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PARTISAN REVIEW
The prestige of Leninism would make a coup d'etat, or the
liquidation of the reformers, too risky a business. The opponents of
reform would have to come out against Lenin openly. They would
have to realize that an attempted coup would mean the rejection and
destruction of Marxist ideology and mark the end of the regime.
After the elections to the Central Committee it would, of course,
be necessary to extend the" principle of one hundred workers" to all
organs of power. Here, again, the criteria for candidacy should be
professional rather than regional. Committees could be set up to deal
with such urgent issues as: amnesty for political prisoners; introduc–
tion of trial by jury; gradual relaxation of censorship; admission of a
co-operative press (such a press existed in the USSR until 1925); the
formation of associations and parties which do not pursue anti–
constitutional aims ; withdrawal of Soviet troops from foreign
territory; replacement of KGB and MVD forces by units of the
people's militia (i .e . , partial implementation of the Marxist principle
of an armed people), etc. Another immediate aim would be to raise
the standard of living and balance the economy.
Most of these measures could obviously be financed by halting
the arms race, by reducing the size of the armed forces (and the
length of compulsory service), by eliminating prestige projects from
the space program, and by slashing the direct and indirect incomes of
high officials, applying a principle which Lenin repeatedly called a
sine qua non
of socialism.
The culmination of the
preliminary'
reforms should be in free
elections to the soviets and the transfer of all power to them. This
would guarantee nation-wide free public debate of all legislative
measures and political questions.
I am convinced that, under conditions of freedom, the people
would elect a democratic model without hangovers from the past or
transplants from Western models.
Solzhenitsyn and his supporters believe that democratization
would be accompanied by a bloody upsurge of nationalism among
the non-Russian peoples . This makes their type of "democratiza–
tion" difficult to understand. There would be no likelihood ofa bloody
revolt if all the nationalities of the Soviet Union were offered the
choice of secession or of remaining in the Union under conditions of
their own determination.
