THE REAL SOVIET DEMOCRATS ARE ON A ROLL: THE WEST MUST NOT HELP GORBACHEV RESIST PRESSURE FOR CHANGE

(Washington, D.C.): During his first
day back in the Soviet capital after the
coup, Mikhail Gorbachev dashed the
earnest hopes and defied the confident
predictions of his devoted supporters in
the West: He demonstrated by his
rhetoric and his initial actions that he
continues to be firmly committed — as
he was before the abortive coup —
to the institutions that perpetrated it.

Subsequent steps, taken under pressure
from Boris Yeltsin and his supporters and
announced today, reveal where the real
hope for structural reform in the Soviet
Union lies. They also underscore the
importance of the West finally making the
recipients of its political, economic and
technological assistance the genuine
reformers at the republic and local
levels and strictly conditioning any
future support to Gorbachev and Moscow
center on a wholesale redirection of
their policies to date.

A Scorecard:
On 21 August 1991, as the coup d’etat
began to collapse, the Center for
Security Policy issued a Decision Brief
entitled: Gorbachev
Must Break With His Erstwhile Allies
Before He Warrants Western Support, Aid.
This paper offered a basis for
calibrating whether a man who had been
brought to power and maintained there for
six-years by the KGB, the Communist Party
and the military-industrial complex would
now break fundamentally and unequivocally
with these institutions. Among the key
indices were judged to be whether he:

• held the KGB, military
  and Party — and not
  just his appointees who
  represented them on the
  “Committee for the State of
  Emergency” — accountable
  for the coup, including
  taking long-overdue steps to
  dismantle their hold on power;
• replaced those who
  participated in the coup and
  their senior subordinates by
  individuals with unblemished
  records of commitment to urgent,
  wholesale democratic and free
  market reform;
• agreed to allow the
  immediate secession from the
  Soviet Union of the Baltic States
  and such other republics as have
  sought their independence; and
• spurned the sorts of
  half-steps and temporizing
  measures toward private property,
  free enterprise, repatriation of
  profits, etc. that have
  characterized his approach to
  fundamental economic reform to
  date.

Gorbachev’s Initial
Response Is Telling:
Unfortunately for those — like President
Bush — who have strenuously insisted
that Gorbachev is a committed reformer, the
Soviet President’s initial words and
deeds after his restoration failed each
of these measures. In fact,
Gorbachev showed in both his declared
positions and his personnel actions when
he returned to Moscow (much as in those preceding
his ostensible removal from power) that
he remains committed to preserving the
old order insofar as he:

Item: Gorbachev
initially named Mikhail Moiseyev to head
the Soviet Defense Ministry.
Gen. Moiseyev was the same man reported
to have assumed Defense Minister Yazov’s
responsibilities for the “Committee
on the State of Emergency” when the
latter was “taken ill” in
mid-coup. He has long been associated
with the anti-reformist elements of the
Army hierarchy, a fact exemplified by the
Kremlin’s ostensible inability to
complete the CFE and START Treaties
without Moiseyev’s blessing.

Item: Gorbachev
initially designated senior subordinates
of the coup-plotters, Deputy KGB Chairman
Leonid Shebarshin and Deputy Interior
Minister Vasili Trushin to head their
respective agencies. It is not
possible at present to ascertain whether
these individuals had any direct
roles in perpetrating the coup. The
working assumption, however, must be
that, if only by virtue of their
positions at the time, they were aware of
— if not involved in — its planning and
execution.

Item: In his
press conference, Gorbachev
expressly disavowed any intention of
undertaking a “witch-hunt”
aimed at purging those involved in the
coup in the KGB, Communist Party
or military-industrial complex. Such a
posture speaks volumes about his
perception of those institutions as the
base of his own power. Arguably, it could
even support the theory that he might
not, as Eduard Shevardnadze has said,
have been the “victim”
of, but at least an initial collaborator
in, this coup d’etat.

Item: Gorbachev
went to some lengths to reaffirm in
particular his commitment to the
Communist Party. He criticized
those like Shevardnadze and Alexander
Yakovlev who recently abandoned it, and
expressed his determination as a matter
of “principle” to remain a
faithful party member. Indeed, he vowed
to “fight to the end for renewal
of the party.”

Item: Gorbachev
indicated that he would simply
“listen to the opinion” of Anatoly
Lukyanov, leader of the Supreme Soviet,
who has been accused of having
masterminded the coup. There was no
demand that Lukyanov resign his seat and,
thereby, forego the parliamentary
protection that makes him currently
immune to arrest. (The reason why
Gorbachev seemed willing yesterday
to turn the other cheek as far as
Lukyanov was concerned may been revealed
today when a member of the Russian
parliament averred that Lukyanov had
publicly asserted Gorbachev was involved
in the planning for the coup. In short,
it could have been a payoff for
Lukyanov’s silence.)

Item: Gorbachev
gave no evidence of a recognition that
his “reform” program was wholly
inadequate or misdirected.
Instead, he appeared unchastened; he
maintained that “whenever you carry
through a reform program, sometimes it is
necessary to regroup.”
Regrouping is not what the bona fide
reformers want to see the KGB, army and
Party do.

