Interview Questionnaire on The AIA and The New Right

1 - Do you believe that alternative views should be represented in the classroom?

2 - If no. In what situations do you feel they should be barred from the classroom?

3 - Do you believe that liberal, radical, left viewpoints should be presented in the classroom? Why or why not?

4 - Do you believe that conservative, right, new right viewpoints should be presented in the classroom? Why or why not?

5 - Does the first amendment (free speech) apply in the classroom? Why or why not?

6 - Does the first amendment apply to people in their workplaces? Why or why not?

7 - Who should define what is taught in the classroom?

8 - Should classrooms be open to public scrutiny?

9 - Is there a difference between Public and Private Universities in regard to public scrutiny? If so why?

10 - What do you consider to be traditional American values?

11 - If you were to design a class on U. S. society, what five books would you include? For what reasons?

12 - If you believe that liberal or conservative (please specify) opinion dominates the academic community then who do you see as responsible for providing the support for the expression of those opinions?

13 - Is there a general public opinion that supports this ideology?

14 - Is the special interest of a particular group supporting this ideology?

15 - Does the teacher espousing public opinion or the views of a special interest group have a right to curtail freedom of speech in the classroom?

16 - Do special interest group or public opinion have a right to curtail the informed opinions of a professor in the classroom, pertaining to the subject matter of that class?

17 - Are there safeguards presently in place to provide a review of professors' performances in the classroom regarding the subject matter being taught?

18 - If so, Are they adequate? How so?

19 - If not. What should be done?

20 - Are student evaluations an adequate source of information about the quality of professors?

21 - Should a student evaluation catalogue be established at all colleges and universities? If so who should control their publication? If not. Why not?

22 - Does an outside group that reports on the lectures of professors provide a social service? How? Why not?

23 - Is the AIA (Accuracy in Academia) a group that provides this sort of information? Why or why not? i.e. How?

a) - Or do you consider AIA unbiased? Why or why not?

24 - Do you believe that the recent controversy over what is taught in the classroom has been beneficial to the educational system? Why or why not?

25 - Has this debate centered on educational issues or political issues? Please Explain.

26 - By presenting controversial arguments in the classroom is free academic inquiry enhanced or threatened? Please Explain.

27 - Given the limited time of a class, how do you think judgment should be made for what is to be included?

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

© 1989 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

WESTERN EDITION

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1989

RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA

Communism: All That Is Sacred Is Profaned

By NATHAN GARDELS

A specter is haunting the Communist world—the specter of economic failure. While supermarkets, shopping malls and personal computers describe the post-industrial West, the economies of the East are still struggling with the abacus and the cabbage, the slide rule and the smokestack. In a cruel paradox of history, the future has left its vanguard behind.

Realizing the "infallible" leaders of the past planned their societies into obsolescence, a new generation of Atari Communists is reviving the invisible hand to guide socialism down the path from hardline to software. But the market has its price. While market dynamism continually revolutionizes production by forging new technologies, it casts society into perpetual upheaval. "All that is solid melts into air; all that is sacred is profaned," Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto.

So it is across much of the communist world today. All that was doctrinally sacred for decades has been profaned. Under market-oriented reforms, intensified inflation, unemployment and social inequality have come along with the return of stock markets and private ownership.

Yet, the Atari Communists are not capitalists. Determined to avoid history's judgment of socialism as the longest road from capitalism to capitalism, they are searching for a new model that incorporates as much collective ownership as an efficient market will allow. Even so, their program has generated a broad reaction from the vested interests of industrialism and ideological orthodoxy.

Since *perestroika* is a social revolution and not a coup d'état, its success depends less on Mikhail Gorbachev's stunning accumulation of political power than on a social base that has an interest in rapidly building a post-industrial society. Yet, there is little evidence that the Soviet Union's blue-collar masses will support a revolution

that consigns them to the dustbin of history.

According to the Institute of World Labor Movements in Moscow, less than one-third of the Soviet population—highly skilled workers, scientists and the intelligentsia—has an "objective interest" in supporting both perestroika's market reforms and its democratic elements.

The vast, less-skilled industrial working class—more than 60% of the Soviet population—supports more democracy, but resists market reforms. Overwhelmingly, workers in the East Bloc prefer the security of a planned economy. This is nowhere more evident than at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk. The Polish government wants to shut down the inefficient plant, while the workers want to keep it open—market reform confronts worker's democracy at the birthplace of Solidarity.

Plant closings and unemployment, akin to the dislocations of our own Rust Belt, are part and parcel of restructuring. And as subsidies are removed, higher prices will further assault the proletariat's already pitiful standard of living. Clearly, life under perestroika will get worse before it gets better.

This realization surely troubles Mr. Gorbachev's sleep. He must worry that members of a demoted working class will take refuge in the ethnic Russians' historic xenophobia as their world falls apart. The more Mr. Gorbachev opens to non-Russian ethnic autonomy, the modernizing market and the West without immediate economic results, the more rancorous the nationalist reaction among Russia's industrial proletariat. Any visitor to Moscow these days can report the sympathy that grows daily for the frightening sentiments of Pamyat ("memory" in Russian), a virulently anti-Semitic, nationalist organization that taunts "traditionalism" and assails "cosmopolitanism." The ethnic unrest perestroika has unleashed in the Baltic states and Armenia only bolsters the reaction

lurking in the shadows of disorder.

These are the perils of perestroika that must shape the West's response to Mr. Gorbachev. Western credits can allow the social breathing space for perestroika to take root by producing immediate results for the Soviet consumer. They can help consolidate Mr. Gorbachev's effort to build a prosperous middle-class society linked to the global economy—a society that, Mr. Gorbachev or not, will press for butter over guns. The denial of credits, on the other hand, risks nurturing the rise of a fearful industrial nationalism that defines national might as armed strength. As the classic dynamic of revolution and reaction unfolds in Soviet society, the stakes for the West could not be higher.

Those American politicians and defense specialists, such as Sen. Bill Bradley (D., N.J.) or former Undersecretary of Defense Richard Perle, who argue that Western capital will make it easier for the Soviet Union to put off "the hard choice between guns and butter" are adopting precisely the posture that will drive ethnic Russians back to the refuge of their dangerous traditions. Fearing that Western credits will give Moscow enough rope to hang us, the American critics forget that Moscow already has enough rope, as we do, to hang the world a few times over. The only question is what might make them use it.

Victims of a misleading analogy, many U.S. politicians during the Reagan era invoked the lesson of Munich when thinking of Moscow. But few remember the lesson of Versailles. Without the punitive reparations that decimated the German economy after World War I and gave rise to fascism, the lesson of appeasement wouldn't have been necessary to learn.

Mr. Gardels is editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, the journal of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He recently returned from Beijing, Budapest and Moscow.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1988

The Washington Post

# Moscow's New Tactic: Indifference

By Nathan P. Gardels

For 40 years, America has been worrying about confrontation with the Soviet Union. Perhaps we should start worrying about being ignored.

The focus of Soviet foreign policy is changing, away from its traditional focus on the United States. The "Americanists" in the Kremlin are fading in importance. Taking their place is a new generation of specialists who seem more interested in Europe and Asia.

The nuclear legacy of the Cold War will undoubtedly bind the two superpowers in a special way for a long time to come. But the new men in charge of Soviet foreign policy are convinced that they dare not entrust the fate of perestroika to America. They bitterly recall the failed Soviet-American detente

Nathan Gardels is the editor of the California-based New Perspectives Quarterly.

of the 1970s—which coincided with the years of stagnation under Leonid Brezhnev. And they conclude that they cannot rely on improved relations with America for the capital and technology they need to become a high-tech power in the next century.

The Atari Communists in Moscow have turned instead to the rest of the West—especially Europe—as more reliable partners in the desperate effort to modernize that

See MOSCOW, C2, Col. 4.

BOB DARM FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

## MOSCOW, From C1

backward land of the abacus and the cabbage, the slide rule and the smokestorm.

Evidence of this shift in Soviet foreign policy emerged in the autumn parade of Western European leaders through Red Square. First came Italian Prime Minister Cirico De Mita. Then came Chancellor Helmut Kohl, with a gaggle of eager West German businessmen. French President Francois Mitterand will arrive Nov. 25.

To make the new priorities absolutely clear, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced some important personnel changes in late September. At the now-famous Central Committee meeting on Sept. 30, Gorbachev removed the architects of American-centered detente from leadership positions.

The casualties that Friday included Andrei Gromyko, who lost the presidency; and former ambassador to Washington Anatoly Dobrynin, who had headed the International Department of the Central Committee. (Callers to Dobrynin's office the next Monday morning were brusquely told that "he doesn't work here anymore." Dobrynin later re-emerged in a lower-ranking job.)

At the same meeting, Alexander N. Yakovlev, Gorbachev's closest ally on the Politburo, was put in charge of the newly established Foreign Policy Commission which now guides international relations. And two weeks later, Valentin Falin, a former ambassador to West Germany, replaced Dobrynin as head of the International Department. The symbolism was obvious: the key foreign-policy portfolio would go to a German specialist, not an Americanist.

Yakovlev is widely considered the sponsor of glasnost and a "radical reformer" in domestic affairs. In foreign affairs, he refers constantly to "we Europeans" and associates

Brezhnev's "years of stagnation" with the foolish hope that improved relations with America would provide trade and technology advantages.

Yakovlev told me in an interview last year that under detente, "We thought trade and sharing technology would develop normally. We were punished for this belief. Quite severely. You actually made us orient our interests toward Europe and Asia. How could we put up with such arrogant actions as embargos, clamping down on the export of all kinds of technologies?"

"In devising our strategy," continued Yakovlev, "we can only discuss the policy of a state which is predictable. In American foreign policy we can predict only one constant: anti-Sovietism. It will be a slogan of any administration." While obviously delighted with Ronald Reagan's recent turn of mind, Yakovlev doesn't believe it represents a permanent shift in the American psyche. "Each new administration point-blank discards and negates what has been before," he said.

Valentin Falin, the new head of the International Department, is also considered a "radical reformer" at home. When I saw Falin on the afternoon of the Sept. 30 Central Committee meeting, he passionately defended a sensational Pravda article he had written a few days earlier, blaming the United States for plotting the Cold War in the bare aftermath of the battle of Stalingrad. He vigorously rejected the notion, apparently gaining popularity in Moscow's current anti-Stalinist climate, that President Truman was justified in starting the Cold War because of Stalin's actions.

In what may be a significant expression of the new European tilt, Falin also insisted that Stalin would have accepted a unified—but de-militarized and neutral—Germany run by Social Democrats after the war. The United States rejected the proposition, he argued, not because

they distrusted Stalin, but because they feared an independent Germany in Europe beyond American control. Falin also emphasized that Soviet foreign policy would now advocate "the withdrawal of foreign troops from national territories," beginning in Eastern Europe with Hungary.

As for Soviet-American relations, history's verdict was now clear, Falin proclaimed: "We were led into the darkness of the Cold War. We were not the leaders, but the led."

Because of the anti-American tone of such remarks, many American analysts have seen the rise of Yakovlev and Falin to the top posts of Soviet foreign policy as conflicting with the "new thinking" in foreign affairs promoted by Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Gorbachev himself. Not so. On the contrary, these two men fully embrace the new thinking which places "global interest" above "class struggle" in international relations.

Men have reached the state where, as a species, they can destroy themselves. With nuclear weapons, war has become impossible." Speaking of the complexities of ecological and economic interdependence, Falin even attempted an update of Descartes' dictum "cogito ergo sum" to "we will live only if we think" in today's world. "New thinking," Falin said, "means rejecting all dogma".

Men like Yakovlev and Falin aren't actively opposed to America; they are simply less interested in it—and in following every jig and jag of Soviet-American relations—than the generation that preceded them. They believe that Soviet interests in today's world are better served by working with the United Nations and opening to Europe, Japan and China.

The perspective of the new foreign-policy elite in Moscow is thus one of a multipolar and interdependent world—in which they are at a severe economic disadvantage of nearly Third World proportions. For Moscow, the road from hard-line to software is more safely traveled with their European cousins than their unreliable American partner-in-conflict.

# The New York Review
of Books

January 19, 1989

## The Price China Has Paid:
An Interview with Liu Binyan

Liu Binyan is a sixty-two-year-old writer and journalist who is regarded as the preeminent intellectual advocating reform in China today. During the mid-1950s and again throughout the post-Mao period, he has strongly criticized Communist party officials for abusing their power and suppressing people's rights.

In the 1950s Liu wrote stories intended, in the tradition of Confucian literati, to express the views of the inarticular masses to the country's leaders. In 1957 he was, as a result, expelled from the Party and sent from Beijing to the countryside to do hard physical labor and was prevented from publishing. After further persecution during the Cultural Revolution, he returned to Peking in the late 1970s to produce an extraordinary series of investigative reports, stories, and essays that were published in Chinese newspapers and periodicals. One of the most powerful and widely praised of these, "People and Monsters," published in 1979, was a report on the behavior of corrupt Party officials in northeastern China that was seen as applying to corruption in the Party generally. Because of such writings, Liu became one of the main targets of the regime's campaigns against intellectuals launched in 1981, 1983, and 1987. Along with the physicist Fang Lizhi and the Shanghai writer Wang Ruowang, he was expelled from the Party after Hu Yaobang, the reform-minded General Secretary of the Chinese Communist party, was demoted in 1987.

Liu's views have gradually but radically changed since the 1950s. He has moved away from the traditional Chinese reliance on ideological persuasion to restrain people in power and now puts more emphasis on the need for legal and political institutions to protect liberties, particularly freedom of the press. While Liu remains a Marxist, he began to express such views publicly and repeatedly during the 1980s.

No writer in the Western countries seems comparable to Liu. His position in China resembles that of Eastern European intellectuals such as Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia who, while apparently powerless, can have a deep effect on their society. The great respect now accorded him throughout China derives from his courage in saying what many believe and talk about privately but are afraid to say openly. Now visiting Harvard as a Nieman Fellow, Liu was interviewed by Nathan Gardels, editor of *New Perspectives Quarterly*, which will publish a somewhat different version of the following interview later this winter.

-Merle Goldman

1.

NATHAN GARDELS: Fang Lizhi, the physicist, and yourself are the most prominent intellectuals expelled from the

Communist party during the reform period. Fang Lizhi has concluded that socialism failed and Marxism is irrelevant at the end of the twentieth century; You, on the other hand, remain a committed Marxist. Why?

LIU BINYAN: The problem does not lie with socialism itself. The socialism imported from the Soviet Union and implemented in China was not true socialism.

If we construct a building where there's no foundation, it's not a surprise when the building collapses. A society that is supposed to emerge from a materialist theory of development cannot simply be willed into existence.

NG: Is that how you would summarize the experiences of Stalin and Mao—trying to force socialism into existence through political power?

From Stalin to Mao Zedong, we have had false Marxism.

NG: The head of the Soviet Writers Union has said Stalin compromised socialism on a world scale by his crimes. Do you feel the same way about Mao Zedong?

LIU: Stalin was the first to ruin socialism. The second was Mao, Cambodia's Pol Pot was the third. All of these men completely destroyed the meaning of communism.

These men were not really Marxists at all. They ignored Marx's basic tenet that socialism presupposes a high level of material development. The conditions in each of the countries where these men came to power were not economically mature enough to build a socialist society.

LIU: Yes—utopia through the barrel of a gun.

In the beginning, Lenin himself believed socialism could not happen in an undeveloped place like Russia. He looked to revolution in advanced Germany and Austria to lead the way. When their revolutions aborted, the need to maintain state power persuaded Lenin to push aside the materialist science of Marxism and attempt to establish socialism in one backward country. The result was not true socialism.

Furthermore, there can't be socialism without democracy. Gorbachev has now made this tenet of Marx into an influential slogan in the USSR—"More democracy means more socialism." But over the last thirty years there has been less democracy and freedom in both China and the Soviet Union. This can't be socialism.

NG: So, China has to develop, or redevelop, a market in order to build a more advanced economy before it can become truly socialist?

LIU: That was even Mao's original theory. In fact, he named the postrevolutionary stage, during which market forces would develop the economy, "the new democratic phase." In 1949, Mao said China's "new democracy" would need fifteen to twenty years before it could change over into socialism. But in 1953, Mao wanted to be the leader of the world communist movement so he attempted to leap into socialism. He ignored the material reality and tried to rush into the "glorious future."

NG: You sound very much like Abel Aganbegyan, an economic adviser to Gorbachev, who has remarked that everything since Lenin was a mistake!

LIU: Even though the Maoist course was premature and mistaken, there were achievements. We built heavy industry; culture and education advanced; the people's standard of living was raised. But we paid a great price—twenty cents for something that should have cost only five cents.

Perhaps our enormous suffering has contributed to humanity. We have taught other countries not to take our disastrous path.

NG: The price China must now pay for this tragic past is the deep disillusionment of today's youth. What can a young person believe about the future in China?

LIU: So many of our youth have seen nothing good since they were born. Now, everything depends on the reform and democratization process, including reform of the Communist party itself. I believe our youth will gradually see that there is hope for China.

2.

NG: What is the difference in outlook between a Chinese intellectual in 1956, at the time of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, and an intellectual now during the reform period?

LIU: There is a profound difference. In 1956 Chinese intellectuals still believed in the Party. Now they don't.

Chinese intellectuals awoke in 1956 from the slumber of Stalinist "socialist realism," in large part as a result of Khrushchev's thaw in the Soviet Union. They realized then that idealizing life in literature and the arts had been a mistake. Instead of writing that everyone lived well, they now sought to depict life realistically, with all the contradictions and conflicts of socialist society that "realism" had attempted to suppress.

Paradoxically, just as this "new wave" thinking began to take hold, China (continued on page 34)

(continued from page 31)

embarked on a new phase of "socialist
construction" patterned after Stalin's
industrialization of the Soviet Union. This
course transformed the Chinese Commu-
nist party into the very bureaucratic and
oppressive apparatus that Khrushchev
was criticizing. The party soon collapsed
down brutally on critical thinking, which
was not reactivated until after the Two
Great Disasters—the Great Leap For-
ward and the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution—completely destroyed faith
in Mao and the credibility of the Party.

When intellectual life awakened in
1979, twenty-three years after the 1956
Hundred Flowers Campaign, the faith of
Chinese intellectuals in the Party was
profoundly shaken.

In 1979, many intellectuals nevertheless took the new opportunity to begin developing a theoretical framework to support the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping. Essays and reports published in the *People's Daily* negated the era of Mao as a total mistake. But no sooner did this begin than the Party leadership decided that they could not allow the complete delegitimation of Mao without endangering their own power.

Rather than a new ideological open-
ness, Deng himself put forward the Four
Cardinal Principles in 1979 which con-
strain intellectual freedom in China to
this day. Those principles are keeping the
socialist road; upholding the People's
Democratic Dictatorship; respecting the
leadership of the Chinese Communist
party; and adhering to Marxist-Leninist-
Mao Zedong thought.

I was expelled from the Party in 1987
for breaching these principles.

NG: What on earth does Marxist-
Leninist-Mao Zedong thought mean? I
asked a twenty-one-year-old student in
China this question, and all she could
answer was "love the motherland."

LIU: There are many slogans like "Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought" in China which are not taken seriously either by those who shout them or by those who listen.

Over the last ten years, the more intel-
lectuals have fought for the reforms
launched by Deng, the more they have
been attacked for breaching the Four
Cardinal Principles, including the viola-
tion of Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong
thought. Since the reforms are totally
opposed to the economic ideas of Mao,
the officials launching reforms have
found it necessary to proclaim unani-
mously their loyalty to the Four Cardinal
Principles. In fact, these principles, that
have been put into a constitution that
guarantees freedom of thought and ex-
pression, do not belong there. I suppose
these weird juxtapositions can only hap-
pen in China.

NG: What accounts for the two-steps-
forward, one-step-back nature of change
in China?

LIU: Since 1979, liberalization has oc-
curred in an on-and-off fashion, opening
up and closing down. Virtually every year
there has been a campaign against liberal-
ization, but each campaign gets weaker
and weaker.

In 1981 there was the long campaign
against *Bitter Love*, the film by Bai Hua
in which he exposed the people's suffer-
ings during the Cultural Revolution and
laid the blame squarely on Mao. In 1983
there was the Campaign Against Spiritual
Pollution which lasted only twenty-seven
days. In 1987 there was the Anti-
Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign that
was stopped after three months.

These campaigns all belong to a single
strand of counterreform which emanates
from one faction of the leadership that is
obviously getting weaker as time goes on.

NG: But didn't former chairman of the
CCP Hu Yaobang's dismissal last year
mean a weakening of liberalizing forces
in the Party?

LIU: Even though Hu Yaobang has been
removed, the forces that he represented
inside the Party have actually become
stronger. They've expanded even in the
last year because the Anti-Bourgeois
Liberalization Campaign provoked very
strong negative reactions both inside and
outside the Party. The dismissal of Hu
Yaobang and the expulsion of Fang Lizhi
and myself were viewed as illegal acts
against the Party and the Constitution.
For the first time, people publicly op-
posed a political campaign and defended
its victims. They asserted that the Party's
actions were against the Constitution.

There is another reason why progres-
sive forces in the Party have become
stronger: the Party anticorruption, or
"rectification," program of 1983 and
1984 failed. Originally a lot of people had
put their hopes in the rectification pro-
gram, because it was going to eliminate
the corrupt elements from the Party.
Even some conservative-minded people in
the Party wanted to see the Party im-
proved, and they also opposed corruption.

So, when Hu Yaobang was deposed
and I was expelled, there was sympathy
for our position, even from many conser-
vatives, because not only had the corrupt
problem not been solved, but those
who opposed corruption had been thrown
out of the Party! As a result, the cor-
ruptors became more brazen and attacked
those who had exposed the corruption.
Their brazenness, which has become
more blatant, has upset even some con-
servatives who are moving closer to our
side.

This realignment is key to understand-
ing the current political situation in
China. "Conservatives" realize that op-
posing the free expression which exposes
corruption harms their own interests in
reestablishing the credibility and leader-
ship of the Party. That's why the Anti-
Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign end-
ed so quickly.

The Party leadership also finally
understood that every time it unleashed a
new campaign the economy was severely
damaged. Private businessmen and
foreign investors, already nervous about

Party stability, were worried; and these
campaigns only proved that the fears of
the private concerns were correct.

3.

NG: Does the Party leadership now
believe that political reform is necessary
for economic reform? Or, in effect, is
Deng Xiaoping for perestroika without
the glasnost?

LIU: The economic reform is a very long
leg in China, while the political reform is
a very short one. One can't proceed
without being tripped up by the other.
The student movement in 1986 exploded
because political reform has hardly
begun.

Actually, the first person to bring up
the idea of political reform was Deng
Xiaoping. In 1980 he said we must
reform the political system, fight
feudalism and bureaucracy, and expand
democracy.

But it never came to pass. The resist-
ance within the Party was too strong.
Senior officials refused to give up their
positions and privileges. They are not
concerned about socialism; they are con-
cerned only with their own interests and
that of their children and grandchildren.
I think real glasnost, or openness, will
gradually come about, not because con-
servatives want it, but because the people
will force them to accept it.

NG: Is there another conservative reac-
tion on the horizon?

LIU: If there is it will have different ra-
tionalizations than past campaigns.

It's possible high inflation will be the
excuse. Inflation has caused a lot of
dissatisfaction among the masses. Con-
servatives could use economic reasons to
attack the reforms, saying, "Look! The
majority of people are suffering from in-
flation while a minority who benefit from
the market reforms lives well!"

That approach might be effective be-
cause people are upset about the new
social inequality and what they perceive
as a falling standard of living. Peasants
are often richer than urban dwellers, and
a cab driver, for instance, can make ten
times as much as a bus driver and even an
intellectual.

NG: How would you compare China's
progress under reform to the Soviet
Union's?

LIU: There are many areas where condi-
tions in China are behind those in the
Soviet Union, including political and
cultural conditions, and the state of the
legal system. The Soviet Union is also
riddled with corruption, but Gorbachev
has been more effective in exposing this
corruption.

But we are better off than the Soviets
in the sense that, after the Cultural
Revolution, nobody in China believes
anymore. As a result, if a drastic reform
program is put forward in China that
challenges all dogma, the people will not
oppose it the way many are opposing
reforms in the Soviet Union.

Another distinction. While the Anti-
Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign got
rid of Hu Yaobang, the reforms went
forward. It was decreed in March 1987
that in the elections to the local people's
congresses there would be more can-
didates than positions to be filled and
that the candidates can be nominated not
only by the Party but by the people
themselves. If the Soviet Union were to
have an antiliberalization campaign that
removed Gorbachev, their reforms would
be in real difficulty.

A Publication of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

New Perspectives Quarterly

Volume 5 #4 • Winter 1988-89

Comment

2. All That Is Sacred Is Profaned

From the Inner Sanctum: Beijing, Budapest and Moscow

4. Turning Marx on His Head • Vadim Medvedev

7. Capitalism Has No Patent on the Market • Hu Qili

12. From Big Brother to Big Mac • Janos Berecz

Perestroika: Social Conflict and the Strategic Context

18. The Strategic Imperative of Reform • Silviu Brucan

23. The Four Perestroikas • Leonid Gordon

26. The Dictatorship of the Consumer • Abel Aganbegyan

30. When God Fails, Russia Remains • Régis Debray

The Dismantling of Totalitarian Society

34. The Withering Away of the State? • Jeane Kirkpatrick

37. Post-Totalitarianism • Jiri Pehe

The Loyal Opposition

42. The Great Wall Endures • Liu Binyan

46. Time is a Gentleman • Alexander Dubcek

50. Castro: Dilemmas of the Last Idealist • Tad Szulc

Cinema

53. America's Underculture • Costa-Gavras

Architecture

57. Of Detritus and Denial • Frank Gehry

Correspondence

62. The Challenges to America • Paul Kennedy

Publisher's Page

64. Just Think • Stanley K. Sheinbaum

Comment | All That is Sacred is Profaned

A specter is haunting the
Communist world – the specter of economic failure.
While supermarkets, shopping malls and personal
computers describe the post-industrial West, the
economies of the East are still struggling with the
abacus and the cabbage, the slide rule and the
smokestack. In a cruel paradox of history, the future
has left its vanguard behind.

What is to be done? For communism's
leaders, a new revolution is on the agenda.
The imperative is to build a high-tech, con-
sumer society. For Mikhail Gorbachev in
particular, the construction of a post-industrial
society is a critical strategic matter. He knows
that in the next century, even a nuclear-armed
Rust Belt will be no match for the economic
superpowers of Japan, a United Europe and the
United States.

Realizing the 'infallible' leaders of the past planned their societies into obsolescence, a new generation of Atari Communists is reviv-ing the invisible hand to guide socialism down the path from hardline to software. But, as Marx well understood, the market has its price. While market dynamism continually revo-lutionizes production by forging new techno-logies, it casts society into perpetual upheaval. "All that is solid melts into air; all that is sacred is profaned," Marx wrote in the Commu-nist Manifesto.

So it is across the Communist world today. All that was doctrinally sacred for decades has been profaned. Under market-oriented reforms inflation, unemployment and social inequality have all returned along with stock markets and private ownership.

Yet, the Atari Communists are not capital-
ists. Determined to avoid history's judgement
of socialism as the longest road from capitalism
to capitalism, they are searching for a new
model that incorporates as much collective
ownership as an efficient market will allow.
Even so, their program has generated a broad
reaction from the vested interests of industrial-
ism and ideological orthodoxy.

Since *perestroika* is a social revolution and not a coup d'état, its success depends less on Gorbachev's stunning accumulation of political power than on a social base which has an interest in rapidly building a post-industrial society. From this angle, the percentages are not kind. There is little evidence that Russia's blue-collar masses will support a revolution that consigns them to the dustbin of history.

According to the Institute of World Labor
Movements in Moscow, less than one third of
the Soviet population – highly skilled workers,
scientists and the intelligentsia broadly speak-
ing – has an “objective interest” in supporting
both the *market* and *democratic* elements which
constitute Gorbachev’s *perestroika*.

The vast, less-skilled industrial working
class of the Soviet Union – over 60% of the
population – supports more democracy, but
resists market reforms. Overwhelmingly,
workers prefer the security of a planned econ-
omy. Yet, *perestroika* threatens to take that
security, the chief achievement of a life of
sacrifice, from them. This contradiction is
nowhere more evident in the East than at the
Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk. The Polish gov-
ernment wants to shut down the inefficient
plant while the workers want to keep it open.
In a premonition of the hard road ahead,
market reform confronts worker's democracy
at the birthplace of Solidarity.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

2

and parcel of restructuring. And as subsidies are removed, higher prices will further assault the proletariat's already pitiful standard of living. For that obsolete icon of communist ideology, life under *perestroika* will get worse before it gets better.

This realization surely troubles Mikhail Gorbachev's sleep. He must worry that a demoted working class will take refuge in Russia's historic xenophobia as their world falls apart. The more Gorbachev opens to ethnic autonomy, the modernizing market and the West without immediate economic results, the more rancorous the nationalist reaction among Russia's industrial proletariat. Any visitor to Russia these days can report the sympathy that grows daily for the frightening sentiments of *Pamyat* ("memory" in Russian), a virulently anti-Semitic, nationalist organization which vaunts "traditionalism" and assails "cosmopolitanism." The ethnic unrest *perestroika* has unleashed in the Baltic states and Armenia only bolsters the reaction already lurking in the shadows of disorder.

