America is at war, and its citizens are understandably fixated upon events in the Persian Gulf.  But that should not blind us to a development of even greater magnitude currently taking place: namely, the Soviet regime's concerted attempt to roll back the liberalizations of the 1980s.  We appear to be witnessing the beginning of an ambitious rolling coup, which threatens to spread from the Baltic to the remaining twelve Soviet republics.  The Gorbachev "center" seems to have launched a kind of slow-motion civil war against the constituent republics and such pro-democracy elected bodies as the Moscow City Council.  In the economic sphere, the Soviet leadership has taken a decisive step away from market reform back toward Brezhnev-era central planning.

How could this have happened?  And what does it signify for the future of East-West relations in the 1990s?  Clearly much of the explanation lies in the elusive personality and actions of the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev.  Those who follow Soviet politics closely have been aware almost from the beginning that the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party is not the luminous "democrat" and "champion of peace" touted by the legion of Western Gorbophiles.  Nevertheless, important changes have been evident in the recent positions embraced by the Soviet leader.  Throughout 1989 and 1990, Gorbachev was steadily moving toward a restoration of authoritarian rule.

The reasons for this reversal are not too difficult to identify.  An exceedingly poor strategist--though at times a brilliant tactician--Gorbachev has repeatedly seen his policies yield results directly opposite to those he intended.  Thus glasnost led not to a reinvigoration of Marxism-Leninism and a return to 1920s-vintage idealism and fervency but to a complete discrediting of the ruling ideology, widespread desecration of monuments to Lenin, and a harsh questioning of the wisdom of the "socialist path" taken in 1917.  Demokratizatsiya, with its sponsorship of competitive elections, resulted not in a cleansing and strengthening of the Communist Party but in a widespread defection from its ranks, the abolition of Article Six of the Soviet Constitution (which mandated the party's leading role), and the emergence of anticommunist opposition parties.  The "popular fronts in support of perestroika," which were supposed to marshal public support in the Baltic and in other republics for Gorbachev's program of "within-system" reform, have in fact led to the emergence of vast nationalist and separatist movements seeking sovereignty, and in certain cases full independence, for their republics.

After the initial four years of Gorbachev's leadership, therefore, the Soviet Union had come to resemble an ungainly centaur, half proto-democracy and half entrenched totalitarianism.  It was inevitable that these polar and mutually exclusive tendencies should ultimately clash--they had, of course, been sparring vigorously throughout the Gorbachev period--and the "civil war" which the Soviet president has now launched against the republics and the democrats represents an attempt to bring this long-simmering conflict to a head.

Already in 1989, there were signs that an increasingly disillusioned and embittered Gorbachev was beginning to backpedal.  The massacre of twenty-one Georgian civilians by Soviet paratroops in April 1989 in Tbilisi was a precursor of "Bloody Sunday" in Vilnius nearly two years later.  The bloodshed in Georgia was clearly intended to intimidate growing pro-independence sentiment in that republic.  As has since become his established practice, Gorbachev denied any connection to the massacre, but an independent Soviet parliamentary commission has established that only he and Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov had the authority to order paratroops into action.  The Georgians' vigorous, at times hysterical, response to the massacre and the firm support for their position by democrats throughout the Soviet Union may have helped postpone the big crackdown in the USSR for two critical years.  In January 1990, however, Gorbachev had another limited go at control by bloodletting: tanks were sent into Azerbaijan to suppress a burgeoning Azerbaijani Popular Front.  This operation was conducted under the cover of saving Armenian and Russian lives, but in fact those ethnic groups had for the most part been moved from Azerbaijan before the tanks went in.

Similarly, the current assault on glasnost has a precedent.  On Friday, October 13, 1989--now known as "Black Friday" among Soviet democrats--Gorbachev summoned leading editors and cultural figures to the Kremlin for a two-hour tongue-lashing and dressing down.  During his harangue, Gorbachev pointed specifically to offending articles and singled out editors by name for vilification.  He unambiguously suggested that Vladislav Starkov, chief editor of Argumenty i Fakty (a weekly with the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world), resign his post.  A concerted attempt was then made to oust Starkov and Yevgeny Averin, chief editor of the reformist Knizhnoe Obozrenie, from their jobs.  Democrats rallied to the cause of the embattled editors, and their positions were saved.  At the same time, Gorbachev's close ally and party secretary for ideology, Vadim Medvedev, exerted himself mightily to emasculate a new law on the press that was being drafted by the Soviet parliament; democrats managed to obtain passage of a liberal bill only after a hard fight.

