THE PRESS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1987. Mr Gorbachev’s revolution

Press, 3 February 1987, Page 16

THE PRESS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1987. Mr Gorbachev’s revolution

No-one need doubt that the Soviet Union is undergoing a revolution about 70 years after the one which brought communism to the government of the country; nor need anyone doubt that the chief revolutionary is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mr Gorbachev. The two-day meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, held at the end of last month, demonstrated both the scope of the new revolution and the role played by Mr Gorbachev.

The Central Committee gave its approval to a speech from Mr Gorbachev which called for a choice of candidates for party positions and secret voting for candidates for certain positions. Mr Gorbachev also called for nonCommunist Party people to be appointed to leading jobs. He criticised a former party leader, Mr Leonid Brezhnev. Mr Gorbachev’s support within the Politburo has also been strengthened by new appointments. The changes that he advocated amount to radical proposals for the Soviet Union. It would be a mistake, however, to regard Mr Gorbachev as a political reformer because he is a closet liberal who has found himself by accident head of the Soviet Union and has decided to reform the show while the going is good. Mr Gorbachev was a man of considerable stature within the Soviet Union when he became party leader and well practised in the political art of achieving and holding power. He is where he is because he planned it that way and he will use his very considerable political skills to stay where he is and to achieve the reforms he believes in with all the conviction he has demonstrated so far.

The key to Mr Gorbachev’s thinking is not political reform as such, but economic reform. The Soviet Union has been lagging in growth, and particularly in the development of technology. This has forced several painful conclusions on those charged with thinking about the future of the Soviet Union. One is

that the Soviet system seemed to work best in the earlier period of industrialisation but not in the present period in which heavy industry is largely controlled by electronics and computers. The Soviet dream of overtaking the West in production shows no chance of being realised. The Soviet Union is struggling to keep up with some of the newly industrialising countries whose first steps towards industrialisation were taken decades after those in the Soviet Union. Nor can the Soviet Union afford to ignore the foreignpolicy implications: the Soviet system is simply not being seen as a model for the economic development of countries. The technology gap is also profoundly serious for the Soviet military.

So Mr Gorbachev has embarked on a campaign to revolutionise attitudes towards work and production, towards authority and corruption. Some of the procedures will be more democratic, although the authority of the Communist Party is not being challenged. If Mr Gorbachev’s proposals are adopted, voters will have a choice among candidates for certain political and administrative posts; but the candidates will not be representing different political parties.

Successive Soviet leaderships have attempted to reform agriculture within the Soviet Union. Some Soviet administrations have been diligent in industrialising the country. What Mr Gorbachev aims to do is reform the industrial side of the Soviet Union. He has been faced with a huge, centralised apparatus and some of the fiercest resistance to technological advance has lain among the technocrats themselves. If allowing people to question the adequacy and authority of the party organisers is the price of technological advance, Mr Gorbachev is prepared to pay it. He is bound to find opponents within the Communist Party itself, and may find it difficult to control the speed of democratisation.