INTERVIEW WITH
BORIS
KAGARLITSKI but despite this, the Federation was considered too centralist by a number of the clubs who wanted to preserve their autonomy.
In the FSC, Marxist groups were in a kind of minority because there were different groups of anarchists, populists, environmentalists and so on. So, it seemed that the movement was very unstructured, not only because people didn't want it too structured, but also because of the internal differences. It was almost impossible for us to organize any kind of systematic work across the Federation. However, we managed to establish information links between the clubs all over the country, to establish better relations between the Moscow and the provincial groups — a kind of information network.
The provincial groups are more or less homogeneous, almost always with a Marxist orientation. But two important tendencies exist, Marxists and environmentalists, who have few differences and who are quite used to working together. In any case, the Federation will continue for a time as an information network. • It seems the preparation of the June conference of the Communist Party (CPSU) and the conference itself changed the conditions for the development of initiatives coming from the grass-roots?
Yes. In August 1987, there were a number of diverse groups in Moscow, and next to nothing in the provincial towns. Moscow led the movement, along with Leningrad, where there had also been certain results and real progress for the movement.
Before the party's conference, there was a real explosion of grass-roots activism across the whole country. In Yaroslavl and Kuibyshev, as well as in Astrakhan, there were rallies against party secretaries, calling for them to be thrown out of the conference. The demonstrators won and the whole affair was taken up by the press. In Zagorsk and Kalinsk, the party secretaries were sacked following a strike in the workplaces. People thought that the movement could deliver the goods, could achieve concrete results. There was a growing movement of thousands of people who wanted to organize and go out into the streets, who were organized by very tiny groups of Marxist activists acting as organizers for the people's protest. • What do you mean by Marxist activists?
I mean by that activists of small independent Marxist groups. For example at Kuibyshev, one of the organizers of the popular protests there is also one of the founding
N AUGUST 1987 a conference of informal associations was held and the Federation of Socialist Clubs
(FSC) was set up. Can you briefly describe developments in this federation since then, and also the present situation?
The conference was held barely one year ago, but the landscape has changed so much since then that it seems like years. The most important result of the August 1987 conference was the creation of the FSC. At that time, this sort of federation had been criticized as too centralist, a bit too socialist and not democratic enough. They were criticized, for example, for not allowing people with anti-socialist views to 22 become members of the organization, although it was, in principal, a non-sectarian and anti-dogmatic organization. Now, there seems to be a consensus that the Federation, as it was created, belongs to the past.
Indeed, the Federation of Socialist Clubs was a loose organization with no clear structure and practically no documents regulating its internal functioning. Its programme was also very diffuse, comprising simply on some very general democratic and socialist principles, with almost no economic programme — only a few general ideas about defending social guarantees in the process of economic transformation, and around the democratization of planning and so on. There were only three pages of demands and 32 pages of text in total about the constitution of the Federation. The whole movement was quite chaotic,
International Viewpoint #152 • November 28, 1988
members of the FSC. In the Federation, he represented a group of around 20 people, called the Farabundo Marti Brigade. • Do you think that the period of the conference was a period of broad radicalization?
Yes. People were very discontented with the composition of their delegations, they knew their bureaucrats well and there was a lot of popular protest. It was not a class conscious protest against the bureaucracy, but against their own bureaucrats. But through these protests and these experiences people suddenly realized their own strength, and that was a kind of turning point.
Following this there appeared organizing committees of the People's Front (PF) in nearly all the towns where a real popular protest movement existed. In Russia, this included Kuibyshev, Omsk, Krasnozavodsk, Zagorsk, Kalinsk, Astrakhan, Sverdlovsk, Kazan and, of course, Leningrad and Moscow. And Moscow was far behind in relation to the situation in the provinces. In the provincial cities, there was always the same type of movement, not the whole range of groups as in Moscow, but one or two small groups that were able to hegemonize quite a broad movement. This changed the situation, and finally the provinces sort of imposed their terms on the Moscovites.
The real base of the People's Front, even in Moscow, was outside of Moscow, because it is not a town where it is easy to organize a radical, left-wing movement — many people who live being there are bureaucrats or immigrant workers. People realized that a real movement was growing in the provincial cities whilst the Moscovites were involved in intrigues against each other, having petty squabbles or discussing vague projects. And suddenly, the real movement appeared.
For example, the anarchist group, Obchina, left the organizing committee, as did some other groups, like Citizens for Dignity. They wanted the word "socialist" dropped from the statutes of the People's Front, which the great majority voted against. The provincial groups declared that if the word was withdrawn from the declaration of the Moscow People's Front, they wouldn't work with the Moscow organizing committee. There had been some problems also about the words "democratic centralism" appearing the draft programme, but that didn't change the situation, because all the groups who voted against it have remained in the Front.