A Matter of Choice

Despite such periodic lurches to the right, it was only in the late summer of 1990 that Gorbachev appears to have finally decided to turn his back on reform.  The defining moment, as numerous Soviet democrats and Western journalists have observed, was his decision not to support the so-called "Five Hundred Days" program of economic and political reform.  This ambitious and far-reaching program--which both Gorbachev and his arch-rival Boris Yeltsin initially supported--would, if adopted, have moved the USSR rapidly along in the direction of a market economy and democracy.  Factories and state farms would have been sold off, private enterprise fostered.  Real power would have devolved to the republics, and something like the loose, informal grouping of the British Commonwealth would gradually have come into being.  Gorbachev's decision to renege on his agreement with Yeltsin and come out firmly against the Five Hundred Days program is likely to be seen by historians as one of the critical turning points of the 1990s.

Western Gorbophiles would have us believe that Gorbachev sided with the reactionaries because he had no choice.  Indeed, it is true that Soviet hardliners had been breathing fire during the summer of 1990.  The rapid evolution toward a commonwealth of sovereign republics and the economic reforms advocated by the Five Hundred Days program were seen by these elements--described variously by Lithuanian President Landsbergis as "old-style Bolsheviks," "worshippers of Great Russian imperialism," and "red Fascists"--as a mortal threat not only to their belief systems, but to their livelihood and privileges.  An adoption of the reform program would have threatened the military and the military-industrial complex with massive budget cuts.  The remaining communist true-believers were appalled at the rank heresy of a projected transition to a market economy.

Another major force resisting change was the KGB, whose chairman, Vladimir Kryuchkov, is an unreconstructed hardliner.  With the weakening and demoralizing of the Communist Party under perestroika, the KGB has steadily emerged as an independent political actor.  As Kryuchkov's recent high profile on Soviet television demonstrates, his power has been growing markedly and may already rival that of Gorbachev.  The tumultuous years 1989-90 showed conclusively that the KGB was serving not as a force for modernization but rather as a tool of reaction, working tirelessly to undermine all authentic democratic groupings within the USSR.  The KGB, a potent totalitarian holdover from the Brezhnev era, could hardly have viewed the future devolution of power to the Soviet republics or the Five Hundred Days program of economic reform with equanimity.

A factor frequently cited by Western Gorbophiles to justify his movement away from reform was the perceived weakness and disarray of the reformers.  This view ignores the aggressive "divide and rule" strategy being pursued by the KGB, presumably with Gorbachev's knowledge and approval.  The KGB was bringing numerous fictitious political parties with democratic-sounding names (for example, the "Andrei Sakharov Union of Democratic Forces") and indeed whole political blocs (the so-called "centrist bloc") into existence.  Aware of the threat of disunity, authentic reformers in the Russian Republic joined together under the "Democratic Russia" umbrella to do battle with the Communists and hardliners.

Real as the pressures on Gorbachev were, they alone did not compel him to come down on the side of the hardliners.  If there were heavy risks entailed in ignoring the vehemently held views of the old guard, there were equal dangers in siding with them against both the republics and the democrats.  For one thing, it put any kind of feasible market reform--and therefore economic recovery--in grave jeopardy.  Understandably, talented pro-market economists like Nikolai Petrakov and Stanislav Shatalin have departed Gorbachev's team, while aggressive central planners like the new prime minister, Valentin Pavlov, are now charting a course into the past.  A move back to communist orthodoxy has also put billions of dollars in Western aid and technical assistance in doubt, and it is difficult to see how the Soviet Union can extricate itself from the morass without such Western assistance.

One strongly suspects that personal motives played a key role in Gorbachev's decision.  As perceptive observers like Milovan Djilas noted early on in the Gorbachev period, the Soviet leader is a fervent, true-believing Marxist-Leninist.  Western Gorbophiles have heatedly denied this fact, but to no avail.  In his recent speeches, Gorbachev has spoken with great passion of his visceral attachment to "socialism" and of his aversion to the concept of private property.  He has bitterly attacked the Lithuanians for attempting to establish a "bourgeois republic."  When it came to the sticking point, the deep-seated Marxist in Gorbachev must have recoiled at the prospect of embracing a reform program that would set the USSR irrevocably on the path of democracy and a market economy.

