In fact, the history of market reform in Yugoslavia, which has had the richest experience in this area, shows that self-management poses severe limits to the free circulation of capital and labour, and as such is incompatible with the efficient functioning of the kind of "full-blooded market" that Gorbachev has said he wants to introduce in the Soviet Union. In Yugoslavia, as well as in the rest of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the "radicalization" of the market reform is being accompanied by a retreat from the self-management idea and the restoration of full property rights, including the right of owners to manage and DAVID SEPPO B UT although the self- management orientation has until recently been a minor note in the organized labour movement in the Soviet Union, it was never completely absent. At the May 1990 Congress of Independent Workers Organizations and Movements, where the influence of certain liberal Moscow intellectuals was strongly felt, a minority "Bloc of 33" delegates (mostly from outside the mining areas and in particular from the industrial centres of the Urals), argued for an independent labour movement within the broader democratic movement (a position firmly opposed by the liberals') and proposed the following platform as a response to what they described as an offensive against labour's social and political rights: "In no circumstances to deprive the workers of the right to manage their enterprises and to realize the principles of self-management; not to allow the economic reform to be carried out at the expense of workers' interests, the reduction of their real wages and the spread of unemployment; to oppose the democratization of sell their enterprises. property relations through the sale of state enterprises to private individuals."2
The conflicts over power in the enterprise and the deepening suspicion among the workers that destatization will in prac tice mean the transformation of their enterprises into the property of the bureau1. According to the bulletin of the Workers' Group in the Yaroslavl Popular Front, "Many intellectual democrats talk of the need for a union of the democratic intelligentsia and the workers. It sounds nice. But what they mean in practise can be seen from the example of the Yaroslavl' Popular Front...They rejected from the very start the idea that the Popular Front should seek a social base in the workers and they observed with gloomy apprehension from the sidelines the activity of the Workers' Group. The Popular Front not only did nothing for the organization of Yaroslavl's workers, but it simply does not want the creation of a real workers' and really independent workers' organizations....They mouth off about 'common human interests' and toss out stupidities from the tribune to the effect that 'the class approach leads to genocide."" From Listok Rabochei Gruppy (Yaroslavl') reproduced in Rabochaya tribuna, November 7, 1990. For analyses of the debates at the Congress of Independent Worker Organizations and Movement on this issue see P. Funder Larsen, "Workers of the USSR, Unite!", International Viewpoint, no. 187, June 18, 1990, and B. Ikhlov, "Neklassovyi vrag," Rabochii
21 vestnik, (Perm") no. 5, May 1990. 2. Rabochii vestnik (Per') no. 5, May 1990, p. 11. March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
USSR crats and "affairistes" of the shadow economy formed the background for the emergence of an organized self-management current in the labour movement in the late summer of 1990. But the immediate impulse was provided by the passage in the USSR Supreme Soviet on a new "Law on Enterprises in the USSR" at its spring 1990 session.
This law, adopted with suspiciously little publicity, supersedes the 1987 "Law on State Enterprises" that had granted broad self-management rights to the work collectives, including the right to elect managerial personnel and to participate in and monitor the administration of the enterprise through their elected workcollective councils. The new law was explained at the time by the need to facilitate the process of democratization and the shift to the market. But the activists who managed to learn of it described it as "depriving the work-collective councils of any real functions in management and in practice reducing them to nothing." Under the new law, which said nothing about self-management, enterprises are to be managed according to their charters, which are to be established by the owners.
### Legislation in secret
A week after the law's adoption, the workers of the main assembly line of the VAZ factory declared: "[We] are deeply angered by the fact that the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, on June 4 1990, passed a 'Law on Enterprises in the USSR', in secret from the people, without first even publishing a draft in the press and submitting it to the collectives for discussion. In essence, a gross provocation has been committed against the toilers of the country. A law affecting the interests of every work collective has been adopted without any consideration for the opinion of the toilers themselves. "5
In fact, the offensive against self-management, which had never become much of a reality anyway, had begun months earlier with the government's instruction to end the practise of electing managerial personnel. "The absurdity of these elections does not require discussion," wrote the management-oriented journal EKO. "This has already been recognized by N. I. Ryzhkov. M. S. Gorbachev, who first proposed them, has not expressed any opinion, but his silence speaks loudly."6
The liberal ideologues have also participated in this offensive, though often hiding behind self-management rhetoric. Thus, Gorbachev's personal adviser, economist Nikolai Petrakov, • has described the creation of councils of stockholders (who are not limited to the enterprise's employees), which will appoint the directors and make key decisions on investments, dividends and prof22 its, as "a sort of step toward self• management free of higher-standing International Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 links." The convocation of the first All-Union Conference of Work Collective Councils and Workers' Committees in Tolyatti on August 31-September 4, 1990, was a direct response to the passage of the new law. Attended by about a hundred delegates from enterprises employing some two million, it was almost completely ignored by the national media. Rabochaya tribuna (Workers' Tribune — published by the Central Committee of the CPSU) was the only central paper to give it any coverage, and this was really incidental to its main interest in responding to the challenge of Nikolai Travkin, leader of the Democratic Party®, who said he would eat his hat if the paper published the conference's resolution critical of the government.