Now people are building local sections of the PF — even workplace sections. Today the main problem is not to bring together as many groups as possible but rather to organize the social base, the people. • And what is the attitude of the FSC towards the People's Front?
Some groups in the FSC are in the People's Front and some are not. The majority
USSR
Pizza
Hut
Drawing by Danziger want to join it and perhaps create their own sections of the PF. But, in any case people do not want to split the Federation because, as an information network, it is quite influential and efficient. So the FSC will remain as an information network and a bridge between the majority of the People's Front groups and the minority of left groups who have not joined the Front, but who are part of the left. Besides, we want to work with them. • Can you give an overall estimation of what the People's Front represents today in Russia? In Russia I don't know. I can give some precise figures for Moscow, but the situation there is not very typical of the rest of the country. In Moscow we have more activists than many of the provincial organizing committees, but less popular support. On July 1, we held a meeting, which was legally permitted by the officials, with about a thousand people attending according to Izvestia. Nearly all of them were activists, because it was held in a very isolated place, with practically no passers-by, and there was almost no information distributed by the usual channels on the whereabouts of the meeting place. Even among the activists, many of them were out of town, because after the party conference and all the confrontations people were tired and took their holidays. The meeting was held on a Sunday lunchtime, and even so there were a thousand people. In Moscow, it seems that we can count on the support of 1,500 activists, no more, no less. That can change day by day, but before it was always very difficult to organize something, because there was always a lack of people. Now when we organize something, there are always people to do this or that. For the first time, we are not absolutely poor - I don't say that we are
So... THIS IS GLASNOST rich, but if we desperately need money for an action we can always find it, because we also have a system for collecting money. Activists in the Front went to different parts of the Soviet Union to establish links with various organizations or organizing committees, and they were subsidized by the Front.
There are many people willing to donate money to the People's Front. There are some cooperatives who want to produce badges and t-shirts, and that's also a very important sign because a year ago this was unthinkable. The FSC could not even organize its own budget, it had no money at all, not even for its general projects or to produce samizdat publications. But in the provincial cities it seems that the activists are much more effective, and probably better organized. • Have you tried to link up with the People's Fronts in the Baltic republics?
As the Estonians say, without support in all the republics, we could not survive as a serious organization. Of course, they each have their specific demands, which are rather national democratic than socialist democratic. But they themselves want to develop in the whole of the country.
In Estonia, 1,000 copies were produced of the first edition of the People's Front's journal in Russian. For the second edition, they printed 3,000. Yet there is almost no demand for Russian-language texts in Estonia itself, because they have their own language. There are some Russians, of course, but the majority of them are unskilled workers, politically apathetic and not interested in national democratic demands and the demands of the Estonians. So these 3,000 journals were distributed to Russians in Russia. They try to produce propaganda for the whole of the country, more or less 23 successfully. According to one of the main
USSR
Estonian leaders, one of the most important things for a national People's Front is to win support in the whole country.
It seems that the Estonians, the Lithuanians and the movement in Karabakh, although they are not the same political animal as the People's Front in Russia, are interested in supporting the Russian socialist movement. That gives us a lot of hope. We don't want to create an all-Union structure for the People's Front, but rather a confederation of the different Fronts existing at the level of the republics. But the Moscow committee is not simply trying to collect together all the demands, but to produce a summary document expressing a sort of democratic socialist alternative to the Stalinist system and the technocratic conception of elitist reforms. • Do you think that a broad People's Front's opposition to technocratic reforms is an obvious fact? I have the impression that the question of socialism, of the type of reforms and the problem of relations with the institutions are three main difficulties for the initiators of the Russian People's Front.
No, I think it's a bit different. Many people are very unhappy with the technocratic reform proposals. Most of those in the PF are more populist than Marxist. They are socialists in the sense that they don't want private property, for example. They adopt socialist ideas while at the same time adapting them in a populist sense, using populist language such as social justice, freedom for the people and so on. Of course, some groups are somewhat influenced by technocratic thinking. It seems that, first of all, the critical part of that technocratic analysis is very important and very progressive. On the other hand, the most extreme forms of the technocratic proposals — like price rises, increasing social differentiations, unemployment, private share-holding, creating more and more enterprises as joint ventures or privatizing some industries - these have absolutely no popular support. People in the cities are very hostile to these proposals, particularly because joint ventures, for example, are often anti-ecological and people are very concerned about ecology.
