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The "Former" Soviet Bloc
by Robert W. Lee
Communism, we were told, collapsed throughout Eastern Europe and the old
Soviet Union beginning in 1989. "Democracy," we were told, was in the wind
and "reform" was everywhere. Consider the former Soviet republic of
Turkmenistan, where there have been two presidential elections, a
parliamentary election, a national referendum, and where a former American
Secretary of State now advises President Saparmurad Niyazov, who led his
country to independence in 1991. Encouraging indeed -- until we learn the
rest of the story.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal for April 11, 1995, staff reporter
Claudia Rosett noted that President Niyazov has done away with the cult of
Lenin. That is the good news. The bad is that he has replaced it with the
cult of himself. Throughout the country statues of Niyazov "bedeck the
streets, districts and collective farms now named after him. Mr. Niyazov's
profile, in bronze, adorns the central bank. His face appears on Turkmen
bank notes, on billboards and in the design of hand-knotted rugs." Further,
Niyazov "has built an $82 million marble-floored airport, named for
himself," which has "no toilet paper in the ... restrooms, no food in the
restaurant and not much traffic on the airfield."
President Niyazov orchestrated the creation of the Red-dominated Democrat
Party of Turkmenistan, the country's only legally registered party. To
enhance his credentials as a "reformer," he has reportedly urged Communist
Party veterans to re-create the Turkmenistan Communist Party and a kindred
Peasants' Party. That way, he can boast of having a "multi-party" system and
impress the West.
Regarding those presidential and parliamentary elections, Rosett recalls
that in "October, 1990, he [Niyazov] ran unopposed to become Turkmenistan's
first president, winning 98.3% of the vote. In 1992, running again as the
sole candidate, he won with a landslide 99.5%. In 1994, apparently tired of
campaigning, Mr. Niyazov held a referendum that extended his term until
2002. He got 99.9% of the vote. In elections last December for a new 50-seat
Parliament, 50 candidates approved by Mr. Niyazov all ran unopposed, and all
won." Isn't democracy wonderful?
Rosett further reveals that Niyazov has retained the consulting services of
former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig Jr. (a longtime member of the
ubiquitous Council on Foreign Relations), who for the past two years has
come to Ashgabat (the capital) for Niyazov's birthday (which is also
national flag day). Haig has been helping Niyazov plan a pipeline that,
Rosett states, "would run across Iran to Turkey and eventually on to Western
Europe." The U.S. government has objected to the scheme, because it "might
leave Europe depending on a pipeline that could be controlled by Iran...."
Rosett writes that Niyazov "decides how land will be used and who may study
abroad. He personally controls the dollar reserves of Turkmenistan's central
bank. Recently, strapped to pay bills for some of his large, unprofitable
construction projects, he confiscated 75% of the 1994 profits of
Turkmenistan's commercial banks."
It is all for the long-range good, however. "In his speeches," according to
Rosett, "Mr. Niyazov has explained that his iron grip is part of his
'gradual' plan 'to build a democratic state.'"
So it goes in the former republics of what Ronald Reagan termed the "Evil
Empire." Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this "collapse" of Communism
is the extent to which so many Americans have been persuaded to believe that
leopards who long served the old Soviet and Iron Curtain regimes, and who
continue to exercise decisive power within their respective nations today,
not only changed their spots, but transformed into benign pussy cats. Let us
look at additional examples that confirm the old adage that the more things
change, the more they remain the same.
ALBANIA
In June of last year, Gannett News Service reported, "Five years after the
Iron Curtain fell, ex-Communists are making a comeback in Central and
Eastern European states and former Soviet republics." Of the 22 states
involved, Albania was described as one of only five to "have kept former
ruling Communists from returning to power or from exercising major political
influence." To the contrary, President Sali Berisha, now often described as
a fervent anti-Communist, belonged to the Communist Party prior to 1989. His
government is praised as "democratically elected," yet over 10 percent of
the citizenry has fled the country since Communism supposedly ended. The
government continues to generate two-thirds of the country's gross domestic
product, and most prices remain controlled by the state-owned sector of the
economy.
AZERBAIJAN
The Communists appeared to have suffered an authentic setback here in 1992
when President Ayaz Mutalibov, a Red since 1963 who had been elected in 1991
(he was the sole candidate), was forced out of office by an angry citizenry.