The crew of the national news programme, Vremya, also came, but its purpose was to film Venyamin Yarin, an "honorary" worker-member of Gorbachev's Presidential Council. Yarin told the conference that the President had entrusted him with the mission of organizing the representatives of the work control councils around himself and the Presidential Council. Apparently, the conference's failure to respond to this offer explains why no news about it appeared on Soviet television screens.
While the conference approved of the new law's intention of increasing the economic activity of enterprises, it otherwise assessed it as anti-democratic, directed against the self-management, favouring the arbitrary power of the administration and the ministries and holding back the processes of demonopolization and destatization.
Work councils outmoded?
Some did argue that the work collective councils had been subservient to management and, in any case, they were outmoded now that the government had adopted a policy of privatization!° that allows for more "progressive" forms of enterprise management. The new law states that enterprises are to be administered according to their charter established by their owner or owners. Since, it was argued, the work collectives are about to become the owners, why make a fuss? If they judged the councils to be useful, they could decide to retain it.
But that was the rub: the majority of delegates were not at all certain that the work collectives would inherit the destatized factories. Certainly this was as far from clear in the 500-Day Plan as it was in the USSR government's "Basic Orientations for the Stabilization of the Economy and the Transition to a Market Economy". Both allow for all forms of property and neither makes specific provision for self-management, let alone for ownership or control by the work collectives. Indeed, if one goes beyond the rhetoric and deliberate fuzziness of sections relating to property and management, their entire thrust is against self-management and for the introduction of full private property rights.!
Work councils to choose
Accordingly, the conference demanded that the work collective councils themselves be the ones to choose the appropriate form of property for their enterprises. Specifically, they should have two options: they could either become collective owners, without payment for the enterprise, or they could decide that the enterprise remain state property that would be managed by the councils. In discussing the first option, some argued for payment, since the enterprises were built, not by the collectives, but by the entire society.
But the majority rejected these arguments, not least because the workers simply lack the means to purchase their enterprises. As for management of the enterprises, all were agreed that under both options the administration should be hired employees of the collective and work under its supervision. The meeting declared "impermissible the transforma3. For a brief discussion of the ambiguous self-management provisions of the 1987 law, see D. Mandel, "Revolutionary Reform; restructuring relations between workers and management", Socialist Register 1989, London, Merlin Press, pp. 102-29, p. 110. 4. Rabochaya tribuna, December 6, 1990. On the 1988 law, see D. Mandel, "Revolutionary reform... 5. Sobstvennoe mnenie (Tolyatti), no. 7, 1990. 6. "Demokratizatsiya no proizvodstve, vlast' dela i vlast'..ch'ya?", EKO (Novosibirsk), no. 8, 1990, pp. 85-102, p. 85. 7. Rabochaya tribuna, April 22, 1990. See also, R. W. Davies, "Gorbachev's socialism in historical perspective," New Left Review, Spring 1990, pp. 22-3. 8. Of the sundry liberal parties, Travkin's has made the most effort to court workers. Travkin himself, who rather dubiously claims he was once a worker (at present he is a businessman and politician), regularly appears at large worker gatherings, spreading his message of primitive anti-communism. So far he has had little success among the workers, who have generally been withholding their allegiance from all political par9. In December 1990, Gorbachev disbanded this largely symbolic advisory council, one of whose main purposes seems to have been to co-opt potential opposition. Yarin, a metallurgical worker, had been co-chairman of the anti-liberal United Front of Toilers. He liked to say that after 30 years at the factory, all the property he had accumulated was what he was wearing. As a member of the Presidential Council, Yarin enjoyed a spacious apartment, trips abroad, a generous salary, and, of course, much official honour. It did not take him long to come round fully to Gorbachev's policies. The United Front of Toilers, whose fortunes have been flagging since its foundation in the summer of 1989 (its worker support is quite thin) recently ousted Yarin (according to Yarin, he resigned.) 10. "Privatization" and "destatization" are often used interchangeably in the Soviet Union. 11. The 500-Day Plan gives the work collective one month to propose a form of property for the enterprise, but the decision remains that of the state authorities. It also allows that 10% of the stocks "may be transferred" (this apparently also depends on the discretion of the authorities) to the enterprise for sale and transfer on preferential terms to members of the work collective (not the collective as a group). 12. This account is based on personal communications from participants and Rabochaya tribuna, September 9, 1990.
