Five thousand hand-picked true believers assemble in the Kremlin`s cavernous Palace of Congresses this week to confirm Mikhail Gorbachev`s vision of the past, the present and the future.
With its opening gavel, the 27th congress of the Soviet Communist Party will climax the Soviet leader`s first year in office.
For his ruling inner circle, the congress is the coronation of power consolidated with a speed unprecedented in the nearly seven decades of Soviet history.
For the 5,000 delegates from across the country, it will be a chance to try to resuscitate an 18-million-member party organization suffering political hardening of the arteries.
For the 278.7 million residents of this nation, it is an opportunity for Gorbachev & Co. to prove that the party–after a year of wrenching self-criticism for corruption, ineptness and insensitivity–again deserves the respect and devotion it claims as the ”vanguard” of the people.
For the rest of the world, the congress will serve as Gorbachev`s megaphone to declare that communism will not be judged a contender for history`s ash-heap, but that it remains a fitting challenger to the West.
No small affair.
Congresses are held roughly every five years and constitute the main political event for the Soviet party. Since the party is the sole proprietor of real power in the USSR, that means the gatherings are the main political events for the nation, too.
Usually, they are little more than rubberstamp affairs that dutifully approve the leadership`s medium-term plans and targets. Some, however, have proven to be of huge importance–like the 22d congress in 1961 that brought the Sino-Soviet split into the open.
Kremlinologists like to point out, too, that Tuesday`s opening of the 10- day congress falls exactly on the 30th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev`s secret speech at the 20th congress in 1956. Khrushchev used the podium that day to denounce the violent excesses of Joseph Stalin and in the process touched off a torrent of sometimes violent de-Stalinization throughout the Soviet bloc.
The speech was one of the major developments anywhere in the world in the 1950s.
No one expects anything quite so dramatic this week. Still, Western specialists predict that the leadership of former Kremlin chief Leonid Brezhnev, who died in 1982, will come under intense fire for the stagnation, inertia and corruption that flourished in the 1970s.
Brezhnev`s cronies are becoming scarce in top-level positions, although the government`s middle ranks remain packed with his appointees, bureaucrats who can implement or impede the leadership`s policy initiatives.
Thus the 54-year-old Gorbachev, who ascended to power last March, must walk the line between alienating those Brezhnev-era civil servants, while making a clean break with the policies–or lack of them–of his predecessors. At least Gorbachev is allowing his political opponents to retire on pension. That is a charming alternative to purges during the Stalinist 1930s and 1940s, when resignations were assured by bullet, banishment or prison camp.
In his memoirs, Khrushchev wrote that two-thirds of the 139 members elected to the party`s central committee in 1934 at the 17th party congress died by firing squad. No fewer than 1,108 of the 1,966 delegates to the congress were arrested as well.
Reliable sources say that Gorbachev`s first, and perhaps formative, introduction to internal party drama came when he was elected a Communist Youth League, or Komsomol, delegate to the 22d congress in 1961.
De-Stalinization was being intensified, and the congress voted to remove the former dictator`s embalmed corpse from Lenin`s mausoleum on Red Square, where it had been placed in 1953 alongside the USSR`s founding father.
But there is a second, perhaps more important, historical lesson that Gorbachev may have learned from the anniversary to be celebrated Tuesday, Western analysts say.
Khrushchev`s speech shattering the myth of Stalin`s infallibility caused defections in Communist Parties of the Soviet satellites and inspired upheavals in Poland and Hungary. The unprecedented admission of official crimes encouraged intellectuals and artists throughout the Soviet bloc to seek greater freedoms in the 1950s and 1960s.
Most political scientists trace roots of the Soviet dissident movement of the 1970s to the Khrushchev address. Soviet authorities certainly are aware of it, too, and must certainly remember in their deliberations on how to deal with nonconformism.
It is too early for concrete historical comparisons, but some Moscow intellectuals see shadows of Khrushchev in Gorbachev`s gregarious public manner; in his plans for economic decentralization, promotion of youthful managers and infusion of technology; and in his attacks on entrenched bureaucracy.
Others, however, like some foreign diplomats and members of the dissident community, also see echoes of neo-Stalinism in Gorbachev`s campaigns for discipline, hard work and conformist behavior.