Abulfez Elchiby was elected to replace him. A staunch nationalist, Elchiby
had a long record of opposition to the Communist Party and had been the
nation's leading dissident since the 1970s when he was imprisoned for two
years at hard labor in a rock quarry for his anti-Communist activities. But
in June 1993, Elchiby's government was toppled, and Azerbaijani lawmakers
promptly elected their old Communist leader Geidar Aliyev as parliamentary
chairman and designated him Acting President. In a presidential election
held on October 3, 1993, Aliyev received more than 98 percent of the vote.
He is a former KGB General, was First Secretary of the Azeri Communist
Party, and was a member of the Soviet Politburo during the Brezhnev era.
BELARUS
The current Supreme Soviet (parliament), elected in 1989, is dominated by
"former" Communists who continue to control the policy-making process. In
June of last year, Aleksandr Lukashenko became the republic's first elected
president. While in high school, he served as secretary of a Young Communist
League chapter, and in 1982 became deputy director of a collective farm.
Three years later, he became secretary of that farm's Communist Party
committee.
BULGARIA
The Union of Democratic Forces, which helped oust the old Communist
government and won the 1991 parliamentary elections, held power for only 11
months, after which the country was run by (in the words of a December 18,
1994, New York Times dispatch) "former communists who provided the guiding
hand in the government of the 'non-party' technocrats who ruled from
December 1992 until September of this year." In last December's general
election, the Socialist (former Communist) Party was returned to power,
capturing an absolute majority in the 240-seat parliament. Socialist Party
leader Zhan Videnov, whom Associated Press described the next day as "the
new face of the Communists who used to rule this Balkan country," became
Premier. He had assumed leadership of the "former" Communists in December
1991, and prior to that worked for the Young Communist League.
CZECH REPUBLIC
In January 1968, a so-called "liberal" faction within Czechoslovakia's
Communist Party, led by Alexander Dubcek, temporarily took control of the
country. In his 1984 book New Lies for Old, former KGB agent Anatoliy
Golitsyn claimed that it was a carefully-plotted trial run aimed at
determining if the West would actually fall for the fantasy that a
totalitarian Communist country could spontaneously switch to "democracy"
under the leadership of supposed "reformed" Communists and their
collaborators. According to Golitsyn, the ploy had been planned in the late
1950s, prior to his defection to the West, and was brought to an end without
exposing the supposed "democratization" when, after seven months, Warsaw
Pact troops invaded, ousted Dubcek, and installed a Stalinist regime.
Indications that something was fishy included the nonviolent nature of the
invasion (Dubcek and his colleagues did not resist) and the fact that
neither Dubcek nor his key advisers were executed nor given lengthy jail
terms. To the contrary, Dubcek was given a plush job as a forestry manager
in Bratislava.
Golitsyn predicted in 1984 that the time would come when, as part of a new
phase of Communist strategy, "liberalization in Eastern Europe would
probably involve the return to power in Czechoslovakia of Dubcek and his
associates." On December 10, 1989, hard-line Communist President Gustav
Husek resigned, and that same day Dubcek and playwright Vaclav Havel (leader
of the left wing of the Civic Forum political movement) announced that they
would both run to replace Husek. Havel had earlier said of Dubcek: "I will
not permit any dark forces to drive a wedge between him and me .... He must
be at my side, in whatever function." Referring to Havel, Dubcek asserted:
"We've been together from the very start."
Within less than a week, Dubcek dropped out of the race and threw his
support to Havel. That same day, during a nationally televised address,
Havel declared: "For 20 years, it was official propaganda that I was an
enemy of socialism, that I wanted to bring back capitalism, that I was in
the service of imperialism .... All those were lies." One week later the
Communist Party endorsed Havel as interim president and Dubcek as
parliamentary chairman. The Federal Assembly (parliament) unanimously
elected Dubcek as speaker on December 28, 1989, and the next day elected
Havel president. The fulfillment of Golitsyn's prediction was complete.
On February 21, 1990 Havel addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress,
during which he urged our government to tangibly support political and
economic "liberalization" in the Soviet Union and asserted that most
important of all was the prospect that the world would enter "an era in
which all of us ... will be able to create what your great President
[Abraham] Lincoln called the 'family of man'" (i.e., convergence). The day
before, President Bush had hailed Havel as a man of "tremendous moral
courage" and had moved to clear the way for Czechoslovakia to receive
lucrative most favored nation trade status. Mr. Bush also pledged U.S.
support for other Czechoslovakian access to aid from international financial
organizations, and the Export-Import Bank subsequently announced that it
would begin subsidizing U.S. exports to Czechoslovakia for the first time
since 1946. In September 1990, Czechoslovakia was admitted to both the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
In July 1990, the Federal Assembly re-elected Havel to a two-year term,
whereupon he selected a cabinet that included "former" Communists as
premier, foreign minister, economic planning minister, and defense minister.
