Don't die yet
Carlin, David R. Jr.
OF SEVERAL HMDS David R. Carlin, Jr. DON'T DIE YET THE REVOLUTION BEHIND THE CURTAIN At the time of the French Revolution a certain very old man, when asked why he still clung to life, explained...
...It may turn out that there is no effective stopping point between rule by a totalitarian bu-reaucracy-cum-KGB, on the one hand, and creation of a semicapitalist liberal democracy, on the other...
...The Gorbachev revolution in the Soviet Union may not be quite as inflaming as the French Revolution: no tumbrels, no guillotines...
...Lenin's idea was that the Soviets should have an independent existence and genuine authority...
...So Gorbachev is a Leninist...
...But he does not favor multiparty elections...
...But whatever the outcome, there is no drama now playing on the world stage that is nearly so fascinating as the one being performed in the USSR...
...Gorbachev's ideal seems to be the same as Lenin's: a bipolar system in which authority will be divided between party and state...
...Finally, a limited market system...
...At all events a distinction has to be made between Gorbachev's intention, on the one hand, and the likely consequences of that intention, on the other...
...First, the separation between party and state...
...If the mother church loses its faith, how will derivative churches-in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America-retain theirs...
...He is hot a covert Adam Smith or Thomas Jefferson or even John Kenneth Galbraith...
...Consider the major reforms he has so far undertaken...
...It is thus very understandable that Gorbachev would say he is returning to Leninism, to a system destroyed by Stalin...
...all of them are consistent with the aim of getting rid of the Stalinist elements of the Soviet system and returning to pre-Stalin principles...
...But why should we, the outside world, be deceived...
...Gorbachev favors multicandidate elections...
...but the latter would not be mere rubber stamps for the party...
...The Soviet Union tried the Leninist system once before, sixty-five years ago, when it demonstrated that its equilibrium was exceedingly unstable...
...But anyone with a choice of living or dying would be ill-advised 10 choose death right at the moment, for to do so would be to relinquish a seat at one of the greatest political dramas to be performed in centuries...
...Many Western observers have concluded that we are witnessing nothing less than the dismantling of Soviet communism...
...Stay tuned...
...he wants change through a long series of steps, not by means of a great leap forward...
...This would suit Lenin just fine...
...But his intention, like any person's intention, is one thing...
...DON'T DIE YET THE REVOLUTION BEHIND THE CURTAIN At the time of the French Revolution a certain very old man, when asked why he still clung to life, explained that he did so because he was curious to see what would happen next, so exciting were the times...
...Gorbachev is what he says he is, a disciple of Lenin...
...Stay tuned...
...They concede of course that this is not how Gorbachev advertises his program...
...It was only under Stalin that the Soviets lost every shadow of autonomy and became totally subordinated to the party (which in turn became totally subordinated to the secret police...
...Given his domestic audiences, given even his own political conscience, he has no choice but to proclaim that, so far from dismantling socialism, he is refining and improving it, setting it more surely than ever on the path to true communism, the society in which everyone will contribute according to his ability and receive according to his need...
...the consequences of that intention are something else...
...It remains to be seen whether, in this its second incarnation, it can prove any more stable...
...They would be greatly influenced by the party, no doubt, whose members would dominate the Soviets...
...And if Soviet communism goes, can other communisms be far behind...
...Whatever the ultimate result of his reforms may turn out to be, Gorbachev really means it, it seems to me, when he says he wants to set the Soviet Union back on the track it strayed from when Stalinism replaced Leninism...
...Whatever his lip-service to Leninism, we can see which way he is tending-toward a system of individual freedom, political pluralism, and a mixed economy...
...Lenin, of course, heavily stacked the electoral deck in favor of the Communists, but it wasn't until Stalin that Soviet elections became the total sham they remained until just the other day...
...I see no reason to believe that his real intention is to regain the path his country strayed from when the October Revolution replaced the February Revolution...
...Third, political freedom within the limits of a one-party system...
...Well, I'm not convinced by this analysis...
...Mikhail Gorbachev seems determined to make a gradual, not a cataclysmic, transformation of his society...
...he wants the Communist party to remain the one and only political party in the Soviet Union...
...His heart is not set upon transforming the Soviet Union into a liberal democracy with a semicapitalist economy...
...This is the restoration of the system of small, privately held family farms that flourished under Lenin, a system that did not disappear until the 1930s, when Stalin carried out his brutal program of agricultural collectivization, causing the death of millions of independent peasants as he herded them into state farms and collective farms...
...As I said at the outset, don't die if you can avoid it...
...he is not a closet disciple of Kerensky...
...he even favors elections in which some of the candidates are not members of the Communist party...
...Second, private ownership of farms...
...To be sure, Gorbachev has not provided for freehold tenure of family farms, but he has created something very close to this: long-term leases, with the right to sublet and to pass leases on through inheritance...
...How could he...
...But what is there in this that differs fundamentally from what Lenin prescribed in his New Economic Program (NEP...
Vol. 116 • May 1989 • No. 9
