Gorbachev Pushes Toward Efficiency, Not Democracy

Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s proposal to “democratize” elections of party functionaries in the Soviet Union may in fact lead to more control from the top.

What the Soviet leader has proposed--secret balloting during elections to party bodies and the opportunity to nominate multiple candidates for party positions--seems to be directed primarily against local officials who obstruct his modernization schemes.

First, changes suggested by Gorbachev do not apply to the elections to the highest echelon of Soviet officialdom--the Central Committee and its ruling Politburo and Secretariat. He said that the elections of their members should also be modified, but did not elaborate on when and how.

Second, while promising the party rank-and-file a greater role in choosing party apparatchiks , Gorbachev made it abundantly clear that the Politburo was not about to engage in genuine power-sharing. As the general secretary put it in his address to the Central Committee plenum last month, “Of course, the party should maintain untouched a principle written in its code, according to which decisions of higher-ranking organs are obligatory to lower-ranking party committees, including decisions on cadre questions.” Gorbachev’s bottom line: Party organizations are free to select any communist as long as it is a communist whom their superiors in Moscow want to put in charge.

Finally, Gorbachev’s initiative is limited to the confines of the party. No reference was made at the plenum to allowing anything even remotely resembling political opposition. Contrary to some reports in the U.S. media, Gorbachev didn’t go so far as to argue in favor of having several candidates competing for slots in Soviets, as party-directed government councils are called. Instead, he advocated that voters in their “collectives” be given a chance “to discuss, as a rule, several candidates.” Who actually will be nominated to run, which is tantamount to winning, will still be determined by the party-government establishment.

Nevertheless, the steps announced by Gorbachev at the Central Committee plenum deserve to be taken seriously. Their main purpose appears to be quite different from introducing an element of true democracy. Rather, as in the case of most of Gorbachev’s economic reforms, the main thrust of his “democratization” campaign is to undermine entrenched positions of the bureaucracy, which during the Leonid I. Brezhnev era became increasingly independent not only from the people but from the leadership as well. Gorbachev wants to make sure that middle-level officials do not enjoy tenure, that they do not take their jobs for granted, that their abuses and sabotage of orders from the top will not remain unpunished.

This is no trivial matter. Gorbachev seems to be well aware that nothing can be really changed in the Soviet Union unless the deadwood accumulated in the party and government structure is removed. More than the intrigues of his Politburo colleagues, the general secretary has to be afraid of the quiet opposition of those who pay lip service to his program and then continue business as usual.

They also are prepared to play hardball when their political survival is at stake. In Voroshilovgrad, for instance, the local political machine, which included the provincial party secretary and the heads of the KGB and police offices, went so far as to attempt an entrapment of a local muckraking Pravda bureau chief. According to Gorbachev, the conspiracy amounted to a daring attack against his glasnost , or openness, campaign.

Gorbachev understands that the nomenklatura , as tenured bureaucracy is called in the Soviet Union, is an obstacle to his reformist designs. The problem is that the party-government apparatus is for him not only the problem but also the solution. Gorbachev is attempting to force Soviet society into modernity. And his principal political instrument is the bureaucratic machinery. Support of scientists, artists, writers and other intellectuals, while creating a lot of excitement abroad, is of marginal political utility at home.

It could make a difference if Gorbachev displayed the will to encourage a genuine initiative from below, if he were prepared to tolerate other centers of political and economic power operating outside the official institutional framework. An emergence, even if initially a modest one, of political pluralism in the Soviet Union could create a counterweight to the governing hierarchy. But to proceed in this direction would mean playing with fire. In a multinational empire, this could unleash quite a few forces challenging the fundamentals of the system. And the Soviet people, inexperienced in the art of political compromise, could make demands that the leadership would not be able to satisfy. No wonder that up to now Gorbachev has displayed little inclination to reduce the apparatus’ grip over the country.

Still, unless and until he is ready to do so, his reforms remain more in the category of efficiency than democratization. Members of the Central Committee apparently had no illusions about that when they unanimously endorsed his recommendations.