Soviet Election

The recent election of the Soviet Congress of Deputies has generated some of the most starry-eyed Western political commentary since the portrayal of Yuri Andropov as a jazz-loving closet liberal. Although the election does represent a departure from the previous status quo, we should not allow it to distract us from the important continuities in the Soviet political situation. The election did not alter the fundamental fact that Soviet political events reflect primarily the interests and desires of the ruling elite.

In the past, Communist Party candidates’ 90-plus percent majorities were taken as a mockery of democracy. Boris Yeltsin’s 89% seems to have fallen a point short of the level necessary to raise eyebrows. Although the size of Yeltsin’s majority does not necessarily imply fraud or manipulation of the electoral process, we should think twice before we take his election as evidence of an emerging democratic process.

The entire Yeltsin scenario, from fall to resurrection, may well have been orchestrated to maximize the political benefit to Mikhail Gorbachev. Yeltsin’s ostracism for being “more Gorbachevian than Gorbachev” was never very convincing. Furthermore, the political latitude given to the Yeltsin campaign--including the organization of demonstrations--represents a degree of tolerance tantamount to an endorsement in the Soviet system.

The re-emergence of Yeltsin as the figurehead of a leftist movement offers substantial political benefits to Gorbachev. Playing the leftist “opposition” against the right will allow him to assume the role of the indispensable moderate who can mediate between the otherwise irreconcilable extremes.

Yeltsin, with Gorbachev’s passive blessing, has become the first Soviet leader with a primarily popular, as opposed to a Communist Party, base of support. The cultivation of a popular movement in a nation without a tradition of free political expression represents a gamble of sorts. Such a movement could well spin out of control, particularly in sensitive areas such as ethnic minority affairs. The willingness to accept these risks probably reflects the depth of Gorbachev’s need to recruit support in the struggle against the conservative entrenched bureaucracy. He knows that the genie of popular political expression will be difficult to control once let out of the bottle; it would be even more difficult for a Brezhnev-style conservative opposition to suppress.

When viewed in the contest of current political conditions, the recent Soviet elections cannot be seen as a step towards popular democracy. They can be viewed more accurately as a release of popular political pressure calculated to strengthen the hand of the reformist leadership. The true test of the limits of Soviet electoral politics will be the extent to which glasnost is extended to potentially popular opponents of Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika .

DANIEL J. STONE

Los Angeles