We have won the confidence of populists, socialists, Marxists and environmentalists in the People's Front, who have come together on the basis of mutual discontent with both Stalinism and technocrats — sometimes not for political but for cultural or moral reasons. Because the technocracy is often hostile to Russian culture and tradition., so the populists are very often hostile to the technocracy, and the ecologists are sometimes very suspicious of technocratic ideas.
If we want to build a broad front, the major thing is to find some kind of mutual understanding on the important questions of today and around general ideas concerning strategic perspectives for tomorrow. I don't want to imply that there won't be any problems in the future, quite likely we'll have difficulties tomorrow, more discussions and disagreements in the PF cannot be excluded. But we have reached some kind of
24
International Viewpoint #152 • November 28, 1988 real understanding among the three currents, and we have been able to establish a common language for the discussions. A failure, as in the case of the FSC, will be the result of collective sectarianism.
The PF is not a monolithic organization in the Stalinist tradition, but people who join must be agree on the basic principles, including democratic socialism as a central political objective, free elections to the soviets and all the freedoms that make up an integral part of the democratic socialist project, self-management of workers' collectives and ecological priorities, which must be put above the priorities of the market. The needs of the market cannot remain the top priority in a strict sense, because there are cultural, spiritual and ecological priorities as well. All that is getting tremendous support from the people. • It is a question of starting from needs and not from the mechanisms?
Yes. But it is difficult for the broad movement. We are creating a broad consensus based on the needs of the people and fundamental political changes. Of course, there will be divergences on the question of what mechanisms to use, but if we are agreed about the needs, the differences on the mechanisms can be discussed seriously and compromises can be reached. In contrast, the other type of sectarian collectivism is that everyone agrees on some tactical solutions, some tactical mechanisms, without being agreed on the basic principles. • In your opinion, what are the current SIET ECONOMY
OuT of ORDE
priority needs that the Front has to defend? The main priority for investments must be the modernization of the social sphere, without its commercialization. In other words, investments, plus reorganization, plus modernization of the structures, but less commercialization. We need both investment and restructuring. The bureaucrats, like the technocrats, for different reasons prefer to have more paid services instead of modernizing and restructuring the social sector of the state.
We want to modernize in the sense of more investments and more soviet democracy to control where the money is put and how it is used. But at the same time we say, "no development of paid services without an adequate development of social services". That is one of our slogans. Others are, "no reduction of the workforce without reconversion schemes prepared in advance"; "no investment decisions without ecological discussions"; and, in principle, "no investment decisions without a discussion on the general strategy of development at a national level". These are our key priorities.
We don't want a centralized planning system but a national development programmes for technology, the social sphere, education, ecology and so on. To be useful, this national programme must be seriously elaborated because it is not possible to modernize everything at the same pace. We think that today we are underdeveloped in some areas, but we can't modernize everything — we don't have the resources to do it. So it's necessary to find the key priorities for modernization. Undoubtedly this is one of the major differences between the
PF's understanding of modernization and that of the technocrats. In principle, we are not hostile to modernization. Neither are we in principle against the use of markets.
• When you say "we", are you not mainly giving your own point of view?
No, that's not the case. I think that the provincial groups would accept the Moscow project, which is close to their thinking. We have more problems in Leningrad, because the situation there is half-way between that in Moscow and that in the provinces. On the one hand, they are more practical and better organized, they have more activists, the movement is bigger and so on. On the other, I think that the ideological level in Leningrad is lower, and they are less interested in theory or strategy of any kind. They are more practical. Our main problem in Leningrad won't be to reply to some criticisms of the programme, but rather to the various proposals along the lines of: "let's not have a programme at all"
• This is an ambiguity of the term "peo ple's front". It is not a party, but defines itself as a broad social movement tha has, in fact, political bases. It is a diffi cult situation? Yes. It is a movement/coalitions that ha
USSR some elements of a party-like structure without functioning as a party. One particularity is that there are members of the Communist Party inside the People's Front. We say this is a political expression of a grass-roots union between the progressive elements in the party and the broader popular movement. By definition, this cannot be a political party unless the CPSU itself splits into different factions. • What conception is there of democracy inside the Front? What are the main struggles for democracy?
This is precisely the discussion that is on the agenda. The first things we want is free elections to the soviets at all levels and of judges, respect for the law, a free press, general freedoms and human rights. This means that we are very enthusiastic about glasnost and pleased about all the changes that have taken place here during the last two years. At the same time, we are very critical about the proposals to have indirect elections to the Supreme Soviet and to the Council of Soviet Deputies, because we think that people have the right to directly elect their deputies.
