Lenin's New Apostle

...often in multiple roles, with millions of managers, workers, pensioners, dependents, and would-be customers...

...Yet changes that allow prices to reflect the actual cost of production, that allow them to reflect levels of demand, and that even allow them to respond to competitive imports could ultimately unleash vast internal pressures in the USSR, with profound economic and ideological consequences...

...That's where I was...

...Should that occur, public cynicism, private corruption and the general decline which has marked Soviet life in recent times could grow worse, with potentially dire consequences for us all...

...Khrushchev demanded that the speaker rise and identify himself...

...Where that debate might lead is more difficult to gauge...

...Why do we raise the same old problems at one congress after another...

...As Gorbachev spoke, the television camera occasionally panned a 35-foot-high poster of a determined Lenin hanging behind the rostrum, the Andrew J. Glass, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau in H 'ashing/on...

...What occurs when the planners are told the price of bread, last raised in 1962, cannot be touched because bread is held to be a sacred symbol of stability in the Socialist motherland...

...Khrushchev then pounded his fist on the lectern and said: "You see, comrades...

...In contrast to most of his predecessors, it should be noted, Gorbachev appears to be in no hurry to canonize himself...

...With several breaks for rest and refreshment, he spoke from 10 o'clock in the morning until well after five o'clock in the afternoon...

...and (3) that Gorbachev's basic drives are in many respects quite similar to those seeming to motivate Ronald Reagan...

...At the previous congress in 1981, presided over by an enfeebled Leonid I. Brezhnev, Yeltsin had talked about the problems of logging in Sverdlovsk...

...This time, he felled taller trees...

...Why have we brought this alien word 'stagnation' into use...

...Gorbachev, for instance, wants to plop more high-tech dumplings into the Socialist stew...

...It is a fairly safe bet that there are sufficient resources at hand to accomplish any of these tasks...

...In forgiving, Gorbachev reduced internal anxieties, at least for the moment, by magnanimously insisting that a top-to-bottom Party purge was not necessary...

...They are (1) that the society's ruling class has adopted a profoundly religious character...

...It was left to an ambitious lieutenant, Boris N. Yeltsin, the new Moscow Party boss, to connect the dots on his chiefs outline...

...His was a daring oratorical flight to the limits of Socialist protocol...

...Why for so many years have we been unable to root up bureaucratism, social injustice and other abuses...

...In Soviet terms Gorbachev has done well for himself, just as Reagan has successfully lived his Hollywood fantasies...

...Well, at the minimum, distortions enter an economy that does not react satisfactorily to the laws of supply and demand...

...For the freedom to choose implies the freedom to fail...

...At the congress, Gorbachev spoke about the importance of more closely relating prices to costs...

...Under the Soviet setup, Gosplan (State planning) managers compare columns of resources with rows of demands...

...sole stage prop for the gathering...

...That, presumably, would make the difference in Russia...

...But now these two men are both on top and they intend to stay there as long as they can...

...2) that economic planners here use much the same analytic tools as American corporate managers...

...Islamic values are said to be thriving within Soviet Asia, too, and in the Baltic republics Roman Catholicism is undergoing a revival...

...He sent an early signal of his style by naming Andrei A. Gromyko the Soviet head of state, a post Khrushchev and Brezhnev had eagerly assumed...

...But what happens when the consumer economy shows up way down on the list...

...Gorbachev says that the Soviet system will work, once it is properly tuned and citizens adopt abetter attitude...

...Indeed, it is reasonable to speculate on how much would change were Gorbachev to attain the Stalinoid powers he lacks...

...Leninism was thus fully enshrined at this congress as the official established religion of the Soviet Union, a process that did not in any respect require the assent of the country's 280 million citizens...

...The tinkering with the Soviet economic model, in a bid to extract more juice from the orange, bears a striking resemblance to those what-if spreadsheet formulas that are an integral feature of American corporate life...

