A contemptuous sign in the throng in Minsk said it all: PUT CHERNOBLE FOOD ON THE GOVERNMENT’S TABLE. Disgust mingled with anger last week as 100,000 people seized the streets of the capital of Belorussia, protesting this month’s government price hikes and demanding Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation as Soviet leader. With mass demonstrations spreading to the once docile Belorussian Republic, a vital industrial region of 10 million people, Gorbachev moved to the brink of a crackdown on dissent in the Soviet Union. “Economic collapse is threatening this country,” he said, proposing “anticrisis” measures that include a nationwide ban on strikes and protest rallies.
But will anyone pay attention? One hundred thousand Muscovites simply ignored a temporary ban on demonstrations in the capital last month. Earlier threats failed to ward off declarations of independence or “sovereignty” by all 15 republics; Lithuania remains defiant despite a January crackdown in which Soviet troops killed 14 people in Vilnius. Some 300,000 coal miners, on strike since March 1, have turned down an offer of double pay and vow to continue their crippling stoppage until Gorbachev quits. Last week the government of Soviet Georgia proclaimed independence. As the storm gathers over the Kremlin, the liberal Moscow daily Kuranty is predicting Gorbachev’s imminent “funeral as a state leader.”
The emergency measures will probably buy the president more time. On the surface they sound good. They disparage unprofitable state firms and encourage private enterprise. But the plan is skimpy on detail. It also suffers on from its pedigree: right now, almost anything emanating from Moscow provokes instant suspicion. Moreover, it would continue central planning in the context of free-market mechanisms. If adopted, this will almost certainly prove unworkable. As a senior Soviet economist explains, “You cannot play chess when one side uses chess rules and the other domino rules. We all have to play by the same rules.”
Meanwhile, Gorbachev has to keep the centrifugal political forces in check. His first impulse is for compromise. He sees himself as the man in the middle, the only Soviet leader capable of resisting the excess of both the conservatives and the progressives. But his use of tanks against unarmed civilians in Vilnius lost him the support of progressive forces. Since then, he has relied more and more on backing from the Army, the KGB and other conservatives. The hard-liners in turn have found ways to force their views on him. Conservatives in the Soviet Parliament were collecting signatures last month for a special congress to recall Gorbachev from office. They dropped the idea after meeting with the president. The price Gorbachev paid is not known, but the proposed yearlong ban on strikes and demonstrations is a centerpiece of the hard-liners’ program.
Whether the ban is enforceable remains to be seen. The miners’ walkout halted fuel supplies to steel mills and other key factories. Gorbachev aides admit tensions will escalate if the strikes spread to industries like nuclear power plants or transportation, where unrest could threaten public safety. “Then the president would invoke emergency powers,” says Georgi Shakhnazarov, a Gorbachev adviser. That means using troops to break up job actions. And in any naked confrontation pitting strikers against a Kremlin machine backed by the Army and KGB, the outcome is foreordained. Some Soviet progressives worry that Gorbachev might eventually use troops even to close down critical newspapers or Parliament. “This is still not a society of laws,” says a knowledgeable Western ambassador. “It is a society of power.”
Victory would be costly. Repression by force would destroy Gorbachev’s lingering reputation as a reformer, both at home and abroad. It would be an obstacle to Western investment–already discouraged by the Kremlin’s seeming inability to come to terms with the idea of private property. It would chill political relations with the United States and other Western countries. Already, many foreign governments wonder whether Gorbachev still has the clout at home to deliver further breakthroughs in international cooperation.
This week may provide an early test case, as the Soviet leader travels to Japan and South Korea for talks on economic relations and the status of a group of islands occupied by the Soviet Union but claimed by Tokyo. His performance there will have wide repercussions. Gorbachev hopes for some $20 billion of Japanese investment in the Soviet Far East. A lackluster result, falling embarrassingly short of that goal, would hurt badly. Foreign policy has been the one real success of the Gorbachev years. If the Soviet leader cannot keep up the momentum abroad, his days in power could be numbered at home.
