Events in the Soviet Union
Bonitch, Bogdan
It was always unlikely that the democratization of public life in the Soviet Union would continue if combined with a collapsing economy, a disintegrating political system, and internal...
...That idea is reserved for the Soviets and East Europeans...
...That view is also shared by the Soviet democratic opposition...
...How far back the pendulum of freedom will swing will depend on resistance encountered, at home and abroad...
...Just as "pure" market economies are not practiced in the managed capitalism of Western welfare states, no Western state accepts that it is an automatic right of provinces, even though they may have had a distinct history and ethnic make up, to separate unilaterally...
...The path would be painful, would bring high unemployment, and, if that were not enough, an even lower standard of living...
...The same innocence and ignorance extend to Western prescriptions about nationalism and separatism...
...It will make both negotiations and the future of the non-Lithuanians in Lithuania immensely more difficult...
...Most countries have never accepted the Baltic states's forced incorporation into the Soviet Union through the Hitler-Stalin pact...
...Although extremist nationalists and populists have also benefited from increased freedom of expression, the intellectuals were the major beneficiaries...
...He was never a principled democrat, but he understood that modernizing the Soviet society required opening up a degree of democratization...
...Many Soviet citizens thus now believe that the reforms hailed by Western democrats have made things worse...
...That is why foreign observers, journalists, and Soviet experts were generally so "high" on Gorbachev...
...So far, the reforms have made life worse for most Soviet citizens...
...What are the grounds for assuming that most nationalists and separatists in the Soviet Union want democracy...
...Many of the reforms and changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe now seem irreversible...
...But even in these cases, independence is still something to be negotiated...
...It must be universally condemned...
...The first beneficiaries are the artful dodgers, the spivs and gray-market traders who have profited from the disintegration of the old system and its controls...
...It should have been clear from the beginning that, in communist-ruled politocracies, political reforms must precede economic reforms...
...However, many in the West forgot that he does have iron teeth...
...Nevertheless, the Soviet army's crackdown in Lithuania is both morally repugnant and politically stupid...
...The love of some Soviet intellectuals for a fantasy version of a pure "Thatcherite market" has helped increase class resentments among those in the populace who fear they would be the first to suffer from its introduction— a fear that the recent experiences in Eastern Europe help reinforce...
...To be sure, crime, corruption, miserable conditions, hooliganism, and national intolerance did not spring up full grown with glasnost and perestroika—censorship had kept them invisible...
...Instead, the West has provided economic and financial experts who knew next to nothing about the history of the area or about the politocratic systems for which they proposed to write definitive economic programs...
...The second group to benefit are those Jews who wish to emigrate, in order to get away from the dismal Soviet scene and out of the reasonable fear that growing misery will lead to increased anti-Semitism...
...Democratic change therefore still remains possible—not easy, not inevitable, but at least possible...
...The Baltic countries and Moldavia, therefore, are in a different situation from the other Soviet republics, at least from the point of view of international law...
...The Western insistence on untried economic reforms as a precondition for any real aid has also jeopardized democratization in the Soviet Union...
...It is true that the Baltic countries are different...
...Democratization was in peril as long as economic and political reform did not bring improvements in personal life...
...It requires mass democratic organizations, trade unions, and the development of a civil society...
...Journalists report considerable vocal support "in the street" for the crackdown against those who are taken to be responsible for the intolerably long lines, the scarcity of almost everything, the growing insecurity of the wage earners and pensioners, and the increasing economic differences...
...What is proposed is something no Western democratic state would dream of practicing...
...These claims to national independence or autonomy were seen as propositions, to be, at best, negotiated...
...It was less so for the bulk of the population, which expected greater freedom to lead to economic improvements...
...Something had to give, and the most likely victim was democratization...
...They talk mostly to intellectuals, for whom glasnost was a very real gain...
...The beneficiaries of the reforms are three groups, none of which is popular...
...In none of these instances was it proposed to stop aid or mobilize world public opinion against the dominant country unless it immediately accepted the independence of a suppressed and incorporated nation...
...Otherwise, economic reforms will remain at the mercy of the political bureaucracy...
...It is good to be reminded that the struggle for democracy cannot depend on modernizing reformers alone...
...In this, and in helping to wind down the cold war, he has played a historical role of great importance...
...Some nationalists in Latvia and Estonia would strip the close to 40 percent "minority" population, including those born there, of voting and civic rights...
...It was always unlikely that the democratization of public life in the Soviet Union would continue if combined with a collapsing economy, a disintegrating political system, and internal separatism...
...To these disasters were added the disintegration of public security, increased crime, and a widespread loss of belief in the future of whatever might be left of the Soviet Union...
...No sanctions were proposed against France for its stand on Corsican, Breton, and New Caledonian separatists, or against Spain for its resistance to a separation of Catalonia or the Basque region, or against Great Britain for its denial of Scottish or Irish rights to vote on immediate separation...
...This was not insisted on even in the cases of Third World countries, as the cases of Biafra, Kashmir, Katanga, Eritrea, Timor, and Kurdistan illustrate...
...Unfortunately, both historical experience and the declarations of many nationalists are not reassuring...
...Instead, Soviet citizens were assured by foreign and domestic experts that the only possible economic road was a "free market" combined with private ownership and greater inequality...
...Nor does it help matters when nationalists insist that there is nothing whatever to negotiate, that all they have to do is unilaterally to vote their independence...
...Massive economic aid is the SPRING • 1991 • 161 Comments and Opinions other minimal condition that any democratic Soviet government would need to begin constructing a new type of mixed economy...
...162 • DISSENT...
...Soviet democrats, particularly in the Russian Republic, were right to organize mass protests...
...They were aware that this crackdown signals a massive entry of the military onto the Soviet political scene, in alliance with the conservatives who want to maintain the party's dominance...
...Gorbachev was always a top-down liberalizer, who wanted to create a more modern, efficient, and powerful Soviet Union...
...Not the least item to negotiate are guarantees of rights for minorities in the proposed newly independent Baltic states...
...The third group to benefit from Gorbachev's reforms is the intelligentsia, which has gained a degree of intellectual and artistic freedom and an ever more open press and media—at least until the crackdown of January 1991...
Vol. 38 • April 1991 • No. 2