And then there was personal hubris, the fact that Gorbachev has, in Stanislav Shatalin's word, become "obsessed" with power.  An adoption of the Five Hundred Days program, while manifestly beneficial to the Soviet populace, would have led to an inexorable diminution of Gorbachev's personal power.  Even worse from his perspective, it would have fortified the positions of such hated rivals as Boris Yeltsin and Vytautas Landsbergis.  For a Gorbachev desiring to cling to power it made better sense to side with the hardliners rather than with the fifteen republics and the democrats.  In making this decision, Gorbachev's monumental ego probably allowed him to believe that he could ultimately outwit and outmaneuver the hardliners, even while forming an alliance with them.

The Willing Captive

In my opinion, this decision by Gorbachev will turn out to be a definitive and irreversible one, drastically limiting his future freedom of action and perhaps making him superfluous.  Once it became known, the domestic "correlation of forces" in the Soviet Union immediately changed dramatically, and a powerful upsurge of the hardline anti-reformers became noticeable as early as September of last year.  This surge continued unabated until the time of the January 13 massacre in Vilnius, after which a brief pause set in.  It has become apparent that, in forming an alliance with the hardliners, Gorbachev has to a considerable extent been taken captive by them.

In September 1990, a kind of "dress rehearsal" for the January coup appears to have occurred.  Six regiments of airborne troops, including at least two that would subsequently be employed in Vilnius, mysteriously converged on Moscow.  A rumor was spread that democrats were seeking to mount a coup in the capital.  True to character, Boris Yeltsin responded vigorously to this looming threat--and was then taken out of action in a suspicious automobile accident in which he suffered a concussion.  The reformist Ukrainian newspaper, Komsomolskaya znamya, has noted that rumors that Yeltsin would be involved in a car crash began to circulate the day before the accident occurred.

During November and December, the resurgent communists, sensing their political clout growing day by day, stepped up the heat on a president who, in any case, was himself steadily moving in their direction.  On November 13, a meeting was arranged between Gorbachev and eleven hundred hardline military officers who had been elected to federal and local legislatures.  Adherents of the reformist "Shield" movement in the military were pointedly not invited.  Gorbachev was reportedly jeered and heckled during this meeting, especially when he mentioned the need for military reform.

Four days later, on November 17, a forty-year-old air force engineer from Latvia, Colonel Viktor Alksnis, attracted world attention when, at a session of the USSR Supreme Soviet, he gave Gorbachev thirty days to turn the country away from reform or face removal from office.  Alksnis is a leading spokesman for the anti-reform Soyuz (Union) faction in the Soviet Congress, which claims a quarter of that body's membership.  Former Gorbachev economic adviser Nikolai Petrakov has reported that Alksnis' threat made a dramatic effect on the Soviet leader and that he began seriously to plan the imposition of "presidential rule" on the same day.

During December, the muscle-flexing of the old guard increased dramatically.  In that month, Soyuz succeeded in achieving the removal of two Soviet ministers whose policies it despised.  Moderate Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin was forced out of office and replaced by former KGB General Boris Pugo, with General Boris Gromov, the last military commander in Afghanistan, installed as his deputy.  On December 20, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze--who had been excoriated by Soyuz for pursuing allegedly pro-American policies--announced his resignation from office and cited attacks from Soyuz as one of the factors leading him to make that decision.

Through December, KGB chief Kryuchkov and Defense Minister Yazov repeatedly warned that the unity of the Soviet Union was in grave danger.  In the middle of the month, there came the "Letter of the 53" which politely but insistently urged Gorbachev to effect a clampdown in the country.  Among the signatories of the letter were the Soviet military chief of staff, the deputy defense minister, the commander of the Soviet navy, and the head of the Interior Ministry ground troops.

By the time of the attempted putsch in mid-January, Gorbachev found himself virtually alone amid a sea of hardliners and reactionaries.  Speculation was rife in the Western press concerning the extent to which the Soviet president remained in control.  But as leading democratic spokesman Yuri Afanasyev has commented, such speculation is essentially irrelevant: "Either Gorbachev will rule through the army and the KGB," he asserts, "or they will rule without him."(1)  In having decisively sided with those forces, Gorbachev had committed himself to their agenda, though he could continue to finesse some issues on the margin.