Contrast With the True
Reformers: Gorbachev’s
initial post-coup actions and attitudes
contrast sharply with those of the
genuine reformist elements, notably those
of Boris Yeltsin and his colleagues in
the Russian Republic. Unlike him, they
have expressly called for: a dismantling
of the KGB (a process helpfully
started with the destruction yesterday of
Felix Dzerzhinsky’s statue); the removal
of the Communist Party from workplaces,

governmental offices and the
armed forces; a radical
and swift down-scaling of the
military-industrial complex; independence
for the Baltic States; wholesale
devolution of power from the center to
the republics; and swift prosecution of
all those associated with the recent coup.

Interestingly, unnamed senior White
House officials with President Bush in
Kennebunkport yesterday backgrounded the
press on their real misgivings
about some or all of these aspects of
Gorbachev’s post-coup performance. Their
statements of concern about the Moiseyev
appointment and Gorbachev’s continuing
fealty to the Communist Party clearly
reflected the public sentiment reaching a
fever pitch in Moscow, in the
independence-bound republics and
elsewhere in the USSR: Gorbachev
remains part of the problem, not
part of the solution in the USSR.

Bush Still on the Wrong
Side: Those statements made
off-the-record could not have contrasted
more sharply, however, with the official
positions publicly enunciated by
President Bush and his colleagues in
Western European capitals yesterday. They
all seemed to pick up right where they
left off last week, singing Gorbachev’s
praises as a reformer and recommitting
themselves to assisting him. Indeed, if
the Europeans have their way, they will
do so far more massively than has been
done to date. Mr. Bush
actually went so far in defense of his
woefully overexposed position as a
Gorbachev enthusiast as to make the preposterous
statement that the Soviet President’s
stature had not been diminished as a
result of the coup!

Gorbachev Tacks:
In his remarks before the Supreme Soviet
of the Russian Republic, Gorbachev
announced that he had arrived at a number
of agreements — including ones
concerning personnel matters — with
Boris Yeltsin. He revealed that some of
those appointed yesterday were to be
removed from office and others would be
subjected to an investigation jointly run
by his office and that of the Russian
President. Indeed, in an apparent
spontaneous decision taken in the face of
catcalls when Gorbachev suggested that
some like old Gorbachev bagmen Primakov
and Vorontsov had objected to the coup,
he announced that his entire government
must resign (presumably excepting
himself).

The West Must Shift Course
Now! The Center for Security
Policy believes that, in light of
the latest, powerful evidence of Mikhail
Gorbachev’s desire to preserve the power
of the traditional central authorities in
the USSR and his willingness to yield on
this score only in the face of
sustained pressure, it would be a
grievous mistake for the West to come to
his rescue. Accordingly, the
Center urges the G-7 nations to suspend
any actions that would have the effect of
“intervening in the internal
affairs” of the Soviet Union by
giving Gorbachev political, economic and
technological support that might
strengthen his ability to resist the
constructive demands for change from the
genuine democratic and free market forces
at the republic and local levels.

Specifically, it would be ill-advised
and counterproductive now to pursue such
initiatives with the Gorbachev regime as:

• A further extension of taxpayer-underwritten
  credits in support of
  agricultural and other exports —
  an idea made all the more bizarre
  (and actually illegal
  under present U.S. law) by
  Moscow’s demonstrable lack of
  creditworthiness;
• The imminent liberalization of
  Moscow’s access to militarily
  relevant high technologies
  scheduled to go into effect on 1
  September, certain under present
  circumstances to find their way
  into the hands of the Soviet
  defense-industrial complex;
• Assistance in other ways to the modernization
  (e.g., technical support, joint
  ventures, etc.) of the Soviet
  military-industrial complex
  under the rubric of “defense
  conversion;”
• Additional borrowing
  privileges through the European
  Bank for Reconstruction and
  Development, yet another
  device for Moscow center to tap
  into Western taxpayer resources;
• Full-membership in — and
  borrowing privileges from — the
  IMF and World Bank, still another
  couple of Western
  taxpayer-guaranteed lines of
  credit;
• Massive infusions of technology
  and resources to facilitate the
  revitalization of the Soviet
  strategic energy sector,
  a potential source of untied
  hard-currency that could help
  prop up the regime and postpone
  further its willingness to
  implement systemic reform; and
• Creation of a ruble
  stabilization fund which
  would permit Moscow center to
  gain access to Western hard
  currencies simply by printing and
  converting worthless rubles, with
  few, if any, of the necessary
  preconditions in place.

Should the Bush Administration prove
determined nonetheless to press forward
with such initiatives, despite the fact
that they would have the effect of still
further aligning the United States with
Gorbachev and his central authorities —
and, as a practical matter, undermining
the democratic alternatives — Congress
should move to block these steps.
In this connection, the Center commends
Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ) and Rep. Dave
McCurdy (D-OK) for their resolute
expressions of support for the true
reformist forces and their opposition to
further taxpayer-guaranteed bailouts for
those, like Mikhail Gorbachev, who remain
devoted to the old guard and to the
preservation of their traditional power.