Havel resigned in July 1992, once it became clear that the country would not
continue as a federal state. In February 1993, parliament re-elected him as
the first president of the new Czech Republic (which had separated from
Slovakia on January 1st). According to the July 1994 issue of Background
Notes, published by the U.S. State Department, "Full membership in the
European Union, which the government hopes to achieve by the year 2000, is
probably the country's highest foreign policy goal."
GEORGIA
In 1991, Zviad Gamsakhurdia received nearly 87 percent of the vote to become
the first directly elected leader of a Soviet republic. Eduard Shevardnadze,
who would later become Soviet foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev, was
the republic's Communist Party boss at the time. Shevardnadze had earned a
reputation for ruthless brutality and had personally authorized the torture
of prisoners in Georgian jails. The Washington Post for September 6, 1992
recalled, "In his 13 years as Communist Party chief [Shevardnadze] was
regarded as an aggressive persecutor of nationalists and dissidents,
including Gamsakhurdia." Writing in the Washington Times for August 8, 1985,
Michael Bonafield cited underground documents that reached the West as early
as 1975, indicating that Shevardnadze "personally authorized the torture of
prisoners of Georgian jails." Bonafield described how Shevardnadze "set up
the special No. 2 block of the prison, a slaughterhouse for 'target'
prisoners and a place for the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] hangman's
orgies, where the most horrible tortures were used: beatings with iron bars,
prodding with steel needles and rods, hanging up prisoners by the feet ...
and so on."
Shevardnadze joined the Communist Party in 1948, graduated from the Party
School of the Central Committee in 1951, and in 1956-57 became Second, then
First, Secretary of the Communist Youth League. He was named a full member
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia in 1958. From
1965 to 1972 he served as Georgia's interior minister, and in 1972 became
the republic's Communist Party leader. He was appointed a non-voting member
of the national Politburo in 1978, became a full voting member in 1985, and
was then selected by Gorbachev to succeed Andrei Gromyko as foreign
minister.
On December 20, 1990, Shevardnadze suddenly resigned as foreign minister,
raising the specter of an "impending dictatorship" due to the increasing
influence of "reactionary" forces opposed to perestroika.
Following the failed anti-Gorbachev "coup" in August 1991, President
Gamsakhurdia was the only leader of a Soviet republic to openly voice the
widely held suspicion that Gorbachev had himself faked the "coup" as part of
long-range Marxist strategy. When the new Commonwealth of Independent States
was formally launched in December, Georgia was the only republic that
refused to join.
Soon, a clamor led by leftist intellectuals began demanding that he resign.
When he refused, heavily-armed opposition forces moved against him in
December 1991, and in early January he was forced to flee the capital of
Tbilisi. During an interview with Associated Press on the day of
Gamsakhurdia's departure, Eduard Shevardnadze hailed the military coup as a
"democratic revolution," assailed Gamsakhurdia as a "dictator," and
expressed "a great desire to participate in the creation of a democratic
Georgia."
In October 1992, Shevardnadze was elected to the new post of parliament
chairman, the equivalent of President. The election was carefully structured
to assure his victory and create the semblance that it was a landslide. He
ran unopposed and elections were not allowed in at least six districts
considered strongholds of former President Gamsakhurdia. Shevardnadze
received 90 percent of the vote, after which he told reporters: "Our people
have finally chosen the democratic path." What he meant by "democracy"
became clear on August 6, 1993, when he told Parliament: "My word should be
law for everybody." According to the Autumn 1994 issue of International
Currency Review, he has "ruled Georgia with terror and brutality ever since
... with the help of special troops or 'bodyguards' trained in secret by
U.S. special forces seconded to Georgia for the purpose."
HUNGARY
According to the State Department publication Background Notes for December
1994, "Hungary's transition to a Western-style parliamentary democracy was
the first and the smoothest among the former Soviet bloc...." The country's
hard-line Communists were supposedly voted into near oblivion in 1990 when
the Socialist Party (formerly the Communist Party) finished a dismal third
in parliamentary elections, capturing only 33 seats in the 386-seat national
assembly. The victor on that occasion was the Hungarian Democratic Forum
(HDF), which had been the first opposition party to emerge during Hungary's
supposed "liberalization." Yet, as United Press International reported on
December 13, 1989, the HDF itself was receiving "support from the highest
levels" of the Communist Party Politburo.