Secondly, we are against the proposal to send delegates from organizations selected by the plenums to the Supreme Soviet, because they are not people's deputies but delegates, bureaucratic pawns. We are therefore critical of these proposals and we are already campaigning against them.
We are also campaigning against the ukazes, the decrees, which limit the right to demonstrate. We want to transform glasnost into a regular freedom of speech and of the press, which necessarily means giving citizens the right to organize cooperatives, publishing houses, and to give to different social groups the right to produce their own publications and to open the state system of mass media to these groupings.
We also think that without workplace democracy there won't be any stable political democracy. We don't want workplace committees to be limited to internal problems inside the enterprise, but to create inter-enterprise committees, branch committees and local committees linked to those in the workplaces. These, along with democratically elected soviets, could create a network of functioning socialist democracy and decision-making.
Of course, we don't have any practical experiences to go on, so we can't judge how realistic our proposals are. But what is also extremely important is that we want the slogan, "All power to the soviets" to become a reality through a system of free elections, guaranteed by a good electoral
• Is this slogan very popular today in the Soviet Union?
Yes, very popular. It doesn't necessarily i mean that people are against the party, bu they are tired of its direct rule, and ever party members don't want direct party rul
• Let's talk about two questions, the soviets and the party. What's surprising for us is that two, or maybe three, years ago, it was thought that the Soviet people were so disenchanted with soviets that the path of democratization and the expression of demands would go around them, and that something new would be built. Is the impact of this slogan just tactical?
No, it's not tactical because the slogan, "All power to the soviets" was not invented by radical intellectuals in Moscow. It came from the provincial cities and it is a kind of political resurrection. It comes out of popular culture, because people reproduce, somewhat unconsciously, slogans and models of the last democracy ever tried in the Soviet Union, and they discuss it. The last model that was tried was that of the soviets. This is something that people know about. There are, to say the least, some romantic ideas about what happened when the workers' soviets were really in power. But even if these ideas are inadequate, they exist. And when people say, "All power to the soviets", they are not thinking about the existing soviets but of soviets that were really elected. When we say all power to the soviets it means free elections to the soviets. • And the question of parties?
In principle, we are nearly all agreed that a multi-party system is necessary for democracy. That democracy means more than one party. But there are two things we shouldn't forget.
First of all, democracy does not simply mean a multi-party system, it means having all the basic rules of democracy such as habeas corpus, electoral laws and free speech.
Without all these elements setting up a multi-party system will change nothing. In some under-developed countries, the multi- party system failed dramatically. It became corrupt, inefficient and dictatorial because there was practically no organized network in civil society — the conditions didn't exist to create it — and so there was no common basis for establishing a multi-party system with a real democratic content. The problem today is to create the conditions for a real democracy, to build this network in civil society. Most people today are not interested in establishing a multi-party system, but in changing things locally and nationally by free elections and actions - they are not thinking in terms of a Westernstyle multi-party system.
The second point is that, without real parties, we can't talk about a multi-party system. In Spain, for example, when it came to the point of legalizing the Communist Party, it had already existed for a number of years, as had the Socialist Party. So when the time comes to establish a system with several parties, they must already exist, at least in an embryonic, elementary form.
• That means in the present situation 25 here, bigger forces are needed acting any more.
November 28, 1988 • #152 International Viewpoin
USSR in a political way...
This is the third point that is equally important for us. We don't think that the
Communist Party itself is homogeneous — there are contradictory forces inside it. In the last analysis, some sort of political differentiation will appear that will lead, in the long term, to the appearance of competing political parties. Political pluralism will come not from a challenge to the CPSU, but from inside the party itself. This seems highly improbable today to many people, but some party members inside the People's Front are agreed in thinking that this will be the main route towards party pluralism.
• Can you give us an idea how many party members there are in the People's Front, and explain generally the problems of the PF's relationship to the official institutions?
I must confess that there are not so many
CPSU members in the People's Front.
They are present in all the initiative groups and they are influential, but their numbers remain limited. If party members are not careerists - and those joining the People's
Front are not — they are older, more experienced and have more political culture.
People are selected to join the Party for formal reasons, but they are trained. So in spite of their small numbers, they are influential.
We have an inter-club party group, in the organizing committee, which is very influential when decisions are being taken or concepts elaborated. This group exists only in Moscow. But in Krasnozavodsk, for example, party members also dominate the local committee. In Leningrad, they are probably not dominant, but influential.
There is a democratic tendency in the party. • Perhaps it is also an attempt to control the People's Front?
No, no. It is difficult to imagine thousands of party members ordered by the bureaucracy to join the PF just to blow it up from the inside. In fact, it is not the case, because the functionaries never came to the PF. The people who come to the Front have to join concrete groups, concrete actions, and so people would know if they were trying to sabotage things. • Do you think that a sort of regroupment could develop inside the CPSU?