tion of ministries into concerns playing the role of leasors of joint stock companies." It called on the Supreme Soviet to suspend the law until it could be revised to take into account the decisions of the conference and it asked republican parliaments to ignore those provisions that contradicted the self-management provisions of the 1987 law. A new draft law should be submitted to a national discussion. The conference elected an organizing committee to co-ordinate the activities of the work-collective councils and workers' committee throughout the country and to act as their spokesperson. It was instructed to participate in revising the law and to convoke a full congress of self-management committees in December that would establish a permanent organization. 12
This was the first organized expression of how at least a significant part of the workers see "destatization" '. It made clear the underlying differences between the motives of the workers support for market reform and those of the liberals. As noted earlier, rhetoric aside, a "full- "full-blooded market" ', the liberals' ultimate goal, requires the establishment of full private property rights. The workers, for their part, support market reform and the enterprise autonomy that it would provide as conditions for a more efficient economy and real self-management by the collectives. Although the conference was silent on this, it was implicit in its position that enterprises that become the property of the collectives (there is no question for those that remain state property) could not be divided or sold.
### Successful conference
Despite the organizing committee's meagre resources and the difficulty in finding a large enough hall, 700 delegates and 300 harr and 300 observers, mainly workers and engineers, self-management activists from large enterprises that together employ about seven million workers, attended the Founding Congress of Work-Collective Councils and Workers' Committees on December 8-10, 1990. Many of the delegates had to pay their own way, and some had even to brave threats from management.13 But the main purpose of the gathering, to create a permanent organization of self-management committees, to reaffirm the Tolyatti conference's position on the "Law of Enterprises in the USSR" and on destatization, and to develop a plan of action, were achieved. The congress founded the Union of Work-Collective Councils and Workers' Committees and elected a council of representatives from the major regions, with three co-chairpersons. 14 A heated debate took place over the issue of a warning strike at the start of January to support the congress's programmatic demands. Although a strike was not ruled out, it was decided first to try other means, in particular to act through the Republican parliaments. The chair of the USSR Supreme Soviet A. Luk'yanov tried to reassure the delegates that the Soviet parliament agreed that the self-management councils should have the right to decide all the matters that affect the vital interests of the workers.
He invited them to to work with the parliament on revising the Laws on the Enterprise and on Property, which, he admitted, had already been overtaken by events. But the delegates were not reassured. Sergei Novopol'skiii of the AZLK factory explained that: "It does not depend on promises and declaration and not even on the intentions of the other side, but on our decisiveness. If they do not carry out our demands, we will declare a strike. "15
A dominant theme of the discussion was the danger of a quiet appropriation of state property by bureaucratic clans who are adapting the market to their interests. Much evidence, along the lines cited in my article in the previous issue of /V, was brought to support that fear. The Union's programme of immediate measures took note of the "critical situation in the country linked to the attempt by the administrative-command system to consolidate its power through the appropriation of the
USSR property belonging to the people and to leave the toilers in the situation of hired labourers deprived of rights." It called on the councils to convene their collectives to hear reports from the administration on its activity, "including [that relating to] joint enterprises, small enterprises, cooperatives, as well as its participation in associations and concerns...and to stop any attempts to transform enterprises behind the back of the collective into concerns, joint-stock companies and so on."