With leftists posing as free market "reformers" in control, the economy
deteriorated, which paved the way for the return of overt Communists who
hammer-and-sickled the theme that "democratic reform" had failed. On May
29th of last year, the Communists were returned to power when the Socialist
Party secured an absolute parliamentary majority. The Party then selected
its leader, Gyula Horn, as premier. Horn, who was the last Communist foreign
minister before the "collapse of Communism," had been described in a May 7,
1994 New York Times pre-election dispatch as "one of Hungary's most
unpopular politicians...." The electorate's distaste for Horn was
understandable. As the Times reported two days later, Horn "did not run as
the prime ministerial candidate of the Socialists, apparently because his
background as a member of a Communist Party militia that helped suppress the
1956 uprising provided too much of a campaign target for his opponents." The
Times nevertheless claimed that Horn "is considered to come from the reform
wing of the party."
KAZAKHSTAN
Here, too, it is essentially business as usual, with "former" Communists
firmly in control. President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, the country's top
Communist official prior to independence, was a Gorbachev ally (and
Politburo member) who joined the Communist Party in 1962 and only resigned
from its Central Committee in the wake of the contrived 1991 anti-Gorbachev
"coup." He was elected to the presidency after the breakup of the Soviet
Union. He was the only candidate for a term set to expire in December 1996,
but on March 11th of this year he dissolved parliament and asserted that he
would rule by decree until new elections were held. On April 30th, he
received more than 95 percent support in a referendum to extend his term
until the year 2000.
Some critics claimed that the extension amounted to a return to
dictatorship, but Nazarbayev insisted that it was needed to provide
stability. The West, including the U.S., reacted with typical limp-wristed
indignation. As reported by Facts on File for May 4, 1995, "Representatives
of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations boycotted the
announcement of the results of the vote." Anything harsher was out of the
question. After all, as the March 30th Facts on File had reported,
Nazarbayev "supported aggressive economic reform...."
KYRGYZSTAN
When President Askar Akayev was elected in 1991, he was lauded as the "first
freely elected" president of the republic. In fact, he was the only
candidate and received some 95 percent of the vote. Coincidentally, 95 was
also the percentage of deputies elected to parliament who were members of
the Kyrgyz Communist Party, which Akayev himself had joined in 1981.
In 1986, President Akayev was beckoned to Moscow to serve in the Soviet
Communist Party Central Committee (CPSUCC) Department on Science and
Education. In 1987, he was elected vice president of the Kyrgyz Academy of
Sciences, and later became its president. In 1989, he was elected to the
newly created Soviet Congress of People's Deputies and was subsequently
selected to serve in the Supreme Soviet. In 1990, he became a full member of
the CPSUCC.
In the wake of increasing opposition to his policies, Akayev scheduled a
referendum for January of last year on whether he should complete his term.
More than 96 percent of the voters opted to keep him in office so that he
could continue his "reform" efforts. In July, he proposed that press freedom
be limited in order to halt the "impunity and immorality" of
"anti-democratic" newspapers that were criticizing him. In testimony in
October 1993 and May 1994, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott
declared that due to "the political enlightenment of its president and also
the boldness of their economic reforms, we're going to do what we can ...
[to] elevate the political profile of our relationship." He described Akayev
as "a true Jeffersonian democrat."
LATVIA
Latvia is one of the former Soviet republics which Gannett News Service
claimed in June of last year had "kept former ruling Communists from
returning to power or from exercising major political influence." Yet
Anatolijs Gorbunovs, chairman of the Supreme Council (parliament), is a
former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union and was Latvian Communist Party secretary for ideology.
LITHUANIA
In March 1990, Vytautas Landsbergis, who had an impressive career-long
record of opposition to Communism, became the first non-Communist to head
one of the Soviet republics when he was elected President by Lithuania's
national parliament. He defeated Communist Party chief Algirdas Brazauskas
by a margin of more than two-to-one. President Brazauskas had been trained
as an engineer and worked in construction before becoming a state economic
planner in 1966. In 1977 he was appointed secretary of the Lithuanian
Communist Party in charge of economic affairs, and in 1988 became Party
boss. In 1990, he and a group of fellow Communists supposedly broke with the
Soviets and formed the Democrat Labor Party (DLP) to succeed the Communist
Party.
In 1992, Lithuania became the first of a growing list of former Soviet
republics or satellites to formally return reins of power to the old-timers
when the DLP captured a solid majority of seats in parliament. The new
parliament elected Brazauskas its chairman and acting head of state and, the
following February, Brazauskas received 60 percent of the vote to become the
country's first directly elected President.