These are the perils of *perestroika* which must shape the West's response to Gorbachev. Western credits can allow the social breathing space for *perestroika* to take root by producing immediate results for the Soviet consumer. They can help consolidate Gorbachev's effort to build a prosperous middle-class society linked to the global economy – a society that, Gorbachev or not, will press for butter over guns. The denial of credits, on the other hand, risks nurturing the rise of a fearful industrial nationalism that defines national might as armed strength. As the classic dynamic of revolution and reaction unfolds in Soviet society, the stakes for the West could not be higher.

Nathan Gardels, Editor

## In This Issue

...we examine *perestroika* and Communist reform from the perspective of the transition to a post-industrial society.

To anchor our discussion we sought the authoritative views of Politburo ideologists in Beijing, Budapest and Moscow. From Beijing, **Hu Qili** vaunts the virtues of the market. **Janos Berecz** discusses the limits of political pluralism from Budapest. From Moscow, **Vadim Medvedev** laments man's alienation from public property.

For analysis, we turned to **Silviu Bruean**, author of *World Socialism at the Crossroads*, and a former Romanian ambassador to the US now under house arrest in Bucharest; **Abel Aganbegyan**, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's top economic adviser; **Leonid Gordon**, a leading sociologist at Moscow's Institute for World Labor Movements; and **Régis Debray**, a foreign policy advisor to French President Francois Mitterand and author of *Empires Against Europe*.

**Jeane Kirkpatrick**, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, reconsiders her thesis that totalitarian societies can't change. **Jiri Pehe**, a Czech journalist exiled in Munich, argues that the information revolution has undermined totalitarianism.

**Alexander Dubcek**, the former Czech leader whose reforms were crushed by Soviet tanks in 1968, ponders *perestroika*. **Liu Binyan**, a leading Chinese journalist expelled from the Communist Party last year, looks at the limits of reform. **Tad Szule**, author of *Fidel: A Critical Portrait*, argues that Fidel Castro is the main obstacle to a Cuban *perestroika*.

Also, filmmaker **Costa-Gavras** talks about May '68, the first European Disneyland and Bernard Goetz. L.A. architect **Frank Gehry** reflects on building for the disconnected urban landscape. In Correspondence, "Decline" author **Paul Kennedy** challenges "The American Renaissance."

3

Vadim Medvedev, Hu Qili, Janos Berecz

International commu-
nism, once broken apart,
has reunited in reforms
that stem from a com-
mon imperative: to
correct the Stalinist path
of centrally-planned
development universally
adopted during the days
of the Moscow-
dominated Communist
International. That path
led to economic ruin
in the East while the
West advanced into the
Information Age.

To document this
new "Reform Interna-
tional," NPQ Editor
Nathan Gardels visited
Beijing, Moscow and
Budapest to gather
remarks from the chief
ideologists of the most
reform-minded
Communist Party
Politburos.

Turning Marx on His Head

Vadim Medvedev The entire construction of communist ideology by Karl Marx was founded upon one insight: man was alienated from his labor through private property relations. According to Marx, the fruits of a worker's labors were unfairly appropriated by the capitalist. Thus, socialization of private property was the key to ending the alienation of man. Under Soviet socialism, the state replaced the capitalist.

Now, in the most stunning ideological somersault
since Marx turned the idealist philosophy of Hegel on its
head, the new Soviet ideology chief, Vadim Medvedev,
turns Soviet Marxism on its head. He declares in
the following article that for perestroika to succeed in
promoting technological progress, "the main thing is
to restructure property relations and end the state of
alienation between people and public property."

Significantly, Medvedev links perestroika not to
the anti-Stalinist reform efforts of Khrushchev, which
had been the early reference point for Gorbachev's
reforms, but to Lenin's market-oriented New Economic
Policy of the 1920s. In fact, Medvedev implicitly
criticizes Khrushchev.

In an incredible statement coming from a Soviet
ideologist, Medvedev suggests that the Soviet Union has
much to learn from European social democracy and
asserts the primacy of "mankind's general interests" over
class struggle in international relations.

From this birthplace of central planning dogma,
Medvedev also sanctions market relations for the first
time since they were eradicated in 1930 after the NEP.
Finally, he assures the nervous ravens of the Party
apparatus that "as Lenin believed, the sword of glasnost
heals the wounds it inflicts."

These remarkable comments by the authoritative
Soviet ideology chief are adapted from a speech delivered
in Moscow on October 4, 1988, to a closed gathering
of social scientists from socialist countries. It is published
here for the first time in the West.

Today, few doubt that socialism requires pro-
found renovation. By the end of the 1970s, so-
cialism had lost its advantage over capitalism in
the race for economic development and lagged
behind in key new fields of technology.

Now, there is a need for deep change and
renewal of Soviet society. The socialist ideas
Lenin evolved in practice during the transition
from "War Communism" to the New Economic
Policy (NEP) are the principal influence on our
renewal of the present-day concept of socialism.

Diversion from Leninist principles formu-
lated in the NEP period led to grievous conse-
quences. It would be wrong to only link the
Stalin period, from 1924-1953, with the tactical
error of his desire to reach the pinnacle of social-
ism in one effective leap. Stalin's distortion of
socialism is deeper and lies in a diversion from
the humanitarian essence of socialism.

The attempt in the 1950s and 60s to critically reassess Stalin's distortion of theory was eventually discredited by the subjectivist idea [formulated by Khrushchev in his famous "We Will Bury You" challenge to the US – ed.] of accelerating economic victory over capitalism. During that time, it was projected that we would pass the phase of socialism and make the transition to communism within fifteen to twenty years – by the 1980s.

The departure from Lenin's practical meth-
odology deepened during the period of stag-
nation under Brezhnev, when the thesis was
advanced that a "developed socialist society"
had already been built in our country. Although
this thesis conflicted with the reality we all expe-
rienced in daily life, it was nonetheless used to
extol success and distract the public from resolv-
ing pressing issues.

4 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

In the past few years, under glasnost, intellectuals, the mass media and the public have sought to discover the causes of these alien elements implanted into Marxism-Leninism. Regrettably, in the process, irresponsible attempts have been made to cast aspersions not only on Lenin's heritage, but on the principles and values of socialism. How else can we interpret the claims, published in the press, that the sources of Stalin's "command administration" system go back to Lenin? How else can we interpret the attempts to call the correctness of the socialist choice itself into question?

Such defective criticism can only be addressed by a reformulation of the concept of socialism, and the harmonizing, through theory, of our ideals and the goals of perestroika.

**From Monolith to Diversity** | Summarizing the experience of all socialist countries is one means of formulating a new concept of socialism. We must draw from the very diversity of experience once frowned upon as a departure from Marxism-Leninism and "socialist internationalism." We now believe that the diversity of form and method in building socialism benefits us all.

Furthermore, in working out the modern socialist perspective, we cannot ignore the experience of mankind as a whole. We must not only study the other system's achievements in science and engineering, but also all their forms of social organization and economic processes, including large- and small-scale production and cooperatives. We must also look at the ways the other

system has accommodated international economic integration. In particular, we must study the Social Democratic movement, especially its defense, in terms of social protection and political rights, of the working people.

**The State of Alienation** | We must also overhaul our concept of the economic foundation of socialism. Until recently, our concept of building socialism encouraged the development of state property while imposing artificial restrictions on cooperative business and individual enterprise. In fact, socialization was considered a yardstick for measuring the extent of socialism. Planning was associated with rigid centralization of management, while the importance of economic independence of enterprises and commodity relations were underestimated. That blocked development.

The aim of reform is to create economic incentives for growth in production and to join the scientific-technological revolution. The key to reform is restructuring property relations and ending the state of alienation between people and public property. We must now admit that our previous concepts of public property have proven untenable, leaving a void in our theory.

For the first time in decades we are witnessing an irreversible and powerful renewal process in the forms of ownership of the means of production. Take lease arrangements, for instance [an economic mechanism, practiced for some years in China and Hungary, whereby the state leases collective property to workers and farmers to manage production and dispose of output as they see fit - ed.]. From the experience of other Communist nations, we know that the lease system ensures explosive growth in agriculture and services. And we know from the experiment of the Butovo Building Materials Complex near Moscow that the lease system can be effective in large-scale industry as well. Leasing can not only rescue money-losing enterprises, but enhance profit-making ones.

Therefore, we must lift the ban imposed on the lease system in 1930 and encourage and popularize lease arrangements as one of the advanced methods of using socialist property.

Cooperative forms of ownership must also be encouraged and popularized. Cooperative business and individual enterprise are effective both in small-scale production and in general services that support large-scale industry.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 5

Finally, the wide use of commodity-money relations under socialism should be encouraged. Market exchange, which operates according to the law of supply and demand, is a necessary condition for efficient management of our economic life. Production and consumption should be based on sound economic methods instead of bureaucratic administration or arbitrary, willful decision. The market is an indispensable means of gearing production to fast changing demand. And it is a major instrument in the public control of quality and cost.

At the same time, a socialist economy cannot exist without strong leadership from the center. However, the center should only prevail on such questions as structural changes, investment policy and implementation of major research and development programs. The center must also ensure conditions conducive to effective operation of commodity-producing enterprises.

**Power to the People** | The most important objective for the political system is to put into practice the most fundamental political principle of socialism – ensuring real participation of working people in deciding all the affairs of the State and society, both in the center and at the local level.

We are creating a fundamentally new system of power and government based on broad democracy *and* the leading role of the Party.

Socialism is a system of the people and by the people. But people are not abstractions. Every person belongs to some social, ethnic and professional group with specific interests. Consequently, socialism must create a political system reflecting the actual structure of society and the diversity of interests. We call this system "socialist pluralism."

What are the necessary conditions for realizing socialist pluralism?

First, we need to develop a broad network of organizations, unions and institutes which would adequately express the multitude of social interests. Second, the Party itself should be profoundly democratized. Third, the idea of a law-based state should be realized.

**The Sword of Glasnost** | The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is now open to both internal and public, non-Party discussions on any issue in society. The Party respects the rights of non-communists to have an opinion and to defend their interests. Under such conditions, there are

no grounds for creating any alternative parties to oppose the policy of the Communist Party.

The Party pins great hope on the mass media to be a rostrum for criticism and debate about *perestroika*. Public opinion polls conducted on a regular basis should play a role in establishing and evaluating public interest and public sentiment. True, we are sometimes warned against letting the genie out of the bottle. But I don't think our Party has grounds to fear growing public activity and criticism of our shortcomings. As Lenin believed, the sword of *glasnost* healing the wounds it inflicts.

In promoting democracy, we attach principal importance to the role of the Party in the life of our society. It is crystal clear that there should be no diminution of the Party's leading role by reducing it to merely coordinating functions. On the contrary, we intend to enhance the influence of the Party, not by the old methods of command-style administration, but through efforts to influence public opinion by persuasion based upon clear analysis.

**Eternal Co-existence** | Our concept of peaceful coexistence today rests on an understanding of Lenin. It is a lengthy, long-run process the historic limits of which are hard to establish.

The idea that capitalism and socialism can develop in parallel manner is obsolete. With the two systems inevitably interacting within one human civilization, their development intersects. But it is not a matter of convergence or merger; each system continues to develop according to its own laws. Indeed, because of present-day realities, the relationship between mankind's general interests and class-oriented priorities calls for clarification.

Today, when the universal values of humankind are most vividly embodied in ensuring its own survival, it is precisely those general values that advance to the forefront in international relations. That is the core of our "new thinking" in international affairs.

6

E.C.

Hu Qili As a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of China's Communist Party, Hu Qili is one of the five men who rule China. On economic issues, he is a "radical reformer." His responsibilities on the Politburo include ideology, the press and propaganda.

In this wide-ranging interview conducted at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Hu makes the clear- est statement on record about the final objectives of economic reform in China. He also talks about political and cultural freedom under reform.

**NPQ** | Both China and the Soviet Union are reforming today as a result of economic failure under communism.

The common feature of both countries was a utopian ideology which sanctioned jumping over stages of development to reach socialism. It was thought that state ownership and central planning could establish socialism without first reaching a high level of material development.

**Hu Qili** | Our decision to reform and open to the world in 1978 was not deduced from theory, but drawn from the calamity of the Great Cultural Revolution. The ultra-leftist policies pursued in those years brought China to the brink of economic collapse.

In more general terms, though, I don't think we suffered from a utopian socialist concept. For a period of time we thought highly centralized planning was the sole economic form of a socialist system. We thought that the market economy and commodity exchange were equivalent to capitalism. This brought us a lot of harm.

Now, it seems that the market is not a feature unique to capitalism. Capitalism doesn't have the patent right over the market economy.

The purpose of our reform is to realize a new and unprecedented modality – a planned commodity economy based on public ownership. But this is an experiment. Most of the countries with a commodity economy have private ownership, while most of the economies with public ownership have a planned economy.

What we are trying to establish is a modality where the state regulates the market and the market guides the enterprises. Our planning must respect the "law of value," of supply and

demand. We want to integrate the advantages of the planning and market economy. This is what we mean when we say socialism with Chinese characteristics.

**NPQ** | When Chinese socialism is fully developed, will the market element be superior to the planning element?

**Hu** | Yes. Our final objective is to expose all enterprises – individual, state, private and collective – to market competition.

**NPQ** | At the 13th Party Congress last May, Party Chairman Zhao Ziyang declared that China was now in the "primary stage of socialism" which will last for many decades to come.

Does that mean, in effect, that the laboring people of China will fulfill the historic role the capitalist class played when Europe fully developed the commodity economy?

**Hu** | In the primary stage of socialism we will accomplish the task that might have been accomplished by other classes in other countries during the development of capitalism.

We can jump over the stage of capitalism – private ownership – but we can't jump over the stage of the commodity economy. Only by developing a commodity economy can we develop China's productive forces. And only when the productive forces are highly developed can we realize a system whereby the principle, "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs," can be applied.

**NPQ** | The error of the Maoist past, then, was that political power ruled over the law of value.

**Hu** | We didn't realize then that excessive speed would lead to haste, haste to ultra-left ideas and ultra-left ideas to an ideological radicalism that blocked development. Now we know that when a tender sapling is not yet ready to harvest, the use of human efforts to pull it out of the ground will not make it ripe.

We have learned from this experience. That's why we emphasize a steady pace and oppose radical ideas.

**NPQ** | In the Soviet Union today, the recognition of these kind of mistakes has led Gorbachev to say that the Party no longer "lays claim to a monopoly on truth."

Has the error of "historical idealism," as Zhao Ziyang calls it, led the Chinese Party to a similar conclusion?

The purpose of our reform is to realize a new and unprecedented modality – a planned commodity economy based on public ownership. We are trying to establish a modality where the state regulates the market and the market guides the enterprises.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 7

As a result of opening to the outside world, reintegration with the world economy, and more contact with foreigners, corrupt phenomena such as prostitution, drugs and superstition are becoming widespread. The vices of the old society that had been stopped after liberation are staging a comeback. Some people are saying it is like the old days.

**Hu** | The leadership role of the Chinese Communist Party has been confirmed over a very long period of time. In 1978, we summed up our Party's experiences and realized that great mistakes were made in the cause of advancing to socialism. When we realized that, we made these mistakes public to the people and to the whole world. After that, we decided to pursue the course of reform and of opening China to the global economy and influence from the West. As a result, great changes have taken place in the ten years since the reforms were implemented.

These years have been characterized by political stability, economic development, and a remarkable improvement in our people's lives. Between 1978 and 1987, our GNP growth rate was 9.3% - one of the highest in the world.

Of course, together with such positive developments, new problems keep cropping up.

For instance, in the past China had low wages. Everyone earned more or less the same. The distribution of income was very even, or, according to the old concept, relatively "fair."

Now, the development of the commodity

economy has caused a drastic change. We have cases where people who are good at management - including peddlers without much education - can actually earn more than professors!

And I can also say that some people earn more than our General Secretary or our Premier! This has placed a very big question mark in the minds of the people about whether our reform course is "fair."

Another example: In this transition period from the old to the new, some of the old regulations and rules are no longer adequate while new ones haven't yet been worked out. And new laws are far from perfect. So, some people are taking advantage of the situation. They fish in troubled water to make a profit.

In the past, lower officials of both the government and the Communist Party lacked any economic power. The power over resources rested with the central authorities. If a central official wanted to allocate money at will and to his self-interest, he would be committing a crime.

Now such power has been allocated in a widespread way to lower levels. So, people at lower levels have power over economic resources...

**NPQ** | ...so corruption has trickled down?

**Hu** | Yes. Taking advantage of the new power they have, some people pursue self-interest, corruption or embezzlement.

Also, as a result of opening to the outside world, reintegration with the world economy and more contact with foreigners, corrupt phenomena such as prostitution, drugs and superstition are becoming widespread.

**NPQ** | But these things are part and parcel of building the market economy. You will have to live with them for a long time to come.

**Hu** | Yes. This is going to be a long term struggle that will be waged throughout the reform and opening to the outside world.

Additionally, in the process of economic development, a diversity of economic interests have emerged. Each department, manager and cadre; each social organization, company and individual has their own respective interest. They are all competing.

The one good thing about all this is that we can see China is bubbling with dynamism. The people's initiative has been unleashed. On the

8 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

other hand, our previous ways of governing and management are dramatically out of tune with the new diversity of interests, of competition.

That is why we are advocating "consolidation" of the "new order of the planned socialist commodity economy." Our institutions need time to catch up to our new experience.

**NPQ** | The important point is that in the mind of the Party leaders these phenomena are interpreted primarily as dynamism, not chaos which calls for a retrenchment of the reforms.

**Hu** | Yes. These phenomena have caused great worries among the people. At present, we have a very strong democratic atmosphere and people can express any dissatisfaction.

So, [laughing - ed.] everybody is complaining. Some people say our problems are a necessary part of the commodity economy. Other people hate our situation and swear at the reforms.

Also, the rapid economic development has caused inflation. This has exacerbated people's concerns about the problem of moral corruption.

If you travel just a little bit in China, you will see construction everywhere. The growth rate of industry in China this year is 17%!

This has pushed up the prices of construction material, caused a shortage of raw materials, and a lack of supplies of materials for production.

But we expected all these phenomena. There is no method whereby China can develop a commodity economy and break the mold of the over-centralized planned economy without paying a price. We are therefore very resolute in seeing the reforms through, although we will be cautious in specific matters.

**NPQ** | Specifically, what will the most important policy initiatives be for the next two years?

**Hu** | First of all, we will take firm and effective measures to cure inflation. We will cut back on the scale of capital construction, reduce institutional purchasing power, reduce the amount of credit and restrict the issuance of currency.

We will also rectify something the people hate very much: official padding. Officials in government institutions and departments are making a profit through the differential between price and cost in the circulation of commodities. They charge middleman fees, thus raising the overall prices.

The purpose of getting inflation under control is to create a less strained environment for price reform. The purpose of consolidation is to

ensure a more certain and rapid advance of the reforms in the future.

So, at least for next year, there will be no major price readjustments.

**NPQ** | But the objective of price reform remains as a central foundation of the market economy. The leadership is not shrinking from that objective?

**Hu** | This objective is firm and unswerving.

**NPQ** | What about new initiatives in enterprise reform?

**Hu** | The key to breaking away from price and wage subsidies is improving the economic efficiency of the enterprises.

Above all, that means the directors and managers of factories should have complete power and responsibility for the affairs of the factory. The enterprise should in no way be an affiliate of a government institution. They should be completely independent producers of commodities, responsible for their own profits and losses.

For this purpose we are enacting the enterprise laws which guarantee the right of independent management of those enterprises. At the same time, we are implementing the "contract responsibility" system for enterprises whereby, after fulfilling the state's needs, the surplus can be disposed of freely on the market.

With small service and repair enterprises we have taken the measure of leasing, auctioning or contracting these enterprises to individuals. All these small enterprises, when they are auctioned or leased, have registered immediate improvements in efficiency. We are also contracting the medium- and large-scale enterprises out to organizations of talented and competent people.

Finally, we are introducing the mechanism of competition between firms. One new mechanism we are proposing is the practice whereby a director places a deposit of his own funds on the property of an enterprise.

Let's say I put forward an idea that this factory will earn 1 million yuan every year. Another man might say that under his management the factory can earn 1.5 million yuan.

Whoever gets his ideas approved will have to put his bank account and his family property as a deposit on the property of the factory. He must prove his faith in his ability and his commitment to the enterprise.

A director selected through such a system

Above all, the directors and managers of factories should have complete power and responsibility for the affairs of the factory. The enterprise should in no way be an affiliate of a government institution.

9

We are launching a
big experiment in the
issuance of stock in
medium- and large-
scale enterprises, with
public ownership play-
ing the predominant
role. In some cases,
stocks will be sold
only to the workers in
the particular enter-
prise. In other cases,
the shares will be sold
to the society at large.

will, inevitably, be very strict with production
and highly responsible. He will work very hard.

The workers will duly understand why this
particular director is so strict with the manage-
ment approach. In the past, the workers would
say, "why should you be so concerned and strict
since the factory belongs to the state?"

Now, the director can say to the workers, "you
must work very hard because you put me at risk
of bankruptcy. I could lose all my family savings
that I put up as a deposit. So, if you don't work
hard, I'll sack you."

NPQ | Will the China once ruled by Mao start issuing private shares of stock?

Hu | We are launching a big experiment in the issuance of stock in medium- and large-scale enterprises, with public ownership playing the predominant role. That is to say, we will introduce a stock system without changing the nature of the public ownership of the state enterprises. If 51% of the ownership remains with the state, the nature of public ownership is maintained.

There will be two practices. In some cases,
stocks will be sold only to the workers in the
particular enterprise. In other cases, the shares
will be sold to the society at large.

In addition to providing expansion capital,
the issuance of shares will give workers a stronger
sense of being the master of their enterprise. The
harder they work, the more profitable the enter-
prise. The more profitable the enterprise, the
more of a dividend they get.

Political Reform

NPQ | What's on the agenda of political reform?

Hu | Without political reform, it is impossible to deepen economic restructuring.

Only by legally guaranteeing the people's
right as master of the state, the right to inde-
pendently manage enterprises, and the right to
supervision over the government can we unleash
the enthusiasm of the Chinese people to develop
the economy.

What we have done so far includes the sepa-
ration of the government from the enterprises;
the reform of the election system so there is
more than one candidate for each position;
strengthening of the consultative role of
non-communist groups and parties in the
People's Consultative Congress; and the

strengthening of the role of the press in supervis-
ing the government and the Party.

NPQ | While China is far ahead of the Soviet
Union in economic reforms, it is behind in
glasnost. Can we look forward to the appearance
of a highly critical newspaper, like Moscow
News, in China sometime in the next couple of
years? Moscow News can say almost anything.

Hu | Such things already exist in China. We have several hundred newspapers. Some papers are run by the Chinese Communist Party, but there are many others run by the Youth League, various people's organizations, the trade unions and so on.

All these papers are independent. They have
their own editing and publishing policies. Every
day you can see the press exposing and criticizing
the government and the Party — they talk about
inflation, crime, drugs, prostitutes and even po-
lice corruption, for example, in the Youth Daily.

The contents of the recent work conference
of the Politburo, for example, were all made
public right after the conference concluded so
that people would know what was happening
and could discuss it.

We also call this openness or "transparency."

NPQ | But Liu Binyan, the famous muckrak-
ing journalist, is not free to say what he wants in
the Chinese papers, is he? He was expelled from
the Party last year.

Hu | Of course he can write what he wants.
He's a free man. He can hold press conferences.
He expresses his political views and makes all
kind of comments. He even makes verbal attacks
on China.

NPQ | Why did he have to be expelled from
the Party? Is there no room in the Party for his
kind of criticism?

Hu | He was not expelled because of his
criticisms. If Liu Binyan doesn't believe at all in
communism, why join the Communist Party?
It's ridiculous.

NPQ | But Liu Binyan is a committed Marx-
ist. He believes in building socialism. His aim is
to expose corruption. Isn't there room for critical
Marxists in the party?

Hu | There are many people with far more
critical views than Liu Binyan in the Chinese
Communist Party. Believe me, criticism is ram-
pant in the Party. It ranges from those who fear
the social problems introduced by the reforms to
those who believe the pace of reforms is too slow.

10 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

Whether a piece of artistic work, film or TV program is good or bad, it is up to the audience to make comments. The Party has no role here. It can make no decision on such things.

Their criticisms are far sharper than Liu Binyan's. But they obey the discipline and the Constitution of the Party.

Additionally, many of the people described in Liu Binyan's reportage about corruption actually wanted to sue him, because what he described wasn't true.

So, freedom to criticize depends on the nature of the questions involved.

Let me give you a recent example. At the 13th Party Congress, many delegates raised very sharp criticism of the education policies and proposed bankruptcy laws.

All these criticisms were made public and carried in the *People's Daily*. The party is not unified on these questions. There are differences. We in the leadership did not necessarily agree with the criticisms raised, but that didn't matter. They were aired nevertheless.

Another example of open criticism and debate concerns the controversy over some recent films and TV shows, for example *River Elegy*, about the Yellow River.

**NPQ** | Many young intellectuals like *River Elegy* because it criticizes Chinese tradition – embodied in such landlocked, inward-facing symbols as the Yellow River and the Great Wall – as a drag on modernization. I have heard you are sympathetic to local Party censors who disliked the film’s attack on traditional values.

**Hu** | That is not correct. In the Party we have a principle now: there is to be no interference concerning films or other artistic works.

Of course, leaders of the Party have their own likes and dislikes. But that does not represent the view of the Party.

The focus of the Party now is to maintain a democratic and open environment in which people can have free discussions. Only in such an environment can literature and art develop on a healthy track.

**NPQ** | As an individual, not as a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, what is your opinion of *River Elegy*?

**Hu** | Generally speaking, this TV series is a good one. It is conducive to reform.

There are drawbacks. A film or work of art should take a more analytical attitude toward

the heritage of a country. A more analytical attitude would discard the dross but not the essence of our inheritance.

Of course, we cannot expect any TV series to be perfect. It is a good thing that people have different opinions on this film. I think the controversy over this TV series is itself the success.

## Relations with Moscow

**NPQ** | Do you take seriously the "new thinking" of Soviet foreign policy? Is it sincere?

**Hu** | We appreciate the new thinking in the foreign policy of General Secretary Gorbachev. The reform efforts of the Soviet Union are sincere. And if they want the domestic reforms to succeed, they must be sincere in their foreign policy. So, we welcome the reforms and wish Gorbachev success.

We also hope that the obstacles to improved relations, in particular the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea, will be removed at an early date and state-to-state relations can be resumed.

I believe things are developing in a positive direction. From the overall trend in the world, one can see that the days of hegemonic and bloc politics are gone. In any event, when the relations between China and the Soviet Union are restored, they will not possibly revert to what they were in the 1950s.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 11

## From Big Brother to Big Mac

**Janos Berecz** As the Politburo member in charge of ideology for the Hungarian Socialist Worker's Party, Janos Berecz, 56, stands at the political center of the nation now leading in Communist reform. As ideology chief, his views mark the boundary of Hungary's astonishingly far-reaching changes.

The running joke in Budapest these days defines socialism as "the longest route from capitalism to capitalism." Indeed, over the last twenty years, and at a heavy price in terms of inflation and foreign debt, the Hungarian economy has come to resemble the West more than the East.

Since 1966, private activities have doubled the average income of the population. Seventy-five percent of services and 85% of construction are in the private sector. Household plots and farms account for over 50% of agricultural output, making Hungary one of the most efficient producers of food in the world. Over 60% of industrial goods are priced according to the world market.

Unlike Moscow, the only lines one finds in this Central European capital are at the fabulously popular McDonalds and at the Adidas Sportswear store in Budapest's fashionable shopping district.

The treatment of dissent has shifted from token freedoms to token repression. Indeed, political reform has advanced so far that the most pressing issue on the national agenda is what form pluralism will take.

We discussed these topics with Janos Berecz at the Central Committee headquarters, known locally as the "White House," on the Pest bank of the Danube. Looking very unlike a party ideologist in his blue, button-down Oxford shirt and Swatch watch, Berecz responded to questions for two hours beneath the watchful gaze of Lenin's portrait.

**NPQ** | Marx felt that in capitalist societies the "social relations" of private property placed a fetter on the full development of "productive forces." As a result, Communists believed that abolition of private wealth would eliminate social conflicts and that economic life would therefore automatically prosper.

Instead, the opposite seems to have occurred: the "social relations" of socialism – centralized planning, bureaucracy, monopoly state ownership, one-party government – have caused economic stagnation in socialist societies while the West has prospered and moved into the Information Age.

Is the recognition of this contradiction the basis for present reforms in Hungary and elsewhere in the socialist world?

**Janos Berecz** | The dogma that nationalization and collectivization of all productive forces would, by themselves, create the socialism described by Marx hampered our ability to progress. Now, reality has broken through the dogma and we realize that we do not have socialism in Hungary.

After our revolution, we thought that since the general trend of advanced capitalism was to devour small-scale producers and centralize economic production, collectivization of those small producers was key to the establishment of socialist social relations. But it has become evident that this policy was both unrealistic and damaging. It liquidated small property and private activities before large state and cooperative organizations had developed to cover the resultant gap, especially in agriculture and services. As a result, the relations of social ownership and control acted as obstacles to the development of the forces of production.

Our policies were both practically and theoretically hasty. Our central planning policies established monopolies instead of the competition that would have helped develop the economy. As a result, the people themselves started to lose interest in production. We reached a stage where we could not progress, and so we became underdeveloped.

