Too Many Embarrassments Could Sink Soviet Openness

Almost lost in the speculation about the Soviet submarine that sank in the Atlantic was the surprising news that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev had alerted President Reagan about the nuclear-powered craft’s accident two days earlier.

Being so open about their problems, and so quickly, is a very different reaction from what we’re used to from the Soviets, and certainly different from the way they responded after the explosion at Chernobyl. It took three full days before Soviet officials made a public announcement--and it was three sentences long. As the Soviets’ head of state, Gorbachev was no better; he waited 18 days before speaking publicly about the disaster.

Secrecy is the Soviets normal response to catastrophe. They have never acknowledged a nuclear-plant explosion similar to Chernobyl that occurred in the Urals in 1957, and they refused until the last minute to tell the world that one of their nuclear-powered missiles was due to crash back on Earth in 1978.

When he took office, Gorbachev made a point of calling for more openness in the Soviet Union, yet neither his nor his government’s initial response to the explosion at Chernobyl seemed to indicate anyone had learned anything new. But the Chernobyl experience was a costly one, not only in terms of lives, but also in terms of international prestige. Gorbachev was caught with his reactor down, which did little to enhance his image as a man who said the Soviet Union could be trusted to be open about a nuclear arms test ban and verification procedures.

In response to the outcry over Chernobyl, particularly from Europe, Gorbachev did a sharp turnabout in favor of candor. He ordered an investigation of the accident and publication of its findings in unprecedented detail. At an open meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Soviet participants were frank in discussing Chernobyl. On Aug. 31, Soviet authorities even reported a shipping accident that in other times would have gone unacknowledged: the sinking of a passenger liner in the Black Sea, with the loss of more than 100 lives.

This heralded a very different public relations policy on the part of the Soviet authorities--or did it?

There is no doubt that openness represents Gorbachev’s own personal agenda. He has toured the country demanding that there be more openness-- glasnost. On a visit to Khabarovsk on the Pacific Coast, Gorbachev urged party officials in the area to change their ways. Stop suppressing the local newspapers, he said. Encourage them to report blunders and corruption. “If we do not criticize ourselves and subject ourselves to analysis--we do not have an opposition party, comrades--this is why (criticism) is a requirement, it is simply an essential requirement for the normal functioning of both the party and society.”

Such candor is what makes Gorbachev such a fascinating leader. The problem is, not all agree with him. There are strong forces in the Soviet Union opposed to the whole policy of openness: Too much is no good; it can create the wrong ideas. For example, Yegor K. Ligachev, the No. 2 man in the Politburo, complained at the February Communist Party Congress that while “there has been good criticism of ‘everything improper,’ unfortunately some newspapers have permitted lapses, and Pravda’s editorial office has not escaped this.” Andrei Gromyko said much the same thing.

Just how powerful the opposition can be is suggested by the fact that Gorbachev himself cannot be freely quoted. When Tass and Pravda got around to reporting his speech at Khabarovsk, they censored his assertion “we do not have any opposition party, comrades.” In other words, even Gorbachev can be too open; a reference to a multi-party system might cause problems.

So why the openness after fire erupted on the nuclear submarine 1,300 miles off the Atlantic Coast? The most obvious answer is that the Soviets do not want to do anything to jeopardize this weekend’s mini-summit. Even though the Pentagon knew about the explosion before Gorbachev’s message, the Soviets wanted to head off any repetition of the Chernobyl scare and a public relations fiasco just when they need to put their best foot forward. The favorable reaction that they received abroad for being so open should convince those who are resisting Gorbachev’s counsel on the value of frankness in good public relations.

Whether this is the pattern for the future will depend in part on the strength of the opposition and on the events themselves. If the Soviets suffer one embarrassing accident after another, their technical prowess will come into question. Remember how upsetting the Challenger explosion was for our sense of leadership in space. A series of similar, publicized incidents in the Soviet Union might be too big a blow to bear and would probably strengthen those who favor the tried-and-true course of secrecy.

Gorbachev’s openness represents a very new era for the Soviet Union, assuming that events and politics do not conspire to thwart him.