MOLDOVA
President Mircea Snegur was elected on December 8, 1991. The sole candidate,
he mustered 98 percent of the vote. As summarized in an August 12, 1994 CRS
Report for Congress, he "held various top Communist Party and government
positions before Moldovan independence in 1991, including president of the
Moldavian Supreme Soviet, deputy chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet, and
secretary of the Moldavian Communist Party Central Committee."
Moldova's first parliamentary elections in February 1993 saw the Agrarian
Democratic Party (ADP), led by Snegur and other "former" Communists, finish
far ahead of their rivals. Petru Lucinschi of the ADP was subsequently
elected parliamentary speaker. He was once a member of both the Central
Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and the Politburo, and was a first
secretary of the Moldavian Communist Party. Premier Andrei Sangheli also has
a long record of service to the Communist cause.
POLAND
Poland was the first East European country to supposedly throw off the yoke
of Soviet domination. The Solidarity labor movement, which thrust
"anti-Communist dissident" and current President Lech Walesa into the public
spotlight, was launched in 1980 after months of nationwide strikes. Founding
members of the movement included authentic anti-Communists, Communists, and
collaborators with Communism. According to then-Hungarian Communist Party
First Secretary Stanislaw Kania, there were about one million Communist
Party members in Solidarity, including 42 of the 200 members of the Party's
1981 Central Committee.
In New Lies for Old, Anatoliy Golitsyn charged that Solidarity was
"suppressed" in 1981 (though not completely) as a maneuver to convince the
West that it was an authentic opponent of the hard-line regime headed by
Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski. Golitsyn predicted (in 1984) that
eventually "it may be expected that a coalition government will be formed
[it was], comprising representatives of the communist party [there were
many], of a revived Solidarity movement [after it was re-legalized], and of
the church. A few so-called liberals might also be included [some were]."
During a series of "round table" negotiations between Solidarity and the
ruling Communist government in March 1989, an agreement was reached on major
political reform. Early in the negotiations, Walesa agreed to let the
Communists have 65 percent of the Sejm (lower house of parliament) seats in
the new government. With Walesa's blessing, Jaruzelski, his supposed
tormenter of less than a decade earlier, was elected president by
parliament. Jaruzelski bowed out after Walesa was elected to succeed him in
December 1990.
While negotiations for the new system were progressing in 1989, the March 2,
1989 issue of the Soviet current affairs weekly New Times printed an
interview with Walesa in which he acknowledged that he was not seeking to
take power away from the Communists. "Let power remain in the hands of the
Communists," he said, "but let it be different. Let it serve the people
better, respect the law and be accountable to society. We are prepared to
cooperate constructively with such authorities."
In the country's first parliamentary elections under the new system, more
than 29 parties gained representation in the Sejm. The "former" Communists
of the Democratic Left Alliance, and their Peasant Party allies, captured a
mere 93 seats in the 460-seat Sejm. But in September 1993, the Communists
were voted back into power when the two Red-dominated parties secured a
two-thirds majority in the Sejm, sufficient to override presidential vetoes
and perhaps draft a new constitution amenable to their own interests.
Poland's current prime minister, Jozef Oleksy, was previously speaker of the
Red-controlled Sejm. He once belonged to the Central Committee of the Polish
Communist Party. He replaced Waldemar Pawlak, who resigned as prime minister
after losing a no-confidence vote in parliament on March 1st of this year.
Pawlak, too, was a "former" Communist.
On August 12, 1994, Minister of Internal Affairs Adrzej Milczanowski, who
was brought into government service by Walesa, appointed Marian Zacharski as
chief of Poland's civil intelligence agency. Zacharski was forced to step
down only five days later in the wake of a vigorous protest by the United
States. Years earlier, Zacharski had been sentenced to life in prison in the
U.S. for stealing military secrets for the Soviet Bloc. He was freed in 1985
as part of a Cold War spy swap. President Walesa praised Zacharski's
"professionalism and many years of experience," but nevertheless called for
his resignation because the nomination would make "Poland's process of
integration with the West more difficult." The Washington Post reported on
September 3, 1994 that "Zacharski will remain in a prominent position in the
intelligence section of the Office of State Security, Poland's civilian
secret service."