As the Hungarian economist Ivan Berend has pointed out, our policies were a vulgarization of Marx's assumption that fully developed socialism depended on a highly developed economy and advanced economic concentration. We had also, in fact, violated another Marxian ideal: that under socialism, people can develop their abilities, talents and knowledge to the maximum. Perhaps the best contemporary term for that ideal would be "entrepreneurship." In the entrepreneurial period, people take initiative. But in our country, initiative had almost completely disappeared.

The system of political institutions built up during the "dictatorship of the proletariat" also contributed to stagnation. During that time, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (HSWP) monopolized all activities in the political sphere

Our policies were both practically and theoretically hasty. Our central planning policies established monopolies instead of the competition that would have helped develop the economy. We reached a stage where we could not progress, and so we became underdeveloped.

12 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

and we all suffered the consequences: political and economic crisis, as well as the social explosion of 1956.

Similar situations prevailed in 1968 in Czechoslovakia and in Poland in 1981 when Solidarity emerged and martial law was instituted. These explosions forced the respective parties to recognize that the contradiction between the relations of production and the development of the economy had to be resolved.

Today, we see that a reform movement has developed across the socialist world. Our reforms, the Chinese reforms and Gorbachev's *perestroika* will all result in unleashing productive forces and will prove more conducive to human creativity.

We are all aiming to create conditions in which people don't just work, but also think and put those thoughts into practice. And, if the people put their ideas into practice, they should reap the benefits from their efforts. Such conditions are necessary in the age of scientific-technological revolution.

**NPQ** | Something else once thought to belong only to capitalism is also now seen as a necessary property of socialism: the market.

As the Chinese party ideologist Hu Qili told me, "Capitalism doesn't have a patent right over the market."

**Berecz** | Marx and Engels always stressed that socialism is only a transitory stage between capitalism and communism where commodity production takes place. If there are commodities, there should also be a marketplace for their exchange. In a market, the "law of value," or supply and demand, should be observed.

The dogma of centralized planning hindered this understanding, despite the fact that it was something one could read in every schoolbook.

**NPQ** | Is the final objective of the reform to make the market dominant over the plan?

**Berecz** | At present, we have a plan that outlines the main tendencies of development in Hungary and takes into account the country's particular features, circumstances and resources.

However, the production of goods and services should be driven by the market. If the market gets into conflict with the plan, the plan will have to be modified.

**NPQ** | Marx well understood that full development of market relations causes great upheaval in the social order. In the *Communist*

*Manifesto* he wrote, "all that is solid melts into air; all that is sacred is profaned."

With the introduction of market reforms in Hungary, that is what happened. What was sacred about socialist doctrine is now profaned. Not only is there private ownership and stock markets, prices and competition, but inflation, unemployment and social inequality.

**Berecz** | There is no way to avoid inflation and there is no way to avoid the unemployment that results from economic restructuring. For this reason, tension is increasing. But when the economy reaches a more consolidated form and development takes off, tensions will become manageable.

At that point, however, something new will appear, or rather, an old matter will reappear: the private entrepreneur will once again become the owner of part of the value he produces. This used to be called exploitation. But, if the wealth created by entrepreneurs helps improve the standard of living of the whole nation, then it must be considered inequality, not social injustice.

**NPQ** | It has been reported that as much as 25-30% of the Hungarian economy might become privately owned.

Is that something you can envision?

**Berecz** | Yes. In the service area of the economy, for example, I can imagine far more than 25% private ownership. In industry, we would like it to be higher than 25%.

In addition to purely private ownership, we are also promoting mixed forms of collective and private ownership – stock companies and limited partnerships.

These mixed and privately owned companies will be the competitive yardstick by which we can measure the performance and efficiency of state-owned firms.

A new income tax has been instituted to put a brake on the really significant social inequality that may arise from privatization. Beyond a certain rate of profit, the tax is 60%. Although less than one year old, everybody is crying and weeping because of this tax. The entrepreneurs say the rates are too high. "Why the hell should we work if the state takes the money?" they ask.

These taxes are considered something that blocks the entrepreneurial spirit. The Parliament is quite upset about them.

**NPQ** | On the other hand, the vast majority of the people who are not entrepreneurs must be

> Today, we see that a reform movement has developed across the socialist world. Our reforms, the Chinese reforms and Gorbachev's *perestroika* will all result in unleashing productive forces and will prove more conducive to human creativity.

13

upset to see all the expensive houses they can't
possibly own, or the BMW's, Mercedes and Alfa
Romeos around this town. There seem to be
almost as many Mercedes in the hills of Buda as
in Beverly Hills.

**Berecz** | The people are upset if they don't know exactly where the new rich get the money to buy BMW's and big houses.

There are different kinds of rich people. Erno Rubik, inventor of the Rubik's cube puzzle, is considered a great and talented man who contributes to the prestige of the country. Also, he has a foundation which assists the public purpose. If the wealth is coupled with this kind of collective attitude, people may be envious but not angry. However, if the wealth goes together with the offensive and arrogant way of life of the *nouveau riche*, then it is upsetting.

**NPQ** | In the companies that will be issuing stock, do you envision total or partial private ownership? For example, the state or community retaining 51% of the shares with the upper limit for private investors being 49%?

**Berecz** | I envision part ownership. In principle, however, companies can now be 100% privately owned by domestic or foreign investors.

But the ownership group must be able to
manage the assets at their disposal. The workers
employed by the various companies issuing stock
can also buy shares.

Starting this year, the issuance of stock will be
a very broad-scale initiative.

**NPQ** | If there are multiple interests in Hungarian society, naturally one asks why not multiple political parties?

Imre Pozsgay, a member of the Politburo, has
said he has “no objective arguments for a one-
party system.”

**Berecz** | My view is that we have to avoid any division of interests that might lead to open social conflict. Multipolar political pluralism in the current period of building socialism is inconceivable. Alternative centers of power would wage a political struggle, radically dividing society, instead of promoting the activity and cooperation of the various political groupings that express the stratification of interests.

Under present conditions, there is no realistic
basis for a multiparty system of the kind estab-
lished in bourgeois democracy.

It would be tragic if other parties appeared on
the scene and provoked a sharp political fight.

So far, in our history, we have not been able to
fight in a quiet manner.

Having said this, our task is to respond to the
question of whether it is possible to have politi-
cal pluralism with the guidance of one party.

Our Party recognizes the pluralism in Hun-
garian society. There are several interests and
thus several ideologies. We have passed through
the stage of "proletarian dictatorship" and are
trying to become a society built up from the grass
roots. We are turning increasingly into a party of
the people as a whole. From the ideological
point of view, Hungarian society is pluralistic.
For this reason, the Party has proclaimed its
desire to secure the hegemony of Marxism-Lenin-
ism, not its monopoly over the political process.

I'm convinced that such a system is feasible.
We have already embarked on a path that will
lead to the introduction of the system of plural-
ism with one-party rule. But to get to this stage,
it is necessary for the Party to give up the direct
practice of power.

Our Party should formulate broad policies,
not engage in day to day management or admin-
istrative activity. Such activities should devolve
to the enterprises, and to the government au-
thorities and legislature. Trade unions, not the
Party, should represent the interests of workers
at the factory level and in society. Additionally,
the courts should be strengthened to protect the
citizens against administrative abuses by the
state and to adjudicate conflicts of interest.

Naturally, this creates new political problems
for the Party. We can no longer impose our
position and must appeal to the citizenry for
their support.

**NPQ** | The only argument for one-party rule that I can discover in what you've said is political stability.

**Berecz** | Crucial changes like the ones I've
just described can only take place under the
circumstances of stability.

At a recent Central Committee meeting,
someone asked: "On what political issues is there
unity among the Politburo?"

I answered that there was unity on three
items: (1) That the implementation of profound
political change is crucial and that political re-
form must be taken very seriously; (2) that open
discussion is positive. If we didn't have disputes,
we would be following the old pattern which we
have now rejected; and (3) that in order to make

We have to avoid
any division of inter-
ests that might lead
to open social conflict.
Multipolar political
pluralism in the cur-
rent period of building
socialism is incon-
ceivable. Alternative
centers of power
would wage a political
struggle, radically
dividing society.

14 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

Under the laws that will come into effect next year, nearly everything can be disputed. But the Constitution, which gives priority to collective property, should never be a subject of debate. In Hungary, we want a social system based on the equality of the people, not on the privileges of certain strata.

these profound changes, it is necessary to have political stability as the context for social dialogue and the building of consensus. For this to occur, the HSWP must function in a more open, less monopolistic way than in the past, but the new social forces and independent groups must practice self-moderation.

It is necessary that all three of these items be practiced simultaneously. Breaking one leads to the breach of the others.

**NPQ** | You have no objection then, at some more stable time in the future, to competition between two or more parties for political power?

**Berecz** | I agree with a colleague of mine who said: "If there is another good socialist party, I can envisage a competition."

**NPQ** | Let's look at pluralism under one party. There are two aspects of this issue: factions within the HSWP, and the relationship of the HSWP to independent groups only now allowed to be politically active in Hungary.

First, under current circumstances, legalization of factions seems the most important step toward the democratization of political life. It would allow for the representation of all social classes, undermine the oligarchic tendency of the party bureaucracy and counter intolerant, repressive methods.

Will the HSWP be the first party in the Communist world to allow legalization of factions as well as the institutionalization of minority positions?

**Berecz** | This is exactly what we are working toward. A proposal was heard at the Party conference in May for a "freedom platform" within the Party. We decided then that it would take two or three years to introduce this possibility.

Over the next two years we will have to examine those procedures which would allow for the autonomy of different groups within the Party, while not causing the Party to lose its capacity to act in a unified way.

We have to avoid the emergence of an alternative party organization within the Party.

**NPQ** | This also means that you accept the institutionalization of a minority position – an opposition point of view – in the Party.

**Berecz** | Yes. The minority should never be pushed into a disadvantageous position. After all, new ideas are conceived more readily among the minority. To have many views is only natural. They should be expressed.

The important thing is that the majority be able to agree on moving in a certain direction and that the minority have the ability to reintroduce a defeated topic, an alternative view, at any time.

**NPQ** | What about the relation of the Party to independent groups?

**Berecz** | We are in a period of transition on this question. We now have a Constitution which declares the freedom of organization, but nothing more than that has happened.

When a social movement organizes itself there are, as yet, hardly any rules that provide a legal framework for their activity, a framework which would assure that group A, for instance, could not enforce its interests to the detriment of group B.

Beginning this year, under the new Constitution, the question will not be whether the Party likes or dislikes a group. The question will be whether the rules are respected.

**NPQ** | What might the rules be? According to the seemingly predominant view in Party discussions, there are three principles that the new independent organizations – be they ecological groups, student groups, scientific and academic workers, whatever – may not breach: (1) Respect for the "socialist social system;" (2) acknowledgment of the leadership of the HSWP; and, (3) respect of the Warsaw Pact alliance commitments.

What does that mean? Can an article be published calling for an end to socialism?

**Berecz** | Under the laws that will come into effect next year, nearly everything can be disputed. But the Constitution, which gives priority to collective property, should never be a subject of debate. In Hungary, we want a social system based on the equality of the people, not on the privileges of certain strata.

Against this background, of course, there can be divergent socialist ideas. The vast majority of groups seeking expression can function openly under this principle.

There are some anti-communist and nationalist forces that we don't want to tolerate as organized forces in our society.

**NPQ** | The difficulty in respecting the "socialist social system" these days is, as we've been discussing, nobody knows exactly what it is!

Is a system that allows social inequality, unemployment, stock companies and exploitation

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 15

Today, we are of the view that it is necessary, for the sake of building up the social consensus, to provide a grave for Imre Nagy. He should have his grave. The family has a right to bury him. This is in the preparatory stage now. We are establishing contact with the families.

still a socialist system?

**Berecz** | That's true [laughing – ed.]. It is for this reason that the Party has to be more collaborative and consultative with other groups on ideological matters.

**NPQ** | Yegor Ligachev, the conservative member of the Soviet Politburo, has said that, "with the exception of state secrets, there must be no limits to glasnost."

Do you agree?

**Berecz** | With one exception: there must be protections for business secrets.

**NPQ** | I was thinking more about certain historical facts.

In the context of modern Hungary – where there is full access to McDonald's hamburgers and American rock'n'roll – it seems incongruous that basic historical facts about Hungarian history are unknown by its people.

I'm referring to the famous demand to know where the bodies of Imre Nagy and his colleagues – executed after the Soviet invasion of 1956 – are. Why not reveal this fact?

[Imre Nagy was Minister President of Hungary in 1956. When the Soviet troops invaded on November 4, he issued an international radio appeal for resistance. Nagy was later executed by the Soviet-imposed government of Janos Kadar.

At this point in the interview, Mr. Berecz went off the record to describe the location where the bodies had been found. Apparently, the officer charged with disposing of the bodies had signed no papers as to their individual identities and precise

location. But now the bodies have been located and exhumed. – ed.]

**Berecz** | It is a pity that we have delayed the process of settling this question.

Any brutal murder is shocking for the population. For political reasons, no one should be sentenced to death.

Today, we are of the view that it is necessary, for the sake of building up the social consensus, to provide a grave for Imre Nagy. He should have his grave. The family has a right to bury him. At a time that would be suitable for the family and the competent (medical and pathological) authorities, his corpse will be properly buried. This is in the preparatory stage now. We are establishing contact with the families.

The process is difficult and painful. We must get to the point where it is 100% certain that the corpse is accurately identified. There can be no ground for hesitation or doubt. So, there are all kinds of pathologists and medical experts that have a role to play. The whole process should be completed by spring.

What applies to Imre Nagy applies to all those who were sentenced to death for political, rather than criminal, reasons.

**NPQ** | But the Party is committed to the proper burial of Imre Nagy as the basis for building up the social consensus?

**Berecz** | Yes, and also because of human honesty. We have to consider what such men did throughout their whole lives. Concerning a number of things, the role played by Imre Nagy

16 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

should be appreciated. One has to know how to put that into proper perspective. After all, he was a member of the Communist movement for 40 years.

**NPQ** | What's the difference between the content of Dubcek's reform in 1968 and what you are doing in Hungary today, or what Gorbachev is doing in Moscow under perestroika?

**Berecz** | Twenty years.

In Czechoslovakia, the people pressing the 1968 reforms failed to recognize that others feared for their security under such rapid and radical change. There was no self-moderation exercised by the exuberant supporters of change.

Yet, I know that Janos Kadar personally did all he could to get Dubcek to understand the need for self-moderation.

**NPQ** | Unlike 20 years ago, is it possible to separate East-West bloc politics from the far-ranging internal reforms that are moving toward a market economy and broad political freedoms?

**Berecz** | Yes, reform can be separated from the confrontation of blocs. That's a great difference with the past. In our meetings with the Soviets, it is always emphasized by the Soviet side that *perestroika* pertains not only to the internal processes of the Soviet Union, but to external relations as well. They stress it is up to each country to make their own policy decisions.

In any case, it is not the reforms that cause insecurity, but political instability that would present an obstacle to thinking in terms of a common Europe.

**NPQ** | The Soviets are withdrawing from Afghanistan. This is the first time Soviet forces have withdrawn after an intervention since 1956. Does that make you hopeful about withdrawal from Hungary?

**Berecz** | There is no difference in principle between the Soviets and us on the issue of troop withdrawal. On a bilateral basis, we can make such an agreement at any time. We don't have to wait. [Valentin Falin, the new head of the International Department of the Soviet Central Committee confirmed this during an interview with NPQ in Moscow: "We are now advocating the withdrawal of foreign troops from national territories. The withdrawal of foreign troops will be conducted stage by stage. Hungary will not be last in this process, it will be first."

Also, in December, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced the start of the unilateral Soviet

troop reductions from Eastern Europe. - ed.]

**NPQ** | In principle, then, the Soviets are prepared to remove their troops at any time. There is no disagreement between you and the Soviets on the withdrawal of their troops?

**Berecz** | Correct. In fact, the issue is on our side. We would like to disarm and not continue building our army.

**NPQ** | Is the greatest danger to reform across the socialist world "reform-anarchy" by the exuberant partisans of change, as you once put it, or is it the entrenched bureaucratic interests who resist change?

**Berecz** | In the Soviet Union the danger comes from a conservative opposition. But, the opposition can't be identified by a person or a group. Even those who are supporters of *perestroika* are conservative in their thinking. For instance, people articulate many things, but fail to translate them into practice. That is the most dangerous form of conservatism.

In our country, the danger is the possibility of uncontrollable events. There is no organized conservatism here. But it will materialize if there are movements by students and others that get out of control, causing confusion or upheaval.

Our task is to keep on the proper track. Our problem is to keep the river in its bed, not overflowing its right or left bank.

> In our country, the danger is the possibility of uncontrollable events. There is no organized conservatism here. But it will materialize if there are movements by students and others that get out of control, causing confusion or upheaval.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 **17**

# Perestroika: Social Conflict and the Strategic Context

Silviu Brucan, Leonid Gordon, Abel Aganbegyan, Régis Debray

The gist of perestroika is to make Communist society safe for the information revolution.

Yet, the strategy of post-industrialization conflicts with the obsolete ideology of the "society of the industrial worker." Now that the modern god of communism has failed and the market's invisible hand has been revived, will Russia's demoted working class retreat into the xenophobia of industrial nationalism? We asked key intellectuals from the left to address these developments.

## The Strategic Imperative of Reform

Silviu Brucan The former Romanian ambassador to Washington and a former editor of the Romanian Communist Party newspaper, Silviu Brucan was placed under house arrest by the Ceausescu government when he spoke out during riots in Romania's second largest city, Brasov, in November, 1987.

In the following article, Ambassador Brucan describes the historical reasons why Communist governments have chosen military-political influence over economic influence in world affairs, and argues why that strategy must change.

**Socialism's Historic Juncture** | World socialism must either adapt its system to the information revolution and, as a result, acquire the ability to enter the 21st century; or not adapt and remain an aborted historical experiment, trapped in the 20th century. This strategic imperative drives the reform movements throughout the East.

Although the share of world industrial output by the Eastern bloc economic community (COMECON) is roughly 33%, its share of world trade is only 11% and its share of world financial transactions a mere 9%. Those statistics reveal a lack of competitiveness in industrial products as well as a marginal influence on world markets. In fact, socialist economies are forced to participate in world markets according to the rules of Western capitalism.

This lack of worldwide economic power affects the Eastern bloc's ability to assert worldwide political power. At a time when threats to

use nuclear force are stalemated, nations are increasingly dependent on their economic and technological assets. That fact creates tremendous problems in the East. For example, in 1986, per capita income in the US was $13,000; in Japan, $12,000; in West Germany, $12,000; in the USSR, $5,400; and in China, $400!

Historically, as long as the competition between East and West was an industrial competition, everything worked according to plan: the socialist countries, less developed but enjoying a higher rate of growth, were slowly but surely catching up with the highly industrialized capitalist nations.

But the Information (scientific-technological) Revolution changed all that. In the West, the new technologies led to a tremendous expansion in productive power. In the East, on the other hand, there was a sharp drop in growth rates - from 10% in 1960 to 3% in the early 80s. The reason, stated bluntly, is that command-type planning systems could not assimilate the Information Revolution.

As a result, the superpower status of the Soviet Union is clearly at stake. Glasnost, perestroika and other reforms are strategic attempts to preserve that superpower status.

**The Obsolete Mythology of the Worker** | If perestroika is to make Soviet society safe for the Information Revolution, it requires internal social change as well as new strategic policies.

Internally, perestroika requires the rise of an intelligentsia that can come to terms with the revolution in computers and global communications. This has been obvious for some time. But the Communist parties have not been prepared

18 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

to accept the political consequences of a social
development that turns intellectuals into the
most important segment of socialist society and
sacrifices the industrial worker on the altar of the
technological revolution.

The nature of the working class is the key
theoretical issue in the East today. Everything –
society, the state, the Communist Party – is
supposed to serve, represent or be ruled by this
class. When industrialization generated a mas-
sive exodus of peasants to the cities, the indus-
trial worker of peasant origin became the ideal
social base for the Communist Party. Supposedly
incapable of exercising power himself in a mod-
ern industrial society, the manual worker needed
a "vanguard" to exercise power on his behalf. In
turn, the idealization of the true industrial
worker who built socialism with his own hands
provided the ruling party bureaucracy with im-
peccable ideological credentials.

This mutually rewarding arrangement has
been threatened by the Information Revolution
which diminishes the numbers and social status
of manual workers while increasing the numbers
and enhancing the status of intellectuals. That is
why the Communist Party resists assimilating
the Information Revolution.

An increasingly apparent incongruity has
thus emerged between the party bureaucracy
now holding power and the emerging class struc-
ture in socialist societies. The rise of the techni-
cal and creative intelligentsia in the USSR is
bound to encounter fierce resistance among the
social groups most affected: manual workers
(about 30-35% of the work force) who would
lose their social status and prestige; the Party
bureaucracy with its administrative apparatus

(15%) which will try to hold on to power and
privilege; and the last Mohicans of the Stalinist
ideological spirit who occupy key positions in
cultural, artistic and scientific institutions.
However, all three are social groups without a
future. They can obstruct and retard the process
of change, but they cannot stop it.

**The Evolution of Communist Strategy** | To
understand the need for new strategic policies
from the Eastern bloc, it is first necessary to
understand how the East arrived at its present
predicament.

From the beginning, the first socialist state,
the USSR, had to struggle to attain two major
strategic objectives: the fundamental economic
task of catching up with capitalism (without
catching up, socialism could not assert itself as a
superior socio-economic system) and the politi-
cal-military aim of acquiring the status of a world
power strong enough to withstand challenges
from a hostile capitalist environment.

After World War II, the USSR emerged as
one of the two world superpowers, continually
clashing with the United States for a hegemonic
position, initially in Europe and eventually on
all continents. As the revolutionary process ex-
tended into Eastern Europe under the umbrella
of the Red Army, the United States countered
with "containment" policy, with the North At-
lantic Treaty Organization, and so on.

During the Cold War, Soviet policy con-
centrated on the political-military objective,
despite the fact that the USSR badly needed to
reconstruct its devastated economy. The success
of socialist revolutions in Eastern Europe and
China reinforced the belief that Communists
were at their best in political organization and

The nature of the
working class is
the key theoretical
issue in the East
today. Everything –
society, the state, the
Communist Party –
is supposed to serve,
represent or be ruled
by this class. That
is why the Communist
Party resists assim-
ilating the Information
Revolution.

19

armed struggle. Generally, the conviction was growing that economic competition was less important than the territorial expansion of socialism. Ironically, the tendency to ignore economic competition grew from the gross underestimation of economic factors which for a Marxist are, in the final analysis, supposed to be decisive in society's development.

For a while, Khrushchev seemed more concerned with the fundamental task of economically catching up with capitalism. To relax the heavy burden of military expenditures on the economy, he made his spectacular proposal for general and complete disarmament. But nothing came of it.

In the early 70s, detente offered another opportunity to review Soviet strategy. The Nixon-Brezhnev accord was essentially a package deal in which political-military matters were lumped together with trade-technological commitments in a quid pro quo.

Apparently, the Soviets were chiefly interested in the trade-technological end of the bargain. Indeed, the Soviet leadership was led to expect economic benefits that would have allowed the USSR to make significant headway in economic competition with the West. Informed sources at that time disclosed that Henry Kissinger mentioned a $10 billion target for the volume of US-Soviet trade. On that understanding, the Soviets accepted a key provision which stated that it would be contrary to the objectives of detente if one of the parties sought to expand its sphere of influence, whether direct or indirect, to the detriment of the other.

From the American viewpoint, the accord was a pledge to maintain stability along the periphery of the Third World as a condition for a stable peace at the center. In other words, the United States viewed the accord as an instrument for securing a worldwide status quo in political and military terms.

However, in 1974, the US Senate passed two amendments which linked trade with Soviet emigration policy and set a low ceiling on US credits. Moscow viewed these amendments as measures that canceled the most attractive parts of the deal. Thus, the Soviets felt free to give weapons to Angola and Ethiopia, actions that were perceived in Washington as canceling the remaining part of the agreement.

President Carter's campaign on human

rights, primarily directed against the Soviets, added insult to injury. Then the failure of the US Senate to ratify SALT II marked detente's final. When the Soviets acted in Afghanistan there was really nothing left from the original package deal.

As a result, Soviet strategy again switched to a political-military build-up. In official Soviet documents the success of socialism was measured in terms of territorial extension rather than economic performance.

**Economic Strength Versus Military Strength** | In light of that history, Gorbachev's critiques of Brezhnev implicitly question the priorities of Soviet strategy. They originate in a sober appraisal of the state of affairs in three important areas: (1) In world economic competition, where the socialist countries are losing and the East-West gap is getting wider; (2) in the West (especially Western Europe), where Communist parties are losing ground even though capitalist economies are going through a protracted crisis of high unemployment and low investment; and, (3) in the Third World, where Marxist-Leninist regimes are facing seemingly insurmountable economic problems while countries in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, which have followed capitalist methods of development, enjoy high economic growth and rapid industrialization.

So, even though the Soviets have built a military force equal to that of the United States, which allows the USSR to display political and military initiative worldwide, it can do nothing of that sort in the world economy, where its actions are adaptive. This is why the emphasis on political-military means has simply been a more convenient choice of strategy.

The flaw in this strategy is that in times of peace, economic factors take precedence. For example, the heroic military victory of the Vietnamese over American intervention was expected to benefit socialism throughout Southeast Asia. But a wholly different situation developed. When the Communist leadership in Hanoi had to deal with peace, the economy went from bad to worse. Even the few modern installations left by the Americans in Saigon were crippled by Hanoi's mismanagement.

However, because the Soviet Union is a superpower, it does not have the luxury of renouncing all military force. Mikhail Gorbachev is therefore confronted with a formidable task:

> So, even though the Soviets have built a military force equal to that of the United States, which allows the USSR to display political and military initiative worldwide, it can do nothing of that sort in the world economy, where its actions are adaptive.

20 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

Computer technologies, microprocessors and telecommunications are pushing industries and whole societies toward greater efficiency and wealth. The nations that possess these technologies are thus bestowed with economic, and therefore political, power.

The shift from a military build-up to economic restructuring can only take place in an international environment the Soviets perceive as safe.

That is what prompted Gorbachev to launch his spectacular bid for a non-nuclear world by initiating a series of disarmament proposals designed to conclude realistic and feasible agreements with the United States. Ronald Reagan's determination to proceed in that direction made it possible for Reagan and Gorbachev to sign the treaty on elimination of intermediate range missiles which was a breakthrough in disarmament negotiations.

Yet, while a comprehensive plan to reform Soviet society is shaping up within the Kremlin, the fact remains that neither the formulation of foreign policy nor the behavior of the USSR in carrying out that policy are solely the results of domestic concerns. The international environment, particularly the rivalries among the major power blocs, with their competitive dynamics and power struggles, plays an important role in shaping Soviet foreign policy. Therefore, the reform movements to change Soviet society will not be enough. For a really new Soviet foreign policy to emerge, the relationships among the international power blocs must also change.

**The World in the Year 2000** | Computer technologies, microprocessors and telecommunications are pushing industries and whole societies toward greater efficiency and wealth. The nations that possess these technologies are thus bestowed with economic, and therefore political, power.

From 1972 through 1985, the share of high technology in total exports rose in the US from 29% to 38% and in Japan from 16% to 42%. Western Europe's share remains at 25%. Eastern European exports of high technology, on the other hand, are miniscule.

Japan is moving toward global economic supremacy. Because Japan lacks a heavy military sector to sap either investment capital or scientific and managerial talent, Japan enjoys high domestic savings and industrial relations more stable than other Western countries. Although Japan's population is less than half that of the Soviet Union's, its exports are nearly double. If recent trends continue, sometime before 1990 Japan will surpass the USSR in gross national product – pushing the USSR to third place in the world economy. Japan will also supplant the

US as the world's leading trading power.

Japan's trade surplus is running close to $100 billion a year, and leading American economists are already referring to a "bi-polar financial world" between New York and Tokyo, with "bigemony" replacing American hegemony and the role of the dollar in the world economy.

Japan is emerging as the strongest contender for predominance in international high technology markets, and the intrusion of Japanese high-tech products on US and Western European markets proceeds at an alarming pace. However, the US remains the principal innovator of technological know-how and generator of new high-tech products even though higher capital costs keep driving high technology manufacturers overseas.

Although the United States is still the leading economic power in the world, its decline is apparent in the 80s. In recent years, enormous defense spending, along with numerous other factors has led to ever-increasing cumulative federal budget deficits while the dwindling competitiveness of US industrial goods have resulted in a large balance-of-trade deficit. These growing deficits have been financed by borrowing from the rest of the world, particularly from Japan. In the process, the US has become the world's largest debtor country.

These crucial developments, however, are no comfort to the new Soviet leadership because they arrive in conjunction with the advent of the "third industrial revolution" – the computerization of economic and social activities and the large-scale introduction of microelectronics and robotics into the industrial process. Japan's rise and the US' decline cannot camouflage the more serious problem of the East's vast technological lag vis-a-vis the West.

Even if internal conditions in the East may dictate gradual change, it is increasingly obvious that the strategic position of COMECON in the world economy requires a more rapid transformation. Nothing is more convincing in this respect than the fact that the Eastern bloc countries do not even matter in the high-technology contest now being waged in worldwide markets. How long can socialist economies survive in competition with capitalist economies that are increasingly computerized and informational?