The Union's basic goals are the achievement of "legal guarantees and the realization in practice of the voluntary and free choice by the work collectives of forms of property and management", , as well as "drawing of work collectives into the process of managing their enterprises, as one of the main ways of fighting against the totalitarian system with the aim of overcoming the alienation of the toilers from power and from property and the liquidation of the cruel exploitation of the people by the barrack-bureaucratic state." Finally, the "union unites the labour collectives -y, une unlon unites the labour collectives in the aim of mobilizing their civic activity as a factor for the general improvement of the situation in the country, as a factor of constant positive pressure from below on legislative and executive organs, and finally, as a factor that will block antipopular actions and facilitate the precise and swift execution of plans and decisions in the interests of the toilers."16
From a socialist point of view, the programme of the new Union is not unambiguous, and it is worth looking first at some of the potential dangers it presents. As already noted, although the inalienable and indivisible nature of the collective's property flows logically from the programme, this is never made explicit.
No economic conception More importantly, there is no overall economic conception. The Union clearly supports market reform (although this too is not really spelled out), but is this reform to lead to a system defined by market relations, that is, one in which the market dominates and dictates its logic to society, or to one where market relations are a mechanism of economic regulation and coordination subordinated to the collective, conscious will of the society?
It could be argued that the movement's emphasis on enterprise autonomy and on ownership by the collective can serve as a basis for an eventual restoration of capitalism as well as for the construction of a socialist economy based on self-management, depending on whether the accent is on the market or on the collective power of the workers. If it is on the 13. Rabochaya tribuna, December 8 1990. 14. These are a mechanic-assembler from VAZ, an engineer from the new Elabuga auto factory and the chairman of the work-collective council of the Moscow Kauchuk rubber factory. 23 15. Rabochaya tribuna, December 12, 1990. 16. Unpublished document. March 4, 1991 #201 International Viewpoint
USSR former, there seems little more reason to welcome monopolism based upon workers' self-management than bureaucratic monopolism; both involve the pursuit of particular, corporatist interests at the expense of the collectivity.
Gorbachev moves to right
With Gorbachev moving to the "right" (in particular his attempt to shore up the Union and the disintegrating economy through extraordinary presidential powers based upon a greater reliance on the army and the KGB and his appointment of conservatives to certain top posts) and the realization among liberals that "destatization" is not proceeding as they would like (that is, in a way that would give ample influence and reward to the intellectual élite and to a private sector not dependent on bureaucratic whims), some liberals are already proposing the idea of an alliance with the self-management movement, hoping to dominate it.
Gavriil Popov has publicly warned of two possible variants of privatization: "the transfer as property to the bureaucracy (along with the trade mafia) of that which they have, so to speak, already been "managing" so successfully; or democratic privatization, with transfer of enterprises to the toilers." (A supporter of the 500-Day Plan, Popov no more really wants to seen the second option realized than do the bureaucrats he is attacking.)
Igor Klyamkin, one of the most insightful liberal ideologues, has now also come round to seeing in Gorbachev the leader of the "revolution from above". Yel'tsin, on the other hand, represents for him "new [unnamed] forces"; Yel'tsin wants a "different [unspecified] kind of market." Klyamkin laments the fact that nationalism cannot serve as a basis for "democracy" (that is, for the liberal intelligentsia and its restorationist project) in Russia, as it does in other republics. He suggests, however, that such a basis might be constructed from the struggles provoked by destatization, and he calls for "a broad bloc of employees and entrepreneurs. "18
The hopes pinned on this tactic of harnessing the popular movement to the liberal programme in the Russian Republic by playing up the opposition of a supposedly democratic republican parliament led by Yel'tsin to the undemocratic central government and parliament led by Gorbachev has some basis.
The tactic has a major trump in Yel'tsin's personal popularity as an outspoken opponent of the establishment -though there are some signs that his star too might be waning. Thus, the workers of the VAZ assembly line, whose resolution was cited above, appealed to Yel'tsin and the Russian parliament to defend their self-management rights against the central government. Their programme of the 24 tives to work through their republican par- December Congress called on the collecInternational Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 liaments and to push for the transfer of their enterprises from Union to republican jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the liberals' attempt to win the self-management movement to their cause has slight chance of success: their market reform is no more compatible with a revolution from below and genuine self-management than that of the reformist wing of the bureaucracy. And these two groups need each other to realize their programmes, which are really not that different.' It was only a little over a year ago that Klyamkin himself wrote that the transition to the market could not be achieved democratically, since the workers are too attached to the idea of social justice.2° Now, after suddenly "discovering" that Gorbachev, in contrast to Yeltsin, has embraced the "revolution from above" he nevertheless still concludes (not at all disapprovingly) that a Gorbachev-Yeltsin alliance is inevitable, though for good measure he concludes that it will be a stormy marriage of convenience.
