Please, you can challenge my impression. It is as difficult for us to cooperate with the Komsomol as it is easy to contact the Party bodies. The Komsomol does not try to get us to participate in any activity. It does not take part itself. At best, it may offer us premises, while all the rest appears only in the reports. • Lubtsev 1 want to point out that among the members of the parallel groups there are many Komsomol members. It would be more logical to ask the Komsomol how it defines its relationship with the youth. Having overcome the tendency that might be represented by the words "permit nothing," are we sometimes falling into another extreme that I would call being afraid of the youth. You can already hear the voices clamoring, "Let them do what they want!" That is impossible. Any society lives within defined juridical bounds, and any social movement has to have juridical bases, as well as limitations. • Bellayeva Today, we are experiencing a real juridical boom. Our institute is working like a team of fire-fighters. We have never made such intenses exertions in creating new juridical norms. You have just mentioned juridical limits, but some of them were created in the 1950s and even in the 1930s. At present, they have been revised, in particular for voluntary associations. • Pavlovski There is a wonderful democratic rule. Whatever is not forbidden, is permitted. Everyone has to get used to that. The recent conflicts between some youth 7 groups, the attempts to resolve differences November 9, 1987 • International Viewpoint permitted" KNOWN AS the publication par excellence of the advanced wing of Gorbachev's supporters, Moscow News published an interview in its September 13 issue about the August meeting of the independent social clubs.
Gennadi Zhavoronokov conducted the interview. G. Pavlovski, was described as a "member of the Council of the Social Initiatives Club"; Y. Lubtsev as the chief of the propaganda department of the Communist Party committee in the Brezhnevski borough of Moscow; and N. Bellayeva as a collaborator of the State Law Institute.
The interview is translated from the French-language version of the paper, Les Nouvelles de Moscou.
U NTILthe recent past, many people linked the very notion of parallel groups to all sorts of excesses. They imagined uncontrollable groups of youth more or less opposing society. Today, we see them as individuals who want to really participate in the processes of transforming our lives. Where did the idea for this dialogue meeting come from? • Pavlovski First of all, we realized that there was no coordination of the activities of these groups, which sometimes expressed different interests. It was this and nothing else that aroused a reaction of rejection both from the population and the judicial bodies. The word parallel become an insult, although it only meant that an individual or group of young people engaged in their favorite occupations outside an official group.
Then in the pages of the weekly Sobesednik, the Social Initiatives Club proposed holding a conference. The Moscow Party Committee helped solve all the technical problems.
The meeting proceeded in a stormy way. It turned out that every group interpreted democracy in its own way — "We are the only ones who know how the monuments have to be protected," "We are the only ones who know how to maintain the ecological balance," and so on. Someone described these discussions as the "kindergarten" of democracy. But, after all, it was only an initial experiment. Extremism is not rational, even in words. What juridical argument can there be put forward to avoid confusing enthusiasm and interest with inadmissible manifestations? • Bellayeva First of all, a few words about extremism. Lately, this word is coming up often. Groups attribute this to others, without realizing that they are going off half-cocked themselves. This is quite dangerous. We are seeing the seeing the appearance of a phenomenon of "extremists fighting extremists." Yuri Vasilevich, this first discussion meeting might be considered an additional burden on the Party organs placed on you by the social groups. But could it be seen as an opportunity to
USSR of opinion by force and arbitrary judgements, have proved to be sad lessons for us. In large measure, the reason for this was the lack of information about others. This must not happen again.
One of the practical results of our meeting was the creation of an independent press center whose mission it will be to inform everyone about the objectives and tasks of the various movements; and the formation of an "arbitration" group whose mission it is to settle conflicts peacefully on the basis of justice and democracy. Loneliness is considered the twentieth century plague, like AIDS. Now, we can analyze the youth movement of the 1970s, which arose in response to stagnation. Young people formed clubs based on their musical tastes in order to relax. Trying to escape from emptiness, they came back to the same emptiness because they had neither precise perspectives or objectives. Isn't the movement of the 1980s threatened by a similar danger? • Pavlovski Loneliness is the first symptom of the weakness of social relations, a sign of a lack of knowledge about other people. This can be overcome through common activities. At present, such activities are inadequate.
Most of the clubs are as young as the perestroika. At the meeting, various proposals were put forward that were appreciated by everybody because they reflected the interests of society — to build a monument to the victims of the repressions, to organize assistance teams for welfare cases, to adopt a charity program, that is, concrete care for the elderly and disabled. All of us feel that the perestroika has a pressing need for personalities. Do you think that a social movement can offer political and other leaders who will take charge of solving the most timely problems? • Lubtsev All these groups, and this greatly slowed down the meeting, have a common idea — participating in the transformation of society. It is hard to predict who among the leaders of the young people today will become political or state leaders. I would like to clarify some details. Yes, that depends on them, but also on us. For long years, with an enviable persistence, we have challenged our youth by reminding them that "at their age, some people were commanding regiments. " We did not challenge them without giving them regiments. There they are before us as "commanders of divisions."
This flowering might be feared as a danger, but it could also be considered as a school of social experience, of active civic efforts. • Lubtsev The dynamism exhibited by youth in defending their ideas astonished and pleased me. This is no longer a "lesson learned by rote." I will be frank. I have not seen such a spirit in many Komsomol meetings — far from it. From this point of view, some of these young people have the potential of offering new conceptions and ideas to our society. Only let this be a school for concrete achievements, and not a school for back-biting.
It is a school for all of us, because the discussion meeting showed that a lot of us were not capable of taking a new approach of discussing, persuading, seeking arguments. *