Let a Hundred Flowers Die : Gorbachev seems ready to suspend the policy he sponsored

Glasnost-- the decision to allow greater openness and candor in Soviet life--was the most significant harbinger of the reforms that Mikhail S. Gorbachev envisaged when he came to power in 1985. Now glasnost is at risk of becoming the most significant casualty thus far of the Soviet Union’s backward slide toward reimposing tight state controls.

This regression has been given fresh dramatic illustration with Gorbachev’s appointment of Leonid P. Kravchenko as head of the new state corporation that oversees broadcasting. Kravchenko, formerly chairman of the State Committee for Television and Radio, is a conservative who believes, as he bluntly told a meeting of journalists last week, that the primary responsibility of the state-run media is to reflect the views of the state’s leadership.

This is the same Leninist approach to controlling the flow of news and opinion that prevailed for nearly 70 years. Gorbachev’s introduction of glasnost was the first serious effort to begin doing things differently. Now, Gorbachev, himself a frequent target of media and public criticism, seems ready to suspend, if not abandon the policy he sponsored.

The excuse is the old one of compelling state need: National interests--defined, of course, by the regime--must take precedence over the public’s access to uncensored information. In an interview the other day, Kravchenko insisted that “no pluralism” can be tolerated in the state media so long as the “political struggle” goes on to hold the Soviet Union together and to preserve the Communist Party’s authority. That struggle, it’s clear, seems destined to last for a long time indeed.

Glasnost is not dead yet, although its once robust health has visibly declined. Papers like the Moscow News and Komsomolskaya Pravda continue to report and comment independent of official views; many courageous radio and TV journalists try with limited success to evade censorship. But when the printing presses and the paper supply and the TV studios are all controlled by the regime, independence becomes increasingly harder to maintain.

Glasnost has been high among the major domestic achievements of the Gorbachev era. For Americans, certainly, it has been a defining process that seemed to signal a genuine break with the authoritarian past and a committed turn toward true progressive reform. Now, and most notably in the Soviet broadcast media, the distortions, the deceptions, the parroting of the official line are once again being heard. Many Americans, and by no means only those who have remained skeptical about the depth and durability of Gorbachev’s reforms, are likely to find themselves asking whether a regime that eschews honesty with its own citizens can be trusted to be honest in its relations with the rest of the world.