Both sides, though, agree that he has changes in mind. The question is, Can he implement them in light of his country`s previous experiences with liberalization and against the wishes of the dug-in bureaucracy?
”Think of it as a snake in a tunnel,” one Western political analyst said. ”Gorbachev wants the snake to move forward, on a specific, pre-determined path, and quickly. That`s the centrally planned Soviet economy. To do that, he has to widen the tunnel so the snake can do its wiggle back and forth a little better. Those are his reforms.
”But remember, he certainly cannot do away with the tunnel walls, and if he widens the tunnel too much, the snake can turn around or stop or do what it wants. Gorbachev can`t have that. Those are restraints demanded by his political doctrine.
”What Gorbachev is doing is widening the tunnel just a little bit. That`s all. That is reform under the Soviet system. Don`t expect any more.”
Thus far, Gorbachev`s initiatives have kicked up plenty of dust, but little else. Substantive change has not materialized.
Most attention has been focused on an anti-alcohol campaign and the purge of officials said to be aging or prone to graft and inefficiency.
”In the short term, having fewer drunk workers and ousting incompetent managers to make the present system work to its potential is a good strategy,” one NATO-nation diplomat said. ”We`ve already seen a modest improvement.”
Personnel shake-ups have been the arena for Gorbachev`s most astounding triumphs during his first year in office.
Western diplomats who specialize in Kremlin nose-counting say he has sacked 22 of the country`s 59 ministers–those are cabinet-level positions–as well as six of 22 chairmen of state committees, or agencies. Forty-six of 157 regional party bosses also have been replaced while Gorbachev was running the leadership.
Of the 330-member party central committee, Gorbachev can expect that at least half will be fresh faces when the congress completes its balloting.
At the pinnacle of power, in the ruling Politburo, Gorbachev has been able to oust his chief rival, Grigory Romanov, and bring four allies to full membership on what is now an 11-man body.
He engineered the dignified retirement of Nikolai Tikhonov, the octogenarian Politburo member who served also as prime minister, replacing him with political soulmate Nikolai Ryzhkov.
In addition, veteran Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko was relieved of that position and appointed to the largely ceremonial post of president.
Besides choosing a new central committee, the congress is to approve the Communist Party program, a blueprint for society redrafted for the first time since 1961.
Delegates also are to accept economic outlines to the year 2000, as well as a new five-year fiscal plan.
Mostly, however, there will be a spate of lengthy speeches laying down the Gospel according to Gorbachev in primary policy areas. In the next few years, the words will be quoted and re-quoted by the state-run press, lest anyone forget how the line goes.
If past practice is followed–and the Soviet Union is a society built on unbreakable habit–the session will open with greetings from Yegor Ligachev, the ideology chief who appears to be the second man in the unannounced Kremlin hierarchy.
Gorbachev then should follow with the principal report–a sort of State of the Union address. He also is expected to deliver a report on the new party program.
Prime Minister Ryzhkov is expected to tout the two economic plans, and Ligachev will reappear for a speech on party rules. Reports on credentials and party auditors also are expected.
It is likely that Gorbachev will end the congress with a speech after the election of the new central committee.
Debate is as much a feature of Soviet government as in any other country, but differences are never aired on occasions like party congresses. Most decisions have long since been made by congress time.
”I doubt that any Soviet leader in this day and age would submit anything to an open vote,” one Western specialist said.
”Any debates or disagreements are decided prior to the congress,” added another Western envoy. ”Either within the shadowy group you call the elite, or sometimes in the press. In fact, there have been letters to the editor that would have gotten the author a trip to the gulag a few years back.”
Recent letters have proposed such radical measures as re-evaluating the ruble-based economy, purging the party of privileges and establishing a retirement age for officials.
The state-run press also gave lengthy coverage to debates within the academic community over the breadth of reform needed to kick-start the economy –even those arguing for what have to be labeled free-market incentives.
Though the appearance of societal movement under Gorbachev generally is welcomed after a period of economic decline, interviews with Soviet fiscal specialists indicated that the initial bloom of the Gorbachev stewardship has passed.
Replacing it is a more clear-eyed, although still dedicated, assessment of the enormity of their task.
Gorbachev, envoys say, was given carte blanche to conduct Kremlin housecleaning in preparation for the congress. What is not known, however, is how long he has been given to deliver in other areas.
Western envoys have a guess: the deadline is the next party congress.
