A Preview of Coming Attractions : With Conservatives On the Attack, Can Gorbachev Hang On?

Is Mikhail S. Gorbachev in trouble? It is hard to believe that a Soviet leader who is about to participate in a Washington summit meeting with his American counterpart could be facing open opposition. Yet the humiliating dismissal of Boris N. Yeltsin from his post as head of the Moscow party and government apparatus and the all-out attack on democratization in Pravda on Monday have to be regarded as a serious setback for Gorbachev.

Moreover, the way Yeltsin was fired, and the events leading up to his dismissal, suggest that this may indeed be a preview of coming attractions, the dismissal of General Secretary Gorbachev himself.

Nothing quite like the firing of Yeltsin and such a broadside attack on democratization has occurred since Gorbachev assumed control. Certainly, Communist Party officials have been fired; for that matter Viktor V. Grishin, Yeltsin predecessor, was fired. But Grishin was fired for obstruction, incompetence and knavery, not because he believed too much in the reform process. Similarly democratization and glasnost have also been attacked, but never in such an all-out way and in such an important paper as Pravda.

There is no reason why the reform process in the Soviet Union cannot suffer setbacks. After all, this seems to happen in China every few months and yet the reforms continue. Moreover, Soviet reformers defend what is happening in their country by criticizing American observers for not applauding debate and discussion in the Politburo and the Central Committee when for years, we in the United States berated them because there were no differences of opinion and everything was decided unanimously. But there are more sinister implications here.

Several aspects of Yeltsin’s dismissal were particularly distressing. The fact that he found it necessary to criticize himself for his ambitions and selfishness is reminiscent of tactics used by Josef Stalin during the purges and Mao Tse-tung during the Cultural Revolution. In contrast, when Hu Yaobang was removed as the Chinese Communist Party secretary a few months ago, he made no such self-criticisms. After all, Yeltsin’s greatest shortcoming was that he was too passionate about the economic and political reforms Gorbachev was espousing and worked too hard to bring them into being.

Equally distressing for those of us not on a Central Committee, and that must include many members of the Soviet intelligentsia, is the fact that not only was there a unanimous vote against Yeltsin, but that those who attacked him did so with such vehemence and malice. In fact, that makes it all the more likely that Yeltsin’s real sin was in being too thorough in his crackdown on the Moscow bureaucrats. Coming from Sverdlosk, he felt few ties to the existing bureaucracy and so he began a wholesale housecleaning. This was received with something less than enthusiasm within the bureaucracy. In a letter to a Moscow newspaper, the wife of one bureaucrat warned Yeltsin, “Don’t snipe at us . . . you are not strong enough. We will rip up the puny sails of your economic restructuring and you will be unable to reach your destination.” Another caution, “Go back to Sverdlosk while you still have time.” And as they threatened, these bureaucrats got him before he got them.

What should make Gorbachev nervous about all of this is that he has been no less committed to the purge of inept, corrupt and bypassed bureaucrats. However, this has not been at the Moscow level, but at the national level. Those bureaucrats who have not yet been purged are opposed to Gorbachev just as they were to Yeltsin.

Nor does the similarity stop there. There is almost nothing in Yeltsin’s speeches that has not appeared in Gorbachev’s pronouncements. That includes criticisms of subordinates by name, including those appointed by Gorbachev himself. If anything, Gorbachev has been even more passionate in his commitment to economic reform and his criticisms of what heretofore has been trumpeted widely as past Soviet achievements. No such thing, insists Gorbachev. In referring to the reasons why he wanted economic reforms, Gorbachev explained in Riga last February that the economy “had gone downhill so that it stank.” He described the Soviet economy today as being in a “pre-crisis condition.”

Such criticisms have not been received kindly by more conservative members of the Politburo like Yegor K. Ligachev, the second most powerful member of the Politburo, and Viktor M. Chebrikov, the head of the KGB. Ligachev, for example, complained in August that people abroad and even “some people in our own country tried to denigrate the entire path of the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R. and present it as an unbroken chain of errors.” That is not only a criticism of Yeltsin, but Gorbachev as well.

Chebrikov has had his say as well, which in light of Pravda’s attack on democratization must be especially chilling. In his speech in September, Chebrikov criticized those in the West who seek to instill “in Soviet people the bourgeois understanding of democracy . . . install political and ideological pluralism . . . and plant the virus of nationalism.” Given that since September of 1986, Gorbachev has repeatedly insisted that “all of us, comrades, must start learning to work in conditions of extended democracy,” that “one must not be afraid of the process of democratization” and that those who oppose democracy “do not believe in our people,” it is impossible to escape the conclusion that Pravda’s attack on democratization is directed in whole or in large part at Gorbachev.

That Gorbachev has continued to defend his push for democratization, even after the Pravda article, suggests that he is as yet still in charge. Indeed, the fact that Yeltsin was named first deputy chairman of the Soviet State Committee for Construction shows that Gorbachev is willing and able to prevent Yeltsin’s complete disgrace. But it is ironic that Gorbachev, like Ronald Reagan, will come to the summit meeting worried by attacks on his domestic policies. That is why both men need each other and an international agreement.