### Ineffective democracy
As Sergei Stankevich, deputy mayor of Moscow and one of the three leaders of the liberal "Interregional Group" in the USSR Parliament put it in the closing days of 1990: "The situation in the country is critical and by ordinary parliamentary methods, using only our newly-born and still-ineffective democracy, it will be impossible to resolve our Therefore, we need a more authoritarian leadership of the reform process. "21 The liberals' feeble reaction to Gorbachev's shift to the "right" indicates that Stankevich's views are widely shared by his colleagues, or that, in any case, they can find no acceptable alternative to Gorbachev.
Of course, few would deny the need to restore some semblance of order in the economy. The presidential decree reactivating and strengthening "workers' control" of trade (to be aided by the KGB!) should be seen as a populist gesture on Gorbachev's part. But this measure is not really intended to change the relations of power in the economy.
The unmistakable thrust of Gorbachev's latest shift (certainly not his last — the "revolution from above" has only one possible programme: the market) is towards bureaucratic recentralization, which in practice necessarily means strengthening the power of the economic managers vis-à-vis the workers. The All-Union Meeting of Managers of State Enterprises that took place at almost the same time as the self-management congress adopted a strong law and order resolution. In contrast to the workers' congress, this gathering, held in the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses, was addressed by Gorbachev himself and received broad press coverage. 2
As the liberal-apparatus alliance becomes more explicit, so the liberals' success in winning popular support as the only real democrats and most fearless enemies of the bureaucracy declines. On the other hand, socialists, who so far have remained relatively isolated from their potential social base, are the only ones who embrace the revolution from below and put forth a consistent democratic programme. The self-management movement thus opens up new possibilities for breaking their isolation.
Summing up political developments in 1990, Pavel Voshchanov, political observer for Komsomol' skaya pravda, lamented "a mass shift to the right in consciousness... The discrediting of the democratic idea is one of the political outcomes of this last year." By "democratic idea" Voshchanov, of course, means "liberalism". His use of the term "right" is more ambiguous, since it can refer to conservative "defenders of socialism" as well as to genuine socialists (these two groups are indistinguishable to the liberals, who are in complete agreement with the liberals that socialism has already been constructed in the Soviet Union). But there is no evidence of a shift in mass consciousness towards the conservatives, either of the Stalinist or of the Pamyat' (Great Russian chauvinist) type. On the contrary, the emergence of an organized self-management current demonstrates the continued strength of democratic sentiment among the workers.
Weakening liberal influence
The creation of the Union of WorkCollective Committees is itself a sign of the weakening of liberal ideological influence in an important sector of the labour movement. The recognition of the need for coordinating their activities indicates that self-management activists are beginning to discover the limits of a corporatist approach to their struggle for enterprise autonomy. Such an approach, which has received strong encouragement from liberals, was to a large degree a spontaneous reaction on the workers' part to their experience with bureaucratic centralism. But this seems to be changing under the impact of what they have already experi17. Radzikhovskii, "Kapitalizm v otdel'no vzyatoi kvartire," Nedelya, no. 48, November 25, 1990, p. 7. 18. I. Klyamkin, "Oktrabr'skii vybor prezidenta," Ogonek, no. 47, November 1990, p. 7. 19. In the view of A. Kolganov, a Marxist economist at Moscow University, the "500-Days" are based upon a bloc between the "new rich" and the party-economic bureaucracy on terms dictated by the new rich. The Union programme calls for a smoother, less painful path of transformation of the bureaucracy into new rich, naturally on its own terms. A. Kolganov. "Doloi nomenklatumyi kapitalizm," Dialog, No. 17, November 1990, p. 45. 20. E. Bérard-Zarzicka, "Quelques propositions pour une perestroika autoritaire", Les temps modernes (Paris), no. 523, February 1990, pp. 11-22. 21. Komsomol'skaya pravda, December 30, 1990. 22. Trud, December 2, 1990. 23. Rabochaya tribuna, December 8, 9 and 11, 1990. 24. Rabochaya tribuna, December 6, 1990. 24. Kabochaya tribuna, December 6, 1990.
enced of the market and the threat posed by growing economic dislocation.
