Soviet Power Struggle

Has the long-anticipated showdown finally begun in the Soviet Union between Mikhail S. Gorbachev and opponents of his plans for radical economic restructuring? Maybe. Certainly the rumors, the leaks, the inspired speculation that have swept Moscow this week all encouraged the conclusion that a political struggle was under way at the highest level and, indeed, that its outcome may already have been decided. The chief competitors in this struggle are Gorbachev and the party’s second-ranking official and keeper of the ideological flame, Yegor K. Ligachev.

The Gorbachev-Ligachev dispute is no mere clash of egos, no simple contest of political wills. It is a fight over raw power. At stake may be nothing less than the decisive role in determining where Soviet policies will head in coming years, and which current and aspiring officials will administer the most important affairs of party and state.

Ligachev stands at the head of those who fear that Gorbachev’s reform proposals run too deep and that his tolerance for a marginally more liberal political climate goes too far. He has not held back from directly challenging Gorbachev’s leadership by publicly associating himself with anti-reform forces. Some of those in the party who share Ligachev’s views do so because their deepest ideological beliefs are offended by Gorbachev’s seeming departure from Soviet tradition. Others, probably many more, ally themselves with Gorbachev’s opponents because they sense that his proposed changes threaten their careers, their powers, their perquisites.

Even to hope to produce change requires first gaining firm control over the levers of power. If Gorbachev in fact is able to neutralize Ligachev he will have gone far in that direction, beginning with the opportunity to make sure the important party conference scheduled for June is packed with his own supporters. Then would come the real challenge.

Gorbachev in the 1980s is not Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, given to absurd boasts and unachievable promises about the imminent triumphs of a communist economy. Gorbachev and the other reformers know that their nation’s economy is desperately sick and falling ever further behind in a global high-technology environment that becomes increasingly more competitive. The Soviet economy is a mess for many reasons, not least because Soviet ideology is wholly unsuited to making efficient decisions about the allocation of resources and the satisfaction of human wants. Gorbachev knows what changes he would like to make. So do his enemies. That’s what the fight is all about.