...In the politically calmer daytime atmosphere of 1986, no one had the temerity to ask Yeltsin why he hadn't made his criticisms back in 1981, when Brezhnev was tottering but still around...

...Keep in mind that although he is a generation younger than the American President, the Soviet First Secretary essentially shares Reagan's view of the world from the opposite political pole: Gorbachev is as genuinely mistaken about what makes the democracies of the West tick as Reagan is basically ignorant about the official weaknesses and the personal virtues of modern Russia...

...Unlike Reagan, he left the relatively bright lights of Moscow to go back home and climb his way up the ladder until his patrons recognized his worth...

...If life for some Americans is surely less than hunky-dory, it nevertheless holds more in store than, as Gorbachev would have it, social slaughter by a "massive and brutal offensive of the monopolies on the rights of the working people.' At bottom, both leaders deeply believe in their respective systems...

...Gorbachev, like Reagan, is a small town boy who scored very high in the big city...

...The congress was, in that sense, a religious conclave where secular penitents enumerated their sins— mainly sloth, greed and pride of place— while exposing the sins of living and dead Leninist divines...

...By accident or design—in Russia an outsider is rarely able to make such distinctions—Gorbachev spoke 30 years to the day after Nikita S. Khrushchev's secret speech before the same body, condemning his longtime predecessor, Joseph Stalin, as a mass murderer of the people he ruled, including many veteran Communist Party members...

...Why do demands for radical reform get stuck in the sluggish layer of time-servers with Party cards...

...It is doubtful whether these computers will have any appreciable impact, though, without a parallel shift in attitude both within and toward a society that has long been purposefully starved of information...

...That would, by his lights, commendably increase the autonomy of individual Soviet enterprises—making their managers responsible for producing higher quality goods and services and achieving profitable results...

...But it kept faith with the confessional nature of the proceedings...

...One wonders how prudent that question will sound if it is repeated at the next congress in 1991...

...He mentioned none of them by name as he spoke of their failed prophecies...

...What Gorbachev had said was: "When the subject of publicity comes up, calls are sometimes made for exercising greater caution when speaking about shortcomings, omissions and difficulties that are inevitable in any ongoing effort...

...It was a speech that, on paper, weighed two full pounds...

...So why did Gorbachev stress the need for radikalnaia reformat He was, it appears, sending a signal to the Communist 61ite that a debate on Russia's economic future was in order...

...Over the years, many a Soviet enterprise would have gone belly up and many a Soviet citizen would have found himself j obless had the So viets attempted some sort of rational bookkeeping These enterprises have stayed open and their employees continue to be paid, as if they were truly earning a living instead of serving time...

...Standing before the delegates, Yeltsin had also asked: "How often can we present certain Party heads as miracle workers...

...In particular, the phrase "radical reforms" has long been taboo, because Brezhnev once held that all the necessary basic radical reforms were carried out in 1965 and henceforth Communists should simply implement them...

...To be sure, the Russian Orthodox Church continues to have its adherents here...

...And just how did Yeltsin answer the disquieting questions he had raised...

...Being buried in the earth after a full State funeral is the highest accolade the Leninist order can bestow on one of its chief disciples...

...At the outset, for example, the Secretary characteristically called upon the Party faithful—after thinking broadly, "in Lenin's style," about our times— to fashion a plan that will "organically blend the grandeur of our aims with the realism of our capabilities...

...No one here, inside or outside the establishment, believes the new Kremlin crew is prepared to go as far as China or Hungary or even East Germany in altering the central system...

...He has made it work for him and he thinks he knows how it can be made to work for others...

...As Khrushchev recounted Stalin's horrible crimes at the secret session of the 1956 congress—held, incidentally, in the dead of night—someone shouted from the back of the hall: "Where were you, dear comrade, while all this was going on...

...Gorbachev dismissed all who had stood in his place after Lenin died in 1924...

...Yeltsin told the delegates anyway: "I probably lacked the courage and political experience at that time...

