Gorbachev Starting to ‘Assert His Controls,’ Scowcroft Says

The Bush Administration, in its first major evaluation of the Soviet Communist Party Congress now under way in Moscow, indicated Sunday that it believes President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is strengthening his position inside the Soviet Union but still faces extraordinarily difficult challenges in remaking Soviet society.

Gorbachev is “beginning to assert his controls,” National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said in a television interview, “and . . . in the end he will be able to manage the congress the way he wants.”

Scowcroft, interviewed on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday,” suggested that Gorbachev, who is president of Soviet Union in addition to his post as head of the Communist Party, may be succeeding in his goal of “gradually transferring power away from the party into the government structure, which he thinks is the better medium to run the country.”

But Gorbachev, who is being attacked mercilessly by conservatives within the party has to be careful in keeping the Communist Party under control, Scowcroft added.

“He has to do that carefully because if he were to renounce the party and a rival should emerge as the general secretary, for example, the party still--not so much in Moscow but out into the country--still is the medium of control. It is still the local party boss in the village, and so on, that decides all questions.”

Underlying Gorbachev’s strategy, Scowcroft said, is the effort to maintain his postion as the only leader who can mediate between the party bosses who resent the changes under way in the Soviet Union and the more radical advocates of a rapid shift to a full-scale democracy and market economy.

“Within the congress, the conservatives are mounting a major, major attack on Gorbachev’s proposals, just as outside the halls, people are saying, ‘Down with the Communist Party!’ In a sense, that puts him in not a bad position to maneuver between the conservatives and the radicals.”

As Scowcroft put it, the Bush Administration believes that the Communist Party is not “done for yet, but it is definitely on the wane, and it is under assault by Gorbachev himself.”