"Certain elements would very much like to split up the workers as potential ownerS, ," explained a delegate to the Congress from the Elabuga auto factory. "When they are isolated from each other, it will be easier to manipulate them in the service of alien interests. This is one of the reasons we called the congress."4 Much was said at the congress of the need for a strong central authority capable of restoring respect for laws and harmony among the republics, uniting regions and establishing stable economic relations in a unified economic space. But the congress rejected Gorbachev's authoritarian solution. According to V. Kataev, a delegate from Cheboksar:
"Such an authority cannot be established from above with the aid of a club and decrees. It will be established by the work collectives themselves if they become the complete masters of the socialist property. In that case, as the resolution of the Congress states, the workcollective as owners are prepared to bear full responsibility for the results of the economic activity of their enterprises and for order in the country.2
V. Adrianov, co-chairman of the Union and a mechanic on the VAZ assembly line, expressed the outlook of the self-management movement in the following terms: "The work-collective councils in the enterprises were born of perestroika. But from the very start, they were separated from each other. Today the time has come to unite. Why? We are standing on the threshold of the market. We are not indifferent when it comes to who will get that part of the national property that will undergo destatization. The aim of our
INDEPENDENE union: through common affond union: through common efforts, to win the possibility for every collective to itself choose the form of property, to itself become, if it so desires, the owner of its enterprise without payment. Only the workers, having become the master, the owners of the property, are capable of stopping the advancing chaos in the economy.
"The programmes of transition to the market that have been adopted contain within them the danger of violation of the workers' interests. Exploiting the confusion, the administrative-command apparatus is attempting not only to hold onto the reigns of management, but to become in fact the owners of the means of production, creating concerns, associations, joint-stock companies. As for us, we are left the role of hired labour, the draught force of the economy. We cannot and simply do not have the right to allow that."26
A socialist path
If the workers are really going to prevent this, they will have to take up the fight for a socialist path of development. For it alone holds out the prospect of genuine democratization of economic and political relations. While the liberals form alliances with the apparatus in order to push through by authoritarian means a reform that would leave economic power in the hands of a small élite, the socialists emerge as the only real democrats. In a joint declaration at the end of September 1990, a coalition of left parties and groups in Moscow condemned the official reform programmes as.
"One more social experiment that would maintain power and property in a new form in the hands of the party-state
USSR bureaucracy and the "affairistes" of the shadow economy. The bosses of the [Brezhnev] period of stagnation want to change the form of their domination....And once again, the burden of these transformations will fall entirely on the ple.... Yesterday's "irreconcilable" fight- shoulders of ordinary peoers against the privileges of the partocracy are prepared today to defend the power of the same nomenklatura, with the only difference that now transactions will occur in cash [pod nalichnyi raschet]....The slogans of justice, humanism, and charity, under which the democratic movement of the perestroika period developed, have been replaced with calls for a cruel economy, a firm hand, and the auctioning off of the nation's wealth...
"It is necessary to overcome the false alternative between totalitarianism and a monopoly-dominated capitalist market and to take our own path, determined by the creative activity of the people where the live and work and by the unity of their actions as a people. In this work, our sympathies lie with social, production and territorial self-management, though this too cannot be imposed from above."
Among the immediate measures proposed in the declaration are: the right of work collectives to determine independently, without purchase, the forms of property, management and self-management in their enterprises; the right of local soviets to manage land and natural resources, monitored by public organizations; the right of republics and other territorial formations to independently determine their status as well as the powers they voluntarily delegate to superordinate organizations; the abolition of presidential power; democratic opposition to the creation of authoritarian national states that refuse national and civil rights to their own minorities; the consistent introduction of full human rights, in particular the abolition of the death penalty, of anti-strike legislation, of all forms of forced labour, of the internal passport regime and of the nolitical nolice. the regime, and of the political police; the right of the local population through their soviets and through referenda to veto the construction of enterprises on their territoгу.2
Such is the state of glasnost that none of the newspapers would agree to print this declaration. But despite the obstacles posed by the liberal near-monopoly of the mass media (tempered only by the minority conservative media), the profoundly democratic nature of the labour movement, and more particularly, the appearance of an organized self-management current within it, give grounds for optimism about the eventual development of an active, mass base for socialism in the Soviet Union. * 25. Ibid. 26. Rabochaya tribuna, December 8, 1990. Inerational Viewp in, no. 194, November 12, 1990G 25 International Viewpoint, no. 194, November 12, 1990. March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
BREAD
PROTEST
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COMPLAINI
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LALI
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EARLE
By GABLE in the Globe and Mail lot ate Craned & 44 Sundicate
Russian Kerolution ...
GREECE
Down with the government of