COMMENT
We now know enough about
glasnost
to know that, despite
all the speculations by "experts" who simply keep repeating each
other, it is not possible, at this writing, to predict the outcome. Cer–
tainly, no one was able to predict that anything like this would take
place now. However, I doubt Gorbachev can succeed completely,
without relinquishing the monopoly ofpower of the Communist Party,
which he is not about to do. He may, however, succeed partially.
It is patently difficult if not impossible to transform the struc–
ture of a society overnight, and in Russia today this would require
overcoming the ingrained habits and interests of the vast, inert bu–
reaucracy and the millions of workers who have learned to get along
without working. Even more important is the difficulty, if not the
impossibility, of having a free market and an open society controlled
by a single, all-powerful Communist Party. What Gorbachev seems
to want is a capitalist free market without capitalism.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that significant changes al–
ready have been made . The rehabilitation of Sakharov, for example,
and the readmission of Trotsky and Bukharin into Russian history
are monumental events, as is the removal of some restraints on
writing and painting. And, short of a coup by the opposition, an his–
torical process has been set in motion that may not be reversible . Of
this possibility, Voznesensky is reported to have said in a private talk
in this country that the ouster of Gorbachev would bring a return to
the black days of Stalin. From this distance, it is hard to tell whether
Voznesensky, because of his closeness to the political leaders, knew
something we could not know or whether he was drumming up sup–
port for Gorbachev, who needs the Russian intelligentsia as much as
he is needed by them.
Though Gorbachev is meeting resistance at home, he is finding
a receptive audience abroad . So glad are we to see a communist
leader with a semihuman face that Western opinion is lauding him
for making a first step toward what we take for granted. And unless
there is a sudden reversal, he is likely to impress those conservatives
who think of the relation with Russia as though they were dealing
with a business competitor, and those liberals who do not like to be
seen as intractable anticommunists. In fact, the term "free market
socialism," which permi ts the Soviet Union still to be considered a
socialist state while abandoning even the pretense to it, has been
prematurely minted by a British socialist.
