New Soviet Congress Hailed for Bringing Politics to the People

Often tumultuous, sometimes dramatic and occasionally boring, the initial session of the Soviet Union’s new national assembly, the Congress of People’s Deputies, launched the country on what its leaders promise will be the road to democracy.

For the first time, popularly elected representatives had an open national forum to debate the country’s problems and to propose solutions with the expectation that in future sessions they will be able to approve specific action, and the 2,250 deputies took full advantage of the opportunity.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev described the creation of the congress and its first session as “the most outstanding event in the entire history of the Soviet state,” a major achievement for perestroika , his program of political, economic and social reforms, and as a step forward toward “people’s power.”

The session was “a unique opportunity,” Gorbachev said, “to get a clear notion of the real state of things, achievements and shortcomings in our life, because of various negative phenomena,” and then to discuss the reforms necessary for improvement.

“Listening to the acute, at times sharp and emotional speeches of the deputies, one became aware again and again of the burden of problems, a huge burden, and of the fact that the main and most important work is yet ahead,” the Soviet leader said.

Radical changes consequently will be needed in the country’s political structure and in the character of its economic system, Gorbachev said, describing the debates as a watershed for the Soviet Union and part of “a powerful democratic stream that is gaining momentum.” Even Gorbachev’s critics--both those who thought that he had yet to recognize “the sovereignty of the people” and those who believed that he had yielded far too much of the Communist Party’s power--agreed on the historic nature of the congress in opening political decision-making to the people.

The major decisions on resolving the country’s problems were left for the 542-member Supreme Soviet, the new, full-time legislature elected from among the deputies, and the streamlined and rejuvenated government announced here on Saturday by Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov.

What the congress had done through its debates was to begin the development of a parliamentary system, a process that most modern nations undertook decades if not centuries ago but that was halted here after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 as the party developed a monopoly on power and concentrated it in the hands of its leadership.

What was most important in resuming this historical process was the ability of deputies to speak openly and freely on behalf of their constituents, with the expectation that they would not only be heard but would be able to effect change.

“We are witnessing the birth of a nation,” Yuri Feofanov, a political commentator for the newspaper Izvestia, said as the congress’ inaugural session drew to a close last week. “Or, to be more precise, the rebirth of a nation.”

Although the party’s determination to remain the leading force in Soviet society was evident as Gorbachev guided the session as the chairman of the congress, it had taken a major step toward fulfilling its commitment, made a year ago at a special party conference, to share power, and in doing so, to transform the country’s monolithic political structure.

For the first time in Soviet history, democratically elected representatives of the people were able to raise issues publicly that, while crucial to the nation’s fate, were “forbidden areas” before--military affairs, foreign policy, the security services, the privileges of party officials, corruption in the leadership.

They went even beyond these sensitive issues, common enough in most Western parliaments, to criticize the nature of the Soviet political system, to question the way in which the Soviet Union was formed and thus its legitimacy as a state, to argue for such fundamental changes that some deputies effectively were proposing an end to socialism as it had been defined here over seven decades.

And with popular mandates won in the first contested elections since the earliest days of the Soviet state, they insisted on broad and urgent changes with a vigor that stunned even themselves.

Those who believed that the congress would be five or six days of heartfelt but predictable speeches by selected deputies were shocked as one deputy after another, many coming from quite remote areas, strode to the rostrum to indict the country’s leadership for past mistakes, to plunge into yet another “forbidden area,” to challenge other speakers or simply to raise an issue, however mundane, that the deputy’s voters considered their most pressing concern.

A Different Shock

A different sort of shock was felt by the party’s strong conservative wing, which was offended by the sharp assertiveness of liberal deputies, by the criticism of much of what they had held so firmly for so long and by the cut and thrust of the debate.

Alternative programs were outlined by liberal deputies, answers were demanded to questions that no one dared ask here a year ago, Gorbachev’s nominees for key posts found themselves sharply scrutinized rather than applauded into new jobs. And Gorbachev himself was confronted repeatedly with the challenge that he was concentrating too much power in his own hands.

After years of political passivity in which the party leadership’s decisions were accepted without question, political divisions quickly emerged among the deputies--and could form the basis for competition between rival candidates in future elections as well as the development of voting blocs in the congress and the Supreme Soviet.

On the left, there is now an alliance among the liberal “Moscow Group,” the nationalist delegations from the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the southern republics of Armenia and Georgia and radicals from across the country, with a conservative wing coalescing on the right around the party apparatus, the military and deputies from Central Asia.

But in the center there is a broad, moderate middle quite willing to follow Gorbachev’s lead.

“The merit of our congress was that on the basis of a broad debate, we got a fuller notion of the real processes taking place in the life of the country and in the attitudes of the people,” Gorbachev said, summing up the session.

That is what parliaments do, but it is something from which the old Soviet legislature was virtually barred as it gathered twice a year, two days each time, to enact into law without debate the decisions of the party leadership.

“Will we ever become a great parliament like the British Westminster or the American Congress?” one deputy asked during the final hours of debate last week.

“That is hard to say. It depends on us, how we shape this new institution, this Congress of People’s Deputies. But we can say already that we are something entirely new in the history of the Soviet Union.”