Kremlin cracks the whip SPEAKING on television at Gorbachev's request on November 11, KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov raised the stakes in the counteroffensive against the independent movements which has been pursued by the bureaucracy for several weeks. The secret police chief intoned the old Stalinist music.
"The KGB has made its choice, to defend the socialist motherland....The KGB will protect law and order and block all forces trying to tear the union apart...When our country needs unity as never before, we are coming up against forces who would undermine our fraternity." At the same time, Kryuchkov raised the old spectre of foreign secret services trying to destabilize the USSR. Paradoxically, two days after Kryuchkov's speech, following in the wake of other Western governments, Washington announced that it was going to begin aiding the USSR. Journalists writing for such central US capitalist publications as Newsweek and the
International Herald Tribune have begun to reveal that Western aid corresponds more to a policy of supporting
Gorbachev than to any urgent needs of the Soviet people. In fact, nearly all reports agree that the supply crisis in the USSR is the result of bureaucratic mismanagement and misappropriation A CALL for a "return to order"
was raised by Gorbachev at the November 17 session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, accompanied by a series of measures designed to strengthen the regime. Under the third of six headings, he said: "Demands are justly being raised to reinforce law and order, to defend the security of every citizen of our country. Immediate organizational and cadre changes are indicated in the center and in the republics, in the localities."
In the first week of December, Gorbachev appointed a new minister of the interior, Boris Pugo, former commander of the Latvian KGB. That was another provocation against the national democratic movements. The previous minister, Vadim Bakatin, had been accused by neoStalinists of softness toward the national movements and independent republic governments.
The Baltic and Georgian governments have been trying either to get rid of their local KGBs or force them to accept republican authority. This has been a permanent point of conflict, particularly in Latvia, where the Soviet military and special forces have a heavyweight in the society. Moreover, service in a force 1990 and not of deficient production.
GERRY FOLEY charged with repressing a conquered nationality is a classical school of reaction.
For several weeks, the Soviet authorities have been stepping up their anathemizations of the national movements again. An occasion for this was Gorbachev's speech on November 15 to military members of the Congress of People's Deputies. The chief of the Soviet bureaucracy concentrated on defending the army, mainly against the attacks of the national democratic movements, which are opposing the present military system in varying degrees, from demanding the removal of all Soviet troops from their territories and the ending of conscription of their youth by the Soviet authorities (notably in the case of Lithuania), to insisting that local conscripts serve in their home republics and not be used elsewhere without the permission of the republic government.
Violent attacks on national movements
In the discussion with Gorbachev published in the November 16 Pravda, a number of the military deputies made extremely violent attacks on the national movements, quite worthy of Unionist
MPs in Northern Ireland. For example, Major A. Sokorchuk, first secretary of the Samborsk city committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, said:
"Throwing off all masks, antisocialist and separatist forces, with overwhelming representation [presumably, majorities] in the district and local soviets, under slogans of developing national consciousness, are waging a determined struggle for power, mounting a campaign of mass moral terror against Communists, war and party veterans and against members of the military forces.
"Illegal acts are taking place against members of the armed forces, staff headquarters and airbases are being picketed, the army is being characterized as an "occupation force', the draft is being boycotted."
The most violent speech came from Captain K. Akhaladze, a member of the Estonian Supreme Soviet [presumably one of the representatives of the Soviet military forces in that body]. Pravda said that he spoke "vividly and emotionally". "I don't want to say a word against perestroika. But understand me honored comrades, honored President. Perestroika brought a tragedy for me and continues to do so. I have many comrades whose family life has been broken. Look into the hall. Before you are people who with their mothers' milk drank in the words 'motherland, honor, devotion to the fatherland."
Marx and the motherland
"The concepts of motherland and mother are sacred for everyone. When our mother is in convulsions, how can we fail to express our thoughts? There is a lot of talk, but no concrete actions. Remember the words of Marx, when an idea takes hold of the masses, it becomes a material force. And today the idea of separating from the Soviet Union, the idea of 'the collapse of the empire', has become a force in the Baltic, and the parliaments of the republics are carrying it out legally.
"We have to to think again today about where the country is going, where its armed forces are going, who will be with us.
"When I left for Moscow, my comrades asked me to ask the leadership of the country, the army and the fleet, who will be with us tomorrow? You saw the November 7 parade in Tallin. You would have seen eyes of the non-native people filled with tears. They said, "Don't leave, and if you leave, take us with you or save us some way....
"Mikhail Sergeevich [the captain exclaimed -Pravda], I am one of the many who from 1985 to 1988 loved you boundlessly. You were our ideal....But from 1988 [when the national movements took off], I have been slowly moving away from you, and everyday there are more and more such people, who once were enthusiastic about perestroika but
USSR Defense of Lenin, defense of Trotsky?