The Post also reminded its readers that Walesa's regime had "allowed and
even encouraged Communists to remain in important police and security
posts." For instance, "the deputy minister in charge of intelligence in the
ministry and the director of the Office of State Security are former
Communist operatives. Zacharski's appointment was just another move in that
direction. The man he was supposed to replace, Janusz Luks, himself a senior
intelligence officer during the Communist era, is reported to have been
assigned to the Polish Embassy in Washington."
Still, much of the Establishment media continues to portray Lech Walesa as
"a staunch anti-Communist," a description employed, for example, by the
Associated Press in a recent dispatch.
ROMANIA
Despite early attempts to hide the fact, the Communists have ruled Romania
without interruption since December 1989, when Communist dictator Nicolai
Ceausescu was assassinated. The National Salvation Front (NSF), led by
former senior officials of the Ceausescu regime, became the provisional
government. Ion Iliescu, a "former" Communist Party official, was named
president, a post he still holds today. Sham elections were held in May 1991
in which the NSF attained two-thirds of the seats in both houses of
parliament, while Iliescu received 85 percent of the presidential vote. He
was reelected in 1992.
Though Romania has not been free of the heavy hand of Communism, and has
never had a chance to try authentic free market economic alternatives to
socialism, some Western media have blamed its present sorry plight on the
failure of "democracy" and "the free market" since the overthrow of
Ceausescu. Consider, for instance, a remarkable December 21, 1994 Associated
Press dispatch which claimed, "A hungry country sees little difference
between democracy and Communist dictatorship," and stated that Romania's
"traditionally backward economy has slipped further in the free market."
Truly, the mind boggles!
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Boris Yeltsin's authoritarian Red stripes have, in recent months, become
increasingly visible to all but the willfully blind. On August 18, 1995, for
instance, the AP noted the jitters being generated by the Russian
president's close and friendly ties to an increasingly powerful secret
police apparatus. According to the AP, the Federal Security Service, as the
former KGB is now known after six name changes since 1991, "is alive, well
and making a comeback under the protection of none other than Boris Yeltsin.
Last month, Yeltsin promoted the chief of the Kremlin guards, a close
friend, to head the Federal Security Service, his latest move to tighten his
grip on the old KGB."
That "close friend," Colonel-General Mikhail Barsukov, was a KGB agent
during the Soviet era. The AP dispatch continued to note, "Many Russians,
including opposition politicians, businessmen, bankers, former dissidents --
even some of Yeltsin's top advisers -- are jittery about the president's
growing ties to the secret police." *
* In December 1993, Yeltsin announced with great fanfare that he was
scrapping the hated KGB. "The Ministry of Security, the body which conducted
political surveillance of people for nearly 75 years, has been abolished as
a whole," he declared. His decree was widely publicized, and undoubtedly
served to further convince many Americans that he was truly committed to the
sort of meaningful reforms that could justify further infusions of U.S.
foreign aid and other assistance. Less publicized was his action one day
earlier in promoting 27 senior Security Ministry officers to the rank of
general.
The head of Yeltsin's personal security service, General Aleksandr
Korzhakov, is another longtime steward of the police state. Korzhakov, who
has been with Yeltsin since 1985, joined the KGB in 1970. His influence with
Yeltsin is said to be enormous. "To this day," Yeltsin wrote in his recently
published autobiography The Struggle for Russia, "he never leaves my side,
and we even sit up at night during trips together." He describes Korzhakov
as his closest companion of the last ten years.
On December 2nd of last year, Korzhakov had the presidential security
service launch a raid, which has yet to be explained, on the offices of
Vladimir Gusinsky, Russia's leading banker. Gusinsky is allied with Moscow
Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a potential rival to Yeltsin in next year's presidential
elections. Soon after the raid, Luzhkov denied he had any desire to run for
president, and Gusinsky has not surfaced in Russia since early January, when
he moved his family to London. Washington Post correspondent Margaret
Shapiro observes that such incidents, among others, "have sparked worries
here among pro-reform democrats that Russia could be heading back toward a
police state."
Korzhakov has participated in cabinet-level meetings between Yeltsin and his
ministers, was a member of the Russian delegation to the December meeting of
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and is said to have
been responsible for the appointment last November of Vladimir Polevanov as
the country's new privatization chief. Polevanov has called for a larger
government role in industry and a reduction of private involvement. He has
suggested that companies sold by the state be re-nationalized and favors
policies that will limit the "damage" done by privatization.