The rapid advances of the US and Japan in high technology produced a powerful tendency

21

The rapid advances of
the US and Japan in
high technology have
produced a powerful
tendency in Moscow
and other Eastern
capitals to join forces
with Western Europe.

in Moscow and other Eastern capitals to join forces with Western Europe. For the first time, COMECON has officially recognized the EEC and negotiations have been initiated to establish cooperation between the two. The authoritative Soviet commentator Alexander Bykov has gone so far as to suggest coordination of the development and marketing of new technologies "within the framework of an all-European division and cooperation of labor." Ten years ago this would have been inconceivable! [See "Communists and Capitalists" below - ed.]

**The New Challenge Rising in the East** | Finally, a different type of economic challenge comes from the other end of the spectrum – China.

The leadership of China is the first in the socialist world to have grasped the implications of the Information Revolution. China has also made the boldest turnabout in modern history from a military build-up to a drive for economic modernization, best expressed by Deng's principle of "One State, Two Systems." This means that while continental China will develop its socialist system, Hong Kong and Taiwan will retain their capitalist system and way of life for 50 years, yet belong to one state – China.

The idea behind this principle is that the people in Hong Kong and Taiwan enjoy a much higher standard of living, and it would be wrong and counterproductive to conquer the two by force and destroy their prosperity. For the first time in history, a Communist leader in power

has publicly acknowledged that, because of historical conditions, certain of that nation's peoples are better off under capitalism. As a result, the only rational approach is for the rest of the nation to work even harder and with great patience to bring the entire nation to the same level of development and prosperity.

While it is true that China is well behind in economic and technical development, and one historical stage behind in social development, with over 80% of the population still in the countryside, it is also true that China has recently recorded extremely high rates of economic growth: an annual increase of 10.3% from 1979 to 1986. Additionally, China's radical agricultural reform resulted in a breakthrough in grain output from an average of 300 million tons before 1978 to 400 million tons since 1984. Those improvements have made China a net grain exporter. China's successes have convinced most observers that Deng's goal of quadrupling China's gross annual value of production by the year 2000 should be taken seriously.

In this context, China is emerging as the champion of an alternative Communist strategy based primarily on economic success and widespread prosperity. Such a strategy recognizes that socialism must be far less concerned with territorial expansion and far more concerned with consolidating its successes by building an economic system sufficiently modern and competitive to withstand challenges from the capitalist

Communists
and
Capitalists
Sometimes
Agree

Albert Wojnilower, managing director and senior advisor at The First Boston Corporation, recently talked to NPQ about the global economy. After reviewing Wojnilower's remarks, we cannot resist pointing out the similarities between Wall Street capitalist Wojnilower's and Communist diplomat Silviu Brucan's analyses of the world's future trading patterns.

"The pressure within Europe for integration is very great. We all see 1992 approaching, but I'm not sure we clearly see that the lubrication of intra-European differences inevitably means raising de facto barriers against most of the rest of the world. There is also the very real prospect that the Eastern bloc nations (and perhaps the Middle East) will become for Europe what Latin America has been for the US – a place which produces raw materials and reasonably sophisticated low-wage

manufacturing while consuming high-end production and services on never-to-be-repaid credit.

"I also believe Europeans will become more introverted, especially in securities. I predict that in these areas too, Western Europeans will become more oriented to the Middle East and the Soviet bloc. Of course, one of the pleasant side-effects will be that the US-EEC trade imbalance will get a lot smaller and might even disappear altogether.

"The integration of Europe will also mean a stronger partnership between the US and Japan. There are alliances of interest among the different nations of the Pacific basin, and the forces at work are those of economic integration and interdependence. Trade between the two most advanced nations in the Pacific will expand enormously."

22 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

ELO

China's main asset is the size of its population. If its billion people become a modern productive force, China will become a superpower and the framework of world power relationships will change radically.

nations. If China's urban reform can produce the same results as its rural reforms did, China's strategic approach is bound to acquire a tremendous following worldwide.

An even more startling assessment emerges if we project China's 1980-85 average growth rate of 10% (the base period when economic reform began) forward to the year 2000 based on the assumption that China's GNP will, on average, increase by the growth rate of that base period. If we then project a slower Chinese growth rate of 5% from the years 2000 through 2010 (based on the assumption that 5% is closer to rates experienced by industrial nations once they have reached a certain level of economic and technological development), then the USSR (if no significant change occurs in its economic performance) will fall behind the US, Japan and China! That would, to all practical purposes, mean the end of the USSR's superpower status.

**The Inevitability of Reform** | The strategic consequences of this analysis will determine the depth and tempo of reform in the USSR. A high Soviet official who defected to the West in 1978 reinforced that point in a recent article entitled, "With or Without Gorbachev, Reforms Are

Coming." He said, "It is simply not credible that any future Kremlin leaders would be willing to preside over the Soviet Union's decline into a third-class power."

A reappraisal is now taking place in Moscow. The main lesson of seven decades of socialist experience is that political-military advances cannot be maintained unless an adequate economic infrastructure is built to support them. Failure to do this will allow the dynamic forces of capitalism to roll back the political advances of socialism, something we already see happening on the world scene. The rational response cannot be further attempts at territorial expansion of underdeveloped socialism by political-military means, but instead the construction of an efficient economic system that can bring a higher standard of living to the citizens of socialist countries.

The Kremlin is thus confronted with a dramatic choice: Cling to old ways and rely increasingly on military power as the main asset (the conservative hard-liner viewpoint); or take the bull by the horns and proceed with a radical change in both economic policy and global strategy (the reformers' view). The issue of leadership in the Communist movement is at stake in that choice. In fact, the future of the world may depend on that choice.

## The Four Perestroikas

Leonid Gordon During a recent visit to Moscow, NPQ Editor Nathan Gardels and Walter Russell Mead talked with Dr. Leonid Gordon, director of the Institute for World Labor Movements and one of the leading new Soviet "sociologists" - a category of social scientist that only emerged under Gorbachev when the acknowledgment of social contradictions became ideologically acceptable. Dr. Gordon is the author of The Thirties and Forties and The Soviet Working Class.

We asked Dr. Gordon how the post-Industrial Revolution of the "Atari Communists" will fare in a

nation still dominated by the cabbage and abacus, the slide rule and the smokestack. Following is an adaptation of their conversation.

After the 1917 Revolution, the Soviet Union was in a backward, pre-industrial stage. In the 1930s and 40s, with millions of deaths and oceans of blood, we moved into the Industrial Age. Now, as the Industrial Age has given way to the Information Revolution, or as we call it, the scientific-technical revolution, we are backward again.

A post-industrial society, too complex to centrally administer, requires democracy and

23

relies on the market for innovation and competitive dynamism. While the US, Europe and Japan developed the *market/democracy* features that enabled them to evolve into post-industrial societies, we continue to have a special problem: Our capacity for evolutionary development ended in the 1940s with the Stalinist method of industrialization.

Under normal circumstances, the roots of the next stage of development are present in the previous stage. With Stalin, any roots of the future were torn from the ground. Stalin's policies of forced collectivization and of squeezing agriculture to pay for building centrally planned heavy industry destroyed even the smallest traces of the market economy. *Economic culture* was shattered.

By contrast, when Lenin turned to the market-oriented "New Economic Policy" after "War Communism," millions of peasants still had an intimate understanding of the market. At that time, it was possible to issue a decree and, in one night, move from administrative mobilization to market orientation.

After decades of Stalinist policies, however, practical experience with markets no longer exists. As for democracy, in my whole life I have not met a fellow countryman with the experience of taking part in pluralistic political life.

In effect, we industrialized without modernizing. We did not develop the consumer orientation or the market mechanisms required for innovation in production; we did not develop the efficient allocation of goods and services for our increasingly complex industrial economy; and, the pluralism of political and cultural life did not evolve to accommodate the new and more educated urban working and middle class.

Though industrialization advanced to at least quantitative world standards under Stalin, by 1959 – two years after Sputnik – the rural population of the Soviet Union was still larger than the urban population. At this time, as the rest of the advanced world was moving into a post-industrial era – ironically, boosted in part by the Sputnik shock – the Soviet leadership continued industrializing instead of moving forward. They needed to complete the process of urbanization and industrialization, and found it more convenient, for reasons of institutional inertia and political stability, to do so.

Those years – from the advent of Brezhnev's

rule in 1964 to the advent of Gorbachev's rule in 1985 – have become known as the "time of stagnation." But the situation was even worse than that. Under Brezhnev, we became afflicted with *elephantiasis*. It was precisely those parts of the political-economic body associated with the industrial era that swelled enormously and in gross disproportion to the embryonic elements of the scientific-technical revolution. The hands became gigantic while the mind atrophied. Five-year plans and pig iron abounded while personal computers, consumer goods and market mechanisms foundered.

In effect, Brezhnev was Stalin without so much blood. The anti-pluralistic, anti-market culture was the same.

The resultant deformations have made it necessary to change social relations – not gradually but drastically. The whole system of Stalinist priorities must be turned upside down.

That task is the essence of Gorbachev's conception of *perestroika* and *glasnost*. Whether *perestroika* ultimately develops in this way, however, depends on a social base that supports building a post-industrial society. Presently, it is unclear whether the vast majority of the Soviet population is willing to move into the post-Industrial Age as rapidly as Gorbachev would like them to.

**The Four Perestroikas** | The problem is not that *perestroika* has enemies, but worse. Since nobody is satisfied and everybody wants to change, there are very different, even opposite conceptions of change, all labelled "*perestroika*."

Basically, there are four *perestroikas*, defined by the varying combination of four attitudes. In political terms, there are those whose attitudes are *democratic and anti-bureaucratic* on one end of the spectrum and *authoritarian* on the other. In economic terms, there are those whose attitudes favor the *market* (of course, not a pure market, but, as in any modern economy, mixed with state intervention) and those who favor *planning*.

Based on the objective interests of various social strata in the Soviet Union today, these attitudes combine to create four different definitions of *perestroika*:

1. **AUTHORITARIANISM AND PLANNING.** A famous trial has been going on in Moscow in which a former army officer has sued several newspapers to defend Stalin against the avalanche of "slander" pouring out of the Soviet media under *glasnost*. In court testimony this

Under Brezhnev, we became afflicted with elephantiasis. It was precisely those parts of the political-economic body associated with the industrial era that swelled enormously and in gross disproportion to the embryonic elements of the scientific-technical revolution.

24 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

individual has perfectly represented this definition of *perestroika*.

"I am the real supporter of *perestroika*," he says. "I am for building the pure and uncorrupted socialism Stalin had in mind. I am against the weakness and corruption of the Brezhnev years."

By and large, this is the attitude of the middle strata of the Party and bureaucracy, the *apparatchiks*. Though they occupy no leading positions in society, they are functionaries in the ministries. Due to their status, they tend to be against market reforms and against anti-bureaucratic attitudes.

In public life, Nina Andreyeva, the author of that famous pro-Stalinist letter to *Sovetskaya Russiya* [Yegor Ligachev, the Politburo conservative is rumored to be the true source of the letter – ed.] best represents the attitudes of this group.

2. **AUTHORITARIANISM AND THE MARKET.** From the standpoint of their status, the power elite connected with running society – the Central Committee, heads of large departments, administrators of large plants and other economic and cultural institutions, the rural *kolkhoz*s – are interested in economic reform but not in democracy. These are the managers, by and large.

It is difficult to pinpoint a high-profile figure in the Soviet Union who represents this attitude. Although there are obvious problems with the analogy, Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese strategy of reform exemplifies this position.

3. **DEMOCRACY AND PLANNING.** The majority of workers, and thus the majority of the population in the Soviet Union, fit into this category. These workers, especially the less skilled, have anti-bureaucratic attitudes but are afraid of the market reforms. However, this lower-skilled group is very capable of supporting anti-democratic tendencies as well. The more skilled the worker, the more committed he is to anti-bureaucratic attitudes and the less committed he is to planning.

This attitude has most *mass support* because people are unaccustomed to the market, which they fear will drive down their standard of living and cause social inequality. The noted Soviet commentator Fyodor Burlatsky spoke to these fears when he condemned those who advance the idea of the "usefulness of unemployment as a mechanism conducive to growth in labor productivity," reminding his readers that "guaranteed employment and social security constitute the chief gains of the socialist system."

"Will it be fair," he asked, "to assign to working people the burden of the transitional period to the new system of economic management?"

Boris Yeltsin, the deposed party chief of Moscow, perhaps best represents this idea of *perestroika*.

4. **DEMOCRACY AND THE MARKET.** The most skilled workers and trained professionals support both the market and democracy. But many are so deeply connected with technocratic attitudes that they can also support economic reform with less emphasis on democracy.

Certainly Alexander Yakovlev represents this attitude, and, to a large degree, Mikhail Gorbachev himself.

Obviously, the *market/democracy* attitude is best suited for rapidly moving into the post-industrial era, yet the strategy with the most mass support calls for mixing the *plan and democracy*. Since such a strategy is internally contradictory in terms of realizing a post-industrial society, the danger is that the inability to increase productivity rapidly enough may force Gorbachev to resolve the contradictions with a strategy of *market/authoritarianism*.

While such a strategy, which would rely on police authority in the political sphere, may help build a market economy in the beginning, it will tend, as under Stalin, to undermine market culture and result in a command economy, in other words, the *plan-authoritarian perestroika*.

My fear is that the leadership could be pushed in this direction by conflict between the higher strata of skilled workers and the intelligentsia associated with the emergent post-industrial

25

economy on the one hand, and the lesser-skilled industrial proletariat associated with the industrial economy, on the other.

As much as 60% of our population is associated with the industrial economy, while only 10-15% is associated with the emerging post-industrial economy. The conflicting forces of this transition coexist with that part of the population – perhaps 25-30% – still associated with the pre-industrial transition that has never been completed. Imagine that food production is still a problem in a society trying to enter the post-industrial era!

With such a complex set of forces, it is difficult to determine which of the four *perestroikas* will prevail. There are so many political and psychological factors – such as the resurgent nationalism of groups like *Pamyat*, which grow in reaction to Russia's opening to the world – that further complicate people's attitudes based on social status.

In terms of objective interests, however, we can say that only 10-15% of the population linked to the post-industrial economy, plus some immeasurable, but relatively small, portion of highly skilled workers from the 60% linked to the industrial economy favor the *democratic/market* strategy of Gorbachev's *perestroika*.

When subjective factors combine with the objective interests of these various social forces, we see an even deeper political problem: the polarization of attitudes about the very nature of Soviet society. In a recent survey I worked on with *Moscow News*, we found that 44% of those interviewed saw our society as “unjust.” Yet, we also found that 44% of those interviewed found our society “just.” Is such a social division a mandate for the radical reforms necessary to transform Russia into a post-industrial society?

This profound polarization is the greatest challenge that faces Gorbachev's *perestroika*.

## The Dictatorship of the Consumer

Abel Aganbegyan **Academician Abel Aganbegyan** is Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's top economic advisor. As head of the Economics Department of the prestigious Soviet Academy of Sciences, his views on perestroika are authoritative. We recently spoke with Aganbegyan about the aims and difficulties of the first three years of Soviet reform.

**NPQ** | Hungarian premier Karoly Grosz has in the past said that the aim of Hungarian reform is to build an economy “guided by the consumer, not the producer.”

Since the Hungarian reforms are somewhat of a guide to *perestroika*, is that your country's orientation as well?

**Abel Aganbegyan** | *Perestroika* is a strategy for the qualitative transformation of all aspects of life in the USSR. In economics, it has three aims: the transition from bureaucratic orders to performance-based management; a rapid economic

transition to the scientific-technological revolution; and the creation of a consumer society.

In order to accomplish these objectives, we must end the autarkic tendencies in our economy and make foreign economic relations a priority. The administrative command economy must be replaced by a market economy with highly developed financial and credit mechanisms. Material encouragement and the economic self-reliance of enterprises must replace “wage-levelling” and neglected material incentives.

Finally, we must move toward plural forms of property ownership, thereby disbanding the centralized economic system and replacing it with competitive economic units.

In my view, the crucial issue is a consumer orientation. Our top priority is meeting the social needs of our people by building an economy where the production of goods and services is guided by consumer demand.

**NPQ** | In other words, you would have a

26 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

dictatorship of the consumer instead of a dicta-
torship of the proletariat?

**Aganbegyan** I suppose you may put it that
way, yes.

**NPQ** | The Chinese dissident physicist Fang Lizhi has argued that, due to the information revolution, the mass of workers are no longer the leading class in society. Rather, the intelligent ants are.

Is that the way you see it?

**Aganbegyan** | You are looking at our problems from the standpoint of production. Our concern is to build a consumption-driven economy. We do not talk about a "state of the workers" as before. We now talk about the "nation" as a whole and the "middle class" as the main class. Today, we seek to avoid the distinction that some people are "workers" and others are not so important. We are trying to integrate everyone into a "middle class."

In any case, the working class today is not
merely a laborer who shovels dirt. We now have
130 million people in the labor force. There are
35 million in industry - ten million engineers
and 25 million skilled laborers. Five to seven
million workers are very skilled. We also have
about five million scientists. There are 25 mil-
lion people in agriculture. The rest are in edu-
cation, medical care and other human services.

Because the success of *perestroika* will ulti-
mately satisfy the consumer needs of the largest
group in our society – the working class – it is in
their long-range interest. But, as Tatyana
Zaslavskaya [*the leading Soviet public opinion
analyst – ed.*] notes in our *Perestroika Annual re-
view, certain disadvantages for the working class
cannot be ignored: inevitable price increases for
foodstuffs and services; increased rent rates; and
the reduction of redundant jobs. As Zaslavskaya
forthrightly puts it, these things are the natural
result of *perestroika*, the "social price" which has
to be paid for getting rid of our backwardness.

**NPQ** | I wonder if there is a contradiction in *perestroika* between the goals of market efficiency and democratization?

I'm thinking of the conflict revealed in the
Lenin Shipyards in Poland. The Polish reform
government wants to close down the inefficient
shipyard with all its redundant jobs; the demo-
cratic workers movement, Solidarity, wants to
keep it open.

Won't this conflict between democracy and

market efficiency also appear in the Soviet Un-
ion at some point?

**Aganbegyan** | I don't see the same conflict in the near future in our country because the government does not plan to close down any enterprises. Under our new laws, enterprises are free to make as much money as they want. Conversely, if they are inefficient, they just won't make much money and the workers there will be poorer than in other enterprises.

If a particular plant doesn't have enough
revenue to pay the bills, the suppliers won't
supply them with parts. Then, the employees of
the enterprise will have to decide what to do.
They can fire the management and re-elect a
new boss. Perhaps they could merge with some
other enterprise that is more efficient.

Inefficient industries will close by themselves
if they can't make it. The government will have
nothing to do with it.

**NPQ** | The new Soviet ideology chief, Vadim Medvedev, said something very surprising recently – that “the main thing” in boosting the productivity of the Soviet workforce is to “end the alienation of people from public property.”

Doesn't that turn Karl Marx on his head?

**Aganbegyan** | In the past, the Soviet economy underwent severe deformation. Alienation developed among the people with respect to socialized property. The workers simply did not consider that everything in a factory – the equipment, the tools and so on – was actually theirs. So, they were not much interested in production or in maintaining the facilities where they worked.

Now, we are trying to implement a new
managerial style – based on performance and
democratic input, not fiat – that will alleviate
the workers' alienation.

And socialized property itself will undergo a
deep reorganization. We want to develop the
cooperative form of non-state ownership and
mixed forms of state and private ownership.
Without resorting to hired labor, we are promot-
ing individual enterprise as socially useful be-
cause it increases employment, offers individuals
additional income in accord with their efforts,
and more efficiently satisfies the demand for
goods and services.

Most importantly, we are reinstituting the
lease, outlawed in 1930, as the deepest reorg-
anization of property relations. Under this

Under our new laws,
enterprises are free
to make as much
money as they want.
Conversely, if they
are inefficient, they
just won't make much
money and the
workers there will be
poorer than in other
enterprises. Inefficient
industries will close
by themselves if they
can't make it. The
government will have
nothing to do with it.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 **27**

approach, the state will lease back collectivized and nationalized property to workers who will then control and manage resources independ-
ently for a specified period of time.

If you put all the pieces together – consumer market stimulation of production, family and individual enterprise, cooperatives, self-management of common property, leasing – you will understand that *perestroika* is quite a deep reorganization of our economy. We are constructing economic pluralism.

**NPQ** | How does all this radical talk of deep economic restructuring sit with the premier conservative of the Politburo, Yegor Ligachev, who now guides the agricultural reform policy?

**Aganbegyan** | It is not widely understood in the West that, even before the redistribution of Politburo duties in September, 1988 Ligachev was in charge of agriculture.

I don't believe he is opposed to family farm ownership and solely in favor of the old collective farm. You know, I lived in the Siberian region and worked in the Academy of Sciences there for 24 years. When I arrived as a young man, Ligachev was the first secretary of the regional Party committee. I visited him frequently.

During his time as regional first secretary he used unorthodox approaches to develop agriculture. He did not just issue directives, but actually encouraged and developed personal property and extensive land use. He did other innovative things, like building very large hot-houses and organizing mobile agricultural brigades, all of which were in contradiction with existing habits. So, I don't think he is a person who will hamper the development of agriculture under *perestroika*.

In any case, one must not think that everything that happens in some distant agricultural region depends on one man sitting in Moscow. After all, we are pursuing the policy of expanding economic freedoms, independent ownership and self-management. Many things can be done without asking permission from the center.

The operative principle today is "if it is not forbidden, then it is allowed." You can do anything if it is not forbidden.

**NPQ** | The Soviet Union is headed down the same road of economic reform as China and Hungary. After years of rigid, centrally planned administration of subsidized prices, their new economic dynamism has run smack into the

roadblock of that old capitalist evil, inflation.

How are you going to deal with that?

**Aganbegyan** | I agree that inflation is a serious problem that we cannot escape. As we shift from an economy where prices were set by directives to an economy where prices are set according to supply and demand, inflation is unavoidable. In order to avoid a political crisis, however, we must keep this inflation below double-digit levels. I'm thinking of China's 20% inflation, Hungary's 18% inflation, or the stupendous 210% inflation in Yugoslavia.

Because our statistical data base is in such disarray, we are as yet incapable of accurately measuring our inflation. Economists estimate a three-to-four percent inflation rate in retail prices, about five percent inflation in the machine building industry, and six or seven percent in construction.

Our current inflation, however, is completely different from the problem of inflation in capitalist countries. Your inflation stems from an overheated, saturated market. Ours stems from a shortage market. Currently, our inflation is created because the goods marked with cheap prices by administrative decision are disappearing and the more expensive goods that reflect the real price of production are growing in quantity.

We have not yet completely freed prices. In the collective farm markets, where there are free prices, the cost of food is two-to-three times the government price for comparable goods. And, of course, cooperative prices are also free, and therefore higher, which causes dissatisfaction among consumers.

To avoid double-digit inflation, we will carry out price reform in a manner that regulates the

28 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

prices of key goods. The price of fuel, electric power, food staples and certain types of mass produced goods should, in the initial stages of price reform, remain state regulated.

**NPQ** | Visiting the Soviet Union these days one is struck by the advanced state of dilapidation, the paucity of services, the continuing poor quality of food, the pervasive scarcity of goods, and the cynicism among the common people that, for all the fresh rhetoric of *perestroika*, there is still only cabbage on the table.

Critics charge that the standard of living has actually fallen since Gorbachev took over. One's impression on the street is that this is manifestly so. Is *perestroika* working?

**Aganbegyan** | *Perestroika* has gained pace slowly. From the perspective of our goals, we have done little.

Why is this? First, we underestimated the abyss of stagnation.

Second, we underestimated the sophisticated resistance to management restructuring from those who will be robbed of the privileges they stole from the people.

Third, the measures taken to change from administrative fiat to the primacy of economic criteria were not radical enough to undercut the power of the *apparatus*.

We now know that we moved too slowly. But did we begin in the right place?

We started by trying to improve the food situation. We increased agricultural output by nine percent, even though there had been no increase at all in the previous seven years. Its true, nine percent wasn't enough. It would have been preferable to double agricultural output in six years, as the Chinese did. Be we couldn't accomplish this in our first attempt.

Even in the face of resistance, we have fundamentally shifted direction: While, for 25 years, total living space decreased in the Soviet Union, we increased residential construction by 15% in the last two years; while the life expectancy rate had been decreasing for two decades, over the past three years we improved it from 68 to 70 years of age; while investment in education decreased over the past two decades, we reversed the trend by increasing teacher's salaries by 11%.

In 1985, a study concluded that a remarkable 71% of machine tools built were obsolete. We've reversed that and started to re-equip industry with new technology.

Additionally, our labor force in industry has been reduced by 1.3 million, releasing new workers for the service economy. Labor productivity has increased 50% in industry and 100% in construction and agriculture.

Could we have done more in the past three-and-a-half years? Of course we could have. But we have done a great deal. What other society has done so much to transform its entire system in such a short time? Although the benefits of shifting the foundations of the Soviet economy remain as yet largely hidden, the essential fact is that we have reversed years of stagnation.

**NPQ** | Is *perestroika* irreversible?

**Aganbegyan** | *Perestroika* is not yet irreversible, even though there is no positive alternative for our society. That is our dangerous paradox.

The irreversibility of *perestroika* depends on further accelerating economic reform, especially price reform, and completing the all-important political reforms as well as legal constitutional reforms. I am convinced that in three or four more years there will be no turning back from our new course.

We fully understand that time is our enemy. And we recall that Lenin said "whoever has gained time has gained everything."

*Perestroika is not yet irreversible, even though there is no positive alternative for our society. That is our dangerous paradox. The irreversibility of perestroika depends on further accelerating economic reform, especially price reform, and completing the all-important political reforms as well as legal constitutional reforms.*

29

Régis Debray Almost forty years after Arthur Koestler wrote about his disillusionment with commu-
nism in The God That Failed, a belated crisis of faith
afflicts the high priests in Moscow. But, for a regime
legitimated by the Bolshevik Revolution, what will
replace the secular religion of Marxist ideology? In the
absence of a unifying ideology, what will integrate
that vast, multi-ethnic empire of the Soviet Union?
As the familiar world falls apart for the Russians
who have dominated the Soviet Union, will they, like
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, turn for affirmation to the
xenophobia and mysticism of Czarist times?

These profound questions are prompted by the
upheaval of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika.

Few in the West can address these issues as insight-
fully as Régis Debray. Once the top student of prominent
Marxist "structuralist" philosopher, Louis Althusser,
Debray came to know every doctrinal niche of the most
influential ideology of the 20th century. Later, he
became the chronicler and confidant of the great martyrs
and saints of Third World Marxism: Che Guevara,
Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro.

After spending three years in a Bolivian prison during
the early 1970s for his association with Che Guevara,
Debray returned to Paris where he wrote about his Latin
American experiences in the acclaimed novel, Undesir-
able Alien. When Francois Mitterand became President
of France in 1981, Debray joined him at the Elysee
Palace as an advisor on foreign affairs and an influential
member of Mitterand's inner circle. Until his recent
resignation from the Elysee to protest the President's
excessive concentration of power and the erosion of
public life by TV and American-style personality
politics, Debray was planning the upcoming commemo-
ration of the French Revolution.

Régis Debray's latest book is Empires Against
Europe. This article was translated by Michael Davies.

The opposing conceptions of “the new” and “the old” have governed our perception of the passage of time. “Old” has meant outmoded, lamented and condemned to die out. Linked to inexorable progress, “new” has meant the promise of an invariably better future. This has been the shared ideology of both East and West, of liberalism as well as Marxism.

The idea that progress may resurrect the ar-
chaic, or that “the new” may reactivate “the old”
collides head-on with our linear grasp of reality.
Yet, this is precisely what appears to be hap-
pening in the Soviet Union under perestroika.
In that beleaguered land, the renewal of tradi-
tion is inseparable from the process of moderni-
zation itself.

While it is already clear to us in the West that the “post-Modern” often closely resembles the “pre-Modern.” The Soviet Union, still lagging behind in many respects, appears to be preparing for a forced march into this indeterminate zone of historical time. It may well be that in their university years, our grandchildren will be called upon to write an essay on the topic, “The Soviet Union, 1917 – 2017: The Death and Rebirth of Holy Russia.”

Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign marks an-
other movement of the Russian pendulum first
set in motion in the 14th century, when it began
its swing from the Asiatic despotism of Ivan the
Terrible to the European reformism of Peter the
Great. Without doubt, Gorbachev is now push-
ing the pendulum in the direction of individual
freedom. In the shadows, however, a resurgent
despotic tradition may well be waiting for the
current swing to run its course.

**Regressive Democratization** | In order to remedy economic stagnation as well as underdevelopment, the Soviet Union must thoroughly democratize its political life. Paradoxically, that democratization cannot help but reawaken the powerful ethnic, nationalist and religious impulses repressed by decades of brutal bureaucratic rule.

Beneath their alienated Soviet identity,
Armenians remain essentially Christian, the Az-
erbaijani are Muslim, Ukrainians are Catholic
and Russians are Orthodox. A society which has
watched the future it was promised seventy

In order to remedy
economic stagnation
and underdevelop-
ment, the Soviet
Union must thoroughly
democratize its politi-
cal life. Paradoxically,
that democratization
cannot help but
reawaken powerful
ethnic, nationalist and
religious impulses.

**30** New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter1988-89

years ago evaporate with each passing day instinctively returns to its roots. The law of "the return of the repressed" is as valid for a people as it is for an individual.

Thus, the real question posed by the end of Brezhnev's "time of stagnation" is whether Gorbachev's *perestroika* is up to the challenge of resurgent traditionalism. Which tendency will prevail in *Homo Sovieticus*? The reemergence of the traditional ethnic and religious identities, or the further emergence of individual freedoms?

Let us not forget that of all the European cultures, Russia is the most deeply religious, the most compulsively mystical. Where else did the two kingdoms of God and Caesar more willingly fuse than in the third Rome, heir of the Byzantine imperial legacy?

Without stretching the parallels between the Revolution and the Apocalypse, between Soviet poster art and icons, between Party dignitaries and Byzantine courtesans, it is still easy to show that Russian communism encoded in its

materialist liturgy much of the old, well-worn spiritual formula.

In the Russian Communist sense of historical time, the Biblical chapter of "Revelations" is far from absent. The society as "community of the incarnated Word" is also manifest in the mystique of the Party and both its congresses and plenums. Biblical prophesy bears a distinct resemblance to "The Master Plan." Orthodox religion places the community before the individual and puts a sense of community in the heart of the individual.

Nationalistic, Slavic, anti-rational and authoritarian, Russian orthodoxy – Communist or otherwise – does not embrace individualist values. The West might hope that Personalism, a Christian form of humanism, will increasingly penetrate Russian thought. But if the return of the repressed invariably means a return to roots, the radiant future at the heart of the Empire is more likely to resemble a Golden Age of Solzhenitsyn than of Sakharov.

31

**Return of the Repressed** | In a multi-ethnic empire, the return of the repressed translates into the explosion of the Empire. What will hold it all together when the communist ideology has lost all its believers?

As a secular religion, communism never en-
sured the integration of ethnic groups. Rather, it
subordinated them to a common "faith" and au-
thority. Under communism – a civil religion
subject to the empirical tests of reality – the
effective exercise of power cannot be divorced
from adherence to its stated ends for too long.
Once that schism allows cynicism to creep in,
the system of political domination enters its
final phase.

In the last three decades, we have witnessed
attempts by Marxist-Leninist propagandists to
compensate for the system's diminishing returns
by increasing the number of rituals and cere-
monies. This inflation in the official list of fes-
tivities. Days ("Railway Workers Day," "Tank
Divisions Day"), honorary distinctions, medals,
mass meetings, "historical" addresses and educa-
tional field trips for students to the "sites of the
glorious proletarian revolution" have failed to
mask the vacuity of the officially "significant."
National ritual, just like national currency, be-
comes devalued whenever there is too much of it
in circulation.

To be sure, the demise of the commissar does
not guarantee the rise of the Western-style
manager, the computer programmer or the law-
yer. The commissar's fall from grace could just as
easily lead to the restoration of the Pope, the
Sufi, or Dostoyevky's Inquisitor. The end of the
road for the commissar may well reopen the path
of faith in Christ.

Since there is no such thing as an agnostic
society, the crisis of ideological faith puts reli-
gion back in the saddle. The artificial is replaced
with the natural. The salvation of the world by
the industrial proletariat has not come to pass,
but the "people of God" are still here and they
still yearn for salvation. Those who picture the
future of the Soviet Union in terms of steel, glass
and concrete will surely be surprised at the
number of domes, minarets and church towers
that will describe the next century's landscape,
just as they did before 1917.

**The Truth in a Paradox** | At one time, Karl Marx wrote, "mankind only destroys what it has already replaced." Keeping that dictum in mind,

we should remember that the Communist Party
wanted to liquidate the Orthodox Church at the
beginning of this century, in part by taking on
similar functions. It seems now that the future
may well confirm Marx by revealing the paradox
of his truth: The de-canonization of Stalin and
Brezhnev could well mean the re-canonization
of Saint Serge.

For the moment, the Party is already obliged
to make room for the Church and the Russian
Christian Millennium has been heralded with
great pomp by Gorbachev's regime. This reawak-
ening of historic memory collides with an ideol-
ogy of comparatively short duration. Those for
whom Russian history began in 1917 now re-
member that an event of at least equal impor-
tance took place in 988 AD on the banks of the
Dnieper in the Ukraine: Vladimir's baptism.

**Emperor Constantine Gorbachev** | The last remaining legitimation of a single-party structure, whether in the Soviet Union or China, is more functional than ideological. A single ideology is an instrument of unification, order and cohesion that deflects centrifugal forces – ethnic, religious and regional. Yet, that integrating structure also requires a credible belief system. Marxism, by virtue of its essential intolerance and comprehensiveness, permitted the Party to piece together the puzzle of contradictory allegiances much like Emperor Constantine utilized Christianity to arrest the disintegration of the Roman Empire.

From the ideological point of view, the Rus-
sian Empire has passed its zenith and Gorbachev,
unlike Constantine, has no new religion of sal-
vation at his disposal. At the peak of his power
pyramid, Gorbachev has no metaphysical means
to arrive at his political ends. The only means at
his disposal – nationalism, ethnic identity and
religion – don't lend themselves to modernizing
goals. By their very nature, they are incom-
patible with the super-national myth of Homo
Sovieticus. The only available well-springs to re-
invigorate Gorbachev's demoralized system can-
cel out the only ideology he can officially call on.

Thus, in this great superpower of 270 million
people, one finds Orthodox power, Suni Muslim
power, Catholic power, Jewish power and even
some fledgling Evangelical sects existing along-
side an impotent communism that can no longer
control and unify these divergent strains.

As democratization advances, this central

Those for whom
Russian history began
in 1917 now remem-
ber that an event of at
least equal impor-
tance took place in
988 AD on the banks
of the Dnieper in the
Ukraine: Vladimir's
baptism.

**32** *New Perspectives Quarterly* ▲ Winter1988-89

identity crisis intensifies the resurgence of eth-
nic and religious memory. Each group, as it rises
in opposition to its neighbor, heralds the death
of the official multi-ethnic religion and threat-
ens the outbreak of classic, and potentially brus-
tal, religious-ethnic violence.

**The Same Bell Tolls in the West** | Only the very clever in the West dare offer lessons to the Soviet Union in crisis management. For whom does the bell toll? While it tolls resoundingly on a continental scale in the East, it also tolls for the West.

Haven't we shared the same blind faith as the
Marxist states have in the cult of modernity?
The watchdogs of established orders warn of the
threat from external foes, but the real threat has
always lain within. The enemy of national secu-
rity is not found at the border, but within the
xenophobic and traditionalist tendencies of the
mass public.

The long-awaited convergence of liberal and
Marxist systems is not taking place primarily
though the common faith in technological prog-
ress and individual freedom, but in the need for
traditional communion born of the creative-
destructive nature of progress. The new commu-
nications technologies and the skepticism bred
by democratic institutions are being confronted
by the roots they have torn up.

In this new world, tell me what you fear the
least and I'll tell you what will harm you most.
Classroom geology textbooks in the Soviet Un-
ion mention nothing of plate tectonics. To sci-
entific Marxism, this appeared too speculative.
It involved too much uncertainty for the iron
laws of history. Marxism also feared neither eth-
nic nor religious identity as obstacles to the
"glorious future."

These marginal subjects languished for a
hundred years at the fringes of Doctrine. Now,
the periphery is quaking and the center is crum-
bling from the tremors. How can we be so sure
that the West is safe from the fault-line of
modernity's revenge?

For whom does the
bell toll? While it tolls
resoundingly on a con-
tinental scale in the
East, it also tolls for
the West. Haven't
we shared the same
blind faith as the
Marxist states have in
the cult of modernity?

33

# The Dismantling of Totalitarian Society

## Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jiri Pehe

The prevailing assumption of postwar American foreign policy, especially during the "evil empire" days of the Reagan administration, was that "totalitarian" communism was incapable of changing from within.

The radical economic reforms in China and Hungary, as well as Gorbachev's perestroika, have seriously undermined that assumption. We asked Jeane Kirkpatrick, the key proponent of the "unchangeability" thesis, to re-evaluate her views in light of recent developments. We also asked the expatriate Czech journalist Jiri Pehe to describe the internal dynamics of dismantling totalitarianism.

## The Withering Away of the State?

Jeane Kirkpatrick was ambassador to the United Nations from 1981 to 1985 and is author of Dictatorship and Double Standards. As professor of government at Georgetown University and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, she remains influential in conservative Republican policy circles.

Ambassador Kirkpatrick first came to President Reagan's attention because of an essay in which she argued that "authoritarian" systems could evolve and change from within while "totalitarian" systems could not.

In the following comments, Ambassador Kirkpatrick weighs the new evidence of perestroika and Communist reform against her famous thesis. Remarkably, her formula for dismantling the totalitarian state sounds like the agenda of reform communism: disentangle the identity of the state with society; create autonomous power centers in the civil society and economy through decentralization of decision-making; tolerate the open conflict of points of view and interpretations of reality; renounce coercion as a means of enforcing ideology; and establish a "law-based state" to protect the individual against power.

Is it possible we are watching the evolution of totalitarian states into authoritarian regimes?

Economic reforms and moves toward limited pluralism across the Communist world suggest that it just might prove possible to transform

totalitarianism peacefully from within. It seems that Communist reformers may be ready to abandon the distinguishing characteristic of totalitarian society, i.e., total control of society by the Party. Marxist governments are relinquishing control over some domains and beginning to share control in others. We are watching them give ground to their own people – little by little.

A totalitarian government claims the right to control all aspects of society and seeks to absorb all social institutions into the state. Such a state recognizes no limits to its power. Individual rights and freedom of association do not exist under totalitarianism. The state is all-powerful.

By contrast, pluralism means the existence of independent, multiple sources of power. Even in a country where an authoritarian government rules, such as Chile, power is not total. While Pinochet controls the state, the economy is in private hands and religious belief is free. These independent bases of power can serve, eventually, to transform the government.

In the political development of the West, pluralism evolved out of the competing world-views of the "two swords" – ecclesiastical authority and temporal authority. Almost everything was controlled by those two authorities, but two independent sources of power nonetheless existed. Once the omnipotence of the ecclesiastical sword had been broken by the challenge of temporal authority, pluralistic culture grew in the West to embrace a broad set of political and individual rights.

It is possible that a similar development is taking place across the Communist world. The big question about the evolution of totalitarian

34 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

societies is one of power. Who, in the end, decides how the life of society is organized?

Will a state or party which has aspired to total control now forgo that effort? Decentralized decision-making, whether by factory managers, religious believers or in ethnic groups, entails an alternative system of organizing power that is inconsistent with comprehensive control by the center.

The most important sign of totalitarian evolution is on the economic front. There are also significant social and cultural developments.

**Autonomous Economies** | In a system where the distinction between state and society is obliterated, all relations become political. However, the emergence in China and Hungary of a network of independent producers and market pricing – the ultimate decentralized economic decision-making mechanism – potentially challenges the omnipotence of political power in a manner akin to temporal authority's historic challenge to the church. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev has made it explicit that the object of *perestroika* is to make decisions about production and consumption on the basis of *economic*, not *political*, criteria. In all three countries, the Party leadership has asserted the necessity of independent enterprise management. Quite clearly, Communist economic reform, particularly in China, is creating the basis for independent structures of power.

The potential for a plural social life can be seen more clearly in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe because of the conjunction of *glasnost* and *perestroika*.

In Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, people are speaking their own languages, singing their own songs, flying their own flags. They are publicly recalling the Hitler-Stalin Pact that forcibly incorporated them into the Soviet Union. Astonishingly, they are even asserting their independence and sovereignty in Estonia, though that assertion has been rejected by Gorbachev and the Presidium of the USSR.

In Moscow, the government has announced plans for a new center on Judaic Studies and is reported to have promised German Chancellor Helmut Kohl that "all political prisoners" will be released. Soviet journals now discuss formerly forbidden subjects, from Leon Trotsky's rehabilitation to the role of Russian soldiers in the Katyn Massacre of Polish officers during World War II.

In Poland, the government has offered unprecedented autonomy to the Catholic Church and recognized the necessity of talking with Solidarity. In Hungary, a papal visit is under discussion and Amnesty International was allowed to stage a rock concert.

Clearly, the civil society which, historically, was repressed under state monopoly control is reasserting itself.

**From the State to Politics?** | If allowed to develop, this new economic and social pluralism will inevitably force the issue of political pluralism. At some point, the autonomously developing economy and the social groups will run into conflict with the one-party political system.

The moment political pluralism appears, if it does appear, is the moment that will mark the definitive end of totalitarianism. Tolerance of dissent or an alternative governing program is a step toward pluralism. Even legalization of factions within one party, with each faction claiming the mantle of truth, is a step forward.

The pace and order of evolution from totalitarianism is unclear, the outcome uncertain. Lech Walesa distinguishes these days between economic pluralism, which means free markets; social pluralism, which means the right to form organizations freely; and political pluralism, which means the right to compete for political power. The leader of Solidarity believes political pluralism should be left for last.

**Evolutionary Watchlist** | As the drama of Communist reform unfolds, there are three areas I watch most closely to determine whether the evolution from totalitarianism is progressing:

**TOLERANCE IN RELATIONS AMONG FACTIONS IN THE COMMUNIST PARTY.** We should not forget that tolerance of open discussion is new in Communist societies. Once, deviation from the Party line meant execution. Since Khrushchev, the Russians seem to have given that up. The sight of two Politburo members – Alexander Yakovlev and Yegor Ligachev – going around the Soviet Union publicly disagreeing with each other is something completely new. And when someone loses out, like the former Party chief in Moscow, Boris Yeltsin, not only does he survive, but he survives near the top. His public attack on Ligachev in a BBC interview last year was a mindboggling event in the annals of internal Soviet politics!

We have witnessed similar developments in

In Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, people are speaking their own languages, singing their own songs, flying their own flags. They are publicly recalling the Hitler-Stalin Pact that forcibly incorporated them into the Soviet Union. Astonishingly, they are even asserting their independence and sovereignty.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 35

China. Hu Yaobang remains in the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party even after being deposed as Party chief.

THE EVOLUTION OF DECISION-MAKING, PARTICULARLY IN THE ECONOMY. The Chinese emphasize "the delegation of power to other levels" than the center, the separation of the state from the economy and the necessity of independent enterprise management. From the beginning of *perestroika*, Gorbachev has stressed the "self-financing" and "self-management" of enterprises as a means to make them independent of the state and responsive to fledgling market forces. Now, Gorbachev and his colleagues are promoting the lease of state property to peasants and workers for their independent management and control.

The decentralizing act of price reform has been largely implemented in Hungary. It is the key issue in China today and will be at the center of the Soviet agenda.

THE EVOLUTION OF RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SOVIET UNION AND EASTERN EUROPE. The key issue here is whether an Eastern European nation is free to "defect" from socialism. The essence of the old Brezhnev Doctrine seems to still apply: Every socialist state can choose its own form of socialism as long as it never "regresses" from socialism. Socialism is the only alternative, in other words.

Mikhail Gorbachev has said that he renounces the use of force with respect to other nations in the socialist bloc. I am convinced that such statements will be tested by events in Eastern Europe before 1990, probably in Poland or

Hungary. I fear that force may also be used against Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as it has already been used in the Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region in the southern part of the Soviet Union.

For the moment, I follow each new pronouncement of the Communist reformers with rapt attention. While there is evidence to suggest that totalitarian systems are capable of change, there is so far no example of such a regime evolving into something different. They have either continued or ended in war. And, for the Soviet Union in particular, the Russian tradition of the theocratic state is a discouraging prologue to *perestroika*. Orthodox doctrine has been married to the sword for a very long time. Before communist ideology was joined with state power, the Czar and the Russian Orthodox Church were the omnipotent authority.

We must now wait and see – and hope.

**NPQ** | Aren't both Russia's theocratic tradition and Stalinist totalitarianism breaking apart under the inescapable pressures of a global economy and technological revolution? Aren't those pressures the midwife of *perestroika*?

**Kirkpatrick** | I don't think change is inescapable. I have always rejected the idea that totalitarianism could not survive under conditions of modernity.

It does appear, however, that totalitarianism may be inconsistent with an efficient modern economy under the conditions of the Information Age. We simply don't know for certain since we have not yet lived through this period.

> While there is evidence to suggest that totalitarian systems are capable of change, there is so far no example of such a regime evolving into something different.

36 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

The continuing
revisionism of Soviet
history is tremen-
dously important. It
is among the most
interesting develop-
ments to follow. The
rehabilitation of
Nikolai Bukharin and
the discussion about
Trotsky is stunning.

The Information Revolution provides new opportunities for the diffusion of power. But there is nothing inherently democratic about computer technology: It too presents new opportunities for control and centralization. It remains to be seen whether power-hungry people with totalitarian institutional structures may find a way to effectively harness information technology for the purposes of control.

Additionally, the Soviet Union is in a state of highly uneven development. It is a Third World country with First World weapons systems. I see no reason why advanced and undeveloped sectors cannot continue to exist alongside one another. This is a pattern we see elsewhere in developing societies.

**NPQ** | Since we can't know whether the nature of the Soviet system is changing because we haven't lived through future developments, perhaps we can discover something about its changing nature by looking at new attitudes toward the past.

Why is the current re-examination of Soviet history so critical?

**Kirkpatrick** | The continuing revisionism of Soviet history is tremendously important. It is among the most interesting developments to follow. The rehabilitation of Nikolai Bukharin and the discussion about Leon Trotsky is stunning. These men were officially Public Enemy Number Two and Number One, respectively.

The historical debates are critical to the future because orthodoxy and heresy have been defined in terms of specific figures in Soviet history. The redefinition of historical figures can signify that the boundaries of orthodoxy are being extended and much more is permitted. Or it could mean a sharpening of orthodoxy and a shrinking sphere of the permissible.

You have to remember that Stalin monopolized authority on all subjects for a long time. Stalin on art. Stalin on music. Stalin on linguistics. Stalin on biology and genetics. In all areas, he claimed infallibility.

That claim of Stalin's infallibility was necessary for the totalitarian structure. Therefore, dismantling claims of infallibility in various domains is crucial to breaking up totalitarianism. Anytime you submit claims of infallibility to tests of empirical reality – asking “Does It Work?” “Is It True?” – you've challenged the omniscience of the maximum leader and interpreter of the sacred texts of Marx and Lenin. If you ask, “Does the Economy Work?” you are introducing the foreign criteria of reality to judge doctrinal assertions. That strikes at the base of power claims in a totalitarian system.

Once infallibility is questioned, it can't be reinstated. Even a Marxist-Leninist Humpty-Dumpty can't be put together again.

## Post-Totalitarianism

**Jiri Pehe** In the following article, Jiri Pehe, exiled Czech journalist and editor of Prague Spring: A Mixed Legacy, discusses the challenge faced by Communist systems as they confront the Information Revolution. He now lives in Munich, West Germany.

The ongoing transformation of Communist systems is not an accidental development, due merely to personnel changes within Communist leaderships. Rather, we are witnessing a profound development which has a common cause: the revolutionary social and technological

changes that have already transformed the most developed industrial countries into post-industrial ones.

The Stalinist version of communism, which reigned until recently in Eastern Europe and the USSR, has not been able to accommodate the revolutionary changes accompanying the transformation of the Industrial Age. Therefore, as the technological gap between the most developed Western countries and the Communist ones continues to grow, the choice faced by Communist leaders becomes clear. They can either relax control of the economy, politics and

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 37

ideology – allowing the spread of technologies which may threaten the system but make it more competitive – or they can continue to exercise rigid control over all basic spheres of social life and, consequently, face a gradual degradation of the Communist system to Third World status.

While the leaders of smaller Communist countries with no worldwide ambitions can opt for the latter, the Soviet leadership has no such choice. The legitimacy of its leaders is based not only on communist ideology but on the realization of long-term imperial ambitions. Unless the Soviet Union consciously decides to part with its superpower status, disregard for the realities of technological and economic development has become impossible.

**From Worker to Professional** | In a way, totalitarianism is a logical outgrowth of the industrial era. It is a consequence of the modern utopian idea of a state-administered society born of the Age of Rationalism.

In totalitarian systems, political, economic and ideological competition is eliminated in the name of social perfection. The society, in effect, emulates mass production. While workers are mere cogs in the machinery of industrial production, everyone, including the leaders, is a cog in the machinery of the state.

Totalitarian systems are army-like structures in which the ruling elite exercises complete control over the economic, ideological and political spheres of the country. As such, these systems have been well-suited for the tasks that required the mobilization of large parts of the populace. Under Stalin we saw that totalitarian rulers could rely on enforced labor to construct an industrial economy. Although such methods of industrialization proved to be extremely wasteful of human energy and lives, during certain periods and in certain nations, they helped achieve rapid industrial growth.

A society like this is not, however, well-suited for the conditions which appear with the arrival of the post-Industrial Age. In this period, the emphasis in production shifts from depersonalized entities to individual input and know-how; from manual operation of machines and management of anonymous masses to research, knowledge and communication.

Totalitarian systems are thus faced with a multiple challenge. Their main source of legitimacy – the blue-collar worker – is being replaced

by automated technology. The center of production is shifting from the handling of tangible products to the handling of information. Additionally, more people are involved with data processing, research and scientific tasks. To be effective, these workers have to be given a certain degree of freedom in their decision-making activities. They must have knowledge; their individuality becomes important. This new type of worker cannot be made to operate at 'gunpoint.' Professionals will work effectively only if they are properly stimulated and rewarded.

In the Industrial Age, a stratum of professionals existed, but constituted only a minority of the people in production. In the post-Industrial Age, this group is the main production force. As more and more people become "sophisticated," it is necessary to satisfy their growing and often quickly shifting demands. The centrally-planned economy, however, is unable to do this because it is too rigid. Able to satisfy mass demands, it is unable to meet diversified needs.

Another phenomenon accompanying the post-Industrial Age is the growing interdependence of major producers, and, ultimately, of states. In the Industrial Age, a single state could, under certain conditions, be almost self-sufficient. The range of products and services was relatively narrow when compared to that of the post-Industrial Age. Today, not only can a state not be self-sufficient, it must also become highly specialized, thus locking itself into the international network of exporters and importers.

Totalitarian societies are ill-suited for most of these new phenomena. They are unable to offer proper incentives to the main new production force – the professionals – and they are unable to satisfy their middle-class demands. The unfettered transmission and processing of data threatens the ruling elites' monopoly on ideology, while international integration undermines their control over the economy. In turn, the decentralization of the economy, forced on the ruling elite by the need to give people more incentives and freedom in their decision-making, has a destabilizing effect on society.

If the leaders of totalitarian states do not wish to opt for isolation and thus economic retardation, they must open their societies to the realities of the new age. In Marxist terminology, this kind of adjustment is often referred to as a "realignment of the relations of production with

38 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

the new level of productive forces."

**Post-Totalitarianism** | New communication technologies have been slowly making their way into totalitarian societies for some time. When accompanied by what Marxist leaders call "sozialist relations" of production, however, they often become unproductive. It has not been uncommon that computers and other imported high technology remain under-utilized, or simply unused, when allocated to socialist firms. Although computer literacy, the spread of personal computers and other post-industrial gadgets have remained on a very low level in all Communist states, their use has nevertheless clashed with the rigid control exercised by the leadership and bureaucracy.

In order to "realign the relations of production with new productive forces," some Communist governments have opted for the only possible way out: the partial relaxation of the state's control over the economic, ideological and political scene. This new phenomenon partially changes the nature of totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism, as a system in which the control of economy, ideology and politics is concentrated in one center, is very fragile because these three monopolies of power support and permeate each other. Once a partial relaxation occurs, the entire system is faced with the danger of disintegration. Other centers of opinion and power begin to spring up, posing a challenge to the ruling group. As previous reforms in the Communist systems have shown, once the genie is out of the bottle, he is certain to cause more and more trouble. The leaders are then faced with a choice of radically halting their experiment or keeping it alive, while hoping that they will somehow manage to control new social forces.

The period during which totalitarian societies cease to be completely totalitarian, but are not yet free or even "authoritarian" in the classical sense of the word, can be called "post-totalitarianism." Such a system combines elements of freedom, such as the tolerance of new civic movements, demonstrations and petitions, with one-party rule. What distinguishes this system from common dictatorships is the fact that the Communist Party still exercises a large degree of control over the economy.

**Hybrid Hungary, Police-State Poland** | An example of the hybrid model can be found in

Hungary. Contemporary Hungary has begun to respond to the fact that the requirements of a post-industrial society, with its technologies and forms of management, are at variance with tight control of information, mass communication, movements of people and economic incentives. As a first step, market-oriented methods are combining communist ideology and free-market practices. Though still a Communist society, economic and political concessions are being made to the demands of a post-industrial society. Consumer demands are being recognized.

The market orientation leads to the decentralization of economic management and to the legal acceptance of some practices that in other Communist countries are part of illegal black market activities. Market initiatives and the law of supply and demand have also made their way into the official arena. Heavy investment in electronic and communication technologies, and imports of these technologies from the West, are changing the character of the economic infrastructure.

Politically, dialogue between government and the opposition is a new phenomenon. Though not yet allowed to form an institutionalized movement, some members of the opposition have been allowed to run for seats in Parliament – the very first such development in any Communist state. Furthermore, the opposition is treated mildly. Arrests for differing from official doctrine are rare. The regime is aware that if it wants to continue on the path of reforming the system it must lead the dialogue with the opposition so as to maintain the tacit social contract that shields the reforms from Soviet wrath.

In Poland, totalitarianism has been transformed not only by the factors related to post-industrialism, but because of the unwillingness of the elite to reform the system. The crisis of the 1970s was brought about by the government's inability to create and run a more efficient economic model, a model that – with the help of massive Western loans – was to be based on modern technologies. The Polish government bought entire factories equipped with modern technology, but bureaucratization, rigidity and fear of reforms prevented the government from introducing corresponding methods of economic management. This only deepened the awareness that the Communist elite was corrupt, obsolete and unable to innovate. As a result, the

> As previous reforms in the Communist systems have shown, once the genie is out of the bottle, he is certain to cause more and more trouble. The leaders are then faced with a choice of radically halting their experiment or keeping it alive, while hoping that they will somehow manage to control new social forces.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 39

Poland of 1980-81 witnessed not one but two revolts. First the revolt of workers under Solidarity, then the revolt of the army and police.

These two upheavals meant, in fact, the end of classic totalitarianism in Poland. The workers' revolt challenged basic economic, ideological and political principles of Communist power. The army takeover placed power in the hands of a basically non-party bureaucracy. The takeover was aimed both against the workers and the ossified doctrine of the Communist elite. As a result of these events ideological power remains largely in the hands of the Church and the underground, where it one-sidedly moved during the days of Solidarity.

The new dictatorship in Poland has lost the protective shield of the Communist doctrine that, for all practical purposes, is dead. Consequently, totalitarianism in Poland has been transformed into a common dictatorship run by the army. It keeps some totalitarian features, but they are due mostly to Soviet "patronage" over

Poland. Whatever its future, the system can hardly move back to classical totalitarianism.

What remains clear is that both hybrid models – Poland and Hungary – cannot continue indefinitely because they combine too many opposing forces. Though some may view the comparison as far-fetched, the current post-totalitarian stage at which these Eastern European countries find themselves resembles the transition from an absolutist to a constitutional monarchy in 19th century Europe. The Party becomes "a collective monarch" which keeps important powers but gradually delegates more power to law-making and economic bodies.

As with constitutional monarchies, "constitutional communism" is unstable and is bound to end with the abolition of "the monarch," or the limiting of its power to almost zero. This transition period will be rocked by both successful and unsuccessful attempts to return to "absolutist communism" – totalitarianism.

**The Current Situation** | The current developments in the USSR and Eastern Europe appear less likely to fail than previous attempts because the reforms are finally taking place in the center of the Soviet empire. No outside power, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968, is prepared to "save" the Soviet leaders should they go too far and lose control of the reform process.

Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts, which reached a high point at the 19th Party Conference in June 1988, are nothing less than desperate attempts at "aligning the relations of production with the forces of production."

To achieve this, Gorbachev must relax his party's total control over the spheres of social life. If he wants to stimulate the productivity of the professionals, whose "post-industrial" skills have brought the West to new heights of prosperity, Gorbachev must satisfy the demands of this new class and give them more freedom.

If Gorbachev wants the Soviet Union to play a significant role in the international division of labor, he must decentralize the economy and change its structure; he must make it possible for the Soviet economy to find new areas of specialization in the world market; and, he must eliminate inefficient industries, especially those whose value – high in the Industrial Age – is exhausted with the arrival of new technologies.

He will not succeed, however, if he limits the new freedoms of professionals to production. He

40 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

must provide them, and other workers, with access to information, a less restricted cultural climate, less restricted travel and more contact with the outside world.

Needless to say, all these steps contradict the very nature of a one-party system. Gorbachev must therefore be prepared to accept the growth of independent movements and other manifestations of democracy. He must ready himself to face a real political opposition.

The steps the Soviet Union took at the 19th Party Conference were aimed at maintaining a one-party state that could then become largely de-ideologized, relying more firmly than before on the rule of law. The transfer of power from the Party to state bodies is almost a form of "secularization" of the Soviet society. The endowment of "secular bodies" with new decision-making and legislative power is an attempt to extricate the economy and society from enslavement to an unworkable doctrine. The transfer of power to "secular" state bodies may give Soviet citizens some "legal security" and may guarantee at least partial freedoms which were not previously possible. Above all, the transfer of power may extricate the economy from ideological bonds.

While such a strategy may work temporarily, it does not necessarily create a stable situation. With new legal security – guarantees for personal freedoms, relaxation of press censorship and the possible opening of borders – citizens will press for more than this relatively "free" model. It remains to be seen whether the "snowball effect" can be stopped or whether it will reach a point of no return.

**One-Party Pluralism** | Some theoreticians have jokingly talked of "one-party pluralism." While it appears a contradiction in terms, it is an apt description of the political arrangement most suited to post-totalitarian societies.

Though the Communist Party remains the only power center, it simultaneously allows independent groups outside it to flourish. Restrictive measures are selectively applied to the most outspoken groups, especially those showing signs of formulating their own political programs. However, as the movements proliferate, they contribute to the revival of what is known as "civil society." The dynamism of the debate between the civil society and the one-party state is what propels changes that further transform post-totalitarian societies.

Another source of "pluralism" lies within the Party itself. Unable to work out a unified strategy, as the relaxation of the centralized system of discipline continues, the Party becomes split into various factions. It ceases to operate as a homogeneous entity. Rather, as in the case of Hungary or Yugoslavia, the Party is "a forced coalition" of two or more parties that struggle for power.

The combination of "outside" and "inside" party pluralism provides a dynamism that propels further change. Eventually, the system is bound to show signs of real pluralism.

**Democracy vs. Isolation and Stagnation** | Although temporary reversals of the democratization process cannot be excluded, it is unlikely that the emergence of civil society and party factions can be completely suppressed. The process of democratization has not taken place accidentally. It has occurred because the Communist systems are trying to save their economic position. Paradoxically, exactly because "saving" the system is associated with allowing all the basic elements of the post-Industrial Age to penetrate the Communist systems, they are already on the road either to their own destruction or to significant transformation, since the alternative is isolation and stagnation.

Totalitarian systems grew out of the rationalist premises of the Industrial Age. With the passing of the Industrial Age, these systems are bound to disappear. The post-Industrial Age is not compatible with social rigidity. Changes in the Soviet Union are nothing but belated answers to the revolution that, for the past twenty years, has been occurring in the productive forces. From this viewpoint, the changes in the USSR must be seen as revolutionary.

The arrival of a leader like Mikhail Gorbachev is not accidental either. Should he be deposed, other "Gorbachevs" must emerge. The inner logic of Soviet communism does not allow for the kind of economic retardation that would lead to the loss of its superpower status. The system's vitality depends on the manner in which the USSR opens up the "productive forces" and the "relations of production" of the post-Industrial Age, while establishing corresponding "social relations."

> The process of democratization has not taken place accidentally. It has occurred because the Communist systems are trying to save their economic position.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 41

# The Loyal Opposition

Liu Binyan, Alexander Dubcek, Tad Szulc

Not everyone in the Communist world is in step with the new reform movement, including the most loyal Marxists.

Alexander Dubcek, the precocious reformer whose Prague Spring was crushed by Soviet tanks in 1968, suffered by being ahead of his time. Liu Binyan was expelled from the Communist Party last year for his zealous exposure of corruption. Both remain fiercely loyal to Marxist beliefs despite official disgrace and persecution.

Fidel Castro, on the other hand, defies the imperatives for the reform of his island revolution – all in the name of socialist ideals.

## The Great Wall Endures

Liu Binyan Although a dedicated Marxist, China's most famous journalist, Liu Binyan, was first expelled from the Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution. In 1979, shortly after he was readmitted to the Party after emerging from 21 years in labor camps and internal exile, Liu published the widely acclaimed People or Monsters?, an investigative report on corrupt Communist Party officials in northeastern China.

Persisting in his muckraking attacks on Party corruption, Liu was again expelled from the Party last year when Hu Yaobong, the reformist General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, was demoted.

This interview was conducted by Orville Schell, author of Discos and Democracy, and NPQ Editor Nathan Gardels.

**NPQ** | Fang Lizhi, the physicist, and yourself are the most prominent intellectuals expelled from the Communist Party during the reform period. Fang Lizhi has concluded that socialism failed and Marxism is irrelevant at the end of the 20th century. You, on the other hand, remain a committed Marxist. Why?

**Liu Binyan** | The problem does not lie with socialism itself. The socialism imported from the Soviet Union and implemented in China was not true socialism. From Stalin to Mao Zedong, we have had false Marxism.

**NPQ** | The head of the Soviet Writers Union has said Stalin compromised socialism on a world scale by his crimes. Do you feel the same

way about Mao Zedong?

**Liu** | Stalin was the first to ruin socialism. The second was Mao. Cambodia's Pol Pot was the third. All of these men completely destroyed the meaning of communism.

These men were not really Marxists. They ignored Marx's basic tenet that socialism presupposes a high level of material development. The conditions in each of the countries where these men came to power were not economically mature enough to build a socialist society.

**NPQ** | Is that how you would summarize the experiences of Stalin and Mao – trying to force socialism into existence through political will?

**Liu** | Yes – utopia through the barrel of a gun.

Furthermore, there can't be socialism without democracy. Gorbachev has now made this tenet of Marx into an influential slogan in the USSR – “More democracy means more socialism.” But over the last 30 years there has been less democracy and freedom in both China and the Soviet Union. This can't be socialism.

42 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

**NPQ** | So, China must develop, or redevelop, a market in order to build a more advanced economy before it can become truly socialist?

**Liu** | That was even Mao's original theory. In fact, he named the post-revolutionary stage, during which market forces would develop the economy, "the new democratic phase." In 1949, Mao said China's "new democracy" would need 15 to 20 years before it could change over into socialism. But in 1953, Mao wanted to be the leader of the world Communist movement so he attempted to leap into socialism. He ignored the material reality and tried to rush into the "glorious future."

**NPQ** | You sound like Abel Aganbegyan, an economic advisor to Gorbachev, who has opined that everything since Lenin was a mistake!

**Liu** | Even though the Maoist course was premature and mistaken, there were achievements. We built heavy industry; culture and education advanced; the people's standard of living was raised. But we paid a great price – 20 cents for something that should have cost only five cents.

**NPQ** | The price China must now pay for this tragic past is the deep disillusionment of today's youth. What can a young person believe about the future in China?

**Liu** | So many of our youth have seen nothing good since they were born. Now, everything depends on the reform and democratization process, including reform of the Communist Party itself. I believe our youth will gradually see that there is hope for China.

## Intellectuals Have Lost the Faith

**NPQ** | What is the difference in outlook between a Chinese intellectual in 1956, at the time of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, and an intellectual now during the reform period?

**Liu** | There is a profound difference. In 1956, Chinese intellectuals still believed in the Party. Now they don't.

Chinese intellectuals awoke in 1956, from the slumber of Stalinist "socialist realism," in large part as a result of Khrushchev's thaw in the Soviet Union. They realized then that idealizing life in literature and the arts had been a mistake. Instead of writing that everyone lived well, they

Paradoxically, just as this "new wave" thinking began to take hold, China embarked on a new phase of "socialist construction" patterned after Stalin's industrialization of the Soviet Union. This course transformed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into the very bureaucratic and oppressive apparatus that Khrushchev was criticizing! The Party soon clamped down brutally on critical thinking, which was not reactivated until after the Two Great Disasters – The Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – completely destroyed faith in Mao and the credibility of the Party.

When intellectual life awakened in 1979 – 23 years after the 1956 Hundred Flowers Campaign – the faith of Chinese intellectuals in the Party was profoundly shaken.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 43

published in the *People's Daily* negated the era of
Mao as a total mistake. But no sooner did this
begin than the Party leadership decided they
could not allow the complete delegitimation of
Mao without endangering their own power.

Rather than a new ideological openness,
Deng himself put forward the Four Cardinal
Principles in 1979 which constrain intellectual
freedom in China to this day. Those principles
are: (1) keeping the socialist road, (2) uphold-
ing the Chinese People's Democratic Dicta-
torship, (3) respecting the leadership of the
Chinese Communist Party, and (4) adhering to
Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought.

NPQ | What on earth does Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought mean? I asked a 21-year-old student in China this question and all she could answer was: "love the motherland."

Liu | There are many slogans like “Marxist-
Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought” in China which
are not taken seriously either by those who shout
them or those who listen.

Over the last ten years, the more intellectuals
have fought for the economic reforms launched
by Deng, the more they have been attacked for
breaching the Four Cardinal Principles, includ-
ing the violation of Marxist-Leninist-Mao
Zedong Thought. Since the reforms are totally
opposed to the economic ideas of Mao, the offi-
cials launching reforms have found it necessary
to unanimously proclaim their loyalty to the
Four Cardinal Principles. I suppose these weird
juxtositions can only happen in China.

NPQ | What accounts for the two-steps-for-
ward, one-step-back nature of change in China?

Liu | Since 1979, liberalization has occurred
in an on-and-off fashion, opening up and closing
down. Virtually every year there has been a
campaign against liberalization, but each cam-
paign gets weaker and weaker.

In 1981, there was the long campaign against
*Bitter Love*, the film by Bai Hua in which he
exposed the people's sufferings during the Cul-
tural Revolution and laid the blame squarely on
Mao. In 1983, there was the Campaign Against
Spiritual Pollution which lasted only 27 days. In
1987, there was the Anti-Bourgeois Liberal-
ization Campaign that was stopped after only
three months.

of counter-reform which emanates from one fac-
tion of the leadership that is obviously getting
weaker as time goes on.

NPQ | But didn't former Chairman of the
CCP Hu Yaobang's dismissal last year mean a
weakening of liberalizing forces in the Party?

Liu | Even though Hu Yaobang has been re-
moved, the forces that he represented inside the
Party have actually become stronger. They've
expanded even in the last year because the Anti-
Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign provoked
very strong negative reactions both inside and
outside the Party. The dismissal of Hu Yaobang
and the expulsion of Fang Lizhi and myself were
viewed as illegal acts against the Party and the
Constitution.

There is another reason why progressive
forces in the Party have become stronger: the
Party anti-corruption, or "rectification" program
of 1983-1984 failed. Originally many people put
their hopes in the rectification program because
it was going to eliminate the corrupt elements
from the Party. Even some conservative-minded
people in the Party wanted to see the Party
improved, and they also opposed corruption.

So, when Hu Yaobang was deposed and I was
expelled, there was sympathy for our stance,
even from many conservatives, because not only
had the corruption problem not been solved, but
those who opposed corruption had been thrown
out of the Party! As a result, important forces
once considered conservative, are not now con-
servative. They have moved closer to our side.

This realignment is key to understanding the
current political situation in China. "Conserva-
tives" realize that opposing the free expression
which exposes corruption harms their own inter-\ests in re-establishing the credibility and leader-
ship of the Party. That's why the Anti-Bourgeois
Liberalization Campaign ended so quickly.

The Party leadership also finally understood
that every time it unleashed a new campaign the
economy was severely damaged. These cam-
paigns only proved that the fears of private busi-
ness and foreign investors concerns were correct.

Perestroika Without Glasnost

NPQ | Does the Party leadership now believe that political reform is necessary for economic reform? Or, in effect, is Deng Xiaoping for *perestroika* without the *glasnost*?

Conservatives realize
that opposing the
free expression which
exposes corruption
harms their own
interests in re-estab-
lishing the credibility
and leadership of
the Party. That's why
the Anti-Bourgeois
Liberalization
Campaign ended
so quickly.

44 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

Liu | The economic reform is a very long leg in China, while the political reform is a very short one. One can't proceed without being tripped up by the other. The student movement in 1986 exploded because political reform had hardly begun.

Actually, the first person to bring up the idea of political reform was Deng Xiaoping. In 1980, he said we must reform the political system, fight both feudalism and bureaucracy, and expand democracy.

But it never came to pass. The resistance within the Party was too strong. I think real glasnost, or openness, will gradually come about not because conservatives want it but because the people will force them to accept it.

NPQ | Is there another conservative reaction on the horizon?

Liu | If there is it will have different rationalizations than past campaigns.

It's possible high inflation will be the excuse. Inflation has caused a lot of dissatisfaction among the masses. Conservatives could use economic reasons to attack the reforms, saying, "Look! The majority of people are suffering from inflation while a minority who benefit from the market reforms live well!"

That approach might be effective because people are upset about the new social inequality and what they perceive as a falling standard of living. Peasants are often richer than urban dwellers, and a cab driver, for instance, can make ten times as much as a bus driver.

NPQ | How would you compare China's progress under reform to the Soviet Union's?

Liu | There are many areas where conditions in China are behind those in the Soviet Union, including economic and cultural conditions, and the state of the legal system. The Soviet Union is also riddled with corruption, but their officials are not as bad as some local leaders in China who act like emperors.

Another distinction: while the Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign got rid of Hu Yaobang, the reforms went forward. If the Soviet

Union were to have an anti-liberalization campaign that removed Gorbachev, their reforms would be in real difficulty.

NPQ | How important for the Chinese is the Soviet experience with perestroika and glasnost?

Liu | Very important. We are watching Gorbachev because he began his reforms with politics and the media. He is very good at glasnost, which is exactly what China lacks.

So we would be very concerned if Gorbachev should fail. If Gorbachev is successful, it will encourage Chinese intellectuals and the media to demand greater freedom. One of China's biggest difficulties is that our problems are always covered over. We have to open up and face our problems if we are going to fix them.

If we don't open up, then we won't have democracy. Democracy means giving people the power to choose, and choice is an illusion without information.

## Pluralism Behind the Great Wall

NPQ | As the economy evolves under market reforms, the Chinese economy will develop different strata with conflicting interests. Some people will become richer than others; peasants will want more for their crops, urban workers will want cheaper produce.

Won't these different interests seek expression in multiple political parties?

Liu | Before 1957, the question of multiple parties was actually raised in China, but for the near future I don't think it's possible to have multiple parties. In the 40 years since the revolution the Party has not allowed opposition parties or tolerated people with different political ideas. It has not even allowed non-political ideologies to spread.

As a result, it is even more difficult for a political society or organization to appear in China than in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. Unless social chaos and popular pressure develop to the degree that they render the Party utterly powerless, a new opposition is not likely to appear. The more realistic possibility is the evolution of pluralism within the Party.

NPQ | What would pluralism within the CCP look like? After all, there seems to be no room for critical Marxists like yourself. You were expelled.

Liu | But so many of my comrades are still in

> We would be very concerned if Gorbachev should fail. If Gorbachev is successful, it will encourage Chinese intellectuals and the media to demand greater freedom.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 45

China is a country
with a lot of walls,
symbolized by the
Great Wall. Many
changes occur behind
the wall, but it is
difficult to see these
changes because
the wall itself is the
same as before.

the Party, and because they are in the Party, in
three to five years the Party will change inter-
nally, even though the outer shell of the CCP
may not change. In fact, the Four Cardinal Prin-
ciples are themselves a statement that this outer
shell cannot change. But the insides will change.
The Communist Party is right now in the midst
of internal change. So, there is room for plural-
ism in the CCP.

NPQ | Does that internal pluralism satisfy your idea of socialist democracy, or are you simply admitting the upper historical limit of what is now possible in China?

Liu | I'm not at all satisfied. But China is a
country with a lot of walls, symbolized by the
Great Wall. Many changes occur behind the
wall, but it is difficult to see these changes be-
cause the wall itself is the same as before.

It's hard to say in what form future changes
will take place. Perhaps one day the different
factions within the Party will publicly acknowl-
edge their differences, and there will be an or-
ganizational mechanism for party pluralism. At
present there is no organizational mechanism,
but the factions nevertheless exist and struggle
without a set of rules.

NPQ | What are the most important histori-
cally and politically possible reforms that could
help curb corruption and the abuse of power?

Liu | There are two vital reforms. One is to
expand freedom of the press. The other is to
strengthen the legal system.

Freedom of the press means that existing

newspapers, Party newspapers, have more free-
dom to expose, criticize and express different
opinions. This process has already begun. Papers
such as the *People's Daily* are still Party newspa-
pers, but in reality they aren't the same newspa-
pers they once were. In addition, we also need to
establish independent newspapers that are out-
side the reach of the Party.

Reform of the legal system has only just be-
gun. Previously, we had the pitiful situation
where there were no private attorneys at all, only
government attorneys. Now we at least have
some private attorneys.

NPQ | After all you've been though, all the
ups and downs, the backward and forward pat-
terns of reform and reaction, do you still have
faith that China can build the type of socialism
which inspires you?

Liu | Yes, because of my faith in the Chinese
people. We are a very intelligent and industrious
people. And we have paid such a high price –
Americans can't understand because they have
never had to pay such a price. The deaths, the
suffering and the misfortune have forged a
strength that will push society forward.

In 1957, before our great manmade disasters,
the Chinese people were not strong enough to
push forward. Now, they are.

Translation provided by Liu Baifang and Adam Schorr.

Time is a Gentleman

Alexander Dubcek *During the Prague Spring* of 1968, Czechoslovakia's Alexander Dubcek instituted sweeping democratic reforms, placing himself in the vanguard of a political process that has today come to be known as perestroika in the Soviet Union. In the following interview, he discusses the suppression of the Prague Spring and the current thaw in Soviet domestic policy.

Q | Twenty years have passed since the
Prague Spring. How do you assess Gorbachev's
perestroika?

**Alexander Dubcek** | From both an objective and subjective point of view, *perestroika* is indispensable. It offers an answer to fundamental problems in the socialist community. I support it because I see in it a strong resemblance to the original concepts that led to our attempts to restructure in 1968. The current Russian events, when compared to our New Road of 1968, may

46 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter1988-89

in many ways confirm the vividness and vigor of
our ideas.

The absolute need to rebuild the economic
system from its foundation, by restructuring the
relationship between plan and market, was
taken into account by both the past and present
socialist experiments. Both experiments also at-
tempted to stimulate individual initiative and
recognize the pluralist interests in society. Both
have attempted to define norms of social justice
while respecting social and economic interests.
Both desired to fully democratize the Party and
society. Finally, both experiments attempted to
stimulate the political commitment and initia-
tive of the workers.

I often think about what could have been
done in the intervening years with Czech-
oslovakia's New Road – the benefits our country
and socialism could have gained. There was a
time in which our country used to be among the
world's top ten developed countries. It is now at
the bottom of the top 20.

**Q** | How does the climate in Gorbachev's
Soviet Union in 1988 differ from Dubcek's
Czechoslovakia in 1968?

**Dubcek** | The conditions for change were more conducive in Czechoslovakia in 1968 than they are in the Soviet Union today. All of our people, the workers and intelligentsia, were prepared – mentally ripe – for democracy. The climate for change in our country was better 20 years ago than it is now.

**Q** | What mistakes made the “New Road” in
Czechoslovakia necessary?

**Dubcek** | It was clear that our system of planning had undermined the “law of value.” Consequently, consumer needs were ignored and replaced with a system of production for production’s sake.

The elimination of small handicraft and com-
mercial enterprises, and of small individual lots
in the agricultural co-ops was also an error.

Among the other causes of the crisis was the
violation of civil and human rights. It was as if
we Communists had never known or had forgotten
that after being critical of the bourgeois past,
we should not transform ourselves into apol-
gists for everything which is labelled “socialist.”
Building a new society is much more difficult
and complex than winning a battle. Yet, we have
often focused on the latter.

Such examples defy the socialist theory that

there is no conflict between social and individ-
ual interests. The contradiction exists and sim-
ply cannot be ignored.

Phenomena of this kind are in complete con-
trast with the ideals of socialism but occurred
through the installation of a political climate
that undermined the foundation of internal
democracy. Socialism and democracy are two
matching terms. If democracy weakens, if its ties
with socialism are not respected, socialism itself
is diminished, thus leading to crisis.

The experience in Czechoslovakia, the
USSR and other socialist countries over the last
20 years confirms that socialism cannot accept
stereotypes, ossification, dogmatism, or sectar-
anism. It also confirms that socialism must re-
generate and reconstruct itself in harmony with
its new and pressing needs.

Today, Communist parties should understand,
and the socialist state should make certain, that
the operation of the system produces decisions
that confirm the nature of socialism and that
respect the source of its power: the people. Power
should be articulated in such a way as to stop the
excessive concentration of it in one of its links,
or in the hands of one individual. Power must be
exercised through the authority of ideas and not
by means of violence and repression.

This was the aim of the Central Committee
of the Czech Communist Party (CCP) in 1968.
It supported a politics that operated from the
idea that socialism is not only liberation from ex-
ploitation, but that it “must offer more than
bourgeois democracy could toward the full reali-
zation of the individual.”

I remain convinced that socialism can, in-
deed, must be that socio-political, economic and
cultural code capable of understanding and satis-
fying the needs and interests of the working class
and the wider layers of the countries' workers. At
its center, socialism must express humanism,
ethics and morality. I ascribe an extraordinary
universal importance to these values.

**Q** | In the USSR there is *perestroika*, but in some of the other countries of the Warsaw Pact, albeit with different situations, there has been great difficulty in starting not only a process of renewal but also in initiating a critical analysis of the crisis of socialist societies. Why?

**Dubcek** | I don't believe this problem con-
cerns the Warsaw Pact alone. It would be better
to speak of socialist countries in general. Even

I often think about
what could have been
done in the inter-
vening years with
Czechoslovakia's New
Road – the benefits
our country and
socialism could have
gained. There was
a time in which our
country used to be
among the world's top
ten developed coun-
tries. It is now at the
bottom of the top 20.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 47

the word “crisis” needs clarification.

In the USSR today, for example, they must overcome a state of pre-crisis. In Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring – unlike Hungary in 1956 and Poland in the early 1980s when Solidarity challenged the Party's power – it was the Central Committee of the CCP that led the renewal in an attempt to prevent a crisis. In Czechoslovakia, the harshening of the internal situation came later and was introduced from the outside, as a consequence of the famous events of August 21, 1968.

The history of different socialist countries tells us, though it was never written in our books, that economic and political crises are possible in our societies. The internal contradiction between productive forces and relations is a feature of socialism as well as capitalism.

The experience of socialist construction of socialism confirms that the simple take-over of the basic means of production doesn't necessarily mean its “socialization,” and that social and economic changes, capable of integrating the transformation between productive relations and productive forces, are necessary. Such integration is not achieved once and for all, but represents a permanent process. To delay such reforms opens the door to crisis.

Today, the computer era, the cosmos and the atom force us to develop the Marxist-Leninist heritage in every direction, to not perceive immediately and in everything the enemy's face. The Information Age unites people, classes and

nations. All this leads us to think about content, form, and ideas of class struggle in a different way from 70 or 40 years ago. Even the image of capitalism is not what it used to be.

These are phenomena to study, evaluate and analyze if we are to focus on a real competition between the two different and coexisting systems. The proposals Gorbachev has made to the United Nations General Assembly opened new ground not only for universal peace, but also for a creative and autonomous development for all. A closeness among classes, social strata, people and nations nurtures mutual understanding.

*Perestroika*, in essence, puts all human interests above the interests of the classes. That's what connects both parts of the world, the West and the East. We must nurture the lines that connect us, not those that divide us.

The socialist countries share basic needs: the restructuring of the economic system and the democratization of society and the Party. These reforms should be instituted in line with the technological and scientific revolution. Technologically, our country and the Soviet Union are behind much of the world.

I do not believe, however, that the Eastern European countries are prepared for these changes. The developments in the Soviet Union show that it will not be easy. There is no ready-made recipe for development. The disappointment of the past 20 years is that faith in better conditions has been lost. It's very difficult now to win people over to faith in a new politics.

The Central Committee of the Czech Communist Party (CCP) in 1968 supported a politics that operated from the idea that socialism is not only liberation from exploitation, but that it "must offer more than bourgeois democracy could toward the full realization of the individual."

4B New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter1988-89

**Q** | Can what happened in the Prague Spring be compared to the Poland of Solidarity?

**Dubcek** | In Czechoslovakia, the people – the working class, the farmers, and the intellectuals – joined to spontaneously support and defend their Party. The Polish Unified Workers Party chose a different path and was commended because, "it held the reins with a firm hand," at least until the first explosion of the crisis in 1970 when the food riots broke out and workers were killed in Gdansk. Precisely in order to avoid similar developments in Czechoslovakia, the Central Committee of the CCP deliberately took the path of socialist revolutionary reform, the Czechoslovakian *perestroika*.

Even though the rebirth process lasted less than nine months in Czechoslovakia, the economic results of 1968 surpassed all the incremental advances of the past. In fact, the annual growth of the national economy during that brief period was superior to that registered from 1969 to 1986!

I maintain to this day that there were no internal forces – nor external for that matter, thanks to the Warsaw Pact – capable of over-throwing socialism. There weren't even sec-tarian or dogmatic internal forces capable of subversion. We had a solid guarantee: the mas-sive size of the movement toward renewal. There was never a strong danger of separation of Czechoslovakia from the socialist countries or of the restoration of the capitalist regime.

It should be noted that the interventionist troops didn't occupy the buildings where the "counter-revolutionary" groups had their head-quarters. Instead, they occupied all the head-quarters of the Party, the government and the media. The leaders of the Party and the state were arrested, while those who belonged to the counter-revolutionary bloc were left alone.

**Q** | How did the Czechs receive Gorbachev when he visited?

**Dubcek** | Our people welcomed him not only as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and highest representative of an allied country, but mainly as the head of a new politics in the USSR that offers hope to the entire social-ist community.

Most Czechoslovakians, I am afraid, had excessive illusions about the possibilities for change from that visit. There was pessimism and disillusionment after hearing Gorbachev, while

walking along the streets of Prague, refer to post-1968 Czechoslovakia in words which did not correspond to the general sentiment of our people. Time is a gentleman and will tell us the truth, but the process must not take too long. Otherwise, the events may follow a course which may be different from that wished for.

The most powerful aspect of Gorbachev's visit was his inspired approach to restructuring. We should refer to this inspiration and use it as a guide, rather than wait for the full embrace of Gorbachev's progress by the Czech Party. Though it is a long way from words to deeds, the importance of Gorbachev's visit was the begrudging announcement from the leadership of the Czech Party in favor of *perestroika*.

**Q** | How secure is Gorbachev's position as leader of the USSR?

**Dubcek** | I don't think he will fall from power. He has found some support in the Central Committee [*of the Soviet Communist Party – ed.*] and from the masses, and I think that he is strong – physically and intellectually. I believe he will be successful, but it will take a long, long time. He is only a beginning. Everything still lies ahead. But he has one advantage: There is no danger of the tanks that rolled over us in 1968.

Adapted from an interview that appeared in the Italian Communist Party newspaper L'Unita and from an interview in Life magazine by Lisa Distelheim. Translated from L'Unita for NPQ by Vivian Regueros. These are the only interviews Dubcek has granted.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 49

Tad Szulc Fidel Castro is the odd-communist-out
as radical reform sweeps the socialist world. Although the
Chinese and the Soviets now condemn the "historical
idealism" of Mao and Stalin, who tried to leap to
socialism without employing market forces to first build
an adequate material base, Fidel remains committed
to the idealist course.

Tad Szulc, a former correspondent for the New York Times and author of Fidel: A Critical Portrait, has known Castro since the Cuban Revolution in 1959. We asked the renowned American biographer to discuss El Jefe Maximo's resistance to reform.

For Fidel Castro, commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of his revolution this month, it is a time of great decisions – and of excruciating practical, political and ideological dilemmas.

The 62-year-old absolute ruler faces two basic alternatives concerning the future of his Caribbean socialist enterprise: One is to maintain indefinitely the extremely rigid control he exercises over every aspect of Cuban society in the quasi-mystical hope that new sacrifices demanded from the population will be able to solve Cuba's problems.

The other is to launch liberalizing and reformist policies – roughly in the spirit of the Soviet perestroika – that could help alleviate the awesome economic and social tensions stranding the island's ten million citizens.

Castro realizes, however, that any degree of relaxation would set dynamic forces in motion that could lead to an unraveling of the Fidelista version of a Marxist-Leninist system. Internally, Castro stands before terrible choices: erstwhile disciple of the Jesuits, he must really be asking himself, *Quo Vadis?*

Externally, Castro is under immense pressure to lead Cuba in the direction of perestroika and the profound Chinese economic reforms. He is part of the socialist world and cannot ignore forever the fundamental challenges to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy being posed everywhere by Communists themselves.

Thus far, the stubborn guerrilla leader has contemptuously rejected any notion that the

Cuban revolution should imitate the new Soviet experience. He has publicly emerged as one of the foremost socialist opponents of perestroika – not even dignifying it with the kind of lip service paid by both the East Germans and the Czechoslovakians.

Yet, given Cuba's total economic dependence on Soviet assistance for day-to-day survival, (without uninterrupted Soviet deliveries of foodstuffs and fuel the country would become instantly paralyzed), Castro may find himself in confrontation with Mikhail Gorbachev over a whole spectrum of ideological, bilateral and international issues.

It does not follow, however, that Gorbachev will condition continuing Soviet economic support for Cuba on Castro's blind acceptance of perestroika. Neither of them operates on such a primitive level. Soviet experts on Cuba are aware of the dimensions of Castro's dilemma in terms of internal changes, and the Gorbachev team is sufficiently sophisticated to avoid a showdown over the precise nature of Cuban socialism. Moreover, Gorbachev has committed himself to let his fellow Communists define their own orientations.

In a speech last July, Castro stated that Cuba had her own problems and must follow "a different course." Addressing himself as much to Gorbachev as to Cubans, Castro said: "We must not copy the solutions of other countries; the Cuban revolution does not copy – it creates ... (and) we cannot forget where we are located. We are not on the Black Sea, we are in the Caribbean. The distance from Havana to Miami is 200 miles.... If the US imperialists attack us, who will defend us? No one. We will defend ourselves. Our revolution is 10,000 kilometers from the Soviet Union."

Recognizing that, unlike a quarter-century ago, the Soviets under Gorbachev would not become embroiled in a showdown with the US in the Caribbean, Castro was serving notice on the Kremlin that he had to go his own way to discourage an American attack – by running Cuba like a fortress – and that Cuba's strategic vulnerability did not allow any experimentation with the existing system.

This was very much in keeping with Castro's invocation of the US peril to justify his actions

50

(though the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion mounted
by Americans had made such justifications cred-
ible for a time). His comments were most no-
table, however, for keeping all decision-making
in his own hands. A ban on all form of dissent or
open discussion of public affairs is part of the
Castro control mechanism. He regards glasnost
as an "opening for counter-revolutionaries,"
and, consequently, he prevents the Cuban press
from reporting fully on Soviet reforms.

In a series of speeches during 1988, Castro
made it known that he regarded decentralization
of economic decision-making as "absurd," re-
marking that "if we did that, we wouldn't be
politicians, just technocrats." He announced
that "the most shameful thing" ever done by the
Revolution was to allow the functioning of
"free" farmers' markets in the early 1980s - a
modest liberalizing step that Castro rescinded
within five years on the grounds that peasants
were becoming "millionaires" by selling piglets
and garlic.

Rhetoric apart, Castro's truly theological rejection of any type of market economy or free debate stems from his conviction that even the slightest compromise on his part could result in the undermining of the political system he has constructed. This was confirmed in his mind when proposals for further moves toward relative decentralization followed the creation of the farmers' markets. He nipped the whole idea of economic freedoms in the bud upon realizing that economic reforms would trigger demands for political reforms - and the questioning of the *Fidelista*-Marxist-Leninist model.

Castro also realizes that it would be extremely
difficult for Gorbachev to punish him for ideo-
logical differences. This would be immensely
damaging to the Soviets throughout the socialist
world, especially in the Third World where the
Soviets are keen on preserving their influence.

The real problem between Castro and Gorbachev lies in the enormous waste of Soviet aid by the Cubans. Much of that waste and general inefficiency is directly due to the personal decisions of the "Maximum Leader." In this realm, the Soviets insist on some kind of Cuban perestroika simply to end chaos and waste, especially at a time when Moscow needs all available resources for its own domestic reform.

Both in terms of foodstuffs, fuel, machinery,
and vehicles and in subsidies for Cuban sugar

and nickel exported to the Soviet Union, Cuba
is the largest Third World recipient of Soviet
aid. The subsidies alone stood at $5 billion in
1987, and the cost of direct shipments not cov-
ered by the subsidies added another $1 billion.
Inasmuch as Soviet-Cuban economic relations
are a matter of book-keeping, as well as of actual
trade, the real annual aid figures cannot be cal-
culated accurately. But it is known that Cuba
also owes the Soviets $8 billion (and she owes $6
billion to Western creditors). Finally, Moscow
has committed $3 billion for development proj-
ects in Cuba during the 1986-1990 economic
plan there, with a detailed protocol signed in
May, 1988, providing financing for a nuclear
power plant, a new harbor for tankers, and a
metals' industry.

Under the circumstances, Gorbachev would
be justified in demanding a vastly better Cuban
performance. After more than a quarter-century
of assistance, there is no excuse for the appalling
state of the Cuban economy, which shrank an
additional 3.5% in 1987. In June of that year, a
special conference was held to determine how
economic cooperation with Cuba could be ren-
dered "more efficient," and Politburo member
Yegor Ligachev announced that future ties
"would be restructured."

Up to now, Castro's response to the pressures
to decentralize and liberalize the Cuban system
has been to insist that all ills would be cured by
the campaign of "rectification" of past errors and
elimination of "negative tendencies." It is a non-
violent Cuban version of Mao Zedong's concept
of the "Cultural Revolution" in China and it is
pure ideological orthodoxy. Though officials and
managers have been replaced, endless exhorta-
tions delivered, and millions of man-hours of
"voluntary" work performed during weekends,
vacations and evenings to move the Revolution
ahead, there are no visible signs that "rectifica-
tion" is producing results. Internal repression,
however, rose during 1988.

In the end, if Castro persists on his present
course he may be left to let his Revolution
founder. Gorbachev cannot save him from his
judgements on how to govern Cuba. Thirty years
after he captured power, Fidel Castro stands
alone at the crossroads of the Cuban future.

51

If You Haven't Been Reading NPQ...
Here's What You've Been Missing:

Foreign Affairs

Raul Alfonsin
Saving Argentina

Jacques Attali
Postponing the End of Leadership

Abolhassan Bani-Sadr
Khomeini Needs Reagan

Bill Bradley
Debt and Democracy

Willy Brandt
Catastrophe or Independence

David P. Calio
The End of Hegemony on the Cheap

Laurent Fabius
Deterrence in an Independent Europe

Ali Fakhro
God on the Gulf

Carlos Fuentes
Central America's Problem: Philip II not Mikhail Gorbachev

Bobby Inman
National Security and International Trade

Yehoshofat Harkabi
Belfast on the Jordan

George Kennan & John Lewis Gaddis
Isn't the Cold War Over?

Petra Kelly
The Wall, Glasnost and Marlboros

Neil Kinnock
Breaking with the Nuclear Logic

Flora Lewis
The New Agenda's Old Habits

Michael Manley
Growing Out of Debt

Walter Russell Mead
After Hegemony

Paul Nitze
The Cold War: Then and Now

Sam Nunn
America's Defense

Saburo Okita
Can Japan Lead the West?

Daniel Ortega & Arturo Cruz
The Nicaraguan Revolution

Andreas Papandreou
If Capitalism Can't, Can Socialism?

Orville Schell
China's Two Steps Back

Ronald Steel
The Next American Century

Henry Scott Stokes
The Disquieting Soul of Japanese Prosperity

Alvin Toffler
Future Shock in Moscow

Yevgeni Velikhov, Sidney Drell & Brent Scowcroft
Star Wars: A New Cycle of the Arms Race

Alexsander N. Yakovlev
We Will Astonish You

American Politics, The Economy & Trade

Daniel Bell, Walter Dean Burnham & Michael Sandel
Liberalism and the Crisis of Authority

Henry Cisneros
The Demography of a Dream

George Gilder
Economic Hypochondria

David Halberstam
Of Hubris and Hondas

Alfred Malabre
When the Recession Comes

Mario Cuomo & Jack Kemp
America as a Family vs. Champion of the Individual

Paul Kennedy
Does America Need Perestroika?

Bill Moyers, Jesse Jackson, Pat Moynihan, Julian Bond, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Chuck Robb
A Tale of Dual Cities

Kenichi Ohmae
Don't Blame it on Tokyo

Robert Reich
Mythological Reform

Masahiro Sakamoto
Pax Americana's Twin Deficits

William Schneider & Kevin Phillips
Revolt of the American Public: Left, Right or Both?

Beryl Sprinkel
If the Recession Comes

Lester Thruow
When the Lending Stops

Howard Wachtel
Adventures of the Dollar

Ralph Whitehead
The New Middle Americans

John Zysman, Stephen Cohen & Harley Shaiken
Manufacturing Matters

Culture, History & Philosophy

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
The Reformation of Islam

Allan Bloom, Betty Friedan, Tom Hayden & Frank Zappa
The Closing of the American Mind

Rocco Buttliglione
The Post-Modern Pope

Régis Debray
The Third World: from Kalashnikovs to God and Computers

Ryszard Kapuscinski
One World, Two Civilizations

Shuichi Kato
The Tariff of Time

Czesław Milosz
The Withering Away of Society

Octavio Paz
The Border of Time

Back orders available for $5.00 each issue, and $2.00 each article. Contact:

New Perspectives Quarterly 10951 West Pico Boulevard, Second Floor Los Angeles, California 90064

Cinema

[L.C.]

# America's Underculture

## Costa-Gavras

Greek-born director, Costa-Gavras is one of film's most controversial figures. His works, from "Z" in 1967 through Betrayed in 1988, are more popular and widely distributed than those of any other political film-maker. Costa-Gavras has been a resident of France since 1952. In the following interview, Costa-Gavras talks about the French left's move toward the center, the Americanization of French culture and the process of making ethical films in a business dominated by Hollywood.

**NPQ** | Last year, the City of Paris closed a deal to build the first European Disneyland. When one visits Paris, and looks at the theater marquees in San Germain des Pres or Montparnasse, one sees mostly American films. There's even a new McDonalds restaurant on the Champs Elysee.

To top it off, during last year's presidential election François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac engaged in a battle of personalities – the political debate had ceased to revolve around ideology. This phenomenon is very reminiscent of American politics. Has France, the great bastion of European culture, become Americanized?

**Costa-Gavras** | The world is becoming Americanized. France less than anywhere else because the French spirit is very particular, very special, and they're fighting it. They are not being anti-American. They're just fighting to say, "we have a culture." But it's difficult. My seven-year-old, for instance, adores McDonalds.

Today, countries around the world are imitating American culture. What is being created is not inspired. It's just an imitation. In technical fields, dealing with computers, for instance, that kind of imitation is alright. But when musicians in the cultural arena are only copying American music by playing jazz or just bad music, something is lost. That kind of cultural confusion is frightening. It's as if whole cultures are being transformed into international airports – we can't tell when we're in one country or another.

**NPQ** | Do you think the sphere of French culture is shrinking, while the sphere of American culture is growing? In the integrated Europe of 1992, will American culture be

more dominant than it was when American troops were there at the end of the war?

**Costa-Gavras** | American underculture. The Getty Museum is culture. Disneyland is underculture.

**NPQ** | And this underculture is penetrating Europe?

**Costa-Gavras** | Yes. And it is defeating European culture.

**NPQ** | In discussing this Americanization of culture, Régis Debray has said that it began, ironically, with the student revolts of May, 1968. Though May '68 was a revolt against the rigidity of French society and was, in some nominal sense, anti-American because it involved protest against the Vietnam War, it had the effect of opening up the gates that allowed American culture to flow in. Do you agree with that?

**Costa-Gavras** | I would say it a little differently. The main factor in this cultural transformation was that European leftist theorists of the May '68 era were failures. The Maoists, the Trotskyites and others promised many paradises, but they couldn't fulfill their promises and a vacuum was created.

Americanized culture filled that vacuum and became popular because it promised an easy life. It presented the illusion of happiness through the consumption of material goods. More money equals more happiness. More cars mean a better life. Instead of speaking about the quality of life, which was the point of May '68, we switched to the pursuit of material goods.

This change in priorities came from the US. This is the American underculture. This is the expression of capitalism. It doesn't come from inside needs but from outside

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 53

Cinema

needs – the need to produce and sell more.

**NPQ** | Still, wasn't May '68 a kind of historical marker, since it shook the foundation of the cultural protectionism which had encased France?

**Costa-Gavras** | Yes. It was a revolution. And now, that May '68 generation is in power. Michel Rocard is prime minister, Laurent Fabius is president of parliament, and Debray is in the Elysee.

People tend to connect the idea of revolution with the Russian Revolution, where one system was completely razed and a new system took its place. This is a false assumption. We can't simply eliminate 2,000 years of history. The May '68 revolution initiated more an evolutionary than a revolutionary process.

**NPQ** | Another outcome of May '68 was that the kids in the street, the "fake revolutionaries" like Rocard, ended up making more change in Europe than the professional revolutionaries, i.e., the Communist Party. The fake revolutionaries made the real revolution and the real revolutionaries became politically marginal.

**Costa-Gavras** | Absolutely, because the Communists, instead of making revolution to change society, froze society. They were more conservative than the conservatives!

**NPQ** | When you made "Z," Mitterand was sitting in Brasserie Lipp, Debray was in a Bolivian prison, Jorge Semprun, the leftist screenwriter, was in exile, Andreas Papan dreou was in exile. Now, Semprun is minister of culture in Spain; Mitterand is in the Elysee Palace; Debray is a top Mitterand advisor and Rocard is prime minister, and Papan dreou is prime minister of Greece. Is it shocking how far Europe has moved from the time of "Z" to the time of Jorge Semprun as culture minister?

**Costa-Gavras** | It's quite extraordinary. I remember going back to Greece, years after making "Z." The man who was portrayed as the honest district attorney employed by the colonels in "Z" had since moved up in politics. He called and invited me to the Palace. We sat drinking ouzo together, laughing and talking about the different paths we had taken and the fact that we could both still end up there, in that office, together. That was an astonishing moment for me.

That meeting was a culmination of what we had both, in our own way, been fighting for – freedom and democracy.

**NPQ** | "Z" was a scream about something – about dictatorship and the absence of a democratic political structure in Europe. Now, 20 years later, is Europe the answer to "Z," to your plea for democracy?

**Costa-Gavras** | These changes are the first step. If we go back to "Z," the injustices of the totalitarian colonels in

Spain or in Greece didn't allow any possibility for freedom of expression in art, or anything else. What we now have in these countries is cultural and social freedom. Now there are unions. People can vote. These are all expressions of democracy. It's one step forward.

**NPQ** | It seems that the ironic impact of Papandreou, Mitterand and Felipe Gonzalez coming to power has been to create a political center which didn't exist before and to initiate the withering away of ideological politics.

**Costa-Gavras** | I agree with that concerning Greece and Spain, where there had not previously been a center. But in France there was always a center. However, in the past, in France, politics moved from the right to the center, never to the left.

**NPQ** | And in terms of the withering away of ideological politics, hasn't European socialism, from France south, come to mean social and cultural reforms rather than the economic transformation of society? Aren't these socialist governments the ones that are implementing economic austerity policies?

**Costa-Gavras** | Yes. But the *quality* of life is also important and it occurs through cultural advances much more than through economic wealth.

Of course, the socialist governments are trying to implement better economic policies with less unemployment, or no unemployment at all. But no country exists in isolation. When the dollar goes up and down, for example, we are all affected. Economic reform cannot come from just one country. President Mitterand can make changes but if the dollar goes down or the dollar goes up his economy changes. He doesn't have any control over that. This is also true for Spain or Greece. Finally, the only thing they can offer is more freedom. Freedom and universal educational opportunities are changes that can be achieved on a unilateral basis.

**NPQ** | So, European socialists have lost economic control to America?

**Costa-Gavras** | Yes. They can't resist the dollar any more than the underculture.

**NPQ** | French actor Yves Montand, whom you used in many of your films, became a symbol of the left through your movies. To mix film and reality for a moment, Montand is now playing another character in the cinema of political reality. He has moved away from the left. Who is that symbolic character, what does he represent and what does that say about what's happening to the left?

54 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

Cinema

LLO

**Costa-Gavras** | First, Yves Montand was a symbol of the left before my films. That's why I went to him.

When Montand did "Z" and *State of Siege* the priorities were different than they are today. Some people say that Montand moved to the right. I disagree. Montand became the avant garde for what Mitterand and the left later did, which was to move toward the political center. What Mitter- and did three years later, Montand started three years earlier.

Montand saw that a different approach was needed. We had an extreme left and an extreme right and then the rest of the French society. Montand began arguing years ago that these factions had to get together.

When Montand, in the early 50s, signed the petition against the atom bomb he was in the avant garde. When we did later movies together, like *The Confession*, about repression in Czechoslovakia, we were, in a sense, in the avant garde. Instead of having a perjorative or Manichaean point of view, he moved in advance of the rest of French society. French society is in the center now. But an interesting center. If you have a center with Guy Mollet [*prime minister of France under President René Coty, 1956-57 - ed.*] it's really right. But a center with Prime Minister Rocard is left. Yves Montand is center left.

**NPQ** | So in some sense, as a symbol, Montand represents the transformation, or the evolution, of the left in France?

**Costa-Gavras** | Yes, he is the image of that transformation.

**NPQ** | You once described yourself as a Sartrean Marxist and yet you're a very successful filmmaker in Hollywood, in

an industry not historically tolerant of what, in the US, at least, are considered leftist ideas. You also make films critical of US foreign policy that are commercial successes in the US. How do you explain these paradoxes?

**Costa-Gavras** | It's not my paradox. It's the American paradox. Hollywood has always made movies critical of American society. Some say they are accidents. I don't agree.

Within the human body, you need to have different kinds of cells that are fighting, in order to keep the body healthy. That's the function Hollywood has often played.

I'm just a part of this contrast.

There's also a funny story behind that term, Sartrean Marxist. The label was created in Chile, during the Allende government. I was invited to a roundtable discussion with artists and political people. We were discussing the politics of the period and everyone was saying, "I'm a Marxist," "I'm a Maoist," etc. Then they came to me and I said, "I'm a Sartrean Marxist," which is like saying, "I'm the North Pole and the South Pole." I was waiting for someone to say, "What's that?" But nobody said anything. They just continued around the table, as if Sartrean Marxism was a kind of reality.

I felt a little bit stupid. I tried to interfere and say, "Hey, there's something wrong here." But it didn't happen.

The comment was just a joke. Sartrean Marxism cannot exist. It's true that Sartre was very involved with Marxism for a while but he then moved to the opposite extreme. I was trying to make a statement about what I saw as the religious way people were approaching politics. People were saying, "I'm a Maoist," the same way others say, "I'm a Catholic." It's the worst way to approach politics because it borders on fanaticism.

With this kind of approach to politics there is no critique. You just follow the leader, like Stalin was followed, like all the leaders were followed under Marxism. But blindly following a leader is completely contrary to Marxism. To be a Marxist is to be a permanent critic. Unfortunately, this discussion never took place. The only thing that remains, after 15 years, is this Sartrean Marxist comment!

**NPQ** | You hesitate to define your movies as political films. But you're obviously very interested in the ethical aspects of society.

55

Cinema

**Costa-Gavras** | In an artistic creation, the idea of ethics, of raising questions about society, is essential. I believe it was Milan Kundera who said that giving answers to everything is a form of totalitarianism.

I use the word *ethical*, not *moral* – the distinction being that *morality* is like gold mixed with something else. Ethics is just pure gold. The old Greeks had only one word for ethics. It was ethics. There was no *moral*. Morals were invented later, I think, by Christians.

**NPQ** | Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has said he writes as a kind of revenge, as a response to something that has hurt him or that engenders rebellion in him. Your movies are certainly disturbing. They oftentimes tell true stories of repression and torture. Why do you make these kinds of films?

**Costa-Gavras** | The idea of creating only entertainment comes completely from the McCarthy period. During that period, many actors, directors and people in theater and music were saying, "I'm an entertainer, I'm not making politics." Yet, they were making a political statement by denying politics.

People don't like to discuss the themes I touch upon in my films. These themes exist in the dominant ideology and philosophy of our culture and we accept them, consider them part of our system, part of our way of life and we rarely question them. However, if we shine a spotlight on these themes they then disturb us because we see ourselves.

In this regard, "Z" was a little easier to watch. "Z" took place in Greece, during a time when the regime was controlled by colonels. They were very reactionary people, a little bit stupid, so it was nice to see them because they weren't us. But as you get closer to us – *Betrayed*, or *Special Section* or *The Confession* – the themes become more difficult to watch. So, I'm not making disturbing films. The themes are disturbing.

**NPQ** | Yet you're choosing the subject matter.

**Costa-Gavras** | Yes, because I discovered that nobody wants to talk about certain issues. Nobody wants to talk about this problem of racism, for example. I think it's an important subject to discuss. Why, I don't know.

Of course, I could do different things. I could make action movies. But when I try other types of filmmaking, I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel any passion.

**NPQ** | Your most recent film, *Betrayed*, is, in fact, about racism and bigotry in America. It was released the same year the Reverend Jesse Jackson emerged as a strong contender for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Why, at this time, in this era, did you want to make a film about racism?

**Costa-Gavras** | America is a country of contrasts. When I first came here 20 years ago, there were no blacks in television, no black journalists. I have seen the changes occur over the years. Now, one can have the impression that it's over, that there is no more racism. But there is.

Take the Bernard Goetz case in New York, for example. A guy goes down into the metro and shoots four black youths. It can happen anywhere, but this particular incident was followed by a trial in which the judge didn't convict Goetz. After that verdict, thousands of people said Goetz was right to do what he did.

Nobody speaks about it but the Goetz case is the other side of the Jesse Jackson phenomenon. It's just as real. Remember the Goetz incident occurred in the same city Jesse Jackson triumphed in during the Democratic presidential primary.

56 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

Architecture

# Of Detritus and Denial

Frank Gehry

Los Angeles-based Frank Gehry has gained both national and international prominence as one of the decade's most provocative architects. In the following comments, adapted from a longer conversation with NPQ editors William Meis and Marilyn Berlin Snell, Gehry discusses architecture, inspiration and the demolition of culture.

My basic psychological drive is to express myself, to make mud pies that can be shown to mommy. The creative spirit flows from my child-like sense of the world, my sense of play and wonder.

In architecture, my creative drive is translated into a desire to build spaces that people inhabit and to see their delight and approval as they use those spaces over the years.

Building my “mud pie” is basically a spacial, artistic experience. My work embodies feeling and perception. There is also a little comedy in it. Some people think I am a bit too comic. Others think I am trying to be shocking. Over time, however, I couldn’t sustain myself by employing only shocking architecture. I can’t fool all the people all the time. Neither could I have survived as an architect by simply cracking jokes.

**A Window On The World** | As a Los Angeles architect, my work is an expression of a city made up of a barrage of multiple, disconnected images. Yet, I find a virtue, something of value in those images.

I am a realist. If that is what Los Angeles residents like, if that is what they build, if that is what the culture builds, if that is what the culture is, then I am going to work within those boundaries.

Though I want my work to be accessible, I don't want it to be too accessible. I want people to think, so I don't talk down to them – I try to teach. When I use materials like plywood and chain link, some people perceive that I am trying to be mischievous. I am, at times. I get angry at the world and it shows up in my work.

I can't escape my locale, even if it is ugly. The attempt to bring the ancient Greek notion of marketplace, the *agora*, to Los Angeles is destined to fail because the *agora* didn't have a freeway and traffic coming to it. How does Los Angeles create a sense of the *agora*? How does one create a place that deals with the traffic, the smog and the mess? One cannot. It's like a Mac truck racing down the hill at 70 miles per hour. If someone is going to stop it, they have to jump on it.

**Of Detritus And Denial** | There is a simple reality about the craft of architecture: Architects must build through bureaucracy and economic constraints. I have been trying to find a way to work within that system and turn it to my advantage.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 57

Architecture

The process is analogous to putting a spin on a ball. How does one use the system? How does one take control of the ball and run with it?

Since I don't believe that I can change the system, I try to work within it and comment upon it by using the capital and the materials available to me.

I hate chain link, for example. I don't like it any better

than anyone else does. However, I found it around every building I had designed, so I realized that if others are inevitably going to use chain link then I too must figure out how to use it.

I took some clues from artists that were working with similar materials and I began to explore and to use chain link. I started to see it as a fabric. Yet, the moment I used it intentionally, everyone got angry.

I don't use chain link for shock value. Its use is shocking only in the sense that Andy Worhol's *Brillo* cans were shocking. Worhol was saying, "Look what you are doing! Look what you are preoccupied with!"

The public looks at the chain link I use and cries out it is awful. Yet, they constantly use it. I am fascinated with that kind of denial.

I was making the same point when I made the cardboard furniture. Cardboard is a material that is used in great quantities by the culture but no one pays any attention to it. They simply refer to cardboard as "trash." Again, I found the denial fascinating.

My goal, as an architect, it to take the "culturally common" materials I see being used in huge quantities and transform them into something better. I want to understand the materials and to use them, since their use is inevitable anyway.

If it appears that I am throwing cold water on the world, I admit that there is a bit of that tendency in my work. Sometimes, I become infuri-

ated at what I see going on around me.

**A Word To The Critics** | I don't believe my work is difficult.

People understand it but accept it in differing degrees. Myharshest critics understand my work. They just place a different value on it's positive and negative aspects. They dwell on the negative and say I am being willful, pushing something in their faces that they don't want to see.

58

Architecture

My attitude toward my critics is that if they are going to focus on what is negative in the world of architecture they should look at the massive buildings and all the structures that presently make up the environment and get mad at that instead of my little house with the chain link. People often rail against their surroundings, using their preconceptions. They forget to see.

**Architecture As The Modern Opiate** | I cannot escape reality. When I try, architecturally, to escape reality, it appears contrived. It doesn't fit the times. It looks like a cover-up. I will use a very exaggerated example: The Nazis placed beautiful pastoral scenes on the windows of the gas trucks so that the Jews would have something nice to look at as they were being killed. That's how it feels when people try to cover-up the crap of the culture, when they try to avoid reality.

Places like Disneyland have a purpose because people pay to go there and be disconnected from reality, just like they go to a movie. But when we deal with architecture we are dealing with daily reality. Serious architecture must address how the real world is working. I cannot disconnect from the real world. Whenever I see work that tries to disconnect, it feels like a cover-up. It feels like a lie.

Our cultural denial is very relevant to my work. My buildings offer a commentary on what I see in the world around me. My commentary is no different, in essence, from the commentary offered by Andy Worhol or Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Truman Capote.

Whoever looks at his or her environment and makes some kind of statement about it is interpreting the culture. That type of social commentary becomes interesting when the artist touches a chord with their audience, thereby connecting the viewer with the world.

Whether with building, art, writing or philosophy, if the artist is connecting to the times and touching a nerve, they are helping people to see and, hopefully, to make some connections. Ironically, it is at that very moment that the artist receives both the wrath and the glory for their work.

**Designing In A Deconstructed Society** | Americans went through a period of large-scale, Tennessee Valley Authority-type planning during the Roosevelt years where entire downtown areas were designed and built on a grand scale. Though America's megalomania was realized during those years, the experiments failed.

One of those early projects, Columbia, Maryland, is not much different today than the suburbs of any other American city. It has all the same problems. In terms of really coming up with a new and workable approach to urbanization, these experiments did not succeed.

Though today's city is very complicated to build in, architectural design is much more realistic. City architecture now consists of bits and pieces placed here and there by different people. There is no overall system. It is all breaking down into bits and pieces.

The way one designs a building in the modern American city is to explore the context, find out what is good and bad about the surrounding environment. Though an architect must move within the perimeters of context, they can also modify the context through their design.

Most architects start out designing with a contextual respect for the cornice lines of surrounding buildings. They look for things to hang on to, almost like a crutch. That notion of context comes from Rome. It comes from history. If an architect builds in Europe, they must respect the fact that the monuments won't move. If they are building next to those monuments, they must respect the historic surroundings. If I am building an office building next to Notre Dame, I have to think about Notre Dame.

**Back To The Future** | Classicism is a point of departure for much of my architecture. I don't think classicism, in and of itself, stifles creativity or makes for conservative expression. Yet, the way it is used, when it is copied directly, as in a lot of post-Modern architecture, denigrates and caricatures classic architecture. I have more respect for classical architecture than that.

The downtown Los Angeles Loyola Law School, which I designed, is classical only in the sense that I played with some classic imagery, namely, the court house.

In meetings with the students, faculty and administration, the one thing that kept surfacing was that they were looking for a symbol – something that would clearly represent what they were doing. Since I didn't want to quote history directly, I operated on a minimalist principle, experimenting with how little I could do and still retain a symbol, still create a sense of place. That is the origin of the columns in front of the building.

It does not make sense to go backward. I want to deal with the present as I see it. Some people deal with the present by going backward because they don't feel that the present has anything to offer. It is not relevant for me to go backward.

**Building Blocks: Microcosm vs. Macrocosm** | I realized a long time ago that if I step on a crack I won't break my mother's back. Individuals don't have that kind of power. I don't see my work as a saving-the-world-kind of crusade. Some architects have that God-like world view. I'm more realistic. For me, the process of designing a building is its own gratification.

New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89 59

Architecture

At one time, I admit, I belonged to all the various politi-
cal causes. I used to march on Washington. I used to march
on everything.

Somehow, I never really felt as though I was contributing.
I felt verbally inadequate. When I realized that, I backed off
and focused on architecture, on what I do best. I have been
successful, I think, because I focused on the little mud pie
again, on the microcosm rather than the macrocosm.

In my specific projects, I enjoy getting to know the family,
their wishes and their fantasies. I enjoy exploring with them
and trying to find out what it is that would uplift or give them
more than they expect, so that when they see their home it is
beyond belief. I want my work to enhance their life.

As my clients adapt to the changes going on in the
nuclear family – divorce, stepchildren, etc. – my architecture
adapts. I must often work to bring together disparate familial
elements. When I am successful, I can retain the integrity of
differing family characteristics in one house.

**A Return To Basics** | I came out of architecture school with the liberal notion that designing houses for rich people was immoral, so I went to Harvard to study city planning. It was then that I discovered I couldn't realistically design the grand city plans. They remained drawings and models that never got built.

In the intervening years, I came to the conclusion that
building houses for rich people wasn't immoral, but I am still
not completely confident that I have absorbed that notion or
feel comfortable with it.

I prefer to work with people who don't need to prove
something – who don't need to create excesses because I am
judgmental about the excesses that exist in our society.

I don't like things to get too precious, pompous or monu-
mental. I want people to be able to relate to the building, to
feel as though they can touch it or throw their coat down on
the floor, although that doesn't exclude elegance or beauty.

**Architecture As Science** | My real interest lies with the future, with science. I see architecture as related and analogous to science. We have ways of dealing with present problems but we are neither looking at the problems nor thinking of creative ways to solve them.

The current problem of supplying low-cost housing is an
example of this lack of vision. The largest share of the cost to
build a house comes from the introduction of the mechanical
aspects into it; plumbing, electricity, etc. My fantasy has
always been to have NASA, the government, the scientific
community and industry devise mass-produced mechanical
parts for houses so that they would be both more affordable
and longer-lasting. Why don't we give NASA the problem of

plumbing and powering a house and see what they can come
up with?

Designing like this doesn't necessarily affect a building's
aesthetic. Hopefully, it only means that we can solve housing
problems for the general public, the ones for whom afford-
able housing is becoming less and less available.

I am no visionary. As I analyze the bits and pieces of our
culture, I see only that the answers will come out of the
microcosm, not the macrocosm. It is time to find new ways
and new strategies to deal with the technology already avail-
able to us. We must begin to use our scientific and manufac-
turing capability by redirecting it into a system that works
for everybody.

60 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

LC

New Perspectives Quarterly

▲ Mario Cuomo and Jack

Kemp on the Family •

Octavio Paz on the

Border of Time • Lester

Thurow and George

Gilder on America's

Prosperity • Czesław

Milosz on the Withering

Away of Society • Jesse

Jackson and Daniel

Patrick Moynihan on the

New Urban Poverty •

Rocco Buttliglione

on the Post-Modern

Pope • Daniel Bell,

Walter Dean Burnham

and Michael Sandel

on Liberalism and

Authority • Shuichi Kato

and David Halberstam

on Japan • Gorbachev's

ally Alexander Yakovlev

on Glasnost • Allan

Bloom on Too Much

Tolerance • Bill

Moyers, Julian Bond

and Chuck Robb on

A Tale of Dual Cities •

A.A. An-Na'Im on the

Reformation of Islam •

Régis Debray and

Ryszard Kapuscinski on

God and Computers

in the Third World •

Alvin Toffler on Future

Shock in Moscow •

Daniel Ortega on

Pluralism • George

Kennan on the Cold War

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Correspondence

The Challenges to America — Long-Term, Short-Term, or Both?

The following letter from Paul Kennedy, author of *The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, is in response to an article in the Summer '88 issue of NPQ by Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, entitled "Short-Term Folly, Not Long-Term Decline." Nye had responded to an argument by Giorgi Arbatov, Gorbachev's advisor on US affairs, that America was in decline.

There is much to be said for Joseph Nye's brisk rebuttal of Mr. Arbatov's comments on the problems which confront the United States at the present time. For, of today's two military superpowers, it is the Soviet Union which exhibits the greatest structural weaknesses; and it is by no means clear that the policies of *glasnost* and *perestroika* will in turn avoid even larger problems in the future (e.g., in Eastern Europe). By contrast, the United States possesses a bewildering mixture of both weaknesses and strengths, leaving open the prospect that the latter will mitigate (or even outweigh) the effects of the former.

On the other hand, it is disturbing to find a scholar as discerning and lucid as Professor Nye offering remarks about the changed American position in world affairs that are so bland as to beg a whole range of questions.

The simplest of those questions – one does not need a Harvard or Yale education to pose it – concerns the dubious introduction of the kid-on-the-block analogy. As Professor Nye puts it, “The situation at the end of World War II was artificial. It was like a kid who is one of a number of kids competing for toughest kid-on-the-block, and then every other kid gets the flu. For a while, the kid without the flu is the biggest kid-on-the-block. But eventually, the others are bound to regain their health.”

I don't know the thought-processes of kid-on-the-block in Los Angeles and Boston, but if this analogy holds true then I would guess that the "kid without the flu" might not be as sanguine as Professor Nye about the loss of pre-eminence. To be sure, he now has partners to play with; but if everyone is "competing for tough kid-on-the-block, he is going to find it much more difficult to hold his own. At any rate, he is going to have to strive much harder, *and without any certainty of his remaining Number One* in that changed and much more competitive environment.

Moreover, the reference to the American position at the end of the second World War may be obscuring rather than enlightening. We can all probably agree that the United States occupied an "artificially" high position in world affairs after 1945; its shares of global GNP and of world manufacturing output were, according to some rough estimates, close to 50%. This was, very clearly, a short-term advantage caused chiefly by the damage inflicted upon Europe, Russia and Japan during the war. To see the American share decline to that which it possessed in 1930 would be one thing. But what we seem to be witnessing is a relentless decade-on-decade decline toward shares which the United States held *before* 1900, that is, before it became the biggest kid-on-the-block. (For example, Japan's GNP at today's exchange-rates is two-thirds that of America's, while the EEC's combined GNP is now somewhat larger. That was not the case in the 1930s.) If this is so, then we are talking about a *longer-term* trend, not merely a short-term decline.

62

Correspondence

LLOJ

The second question which is begged by Professor Nye's article is the tendency to blame current American economic problems on the Reagan administration. *Short-Term Folly, Not Long-Term Decline* has become a convenient slogan for Democratic politicians, as witnessed in the recent writings of Senators Moynihan and Bradley. There is, indeed, much to criticize in the fiscal policies of Mr. Reagan, who has managed to turn the United States from being the world's greatest creditor nation to being its greatest debtor nation in the space of six or seven years – a record unequalled in history, even by the feckless monarchs of early-modern Europe. It will be surprising to me if it takes but a mere six or seven years to return the United States to the financial primacy in world affairs which it so recently possessed. As it is, the decrease in the American “visible” trade deficit which has occurred this year is being steadily negated by the increase in the “invisible” sector, so that the overall current-account balance is not improving at all – leaving the country with the unwelcome prospect of having $150 billion on current-account deficits for year after year, which is unsustainable.

Nevertheless, for all the damage done by the “Bourbon” fiscal policies of Mr. Reagan, that surely cannot be held to explain other worrying signs: the decline in the number of patents applied for by American inventors, the fall-off in the number of engineers and scientists produced by the American educational system, the loss of the once-unchallenged American supremacy in such high-tech fields as microprocessors, robotics, and the like. These trends have been under way for some time, regardless of which administration was in power.

It therefore follows that a restoration of American competitiveness involves not merely sounder fiscal policies but also an array of measures to improve basic science, technology, the educational system, infrastructure, commercial research and development, and so on. On such foundations rests both American prosperity, and American power. Nothing has struck me as more curious in the debate about my book, *The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers*, than the conservative right's lack of concern for the economic and technological underpinnings of national strategy. Political speeches which fondly recall America's historic role as the “arsenal of democracy” sound ever more ironic when placed alongside current Pentagon reports of the country's reliance on foreign suppliers of items deemed vital to the armed services. References to Churchillian willpower – again, much favored by the right – become less than convincing when it is recalled that Churchill himself took power just as Britain was about to become internationally bankrupt.

In sum, there is more to this issue than short-term folly; longer-term developments are also playing their part. It therefore follows that while the United States still possesses many strengths and advantages as compared with other nations, there is no guarantee that it will still be “on top” (to use Professor Nye’s term) in the year 2020. That is a position which has to be worked for.

**Paul Kennedy**

New Haven, Connecticut

63

Publisher's Page

Just Think...

I always try to do that myself, but I find nothing fits the old road signs. Everything seems out of whack, and the world is turned inside out.

I was taught in civics classes at PS165 that in a democracy the electorate, because it understands itself to be part of the system, has an obligation to participate in the polity. Every individual has a responsibility to be informed so each can make their own political choices.

I was also taught to believe that under totalitarianism individuals are not only of little consequence, they have no voice in political affairs.

Over the last few months, my daily reading has confronted me with a startling reversal of my earlier beliefs. The Yugoslavs, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Latvians, Armenians and Azerbaijani are all being heard from. Granted, their voices arise from the misery of bad economics, frustrated nationalism and years of repression; but those voices demanding change and participation are not supposed to be heard in totalitarian societies. Democratic participation under Communism? No way, never!

At the same time, here we are in the United States emerging from what is presumed to be one of the heights of the democratic process – our presidential election. Instead, we have experienced the lowest voter turnout and some of the highest levels of voter boredom in our nation's history. Where are our voices, angry or otherwise, yearning for greater participation?

Can we describe ourselves as an involved, dynamic society when our political debates fail to provoke serious arguments about the 35 million Americans in poverty; a reduction of the federal deficit which threatens to bankrupt the Social Security system; the focus in executive suites on financial speculation; our declining standard of living; and most seriously, our absolutely inadequate educational system?

Is it our political system that has fallen into the hands of the *apparatchik* – American style: speechwriters, media manipulators, pollsters, schedulers, fund-raisers, spin controllers, press handlers and even make-up artists? If so, then we must also admit that these political body snatchers have destroyed the art, practice and legitimacy of democratic politics. They live in their own cocoon (which they perceive as a cosmos). They have their own jargon. They relate to the larger world mechanistically, according to their own sterile

assumptions, and in the end 50% of them always lose anyway.

Perhaps we should all remind ourselves of Winston Churchill's remark that democracy was the worst political system he had heard of – the worst, that is, until he looked at the alternatives. His point was that for democracy to succeed, a certain amount of disorder – argument, turmoil and debate – is necessary.

We, on the other hand, have fallen to such a state that we find ourselves more concerned about whether our voter participation rate has plunged so low that we have broken the link between the governing and the governed than about the disorder arising from an active democracy. At a minimum, we are forced to ask how long "democracy" can remain a valid description for whatever it is we are engaged in; and conversely, whether "totalitarianism" is an accurate description of their current situation.

The sclerosis (ours, not theirs) is manifest in other ways: Ads appeared during the campaign urging people not to vote because "...it only encourages them." The rate of turnovers in the membership of the Soviet Politburo is far greater and more significant than those which took place in the US Congress! (And then there is the continuing dominance of money in our elections. When incumbents tell me they are going to fight campaign finance reform, they always tell me reform will make it more difficult to get re-elected. I reply, yes, but while a certain level of stability is highly desirable, the current rigidities are not.)

If we are serious about being a democracy, we need to bring the people (other than those in the salons of Westside Los Angeles and Eastside Manhattan) back into the political process. We need to shake-up our own society and deal with our own very real problems. We are so much better – so much more technically and economically advanced a society – than those struggling nations of the Eastern bloc. It would be a tragedy if their newly found vitality creates a dynamism in the East that is only answered by lethargy and self-satisfaction in the West.

Maybe we should start by going back to teaching in the lower grades those basic truths I learned in civics lessons so long ago. Just think...

Stanley K. Sheinbaum, Publisher

New Perspectives Quarterly

64 New Perspectives Quarterly ▲ Winter 1988-89

Gourmet Gala

October 3, 1989

Dr. Henry Kissinger
Kissinger Associates
350 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

GENERAL CHAIRMEN
Miss Beverly Sills
Mrs. Donald J. Trump

Dear Henry:

CORPORATE VICE CHAIRMAN
Mr. Ronald O. Perelman

HOSTESS COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN

Mrs. Thomas L. Kempner
Mrs. William P. Rayner

HOSTESSES

Mrs. Alfred Bloomingdale
Mrs. William F. Buckley
Mrs. Angier Biddle Duke
Mrs. Jonathan D. Farkas
Mrs. Gordon P. Getty
Mrs. Peter Gregory
Mrs. Joseph A. Lauder
Mrs. Ronald Leeds
Mrs. Robert Mosbacher
Mrs. Nelson A. Rockefeller
Mrs. T. Suffern Tailer
Mrs. Robert Trump
Mrs. John J. Veronis
Miss Barbara Walters

List in Formation

Last year's March of Dimes Gourmet Gala, featuring a celebrity cooking competition, turned out to be its most successful event ever. This year, on Tuesday November 21st, 20 well-known personalities will participate in this unusual dinner and even more unusual competition at The Plaza. With you as celebrity chefs, stirring up your favorite recipe, it will be spectacular.

During cocktails, celebrity chefs will cook for a panel of distinguished food critics in specially-designed kitchens set up in the reception area. All the peeling, chopping, kneading and slicing will be done by sous-chefs who will also help in the presentation to the judges. Celebrity recipes will be replicated by the staff at The Plaza, in cooperation with Pierre Franey, and be served during cocktails and at dinner. The winners will be announced by Craig Claiborne after dinner at which time prizes will be awarded.

The Gourmet Gala is one of the best parties in the country because of the wonderful people who participate - the celebrity chefs, judges, hostesses and guests. Last year, our celebrity chefs included Dinah Shore, Hugh Carey, Aileen Mehle, Hildegarde Behrens, Liz Smith, Bill Beutel, Ron Darling, Bianca Jagger, Dina Merrill, Heather Watts, Jock Soto and Tom Seaver.

Please join us! Your participation will help the March of Dimes in its commitment to prevent birth defects - our nation's primary childhood health problem.

We promise you a terrific evening where no one will dare to complain about the food. We will be in touch shortly, but if you cannot wait, you can reach us at 212-353-8353.

March of Dimes 233 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10003 212 353-8353

The March of Dimes was established in 1938 by
President Franklin Roosevelt. The initial goal of the
foundation was to end the threat of epidemic polio,
a goal that was realized in 1955 with the development
of the Salk polio vaccine. In 1958, the March of Dimes
was rededicated to an even more formidable challenge,
the prevention of birth defects.

In New York City, the March of Dimes' resources are
now committed to a Campaign for Healthier Babies.
The goal of this Campaign is to lower the incidence
of low birthweight, or babies born too small, too soon.
This year, 12,000 infants—nearly one out of every ten
newborns in the city—will start life dangerously small.
A thousand of these infants will die, and many surviving
babies will suffer permanent mental or physical damage.

Low birthweight can be prevented. In communities where
quality prenatal care and education are available, low
birthweight rates are half as high as they are today in
New York. Through the Campaign for Healthier Babies,
the March of Dimes is working to ensure that all New York City
mothers receive the care their babies need to be born healthy.

Miss Beverly Sills

CHAIRMEN

Mrs. Donald J. Trump

Mrs. Thomas L. Kempner

Mr. Henry R. Kravis

Mr. Ronald O. Perelman

Mr. & Mrs. Milton Petrie

Mrs. William P. Rayner

Mr. Steven J. Ross

VICE CHAIRMEN

Cordially invite you to a

Gourmet Gala

an unusual dinner dance and an
even more unusual celebrity cooking competition

to benefit the March of Dimes

Tuesday, the twenty-first of November
The Plaza

Black Tie
RSVP

Reception six-thirty
Dinner eight o'clock

JUN 20 1989

Columbia University in the City of New York | New York, N.Y. 10027

SCHOOL OF LAW

435 West 116th Street

June 14, 1989

The Honorable Henry A. Kissinger
Kissinger Associates
435 East 52nd Street
New York, New York 10022

Dear Henry:

I thought you might like to see the enclosed Joint Statement which a committee of the United Nations Association of the United States under my chairmanship drafted in Moscow recently with a counterpart committee of the Soviet United Nations Association.

I believe it represents an unprecedented consensus between citizens of the two countries on how to make the United Nations work better in the maintenance of peace and security.

The U.S. and Soviet governments seem to look favorably on this statement, as evidenced by the fact that Ambassador Pickering and Ambassador Belonogov were present when we released the statement to the press today.

I'd be delighted to have any comments you may have on the statement, should you care to send them on.

With best personal regards,

RNG:dv
Enclosure
/0601js

UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

485 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10017-6104 PHONE: (212) 697-3232 FAX: (212) 682-9185 CABLE: UNASMER

WASHINGTON OFFICE: 1010 VERMONT AVENUE, N.W., SUITE 904, WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005 PHONE: (202) 347-5004 FAX: (202) 628-5945

JOINT STATEMENT

ISSUED BY
THE UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION OF THE USA
AND THE SOVIET U.N. ASSOCIATION
ON
“THE U.N.’S ROLE IN ENHANCING
PEACE AND SECURITY”

Moscow, USSR

April 1989

This joint statement on the U.N.'s role in peace and security is the first
in a series by the United Nations Association of the USA and the Soviet U.N.
Association on the future of the U.N. system. The suggestions contained
in it would have the effect of enhancing the U.N.'s work in the area of
preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping and strengthening the role of
international law.

The American and Soviet participants in the series of ongoing informal
meetings which led to this joint statement regard it as an important first step
toward revitalizing the world organization so that it may better anticipate and
deal with threats to the peace.

The Chairman of the American panel is Richard N. Gardner, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of International Organization Affairs and Ambassador to Italy, and currently Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia University Law School. Co-Chairing the Soviet panel are Vladimir V. Shustov, Chief of the Research Coordination Center of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Victor L. Israelyan, Vice-President of the Soviet UNA and former Ambassador to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament.

Anniversary Chairman

Katharine Graham

Co-Chairmen

Henry A. Kissinger

Cyrus R. Vance

Chairman of the Association

Elliot L. Richardson

Chairman, Board of Governors

Ivan Selin

Chairman, National Council

Cyrus R. Vance

Chairman, U.N. Day

Stanley C. Pace

President

Edward C. Luck

Vice Chairmen

Ruth J. Hinerfeld

Harry W. Knight

Estelle Linzer

Jean Picker

Richard J. Schmeelk

Brent Scowcroft

Secretary

William J. vanden Heuvel

Treasurer

John C. Bierwirth

Co-Chairmen, Economic Policy

Council

Henry Kaufman

Jack Sheinkman

Chairmen, U.S.-USSR Parallel

Studies Program

Richard N. Gardner

John R. Petty

Chairman, U.S.-China Parallel

Studies Program

John C. Bierwirth

Chairman, Quadrilateral Program

on Asian Security

Frank C. Carlucci

Chairman, Advisory Group

Multilateral Project

Matthew Nimetz

Chairman, WFU/NA Committee

Christopher H. Phillips

Governors

Patrick A. Gerschel

Mary Hall

Armand Hammer

Jerome Jacobson

William P. Laughlin

William A. Miller

Leo Nevas

William S. Norman

John R. Petty

Evelyn M. Pickarts

Mary Purcell

Frank E. Richardson

Arthur Ross

Rabbi Alexander Schindler

Jack Sheinkman

Helmut Sonnenfeldt

Michael Witunski

Vice President, Policy Studies

Toby Trister Gati

Executive Director, UNA Fund

Fred Tamalonis

Director, Special Events

Stanley Raisen

Executive Director, National

Programs

James M. Olson

Director, Communications

John Tessitore

Founding Chairman
Robert S. Benjamin (1909-1979)

Chairman Emeritus

James S. McDonnell (1899-1980)

Honorary Chairman

Arthur J. Goldberg

JOINT STATEMENT

Issued by
The United Nations Association of the USA
and the Soviet U.N. Association
on
"The U.N.'s Role in Enhancing Peace and Security"

Moscow, USSR

April 1989

The United Nations has come center stage once again. This reflects a growing recognition of the U.N.'s role in international relations in an era of increasing global interdependence. Its mediation and peacekeeping efforts are helping to stop the fighting and to address the sources of conflict in several war-torn areas of the world. Its pathbreaking work to protect the environment, to promote development, and to foster a concern for human rights has demonstrated the practical value of cooperation across a wide range of international concerns.

In part, this reflects the reality of a very changed world. Until recently, the U.N. was the scene of sharp East-West and North-South confrontations in which ideological and nationalistic perspectives dominated over a sense of shared interest. Now, however, national perspectives have begun to give way to a more realistic global view based on interdependence and a broader common interest in preserving global order. The result has been less confrontation and greater cooperation among U.N. member states. The politics of inclusion and consensus are emerging step by step at the U.N.

The improvement in Soviet-American relations has had a multiplier effect on these positive trends. It seems that if member states, the U.S. and the USSR included, have learned one thing from forty years of U.N. "cold war," it is that the world body cannot function when national interests are defined in an exclusionary way. The U.N. can work to the extent that nations define their national interest to take account of the security and welfare of other states and to the extent that they are ready to seek a balance of interests. A special responsibility lies with the five permanent members of the Security Council, and especially the U.S. and the USSR, to set the tone and lead the way to a broader and more farsighted concept of national interest.

While the U.N. is not yet free of adversarial and fruitless debates, on the whole, the U.N.'s political environment has been improving. Pragmatism and consensus building are replacing political posturing and divisive vote-counting. The achievements of the Secretary-General and his uniquely qualified staff in defusing trouble spots, the lowering of the decibel level in General Assembly debates, and the serious approach of member states to budgetary reform are all manifestations of this new spirit.

Under these promising new circumstances, the UNAs of the USA and the USSR have undertaken over several years a broad reassessment of the U.N.'s potential to advance the common interests of its member states. The two Associations began by examining the three interrelated issues of preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, and the role of international law and the International Court of Justice (World Court). This joint report, the first in a series, will be followed by others on multilateral arms control, international economic cooperation, the environment, humanitarian concerns, human rights, and a variety of other topics. Both Associations recognize that we live in an interdependent world in which the linkages between these issues are becoming increasingly evident to policymakers and the public at large.

It is our hope that the ideas expressed in the joint reports will spur cooperative action by our governments as well as consideration by other U.N. member states and the U.N. Secretariat. Broad public discussion of the issues in such forums as the World Federation of UNAs (WFUNA) can help to sustain the momentum for peaceful political change during a period of rapid economic and social transformation.

UNA-USA and the Soviet U.N. Association believe that new opportunities have opened up to realize the potential of the U.N. Charter in ways not possible before. At the same time, the new opportunities highlight the need to improve the U.N.'s ability to function in the international system as a force for enhancing security and cooperation.

Both U.N. Associations are convinced that a growing United Nations role in global problems, ranging from peace and security issues to economic development, human rights, and environmental protection, serves the interests of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the entire world community. For the momentum to be sustained, however, two things must happen: First, concurrent with the improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations, both countries must be willing to encourage the U.N. to deal with major issues; and, second, the U.N. must develop more effective institutional means to promote peace and stability.

After many years of stalemate, differences in the U.S. and Soviet approach to peace and security issues have narrowed significantly, particularly as concerns the management of peacekeeping operations and the role of the Secretary-General. The new focus on preventive diplomacy is also welcomed by both sides, for it presents the U.N. with new opportunities to involve itself in regional disputes *before* the shooting starts. The greater acceptance of international adjudication and the present informal bilateral U.S.-Soviet discussions on defining areas for compulsory World Court adjudication offer yet another chance to expand the role of international law.

Opportunities not taken, however, are opportunities lost. Thus, while heartened by the many positive changes at the U.N. in the last few years, UNA-USA and the Soviet U.N. Association emphasize the importance to both governments of ongoing discussions on ways to enhance the U.N.'s effectiveness and of taking practical steps to solve peace and security issues through creative adaptation of traditional U.N. capabilities. If the U.N. system is to respond to the many new demands being placed on it, all member states must be willing to give political support to U.N. operations and accept the financial obligations these new tasks entail.

2

Preventive Diplomacy

It is in the area of preventive diplomacy that both Associations see room for a major expansion of U.N. capabilities. The world body must be involved early in dispute settlement in order to fully utilize the powers granted under the Charter to the Security Council, the General Assembly, and especially the Secretary-General.

If the U.N. is to respond to threats to international peace and security on a global or regional level, the Secretary-General must be capable of identifying emerging conflict situations and of taking initiatives approved or endorsed by the Security Council.

The recently adopted "Declaration on the Removal and Prevention of Disputes and Situations which may Threaten International Peace and Security and on the Role of the United Nations in this Field" offers a solid starting point for codification of the Secretary-General's role in this area. Article 99 of the Charter already empowers the Secretary-General to bring threats to international peace before the Security Council. A more activist approach is also outlined in the Declaration, including the involvement of the Secretary-General in a dispute either at the request of the parties or of his own volition if they fail to invite him. By encouraging regional efforts toward a solution, and most important, making full use of fact-finding missions and Special Representatives, the Secretary-General can have information available to him about brewing crises. Both the Soviet and the American U.N. Associations lay special emphasis on this last point and encourage the upgrading of information available to the Secretary-General *before* disputes reach crisis level.

This information can come from U.N. representatives located in various parts of the world in their capacity as information officers, as resident representatives, or as members of special *ad hoc* commissions appointed by the Secretary-General. These can function as the "eyes and ears" of the U.N., providing timely information on trouble spots. The newly created Office of Research and Collection of Information (ORCI) should distill and analyze this information, supplementing it with other sources for use by the Secretary-General on a timely basis.

The Charter gives the Security Council primary responsibility for peace and security. It is in the interest of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union that this primary responsibility be maintained and that the work of the Council be improved. The Council has demonstrated in recent months that it can operate as originally intended, with close cooperation of the permanent members. Greater five-power cooperation should not be feared by other members because it is the essential precondition for an effectively functioning U.N. For their part, the permanent members should show a sensitivity to the interests of other states and consult with them fully. In addition to informal meetings of the five, there should be a larger number of informal closed meetings of the whole Council, with or without the parties to a dispute, outside the glare of publicity. Annual meetings of the Security Council, at which the Foreign Ministers of Council members meet on a yearly basis on the eve of the General Assembly, could provide an opportunity for a review of the world's security situation. At least part of these annual meetings should be closed.

[LC]

3

[LC]

The work of the Security Council, meeting in closed or open session, should be supplemented by information provided by fact-finding missions and other inputs as warranted. Fact-finding at the initiative of the Secretary-General or the Security Council and with the consent of the parties should be undertaken as early as possible, for it will encourage the flow of information to all parties and prevent the further deterioration of tense situations. U.N. members should, in principle, agree to accept U.N. fact-finding in all disputes to which they are parties. The Security Council should also consider sending good offices missions or even small observer groups as a preventive measure rather than merely *ex post facto*, as in the past.

## Peacekeeping

On the Iran-Iraq border, new U.N. forces stand ready to supervise a Security Council cease-fire mandate. In Namibia new U.N. forces are seeking to ensure free elections and an orderly road to independence in the face of enormous difficulty. In the future, U.N. forces may be deployed in such different areas as Western Sahara and Kampuchea. And there appears to be a role for U.N. observers to monitor compliance with the peace plan of the Central American presidents. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have an interest in ensuring that the objectives of forces in place are achieved and that future mandates are defined as precisely as possible.

In the final analysis, U.N. peacekeeping operations will become integral to the resolution of regional conflicts only if they lead to peace. Operations of interminable duration, with indefinite objectives, and costing hundreds of millions of dollars a year are unlikely to command world support over the long run. Continued diplomatic pressure must be exerted on opposing sides to implement cease-fire provisions and withdrawals and to begin negotiations. Ways of encouraging the process might include a recasting of financial obligations to impose greater costs over time on the regional states most directly concerned. At the same time, it will become more and more important to enlarge the number of states contributing to peacekeeping forces and to ensure adequate training, logistical support, and financing for peacekeeping forces.

At present, although neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union supplies troops for peacekeeping forces, each nation is assessed a sizable percentage of the operating cost of peacekeeping operations. Both the U.S. and the USSR can take additional supportive steps through the Security Council or in support of the Secretary-General to make these operations more effective. These may include the supply of communications equipment, logistical support, and other materiel. In some circumstances, consideration might be given to multilateral naval peacekeeping under U.N. auspices to perform limited tasks relating to the implementation of cease-fire agreements and the reopening of international waterways.

Because of political sensitivities, it will always be incumbent on the Security Council to lay down guidelines for peacekeeping forces and to modify them as the situation changes. The experience of past peacekeeping attests to the importance of clear mandates wherever U.N. forces function. As observer and border patrol forces are followed by forces responsible for election monitoring and the transition to independence, the U.N. will face

4

The Role of International Law and the International Court of Justice

The strengthening of international law is an important element in international cooperation to foster peace and security, to promote trade and development, and to secure basic human rights. The interests of all nations are served by an international legal order that provides clear norms of mutual self-restraint and mutual cooperation, which in turn promote the goals of predictability, stability, and justice. A commitment to observe the rule of law abroad should also be seen as a logical extension of the commitment to observe the rule of law at home. Both Associations emphasize the key role of international law in international relations and call for broadening participation in multilateral treaties and conventions. The rapidity of scientific and technological progress, and its potentially disruptive consequences, underlines the need to create new international legal norms that take account of changing international circumstances.

Because of their weight in international affairs, the United States and the Soviet Union have a historic responsibility and opportunity to advance the cause of international law. They can do this in two principal ways: first, by working to achieve a common understanding of the content of international legal norms and, second, by working to strengthen institutions for the peaceful settlement of disputes.

To achieve a common understanding of the content of international legal norms, action in many fields would be helpful. Most important is the drafting of multilateral agreements by the International Law Commission that codify and develop international law. Another is to encourage a common understanding of international legal norms through the exchange of professors and students and the holding of seminars on international law subjects. The possibility of drafting a textbook on international law that could be used in the schools and universities of the two countries should also be explored.

Much more can also be done to strengthen existing machinery for the peaceful settlement of international disputes and to encourage greater use of that machinery. The five permanent members of the Security Council -- the Soviet Union and the United States in particular -- can by their influence and example help give new vitality to Article 33 of the Charter under which parties to disputes are pledged to "seek a solution by negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or other peaceful means of their own choice."

Both Associations believe that the role of the International Court of Justice should be strengthened. Members should be willing to request advisory opinions from the Court on legal questions when such opinions would help in the consideration of items before the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies.

Recent proposals of the Soviet Union build on long-standing Western interest in exploring mutually beneficial ways of enlarging the Court's adversary jurisdiction. One of these ways would be to have the five permanent members of the Security Council make identical declarations accepting the Court's compulsory jurisdiction under Article 36(2) of its statute in certain well-defined categories of legal disputes -- for example, with regard to cases involving trade and investment, the Law of the Sea, the extradition and prosecution of

6