooked this whole thing up in Langley, Virginia, slyly enlisting an unwitting Armand Hammer in his cause...
...Far more discreetly, of course...
...On the other hand we find Reagan, Gorbachev, Armand Hammer, Victor Navasky (the editor of the Nation), and with them a host of well-meaning liberals too numerous to mention...
...Perestroika is doomed to fail...
...I predict (safely enough) that nothing will change, that the "conservatives" will prevail, and that Gorbachev will be politely rebuffed...
...They must fear that ordinary citizens will consider the proposed changes a breach of a longstanding social contract...
...D o conservatives in the U.S...
...According to the Washington Post's Gary Lee, Ligachev recently visited Togliatti, 600 miles east of Moscow, for presentation of the Red Banner of Lenin to the country's largest (Lada, son of Fiat) automobile plant and congratulate its workers' "successes in cultural and economic construction...
...It seems, then, that glasnost, if not perestroika (in a sense the distinction between the two corresponds to the distinction between talk and action) has gone far enough to risk delegitimizing the whole enterprise...
...a potent voice for conservative legal thinking in law schools and in the government...
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...Nat may be, but the distinction between Communism and socialism is a false one: Communism is nothing more than stable socialism, administered by people who do not intend to let others vote them out of office...
...Thus spake Cockburn...
...After all, the Soviet leadership has always tried to justify its policies and explain away the need for political oppression by focusing on advances toward equality and social justice...
...All that [advice] is aimed at weakening the political stability in the country, upsetting social justice and stimulating a far-reaching stratification in the society...
...This strategy has successfully kept the party's power and perquisites undiluted for decades...
...For these reasons, it seems, the Soviet strongman has been permitted to press his reforms much further than normal...
...Cockburn writes: I'm all for glasnost and perestroika—at least as articulated to me in Moscow last November by Boris Kagarlitsky—but on the international side Gorby's alleged intimates and advisers, Arbatov and Burlatsky and the others, are becoming singularly unimpressive, mostly because they, like their boss, seem resolved to see the world in entirely bipolar terms, with the ancillary goal of saying or doing absolutely nothing to upset the Atlantic powers, or to deny themselves an honorary doctorate at Tufts some time in the near future...
...For once I'm in bed with the liberals, with Reagan, and with Armand Hammer too...
...David Satter in the New Republic believes that glasnost has not gone so far as to "analyze underlying causes...
...Even Solzhenitsyn's friend, Igor Shafarevich, the author of a remarkable book entitled The Socialist Phenomenon, identifying the Western hunger for socialism as a death wish on a large scale, has recently been published by Moscow News...
...Can the New York Times be far behind...
...Court of Appeals, First Circuit Judge James Buckley U.S...
...But make no mistake, the protection of Soviet "gains" will be the goal...
...The solution for the Soviets will be to retain Mr...
...She obviously thinks that the system works pretty well for "ordinary citizens," protected by their "social contract" (a good new euphemism for Communism, incidentally), who receive "social security" in return for "political oppression...
...Notice the echoes of In These Times's Esther Kingston-Mann, not to mention the Nation's Cockburn...
...In a June 4 column entitled "Lenin, Thou Shouldst, etc...
...Particularly disturbing to Cockburn: "Arbatov and the other Soviet detenteniks had no visible misgivings" in signing a document under whose rules of conduct "invaluable Soviet support for the Angolan revolution would be regarded as 'llegitimate, as probably would similar Soviet efforts to defend the revolution in Vietnam and Nicaragua...
...Newly published books "indict Stalin, not socialism," Satter writes...
...Well said, Ligachev...
...media...
...Conservatives" have always thwarted such restructurings in the past (for earlier Soviet rulers have tried to make Communism work better by rearranging things...
...A collection of his essays, The Electric Windmill, was published this spring by Regnery Gateway...
...Featuring invites you to its Second Annual Lawyers Convention Judge Stephen Breyer U.S...
...Words are dangerous things, and Communism is now as imperiled by them as Catholicism would be if Osservatore Romano were to publish papally sanctioned articles attacking long-held church dogmas.ened by perestroika, not just the Communist party...
...Then again, perhaps it was not so unintentional...
...His father, the late Claude Cockburn, was in his heyday in the 1930s a member of the British Communist party and the London correspondent for Pravda...
...I see the fine hand of Casey . . . ^ ockburn, of course, has allies among the Soviet "conservatives," perhaps the best known being Yegor Ligachev, the number-two man in the ruling Politburo...
...Gorbachev has committed himself to making Socialism (not Communism) work in his own country by raising the standard of living of his own people and that this ambition is his single-minded priority...
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...Hammer is implying here that Gorbachev himself does make a distinction and has given up on Communism then he certainly will be deposed—by the Communists (or "conservatives" as I see they are now called in the U.S...
...To keep everything unchanged—Communists really are "conservative" in this sense—they have always used the argument that with so dangerous an enemy as the United States, now is not the time to tinker...
...and keep Gorbachev as a figurehead lest Western credits be endangered...
...Readers have the advantage this time because I am writing before the vaunted Communist party conference in Moscow, whereas you will be reading it after the conference is over...
...Terence MacCarthy Chairman-Elect, ABA Criminal Justice Section The Honorable Edwin Meese, Ill Attorney General of the United States Mr...
...Foreign voices want the USSR to have a political opposition," Ligachev said indignantly, perhaps thinking of Reagan and his CIA advisers on those bilateral commissions that give Cockburn heartburn...
...decision to intervene on Gorbachev's side in the party struggle under way in Moscow," etc...
...He is often identified as Gorbachev's most influential opponent...
...Is this where it is all going to end, the heritage of October, the tradition of Tukhachevsky and Dimitrov [tyrannical Bulgarian strongman], with bilateral commissions adorned by a former chief of the CIA [William Colby] and the head of Novosti, jointly denouncing "adventurism...
...Charles Murray Author of Losing Ground Discussions will include: Federalism and the Scope of Federal Criminal Law Truth in the Courtroom and Procedural Safeguards Equality Versus Discretion in Sentencing Goals of Punishment Improving National Drug Policy Special Debates on the Constitutionality of Capital Punishment and the Special Prosecutor System To register, or receive more information about the Federalist Society, contact: The Federalist Society 1625 Eye Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 (202) 822-8138 Registration Fees Conference Registration Member $20.00 Non-member $40.00 Non-member, $35.00 government employee discount (Add $10.00 to fee postmarked after August 15) Friday evening banquet $50.00 Saturday luncheon $14.00 (address by Mr...
...For those (admittedly few) who are clearheaded enough to recognize that Communism is what they want, and not something that the world has been accidentally saddled with, perestroika must not be allowed to go so far as to undermine the legitimacy of Communism...
...So the bedfellows are strange, are they not...
...and restructuring Communism certainly means undermining it...
...Alex, a chip off the old block, now positions himself well to the left of Gorbachev and the current (wishy-washy) Pravda...
...Be sure to inquire about the special rate available for those attending the conference...
...Notice also that Ligachev, unlike Armand Hammer, really does understand that it is socialism that is threatTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 13...
...Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corporation and friend of Lenin, wrote a piece for the New York Times after the Moscow summit saying he believes that "Mr...
...For Ligachev is right...
...First of all we should recognize that the Soviet system, although materially hopeless compared with free markets, is nonetheless remarkably stable, having survived for seventy years...
...Undaunted, I have nonetheless been thinking lately that Reagan, in his chummy friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev, may unintentionally have introduced an unstable element into the life of the Communist party of the Soviet Union...
...We know that in the normal course of events the Soviet Communist party does not permit itself to be undermined by well-meaning reforms, however much the general secretary of the party might desire such changes...
...This will keep the new missiles under construction and the specialty stores stocked with caviar for party elites, without at the same time allowing anything very destabilizing in the way of perestroika to occur...
...The Soviet economy will, therefore, continue to stagnate, as it has all along...
...If Mr...
...It should not be too difficult to contrive such a balancing act: Get rid of perestroika in fact if not reality, in order to preserve the privileges and immunities of the party...
...Secondly, there can be no doubt that Gorbachev really does want to restructure the Soviet Union internally, in order to make the economy work better...
...From the paper of record we may expect nothing more dramatic than muted editorials urging the Soviets to proceed with a greater degree of circumspection...
...Cockburn has a point, of course...
...But perestroika could subvert it with inequality and injustice...
...cialism and perestroika, whatever Armand Hammer thinks...
...So you can't have both Communism and perestroika...
...And that means you can't have soTom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent and a media fellow at the Hoover Institution...
...And with them undoubtedly stand many American leftists, likely readers of In These Times, Mother Jones and such, who share Cockburn's views but not his candor...
...Not a bad deal...
...They are dishing up to us the idea of a multiparty system...
...Too optimistic, as always...
...The Westerners' advice may not be, as he says, aimed at "weakening political stability" in the Soviet Union, but ifheeded its effect would certainly be that, and if good things happen unintentionally, that is good enough for me...
...A columnist for the Wall Street Journal in addition to the Nation, Cockburn went on to recall the glory days of Leonid Brezhnev, "who did after all preside over the consolidation of the Soviet Union as a modern industrial state and, relatively speaking, a golden age for the Soviet working class, aside from sponsoring the exemplary acts of proletarian internationalism," i.e., the invasion of Afghanistan and the creation of client states in Africa, that Cockburn is now horrified to see under attack in Literaturnaya Gazeta...
...But restructuring a stable system almost certainly means destabilizing it...
...By now Gorbachev has seen enough of Reagan to know what a harmless old codger he is, and presumably he has been able to persuade his chief underlings of this undeniable truth...
...But if we consider the 'advice' that our country's economy be placed on the footing of Western market economies, little remains of socialism...
...New York Times, July 23, 1986 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 munism made him likely, if not inevitable...
...likewise relish the prospect of Gorbachev failing to implement his reforms...
...Nonetheless, I believe that Gorbachev will not be permitted to go any further...
...Let us now take a look at the anti-perestroika murmurings on the American left...
...Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook U.S...
...Colby indeed...
...Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit The Honorable Charles Fried Solicitor General of the United States Professor Alan Dershowitz Harvard Law School Judge Patrick Higginbotham U.S...
Vol. 21 • August 1988 • No. 8