Earlier this year, Yeltsin signed into law legislation renaming,
reorganizing, and strengthening the intelligence services. As summarized in
an editor's note in Anatoliy Golitsyn's new book The Perestroika Deception,
"The Federal Security Service was 'empowered' to search homes without
warrants, to run its own jails and independent 'criminal' investigations, to
operate under cover of other official agencies, to bug telephones and
intercept mail (with 'court permission'), and to operate abroad." London's
Sunday Times for April 9th quoted Sergei Karaganov, deputy director of the
Institute of Europe of the Academy of Sciences and an adviser to President
Yeltsin, as stating that "Russia is moving toward a mixed democratic,
semi-authoritarian model, with the strengthening elements of a police
state."
In June 1994, under the guise of fighting organized crime, Yeltsin signed a
decree empowering the regular police to hold suspects for up to 30 days
without charge, permit police searches of property and examination of
financial records without a warrant or evidence of a crime, and allow
certain crime-ridden cities and districts to be placed under "special
control."
Even as American taxpayers are bilked to bankroll what is said to be the
Yeltsin regime's commitment to "reform," old-time Communists are leading
Russia's prosperity parade. For instance, all of the plotters of the
apparently contrived 1991 "coup" against then-President Mikhail Gorbachev,
and the similarly suspicious parliamentary revolt against Yeltsin in 1993,
have been freed. As just one example of how they are doing, consider the
plight of former Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, who helped instigate the
1991 "coup." The Washington Post for September 22, 1994, reported that
Pavlov is now a prosperous banker living in a $500,000 home and taking home
about $60,000 after taxes (the average Russian's annual wage is around
$1,200). According to the Post, many others "have made transitions similar
to Pavlov's, including others involved in the anti-Gorbachev coup. Indeed,
among the leading businessmen of Russia today are many top Soviet-era
bureaucrats and party members. One recent analysis found that nearly
two-thirds of Russia's new rich had converted prominent positions under the
old regime into their present lucrative niches."
In September of last year, researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences
released a study that found that more than 60 percent of the 580 richest
persons in the country were former members of the Soviet Union's Communist
elite. In the area of banking, for instance:
Sergie Rodionov, chairman of one of Russia's largest commercial banks,
headed the banking department at the Soviet Finance Ministry.
Sergei Yegorov, chairman of the Commercial Banks Association, was once
chairman of the Soviet State Bank and head of the financial department of
the Communist Party Central Committee.
Nikolai Ryzhkov, chairman of the Tveruniversal Bank, was a former Soviet
prime minister in the 1980s.
Such are the folks with whom Western entrepreneurs are being encouraged to
do business. As Anatoliy Golitsyn advises in a postscript to The Perestroika
Deception: "Western industrialists and financiers should reverse their
mistaken involvement in joint ventures with the Communists, thereby
financing the revival of their main political adversaries, supplying them
ill-advisedly with new technology, and wasting time and money on operations
that will ultimately be taxed to death, confiscated, or both."
And make no mistake about it, the possibility of expropriation exists in
virtually all of the "former" Communist countries, including those deemed
most "reformed," and crackdowns of a Tiananmen Square type are not out of
the question in some instances. The New York Times for July 3, 1995 quoted
an unidentified Western ambassador as saying that there are already "many
cases of Russian joint venture partners turning on their Western partners
and trying to seize the businesses" and that "these cases involve officials
of the Government." And Peter Charow, executive director of the American
Chamber of Commerce in Moscow, told the Times, "A lot of Government agencies
have been taken off the state budget and must find ways to support
themselves. Foreign companies are often seen as ready prey."
As noted earlier, the law that established and empowered the Federal
Security Service authorized the FSS to run its own prisons. The gulag
mentality is not only surviving, but thriving. Last fall, William Cohen of
the Colorado-based Center for Human Rights Advocacy led a group of U.S. and
European legal experts who visited Russia to examine the country's criminal
justice system. A dispatch filed in mid-October by Scripps Howard News
Service reporter Holger Jensen summarized their findings. Among other
things, "the legal system is still largely controlled by Communist-era
bureaucrats," with the most serious human rights violations taking place in
Russian jails, where "suspects are held for months, sometimes years, under
barbaric conditions before they go to trial."
Russian procurators (as prosecutors are called) usually assume that anyone
arrested is guilty. Jensen reported that they "will go to any lengths to
obtain a confession. So conditions in the pretrial detention centers are
deliberately made worse than they are in the prisons and labor camps where
convicted felons are sent after their trials." Suspects "are routinely
starved, beaten and deprived of contact with their families," and some
"confess to crimes they didn't commit just to get out of the awful detention
centers."
