7 ters

4 - Friday, Merch 27, 1987 - Nurth Shore News

Bob Hunter

@ strictly personal ®

ep fe!

IT HAS been evident since the Russians began their

unilateral moratorium on nuclear (esting last year that

something, somewhere,
world power.

The fact that the Russians last
month went back to testing in the
face of American pig-headedness
means, of course, that things
have not shifted as much as they
might have.

That anything has changed at
all is the miracle. One can imag-
ine Soviet military chiefs stirring
restiessly behind the scenes dur-
ing the months when the Pen-
_tagon blasted nuke after nuke,
and Russian underground sites
remained silent and unradioac-
tive.

The really cruel irony about
the brief half-thaw in the nuclear
arms race that we experienced
last year was that while Soviet
underground tests were tem-
porarily halted, Chernobyl hap-
pened.

The disaster had the unfortu-
nate side-effect of overshadowing
much that was going on in the
U.S.S.R. that was positive from
the point of view of anybody
who would like to; see -the
emergence of a democracy out of
that ill-starred country’s long ex-
perience of totalitarian terror.

Even before the release of po-
litical prisoners like Sakharov
began, reports out of Moscow in

fsuch publications. as The
Washington Post, Manchester
Guardian and Le Monde in-
i dicated that a ‘‘Prague Spring’’
might “be in the works — a
“Moscc™ Summer,’’ perhaps.
After two generations of brutal
f-repression and utter disregard for
the truth by the ruling Commu-
‘nist Party, it is perfectly
understandable that no- sane
Western observer takes anything
uttered by high Soviet officials at
face value.

Yet the accumulation of
changes in the Soviet Union since
the coming to power of Mikhail
Gorbachev amount, beyond a

t shadow of a doubt, to a serious
attempt at political transforma-
tion.

It is not the first time in Soviet
history that an effort has been
made to re-direct the dead hand
of the one-party system.

Nikita Khrushchev, in fact,

: might have proposed a far more.

effective reform than anything
being suggested by Gorbachev.
Back in 1961, Khrushchev tried
4 to limit the number of terms that
any party member could serve in
power. This would have
prevented petty bosses from cl-
inging to their positions for the
f rest of their lives.
Gorbachev's suggestion to elect
key regional cadres . by secret

Saturday
Sunday

SHERATON
LANDMARK
HOTEL

1400 Robson St.,
Vancouver, B.C.

MARCH 28
MARCH 29

has shifted in the balance of

ballot is not bad, however.

As things stand, the men at the
top who were at the first
meetings of the supreme central
committee, and who therefore
got to clect themselves, have
since then been able to control
the fates of everyone below them
— that is, anyone who came
after,

The predictable result has been
a small club of old men, running
a giant machine. Technically, it’s

called an oligarchy — but in
practise the better term is geron-
tocracy.

Henry Kissinger’s view is that
the Soviet Union is trapped in an
impossible position. [{t faces an
economic crisis if it fails to
modify its system and a political
crisis if it does anything.

As the only industrialized
country in the world where the
infant mortality rate is actually
risirig, the Russian economy and
social welfare apparatus is not
only stalled but going backwards.

The spectre of mass alcoholism
and the collapse of the family is
not some future nightmare for
the country’s leaders — it has
been reality for a long time now.

There is a tendency in the West
— which I normally share — to
dismiss rumblings of liberal
winds blowing in the land of the
Gulag as wishful thinking backed
by bare knuckles propaganda
aimed at simpletons in the free
world. :

Indeed, what we could have [|

here is simply a convulsion of
openness following a power
struggle to fill a vacuum at the
top, with the party apparatus

crushing everyone in the end, as |

usual,
All of that remains to be seen.

It may also just be this time that ]

enough of the steely bureaucrat,
emperors have grasped the
dimensions of their plight and
seen themselves in an ultimate
no-win situation, so that they are
opting for genuine change.

Polls taken in Western Europe
and Canada say that outside of
the U.S.A., it is Gorbachev, not
Ronald Reagan, who is seen as
the great white hope of a post-
nuclear age.

At this stage in the always-
deadly nuclear power game of
geopolitics, I think there may be
truth in that perception. It’s hard
to feel confident about Ron,
that’s for damn sure. Let’s hope
Mikhail and his comrades really
are getting their act together.

Somebody's got to.

——
10 a.m. -5 p.m.
Dl

DEALERS
PRIZES
ADMISSION
$1.50

UNDEVELOPED NV LAND

Park addition blocked

A PIECE of North Vancouver Ci-
ty land near Greenwood Park is to
remain undeveloped for now after
a failed attempt Monday to have
the tract added to the park.

Area resident Viire Daniels urg-
ed by letter that the city property
be added to Greenwood Park in
what she later called a
‘housekeeping matter’’ from
1984,

In September of 1984, Daniels
and a host of other area residents
packed council chambers to protest
the planned subdivision and sale of
the land.

The move was defeated and the
seven-lot city property remained
undeveloped.

Council's defeat of the
development proposal implied the
property was to be part of the park
and council should dedicate it as
such, Daniels contended.

Ald. Dana Taylor agreed. “By
refusing to put these lands on the
market it was the intention that
this land be parkland,’’ Taylor
told council.

But Ald. Elko Kroon suggested
the estimated £500,000 from any
land sale cou!d be used to improve
the park services. “It’s not much
by way of amenity.”

“T think it’s the wrong loca-
tion,’’ said Mayor Jack Loucks. ‘‘}
didn’t think it was a good place for
a park (in 1984) and I haven’t
changed my mind."

After the failed motion to have
the land added to the park, Ald.
Allan Blair proposed the city take
steps to sell the property for resi-
dential development.

“If you can’t go in one direction
you have to go another,”’ he said.

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“What we can do is take the
money and apply it to developing
Greenwood Park."’

“Tt think it’s too sudden and un-
necessary,"’ said Ald. Ralph Hall,

BLACK JACK
{LIBERAL RULES)

ROULETTE
(50¢ TABLES)
“EARLY BIRD
BONUSES”

as the motion from Blair was
defeated. ‘1 don't think we're that
hard up for cash."’ Lamented
Daniels: **It appears they are going
to start again.”*

: AVALON HOTEL

1025 MARINE DRIVE, NORTH’ Vancol

TONIGHT:& :

OM ll

“ MARCH/27, 2
- DOORS OPEN.

oho ance Colléctive A

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