10, 1986 - North Shore News Raa Bob Hunter ® strictly personal ® IT SEEMS the political monolith that lives to the north of us is showing a few cracks through which buds of cre- ative thought are growing. Russia has always had her dissidents, but according to a document leaked to The Guard- ian — and hence to the West — a group of ‘‘powerful officials,”’ calling themselves the Movement for Socialist Renewal, has put forward a manifesto calling for profound changes in the Soviet system. Among them: expansion of the rights of individual commercial enterprises to make their own production aid financial deci- sions, the setting-up of private enterprise in service and con- sumer goods sectors, encourage- ment of farmers’ private plots, and, low and behold, the equivalent of political parties and freedom of the press! experiencing a ‘crisis’’ per se is no big deal. The authors of the Gorbachev Era manifesto argue, however, from a patriotic position, using statistics that could only be ob- tained at the highest levels. They claim that untess the system is overhauled, the balance of power will tip permanently in favor of the United States, with its relentless juggernaut of an economy. This glimpse inside the highly secretive Soviet inner circle reveals that the gargantuan state apparatus is dragging the country inexorably further and further behind the West. In fact, the situation is worse than merely falling behind. “The Soviet Union lags 10 to 15 years behind the capitalist countries in its economic development, and this lag is growing. The U.S.S.R. is now on the path to becoming one of the underdeveloped nations.’ uranium min: are work- So what these ‘“‘powerful officials’’ ing in now, you ask? Apparently they are still en- trenched in their pigeonholes somewhere near the top. The think-tanks out of which these proposals were distilled were set up by Gorbachev himself after he came to power, according to reporter Martin Walker. These reformers — described by Walker as ‘‘the authentic voice of the Soviet elite thinking aloud and debating with itself’ — haven’t got a snowball's chance in hell of loosening the Communist Party’s grip on Russia, I guess, yet their argu- ments echo from deep ideological divisions. The Soviet Union has from Day One been a terminal crisis case, so the fact that the world’s most powerful totalitarian state is JOIN THE OTHER SMART HOME BUYERS WHO HAVE DISCOVERED THE PF! EASURES OF SUNNY WHITE ROCK. We know that people want to look at grass and trees. Ocean Park Village was modeled after an ald English Country green, thus, the living and dining rooms face out on lush, landscaped greenspuce not parking lots and concrete. The village is criss-crossed with attractive paths lined wad rhododenderons, flowering cherry trees, magnolia trees, maples and many others. Artistic lighting The manifesto observes bleak- ly: “The Soviet Union lags 10 to 1S years behind the capitalist countries in its economic development, and this lag is growing. The U.S.S.R. is now on the path to becoming one of the underdeveloped nations.”’ In other words, they are going backwards. By 1983, the U.S.S.R.’s foreign debts to the West amounted to $30 billion, a figure which is projected to grow some 600 per cent by the year 2000, which means that by then the Soviets will be spending 75 per cent of their export earnings just to service the debt. The Soviet system cranks out fabulous spaceships, as the Sovict Pavilion at Expo shows, yet the infant mortality level is actually rising due to chronic shortages of Russian citizens experience the lowest standard of living of the industrialized nations. And, in the manifesto authors’ own words, the lifestyle of much of the rural popuation ‘is reminis- cent of the life of the Russian peasantry in the early 20ch Cen- ture.’ Vhe manifesto is careful not to openly call for competing politi- cal parties. Instead, it urges the legalization of ‘alternative polit- ical organizations’? within the framework of ‘‘building a Social- ist society.’’ Well. Whatever. This manifesto was apparently circulated underground — before Chernobyl, which may or may not mean that its arguments about the need fot freedom of the press have more weight now than they did then, in view of the corruption that has been belated- ly exposed at the doomed reac- tor. In any event, it notes “the role of the Western press in Watergate, the Lockheed bribery scandals, the fail of Japanese Premier Tanaka, and the resigna- tion of the French Minister of Defence over the Rainbow War- rior affair,’? Walker writes. Something is needed, the reformist think, to ‘‘expose the corruption and illegality of even powerful people.’’ The only known institution in history that has been able to do that consistently, if not perfectly, is a free press. Governments don’t. Parties don’t. Heaven knows, even chur- ches don’t. Rather, they all tend to protect their own. What about the courts, legal system? It is interesting that the Soviets don’t consider ‘‘the law” to be worthy of reforming. From their perspective, law is never anything more than what the central power structure dictates, and the police obey their masters, right? Well, anyway, good luck, Movement for Socialist Renewal. 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