In its annual assessment of human rights around the globe, released in
February, the State Department noted that thousands of Russians have been
illegally arrested, and that prisons often stop feeding inmates for months
at a time, relying instead on relatives to provide food. Also, a jury system
has yet to be introduced in 80 regions of the country. Confirming the
findings of the Cohen team, the State Department report found that suspects
are routinely denied access to attorneys, and are beaten into confessing by
procurators who win rewards for closing cases promptly.
SLOVAKIA
Premier Vladimir Meciar is a "former" Communist whose party finished first
(garnering about one-third of the vote) in the 1992 elections. Writing in
the November/December 1994 issue of Foreign Affairs (flagship publication of
the CFR), Anne Applebaum, deputy editor of The Spectator, described Meciar
as "a Moscow-trained apparatchik." In March of last year, Meciar was removed
from office following a no-confidence vote in parliament, but was returned
to the post after his party won Slovakia's first national elections later in
the year. Facts on File for October 6, 1994 reported that Meciar "was
fiercely opposed to Western-style economic reform, foreign investment and
the privatization of state enterprises...."
In March 1992, the defense and security committee of what was then
Czechoslovakia's Slovak republic issued a report, which parliament accepted,
accusing Meciar of collaborating with the StB (the former secret police)
during the pre-independence era. According to Facts on File for April 2,
1992, the "report contended that Meciar had worked for the StB under the
code name 'Doctor' and that he had promoted former StB loyalists while
interior minister [of the Slovac republic], and that he had used information
in the StB files against his political enemies."
TAJIKISTAN
From 1991 until he was forced from office in September 1992, Tajikistan's
president was Rakhman Nabiyev, a former Communist Party first secretary. In
November of that year, the current president, Imamali Rakhmonov (a Nabiyev
supporter), became acting president. As noted by Facts on File for April 17,
1995, the government continues to be "led by former communists."
UKRAINE
From December 1991 until July of last year the second most populous of the
former Soviet republics was ruled by its first directly elected President,
Leonid M. Kravchuk. He was the country's former Communist Party chief for
ideology. Kravchuk kept the government, industry, and agriculture in the
hands of his fellow Communist apparatchiks. In the July 1994 election he was
defeated by current President Leonid D. Kuchma, who was once director of the
Soviet Union's largest missile factory.
In October, Kuchma announced a program of economic reforms which, mimicking
Lenin, he called his "new economic policy." It was publicized in the West as
evidence that he was a true-blue reformer deserving of massive infusions of
Western aid and the support of Western businessmen. Kuchma has claimed,
"Without international aid, we will fall like a house of cards." The aid was
quick in coming, and not merely from the international lending institutions
to which the U.S. contributes heavily. On November 22, 1994, the Washington
Times reported that "President Clinton today will make Ukraine the
fourth-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid when he raises taxpayers'
donations to $900 million, including a $30-million-to-$50-million program to
build free houses for former Red Army soldiers." During a briefing for
reporters on November 21st, according to the Times, "a senior administration
official explained that the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship under Mr. Clinton
was rocky at first but has been bolstered by the July election of Mr.
Kuchma, a reformer."
The Ukrainian prime minister, Vitaly Masol, was the Soviet Union's top
economic manager.
UZBEKISTAN
President Islam A. Karimov was elected president in 1991, receiving 86
percent of the vote after severely curtailing the activities of all
opposition parties. He had opposed his country's break with the Soviet
Union, claiming that Uzbekistan was not ready for either "democracy" or a
market economy.
As in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, a referendum was arranged to provide a
lop-sided endorsement of an extension of Karimov's presidential term. An
April 29, 1995 Associated Press dispatch noted that the "lop-sided figures
in those referendums were reminiscent of the turnouts reported in Soviet-era
one-party votes."
On December 25, 1994, in the country's first parliamentary elections since
the apparent demise of the Soviet Union, the Democratic Party (former
Communist Party) captured more than 70 percent of the seats. As noted by
Facts on File for February 9, 1995: "Foreign observers said Karimov had
allowed the election because he wanted to at least claim that Uzbekistan had
a multiparty democracy."
* * *
If the same standard by which "reformed" Communists and their collaborators
have been judged in recent years had been in effect at the end of World War
II, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hideki Tojo, and their henchmen could
have survived and prospered by simply tearing insignia from their uniforms
and pledging their devotion to a new world order predicated on "reform,"
"democracy," and "convergence" with the Allied nations.
It would have been foolish to fall for such preposterous claims by
supposedly repentant "former" fascists. Why, then, believe such bogus claims
when they emanate from self-professed "former" Communists?
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