Dramatic Steps, but Going Where? : ‘Radical’ Soviet Moves Have Been Tried--and Rejected--Before

Even in the midst of the summit, the Soviet political class is looking ahead to next month’s Communist Party conference, which is likely to have a great effect on them and the future of the Soviet system.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev called the special June conference to give a needed lift to perestroika , his ambitious program for internal change. He hopes for a broad mandate to overcome conservative opposition to his ideas by using “democratization” to give impetus to economic restructuring. The centerpiece of his latest effort to transform the Soviet system into a more efficient mechanism of governance will be a package of political and legal reforms.

Most notable is last week’s proposal to partly democratize the party itself. This involves four changes: the possibility of nominating more than one candidate per party office, voting by secret ballot, limiting terms of office to five years and restricting officials to two successive terms. Two exceptions are an interim procedure for removing a sitting Central Committee member short of reelection time, and the possibility of running for a third term under special circumstances.

It is the last part of the proposed reform that has the greatest potential.

Experimentation with multiple candidacies and the secret ballot has been under way in selected local party organizations in the Soviet Union for the past year. Although early returns suggest mixed feelings on these electoral innovations, it was a foregone conclusion that Gorbachev would seek to extend them nationally.

Given the opposition to perestroika by entrenched party conservatives, many of whom have been in office for years, it was not unexpected that Gorbachev and the reformers would move to ensure greater political accountability through periodic elections and limited terms. The new proposed standard term of office is, in turn, obviously based on the prescribed five-year interval between party congresses in the post-Stalin period.

Finally, the most dramatic step toward intraparty democracy is the suggested Soviet-style 22nd Amendment, limiting tenure in office, which would presumably apply to Gorbachev as well. This idea of institutionalizing the rotation of personnel in party (as well as governmental) office was no doubt prompted by the 18-year rule of Leonid I. Brezhnev that, it is now said, led to “stagnation” and complacency.

If the turnover rule is applied to Gorbachev, this would limit him to 10 years in office (hypothetically, 15 if he won an extraordinary third term).

Yet, however radical this may all appear to the Western eye, none of these ideas are really new to the Soviet-type system. There has been precedence for all or part of the latest reforms in the Soviet Union: the Nikita S. Khrushchev period, the “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity period in Poland.

In 1961 Khrushchev pushed through the first turnover rule for the party. Rule 25 limited higher party officials to 15 years of consecutive service; lower and middle cadres were restricted to six or fewer years in office. Loopholes were provided for all. Comrades could serve “longer periods” if reelected by 75% of their constituents in secret balloting, or, failing reelection at the end of a regular term, they could run again in subsequent elections.

But under Brezhnev the Khrushchev rule was eviscerated through amendment.

The turnover rule resurfaced in 1968 as part of Alexander Dubcek’s short-lived reform program in Czechoslovakia. Party officials were to be limited to six to eight years in office, with the possibility of one additional term if approved by two-thirds of their constituents. The new party rules, in draft form, appeared just 11 days before the Soviet-Warsaw Pact invasion, and hence were never put into effect.

The latest precedent occurred in 1980 in Poland. In the spirit of the Solidarity period, multicandidate elections by actual secret ballot were introduced in the party. During 1981 the new rules brought about tremendous turnover in the Polish party, but since martial law both the letter and the spirit of the rotation principle have been substantially eroded.

Gorbachev’s party reforms raise a number of questions. Will they pass unamended at the conference opening on June 28, given the strength of the conservative forces? For incumbent party officials and their families a great deal is at stake, including a wide range of perks not available to the ordinary citizen. What about the timing of the five-year term? Will it begin with the 27th Party Congress in 1986, will there be special party elections or will incumbents be “grandfathered” in until the next congress in 1991?

Clearly Gorbachev’s intent is to use the reform to eliminate Brezhnevites and other opponents of perestroika from the party apparatus. But, ultimately, will political restructuring significantly alter the style of Soviet governance and lead eventually to a more open society? For now a provisional answer has to be: Probably not.