...Gorbachev, however, since coming up to Moscow from Stavropol, had shown he was made of the right stuff...

...A visit to Moscow in the midst of a Party congress—an event normally held once every five years, which this year also marked the first anniversary of Gorbachev's ascent to the Party's high priesthood—allows one to view close up all the votive rites of Leninism...

...Opening day of the 27 th Congress of the CPSU, Gorbachev addressed some 5,000 Party delegates and another 1,000 foreign guests...

...For one thing, Gorbachev doesn't see anything wrong with the system," Arthur A. Hartman, the astute American ambassador, told me...

...The essential difference, besides the obvious one of scale, is that Russia remains a monopolistic corporation which deals...

...Many hours later, he concluded his verbal marathon by once more exhorting his presumably benumbed, if still faithful, flock to pull up their collective Socialist socks, because that is "the only way to carry out the great Lenin's behest to move forward with united vigor and resolve...

...For his part, Gorbachev castigated these trends as "localism" and urged the true believers in the modern Kremlin palace to stamp them out beneath their Leninist banners...

...This brought absolution from the new Holy Father of Leninism...

...Just about everybody present, following Gorbachev, wore red-and-gold bas relief Lenin pins in their lapels...

...It even qualifies for a modicum of State subsidies through its bedrock support for present domestic arrangements and for the USSR's "peace" campaign abroad...

...Top priority might go to, say, the care and feeding of the Politburo or a new space station or huge nuclear rockets poised to strike the United States...

...Naturally, he suggested, in a few instances the worst of the old lot must be surgically extracted and replaced by younger, bolder, more courageous, innovative Gorbachev men— men such as Yeltsin...

...This idea is so ingrained in Western thinking that it is difficult for outsiders to fathom exactly how radical the concept is within the Soviet framework...

...There can be only one answer to this, aLeriinist answer: Communists want the truth, always and under all circumstances...

...Although he acts as if he plans to stay in charge forever, a la Jimmy Carter, circa 1977, he has trimmed some of the usual trappings of the top Kremlin post...

...In 1961, at the next congress, Khrushchev shocked his listeners anew by demanding that the dictator's remains be removed from the granite mausoleum on Red Square he was sharing in death with Lenin, and that Stalin's name be blasted off the tomb...

...Like any mature religion, modern Leninism regularly favors certain incantations and eschews others...

...Nearly every page, homage was paid to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin...

...THE 27 TH CONGRESS OF THE CPSU-1 Lenin's New Apostle BY ANDREW J. GLASS Moscow Current developments in Russia can perhaps best be seen through the prism of three rather unconventional assertions dealing, in turn, with the nature of Soviet society, the structure of the Soviet economy, and the posture of Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev...

...Yeltsin inquired...

...The problem is that Gorbachev might succeed in making workers work and managers manage—and he still may fail because the system is rotten...

...Gorbachev's frequent citations of chapter and verse, parenthetically bracketed into his text, dogmatically treated the secular sayings of Lenin in much the same manner that Pope John Paul II, in his Vatican homilies, treats the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ...

...The key, he told the delegates, lay in the sad fact that prior Soviet leaders (unlike, of course, the venerated Mikhail, son of Sergei, the onetime secular bishop of Stavropol) lacked the guts to "tell the bitter truth" about what had gone amiss...

...This has happened because of the widespread conviction, in Gorbachev's own words, "that any change in the economic mechanism should be seen as almost a retreat from the principles of socialism...

...In allowing Gromyko to become President, in return for his support in the only Soviet election that ever amounts to anything, Gorbachev ensured the aging Foreign Minister that he will ultimately be interred in Soviet soil, rather than cremated and shoved into the Kremlin wall—the final fate that awaits run-of-the-mill Politburo members...

...His demand was met by a frosty, queasy silence...

...Moreover, Gorbachev wants Gosplan and other key ministries to stick to their spreadsheet-type knitting...