Faraway protest rings alarms in the Kremlin

Press, 9 March 1988, Page 20

Faraway protest rings alarms in the Kremlin

Xan Smiley

reports from Moscow on the

implications of| unrest in Soviet Armenia

From a glance at the map, it seems extraordinary that one of the toughest challenges to Mr Gorbachev since he became Soviet Tsar comes not from angry’ conservative Russian Communists within the Kremlin but from a tiny cluster of people, most of whom live nearer to the Sudan than to Moscow and who muster a mere four million souls in a country of 285 million. Yet the Kremlin is now surely locked in a furious debate. The choice for Mr Gorbachev is between making concessions which could undermine personal and partv authority across the Soviet Union or lashing out with the weapons of repression, thereby slowing the pace of reform still further and encouraging the conservatives to think that the system will never tolerate the slightest whisper of dissent.

An unofficial demonstration of more than 10 people anywhere in the Soviet Union can still send the authorities and their K.G.B. minders into heavy-handed action. A million people more or less spontaneously shouting their heads off in one city, as they did recently in the ancient Armenian capital of Yerevan, leasts real horror into the most liberal minds of the ruling party.

It probably has not happened, after all, since the Bolsheviks consolidated power in the early 19205. In party terms, it must be practically surreal, a bad dream. Worse for the old guard, there are signs that Mr Gorbachev has already given ground to the nationalists, led by people who aVe not even sanctioned by the party. Mr Brezhnev would never even have talked to them,- /

The conservatives did not like it when President Gromyko agreed last summer to meet the obstinate Crimean Tartars, after they had been rude enough to unfurl placards in Red Square. Worse for the party faithful, this time, is the durability as well as the scale of the demonstrations. They started in the ■contested Mountain-Karabakh region.

Worried men in the Kremlin must be thinking about the

Gdansk shipyards, where vacillating Polish bosses let isolated strikes burgeon into the boisterous Solidarity trade union of more than 10 million people. Armenians may be pretending that all they want is for the Mountain-Karabakh region to be transferred from the neighbouring republic; of Azerbaijan back to Armenia. ;But everyone knows that that is a mere pretext for a long-suppressed outburst of allencompassing Armenian nationalism.

No doubt few believe that Armenia can be cut asunder from the rest of the Soviet Union: most; Armenians fear the Turks'more than they resent the Russians. But dreams of greater Armenian autonomy, coming close to independence, are bound to be growing. Even now, powerful Russians who think Mr Gorbachev has long since let glasnost go too far, will be asking why he did not send in the police and troops within the hour to carry the Armenian street orators off to prison.

The Armenian crisis is not just a little local squall. It goes to the heart of Mr Gorbachev’s bigger dilemma — how to allow more

freedom across the Soviet Union without risking an erosion of the Communist Party’s monopoly of power. It also calls for a far more precise definition of those wellworn but still rather woolly words, ; perestroika and glasnost. In conservative eyes, letting people take those twin buzzwords too literally means risking a slide down the slippery slope away from the teachings of Marx and Len n — even though Mr Gorbachev is always careful to intone loyrlty to the party’s ideological Goes whenever he utters. Armenians, conservatives say, have got drunk on glasnost. There are plenty of Armenians who want economic perestroika, anc with far less interference from Moscow. There are devout Communists, not just in Armenia, who believe that the Soviet economy would be much more vigorouri if places like Armenia were allowed to manage their economic business on their own. Behind the Armenian party reformers are probably many more whose entrepreneurial instincts are alive, after 68 years of I Communism, and are longing for perestroika to lead to a

resurgence of private enterprise. Once again, perestroika carried too far could mean a departure from socialist economics and an erosion of party control. In that sense, conservatives in the Kremlin are probably right Economic perestroika and glasnost, taken to heart, are liable to take on a momentum of their own. That is why they are loath to see Mr Gorbachev encourage too much local initiative — especially with people such as Armenians and the Baltic nations, whose loyalty to Marx has always been painfully questionable.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the trouble, for Mr Gorbachev, is that many senior Armenian officials seem to be openly supporting the demonstrators.

The local party boss, Mr Karen Demirchyan, hardly seems cut out to be a sort of Armenian Dubcek, But if he is sacked, as is likely, it will be tricky for Mr Gorbachev to find a newcomer whojis loyal both to Moscow and Yerevan.

This phenomenon has begun to be echoed in the Baltic States, where a number of party reformers have been arguing for

much greater economic freedom from the Kremlin. Mr Gorbachev has been receptive to such ideas, but if they go hand in hand with a growth of independent-minded anti-Russian nationalism, he will have to backtrack. For the Kremlin leader, either course has severe political risks. Across the Soviet Union, glasnots has begun to blur the distinction between anti-party dissident and nationalist-minded party reformer. Even though Mr Gorbachey says the party must set the limits, the spectrum of arguments about practically everything is much wider than before. Armenia is a good example. Party people and out-and-out dissidents have been saying similar things. Mr Gorbachev has stated that glasnost must never allow people to question the rightness of communism for the Soviet Union. But the habit of allowing questions to be asked at all is threatening to give people back their independence of mind. Armenians, well-known for their quick wit, need little coaxing. This process is bound to lead to a questioning of party authority. At the back of every Kremlin leader’s mind is the knowledge that the slow-breeding Russians, who were 52 per cent of the population nine years ago, may soon be a minority in what they consider to be their own creation, the Soviet Union. The Ukrainians and Byelorussians pull the Slavs up to threequarters of the total but, all the same, despite the protestations of "internationalist fraternity” and respect for all the 100-plus nations of the Soviet Union, Mr 'Gorbachev knows he is in charge of an empire. If he is too kind to the Armenians, there could be tens of other Soviet nationalities impertinently asking the Kremlin to loosen the strings. Perhaps even more ominously for Mr Gorbachev, millions of East Europeans will be wondering whether it is time for them to start asking for a bit more independence, too. XAN SMILEY is the Moscow correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph."