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The Soviet Impasse: 'No Exit'?
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16540 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1989 |
1,328 Words |
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Charles F. Elliott
Charles F. Elliott is professor of Sino-Soviet studies at
George Washington University in Washington, D.C. |
The embattled Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has recently returned from his traditional late-summer vacation (in the Crimea) to a tangle of vexing problems. His televised speech on September 9 adhered to his usual stance of eschewing the "Right" or the "Left" course; instead, he insisted upon his unswerving adherence to the "Leninist-centrist" course of perestroika. For Gorbachev, as for the rest of the Soviet leadership, no easy solution is in sight.
The expanding nationality unrest demonstrates a new assertiveness within the labor force.
The inert nomenklatura (the Soviet stratum which has access to the most important jobs, special stores, and privileges in the USSR) shows no sign of willingness to permit systemic change and thereby abandon its traditional power and perquisites. The essence of the Soviet system has, over the past seven decades, been one of sustaining--at whatever cost--the Communist Party's "leading role" in the Soviet Union. The Soviet impasse is today starkly clear. Even before Gorbachev became the general secretary--but increasingly since March 1985 and insistently in 1989--it had become evident that the Communist Party itself acted as a fetter upon the effective modernization of the Soviet economy. (Marx believed that private property was a "fetter" upon the development of the productive forces.) Accordingly, Gorbachev announced at the Congress of People's Deputies (held this year) that the USSR would have a new constitution.
A new Soviet fundamental law, however, will not of itself mean a true change in the system. Andrei Sakharov, the great Soviet human rights advocate, has correctly asserted that
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