‘Communists Are Dragging Us to Chaos’ : Soviet Union: Moscow creates a state of fear to keep the old order in power.

Our country has reached the last stage of disintegration and there is no longer any room for retreat.

After being elected chairman of Russia’s Supreme Soviet, I committed a major tactical blunder. I believed Mikhail Gorbachev. Instead of immediately divorcing myself from the President’s policies of half-measures and half-reforms, I gave in to the illusion that we might still reach some agreement. This turned out to be impossible.

It is impossible to reach agreement with a president who is simultaneously general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and who will always deem the interests of the party caste and the party nomenklatura (bureaucracy) above all others.

The leadership is dragging the country to chaos and ruin in its attempt to preserve a system rotten to the core.

The Communists have begun their onslaught, and more and more frequently one hears “front-line” terminology from even the highest podiums. The president is scaring us with “civil war.” Communists are being told to “leave the foxholes.”

The creation of an atmosphere of fear, insecurity and hysteria is the only chance for a bankrupt regime to remain on top for even a little bit longer.

They keep repeating that this is the decisive year. Then it is time for us, too, to clearly realize that this is the decisive year. Either democracy will be strangled or we will triumph and drag the country from the horrible state in which it now finds itself.

Another blunder and illusion on my part was that, having gained the majority in the elections of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies and having become chairman of the republic’s Supreme Soviet, I, along with my fellow activists, believed victory was ours.

We decided that now we could adopt good laws, appoint energetic and talented executives and begin a normal life. Nothing of the sort. All of the power in the country, as well as in the republics, remained completely in the hands of those who for the past seven decades successfully plundered and squandered the wealth of this state and never intended to share its power.

Thus it is that I, the leader of Parliament in the largest republic with enormous territory and immense potential, have not the slightest idea what will be done to Russia (and not just Russia) by a president with minimal popular support and a government completely divested of such support. I go to bed at night and do not know under what circumstances I will wake up the next day. Will I and my fellow citizens have their money confiscated under the pretext of replacing denominations? Will bank accounts be frozen because of the struggle against inflation? Will the Russian TV and radio network be seized at night or simply banned from the air? Will there be tanks and paratroopers in the streets?

All this is decided in the Kremlin, in the KGB, in the Defense Ministry--anywhere at all except in the Russian Parliament.

Wherever courageous, energetic people have gained power, where we see both privatization and thousands of farmers with their own land, we see normal, intense and creative daily life.

I am convinced that, despite the tragic current situation in our country, we still have a chance to get out of the quagmire--if we get a chance to work undisturbed.

In the near future, our economists will present a Russian Republic’s version of the “500 Days” program. This spring, we will do everything we possibly can to provide land for all who wish it and we will allow them to begin working on it.

As for civil war, I do not believe it. No matter how the atmosphere may be artificially heated and tension pumped up by the president and his forces, I have absolute faith in people’s common sense. After all, what else is there left to believe in?