Stack Politburo, Bolster Reform : Gorbachev’s Victory Could Help the West

Right-wing opponents of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev remain numerous, noisy, angry and obstructionist, as they have been uninhibitedly demonstrating at the 28th Communist Party Congress.

But in the end they have been largely outmaneuvered and outclassed by those whose deeds and plans they direly proclaim are bringing the Soviet Union to ruin.

Tuesday Gorbachev was overwhelmingly reelected as the party’s general secretary, honored if not as the indispensable man then certainly as the currently irreplaceable one. The day before, even more significantly, Gorbachev achieved a singular political victory by winning approval for a thorough reorganization of the Politburo, the party body that has ruled the state virtually since its founding.

What the Politburo changes portend is a more extensive diffusion of responsibility, leading inevitably to a further reduction of centralized Communist Party authority. In just a few months’ time the Communist Party, which since March has ceased being the country’s only legally recognized political entity, has seen much of its administrative power transferred to the institution of the presidency, and all of its legislative authority shifted to the Supreme Soviet. Now the Politburo is about to be reconstituted in a way that should further diminish the influence of entrenched opponents of change.

This is what Gorbachev has been working toward for five years. Gorbachev’s ability to pursue greater reforms should now be enhanced. His goal in this, as in other efforts to eliminate or bypass traditional methods of authority and governance, seems clear. What he is trying to do above all else is preserve the Soviet Union as a political whole. He long ago concluded that the only hope of preventing national fragmentation is through a new federal system that would give the restive republics a bigger voice in their own affairs. The redesigned Politburo is a step in that direction, and certainly the West must applaud Gorbachev’s achievement, since anything that diminishes the power of the hard-liners, encourages greater political pluralism and eases the way toward market-oriented reforms is welcome. Gorbachev hasn’t routed his enemies, not by a long shot, but he does seem to have them in retreat.

The West has a great deal at stake in the success of the Gorbachev reforms, and a victory of this magnitude, while scarcely guaranteeing Gorbachev’s political future, allows it to feel it is backing the right horse. Let’s hope so: For this is the horse that promises to reduce military tensions and lower defense needs in Europe for some time to come--a process that will enable the West to begin to attend to important domestic needs in a way that was not politically acceptable during the Cold War.

Reform of the Politburo is not some far-off, arcane political development but something much closer--now almost astonishingly closer--to home.