Revolution from above in the Soviet Union

Press, 2 December 1987, Page 20

Revolution from above in the Soviet Union

Naylor Hillary, of The Press/ who recently visited Russia, reviews Mr Gorbachev's book ‘Perestroika’

Z T“INTERPRISES must be M . put in such conditions as * *to encourage economic competition for the best satisfaction of consumer demands, and employees’ incomes must strictly depend on end production results, on profits.’ No, it is not Roger Douglas tackling State enterprises in New Zealand; it is Mikhail Gorbachev, in his new book, preparing to tackle almost everything in the Soviet Union. “Perestroika” — restructuring — is at times fascinating, not least because it exists at all. For those who have followed Soviet events in Mr Gorbachev’s first years in office, it may have few surprises; by Soviet standards it is' uncommonly clear and outspoken. Consider remarks such as these:

“Socialism has nothing to do with equalising ... Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.’” “Many of our problems ... are partially caused by the weakening of family ties and slack attitudes to family responsibility ... That is why we are now holding heated debates about the question of what we should do to make it possible for women to return to their purely womanly mission.”

Few other political leaders, while in office, have taken time out to produce a political and economic manifesto that includes such criticisms. Mr Gorbachev wants to be heard. Arrangements were made to have the book published at the same time in 36 countries in an attempt, according to the author, to speak directly to ordinary people in other countries.

Sometimes, Mr Gorbachev speaks of his immediate predecessors as though they were rulers from a political party of a quite different persuasion. “With us, the consumer found himself totally at the mercy of the producer and had to make do with what the latter chose to give him.” “Today, it is as if we are going through a school of democracy again. We are learning. We still lack political culture." Perestroika, the system, emerges from this book as a sweeping attempt to impose quality controls on Soviet enterprises at every level, from the village health clinic to the performance of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Again and again, Mr Gorbachev asserts it is a movement from below, a response to popular pressure to break the rigid production quota systems of the past; to break down corruption amid aministrators; to encourage individual decision-making and a sense of personal responsibility.

A cynic might argue that, 70 years after the Russian Revolution, poor Mr Gorbachev is having to try to teach 260 million people the kind of habits and attitudes that have existed in the West, at least in theory, for generations. ' But perestroika — and its companion glasnost, the new openness — are taking place in a Russian tradition that stretches back more than 500 years. Notionally, both concepts are about increasing individual freedoms and responsibilities; both are still being imposed from above. “Perestroika requires greater organisation in society and conscious discipline of citizens,” writes their leader. “We are preparing the masses for radical changes." The intention may be admirable — it still sounds uncomfortably like Stalin softening up the peasantry for the horrors of collectivisation in the countryside nearly 50 years ago. If Mr Gorbachev has his way, people are certainly going to be moved about and shaken up. “Intensification of social production suggests a new attitude to efficient employment and requires that the labour force be regrouped.” Mr Gorbachev has profound problems. Some younger Soviet citizens are grasping what he means; some seem rather too eager to try new ways. But old habits cannot be changed quickly, even by the decrees of an absolute system. My impression on a visit a couple of months ago was that when many Soviet citizens are told, “You must now make your own, responsible decisions,” the response is “Thank you, yes sir. Please, what is a decision? How do we make one?”

Mr Gorbachev is handicapped, too, by the very nature of a system that claims, to be based on an infallible and inevitable process of history. He must argue that his intention is not to replace socialism and Leninism, but to strengthen it. Many mistakes from the Soviet Union’s recent past still cannot be discussed openly; they can merely be allued to in cryptic fashion. Obligatory invocations to the name of Saint Lenin sprinkle his book, even though it can be hard to find much in Lenin’s writing that supports a more open and competitive political and economic system. Above all, the place of the Communist party has to be preserved, a kind of priesthood that will continue to guide the interpretations of the sacred tests of Marx and Lenin.

“The drive for perestroika has only consolidated the party’s position, adding a new dimension to its moral and political role in society and the State,” writes Mr Gorbachev. Sometimes there is an engaging frankness: “Official opposition does not exist in our country. This places even greater responsibilities on the C.P.S.U. as the ruling party.”

But such remarks are highlights from a less readable sea of words. “Perestroika” could be intensely boring, as a book, for anyone who is not a believer, or a dedicated follower of Soviet affairs. Perestroika is a serious business. If the book had jokes, they have not survived translation.

And when “Perestroika” turns to international affairs, as it does for nearly half its length, it too .often reiterates the distortions and half-truths of the standard Soviet line on international relations.

In fact, Mr Gorbachev might have done better to have skipped his international section, at least for the English translation. One wants to believe him in his sincerity about remodelling Soviet society into a more responsive and attractive machine, even if the concept of society as a machine remains alien to most people in the West.

But there are times, in his international section, when Mr Gorbachev comes close to talking nonsense, and that casts doubt over the credibility of his remarks about his own country. For instance, there is a section where he tries to make Russia seem more part of Europe than is the United States. He invokes for European Russia and the rest

of Europe “a common heritage of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.” But it is one of the great tragedies of Russian, and Soviet, history that Tsarist Russia largely missed the Renaissance and the intellectual and artistic growth that Europe enjoyed from about 1400 onwards. Mr Gorbachev sometimes talks nonsense. He tells us that the Soviet Union and India enjoy “relations of high quality” because both countries base their policies “not in word, but in deed, on the principles of sovereignty, equality, non-interfer-ence in others’ internal affairs, and co-operation.” Try telling them that in Afghanistan or Sri Lanka.

The intentions of perestroika within the Soviet Union are the important part of Mr Gorbachev’s book. Curious answers emerge to the question of why the process, and the book, have been necessary at all. Reading only a little between the lines, it seems that the Soviet economy, and Soviet technology, have been falling further behind the West for a decade or more. The Western boycotts on the export of certain sophisticated technologies have hurt badly and some energetic self-help is needed in the Soviet Union if economic performance is to match promises. Westerners, much less obsessed with politics and economic comparisons, generally fail to appreciate just how important it is to the Soviet Union to equal, and eventually overtake, the economic capabilities of the advanced non-communist societies. If communism is not going to be spread by armed force — thanks to the nuclear stalemate — then it must be spread by example. It has to appear as something

worth adopting for its own sake. "The success of perestroika will help the developing countries,” writes Mr Gorbachev. “The success of perestroika will be the final argument in the historical dispute as to which system is more consistent with the interests of the people.” Mr Gorbachev and his colleagues are caught in a paradox. If perestroika is to mean genuine reform, the Soviet Union, in many ways, will have to move in the direction of the despised noncommunist world. At the same time, it cannot admit its direction, and any hint of a retreat from the process of “building communism” brings a sharp reaction within the Soviet system. Since Mr Gorbachev finished his book the brakes have been applied in the Moscow City Soviet, at the very centre of the system. Mr Gorbachev sounds sincere and enormously well intentioned, at least in his plans for the Soviet Union. He has vast hurdles to overcome among some of his closest colleagues. One can only , hope he succeeds. If the Soviet Union becomes more absorbed in its own affairs, more concerned with the quality of life, especially at the fundamental level of the quality of its consumer goods, it may well be encouraged too leave the rest of 'the world alone, That would be the .greatest contribution to lasting peace that it is possible to imagine. Footnote: “Perestroika” is published in New Zealand by Collins (254 pp.) and costs $|4.95. This is the British edition which costs £l5 in Britain. In' the United States it is published by Harper and Row (288 pp.) and costs 5U519.45. The Soviet edition of 270 pages costs 75 kopeks — less than three New Zealand dollars.