In a year or two, yes. We are waiting for the next electoral campaign in the party. We don't think that the results will be sensational, but in any event the situation inside the party will change. The most important battles will come during the next year. In October 1989, local elections and party elections are scheduled. Nearly one year after the development of the popular movement, that could produce some very serious struggles. ~ • What is the situation in the unions?
I don't want to be over-pessimistic, but until now we haven't seen any sign of movement, almost nothing. Some workers talk about creating a movement among the workers, but not in the sense of a free trade- union. Rather they want to form a kind of workers' lobby inside the PF and the organizing committees, raising workers' demands and ensuring that working-class interests are reflected in the People's
Front's actions. On the other hand they want to mobilize workers in support of the
Front inside the workplaces.
Without being workerist or hostile to intellectuals, some people want to organize specifically working-class groups that can discuss their own problems, for example like the Union of Communist Workers.
This is a group bringing together workers from six Moscow workplaces and from other enterprises in different cities. But there are not very many of them, I think less than a hundred people. They are also involved in the activists of the Socialist Initiative group, which I am also involved in.
But they have have their separate group.
• Do they define themselves as socialists, as communists?
As their name implies, the Union of
Communist Workers. That's to say that they are in favour of communist ideas, but are not party members. But it is very interesting. In Sverdlovsk, there is a workerist tendency that is trying to consolidate itself outside of the PF's Initiative Group. These are young intellectuals belonging to a sort of workers' party, separate from all the other movements. The result is that no group of workers has joined them.
• Do you have any idea about the impact of recent events in Poland, insofar as they are known, on Soviet workers and on the bureaucracy?
It is difficult to reply seriously, because neither the people nor the bureaucracy have any serious analytical material available on the situation in Poland. Some people are working on it now, for example studying Solidarnosc's structures in order to avoid its mistakes.
This is why we were interested in establishing a real programme and ideology for the PF from the very beginning. Because if a populist tendency with no well-defined ideological base were to win - which is not very likely, but not totally excluded -the result would be a politically ineffective movement, unable to really change things, simply acting on the basis of instinct, tactically and strategically impotent and incapable of taking serious initiatives. Solidarnose has no ideological basis, either of the right or the left. Being neither a party nor a trade union, it was not capable of taking strategic initiatives. It had no strategy, and so finally it Failed. I think we have a better chance, because ve nave ine advantage of time Solders grew into a mass movement in just a few
International Viewpoint #152 • November 28, 1988
International weeks. It was a tremendous explosion. We don't expect the same thing here.
• You think you will have more time, and that there won't be a social explosion or a reaction?
I think we will have at least a year, let us say, of normal development. We don't want to destabilize the situation ourselves.
We want to be loyal to the Gorbachev experience insofar as it remains progressive if it doesn't deliver the goods, it is much and brings more democratization. And even better than the reaction. There are technocratic or bureaucratic alternatives to Gorbachev today, but they would end up in a sort of dictatorship, either neo-Stalinist or neotechnocratic, of the Chilean or Stalinist type.
For us, the survival of the Gorbachev leadership is necessary. Without it, the movements coming from the grass-roots could create an alternative of its own, and could even become the motor-force of change. But if Gorbachev was to be removed, by a dictatorial group, a kind of police regime, it would no longer be possible for movements coming from the grassroots to be really influential.
• In the present situation, you are confronted with a traditional, conservative bureaucracy that faces a socialist left and some technocratic currents. Of course, there are bigger differentiations, but many people certainly think in terms of an alliance with the technocratic currents, as is the case in Yugoslavia, Poland and so on.
Yes, I agree. To a certain extent we are ready to ally with the technocrats, but everything depends on how far we are prepared to go in supporting them. Of course, on the question of history, on Stalinism, we strongly support the liberal journals and the liberal technocratic intellectuals when they criticize the Stalinist system politically and economically. But if the technocrats ally with the Stalinists to "bring back order", to implement their own unpopular projects, we won't support them. • Is this to say that, given the situation, you define the possibility of development and expression of the People's Front in the framework of a compromise with the existing structures?
Well, we are realistic and we don't demand the impossible. We make radical, but realizable, demands. When results are minimal, the movement becomes more radical. So the less we get from the authorities, the more the movement radicalizes. There are two elements to this radicalization. One is that the organic radicalization of the movement itself, produced by its intermal dynamic, means that people understand that to win something, they must demand more. The second is a negative radicalization. where people radicalize because of the abence of concrete results. *