USSR
Views from Leningrad
OVER the summer Anne-Marie Fanon talked to supporters of a number of political currents in Leningrad. Their responses are here arranged in the format of an interview. The people who express themselves here were in reality interviewed successively between July 20-25. All quotations are exact.
• How would you summarize the programmes of your parties? Alexander: We are close to the German social democracy. Society must guarantee private property, but its wealth must be utilized for the common good. There should be coexistence of different forms of property... Nobody can buy the big factories; the
OULD you describe the political parties to which workers will buy the small ones
— they are ready to do it. The municipalities of Leningrad want to be independent and look after you belong? Piotr (member of the Democratic Party of Russia): It is not a political party in the proper sense of the word. It consists of organizations of some dozens of members.
Alexander (member of the Social Democratic Party): The SDP has some hundreds of members, in 78 towns, 300 in Moscow and 100 in Leningrad. We have only had official authorization for our existence for three weeks; we do not yet have a newspaper.
It is a very small party but we do not have the ambition of becoming a mass party. We are social democrats, not socialists. Our membership consists for the most part of intellectuals, but our programme must be aimed at the workers. Our objective is not that of building a big party - 2,000 to 3,000 members seems to us the optimum size. We want to educate the working class through a concrete programme. We envisage an electoral strength of about 25%.
Sacha (CPSU full timer): There are 40,000 members of the CPSU in my municipality which has about 500,000 inhabitants. The working class and the technical intelligentsia are leaving the party.
Some scientists and higher level teachers are attempting to take their places in the apparatus. The full timers of the party live completely cut off from the membership and no longer know what they think.
Vladimir (sociologist): There is only one party in the Soviet Union, the CPSU, which has 18 million members, 500,000 in Leningrad. The others are only at a formative stage.
On the other hand there exists a very large social base for the democratic movement, on an anti-totalitarian basis, against the party machine and the state. 6 Two thirds of the deputies in the Leningrad Soviet have come from this base.
high. Each community must choose freely what it decides to delegate to a higher level. The plan is not necessary, the market will regulate.
Sacha: Our country is backward and that is why we need private property. The competition of all forms of property is necessary. Everybody understands this, even the [bureaucratic con-
United servative]
Front of Toilers.
But today property is in the hands of the state and we know neither how to privatize it, nor how to create a balance of interests.
Piotr: It is necessary to give people the possibility of feeling the spirit of competition, enterprise and liberty. The principal question is that of property.
Everyone must understand that if there are more rich people, there will be less poor. In any case there is no solution to the social problems without economic reforms.
Vladimir: The natural way is the market, political democracy, common principal values.
• What are the urgent tasks in today's situation?
Piotr: It is necessary to change the deformed psychology inculcated under
Stalinism. The majority wants justice but only the minority understands how it is possible to have a higher standard of living. It is necessary to restore moral qualities.
Alexander: Our society is at a very low political and moral level. Seventy years
International Viewpoint #192 • October 15, 1990 of Communism have destroyed all ethics. No reform is possible without changing human beings. In this sense, we are not Bolsheviks. Vladimir: The principal question is of moral rebirth....The land must be given to those who work it, the factories sold by shareholdings....The problem is of reviving the motivation to work so as to be able then to help the least advantaged. Those who can work must make their own way in life....The Church has a role to play in this moral renaissance.
Sacha: The CPSU has led this country into such a crisis that there is no other solution than the market. It is contradictory for the apparatus but it is unavoidable.
Everybody knows what we have to avoid;
- throwing ourselves into the market without taking account of the reaction of the masses; - drawing in foreign capital without preparing the national framework;
but what it is necessary to do, nobody knows. There is no market without proprietors, but who will be the proprietors?
No foreign capital, the population will not accept it. But our current proprietors would be worse.
If we knew what kind of planning ГАЗЕТ allowed a response to urgent needs, there would be no 3 need for perestroika.. What are the principal problems of the population in Leningrad? Sacha: First, housing; in my municipality there are 10,000 people on the waiting list. The norm is 18 square meters for three people. Next, the destruction of the environment; you cannot drink the tap water; in the majority of industry, the machines are very old and cause a lot of pollution. Alexander: Next winter will be a decisive stage. There will be neither fuel nor food. It is a favourable terrain for a revolution which would be catastrophic. It is necessary to try to avoid unemployment, to favourise reconversion by training. It is necessary also to increase pensions which are today 30% of earnings. Vladimir: The supply difficulties resemble those at the beginning of the blockade. The children lack vitamins and yet in Leningrad life is better than elsewhere. Strikes can be explained by the very hard conditions of life and the revolt against the privileges of the bureaucracy. For a long time now people have heard talk about change and see that nothing changes. We want things to go more their own factories. Maybe they are right.
In any case nobody can decide from on
quickly. • How do you see the national question in the Soviet Union?
Piotr: Conditions are ripe for the decomposition of the empire and it will take place. A new treaty of union is indispensable.
Alexander: The tensions are extreme between the republics and the USSR. It is impossible and illusory to wish for a single system of laws. The republics must have a greater level of independence. Gorbachev has made very many errors with Lithuania.
Vladimir: The empire is finished. We are at the stage of the collaboration of nations. Each will have its own police force but it is not necessary that each have its own army.
Sacha: The exasperation of the nationalities is the fruit of the policy of the Minister of the Interior. But this has no great echo amongst the population. • Does the army represent a danger for Russia today?
Vladimir: The army could represent a danger. The conditions of life of a number of officers are close to those of the population. 100,000 among them are population. 100.000 among them are without housing and this is going to get worse with the return from the East.
Sacha: I have myself spent my life in the armed forces, in particular in the strategic rockets sphere. In February 1989, I understood that my place was in the democratic movement. I resigned from the CPSU for moral reasons and demanded my expulsion from the armed forces.
There is today a great difference in the army between the high command on the one hand, the soldiers and the inferior hierarchy on the other. Very many officers are ready to leave the army; it is often the question of housing that stops them.
Recruitment by examination is now done at the lowest level - one place for one candidate. It is the more uncultivated who remain, those who are ready to do anything.
The most reactionary are those who occupied Eastern Europe. Their living conditions there were excellent. If they return to the USSR, they will lose all their advantages.
A new law is in preparation to give the right to retirement. After this law, the army will decompose very quickly. We could then be the hostages of the lower officers, which is very dangerous.
I do not rule out the possibility of atomic blackmail inside the country. That is why the democratization of the army is the most important thing. There is a constant struggle between the army and the party.
The army has colossal financial means, immense territories and very sophisticated means of communication. Those who have the information have the power.*
USSR we have entered into a revolution"
Interview with Nikolai Preobrazhensky have brought on a disor-
NIKOLAI PREOBRAZHENSKY is a ganization of the producveteran of the anti-bureaucratic tion and distribution opposition in the Soviet Union, active systems and deepened the crisis.
in attempts to create independent
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