The Old Tricks

When it occurred in the middle of January, the putsch proved to be a sobering lesson for a West mired in residual Gorbophilism and distracted by fast-moving events in the Persian Gulf.  Chillingly, the attempted coup--whose aim was unquestionably to remove the democratically elected parliaments and the presidents of the three Baltic republics--recalled the classic modus operandi of Stalinism.  Gorbachev and his generals reached deeply into a sordid bag of totalitarian tricks--front organizations, national salvation committees, suppression of the press, double speak (whereby repression becomes "salvation"), violent anti-American rhetoric--that had been used in the past to facilitate and justify the absorption of the Baltic region in 1940 and the installation of puppet regimes in Eastern Europe following World War II, as well as the subsequent invasions of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Afghanistan in 1979.

The fact that the regime, after nearly six years of glasnost, was able to summon the will to attempt a classic communist putsch is proof that the totalitarian energies of the system are very much intact and that they have merely been lying dormant, concealed from all but the most perceptive observers.  On "Bloody Sunday," January 13, elite KGB airborne troops sent in from outside the republic attacked the Vilnius radio and television station.  According to a report subsequently issued by the Lithuanian procurator general, 14 were killed and 580 wounded.  In the course of the attack, loudspeakers announced that power had passed into the hands of a mysterious "Lithuanian National Salvation Committee."  "This is the power of working people," the loudspeakers trumpeted, "of workers, peasants, and servicemen.  The power of people like you...."  In a well-coordinated effort, Soviet central television, the official Soviet news agency TASS, and Pravda all announced the assumption of power by the newly emerged salvation committee.  In Latvia, where a similar attack on the republic's interior ministry by MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) special forces on January 20 had left four dead and eleven wounded, a "national salvation committee" also came forward to claim that it had taken power.  This assertion was also supported by the regime-controlled media.

The regime's return to well-tried totalitarian practices was underlined by those shadowy front organizations which now claimed power in both Lithuania and Latvia.  In Lithuania, the membership of the alleged ruling committee was kept a deep secret, purportedly out of fear of popular reprisals.  One spokesman for the committee was identified--Juozas Jermalavicius, chief of the ideological department of the Moscow-loyal Lithuanian Communist Party--but he claimed not to know who the committee's other members were.  He received documents from the committee, he explained, "by courier."  Jermalavicius readily admitted that a majority of Lithuanians did not support the committee but maintained that they were suffering from "national psychosis and euphoria."

The activities of the "Lithuanian National Salvation Committee" were also defended by such high luminaries as Defense Minister Yazov, Interior Minister Pugo, and President Gorbachev himself, though none of them claimed to know the names of the committee's members.  This evil farce, which took one back to the Orwellian practices of high Stalinism, demonstrated the extent to which the regime had retrogressed both politically and morally.  Latvia's version of a national salvation committee did announce the name of its main leader; not surprisingly, it turned out to be Alfred Rubiks, head of the Latvian Communist Party and a member of Gorbachev's Politburo.

There was a black humor in the attempts of Gorbachev and his generals to distance themselves from responsibility for the bloodshed.  Lacking the discipline of Stalinism, the perpetrators could not keep their story straight.  Colonel Alksnis of the Soyuz parliamentary faction, who admitted to having close ties to the Baltic salvation committees, gave a number of interviews to Soviet and Western newspapers in which he asserted that Gorbachev had been intimately involved in preparations for the putsch.  Alksnis reproached Gorbachev bitterly for having failed to institute "presidential rule" in response to appeals from the newly formed salvation committees; that, Alksnis said, had been the plan.  Gorbachev, significantly, has not attempted to refute these damaging claims.  In a sense, indeed, it is irrelevant whether Gorbachev called the shots.  For as former Gorbachev adviser Vyacheslav Dashichev aptly commented, what happened in Latvia and Lithuania was "a logical consequence of his policies."

Boris Pugo, the new head of the MVD, insistently disclaimed any knowledge of the actions of the Black Berets--elite MVD forces--who were systematically terrorizing Latvia, and whose maraudings later spread into Lithuania and Estonia.  Another example of what Western journalists quickly dubbed the return of the Big Lie was the claim by Gorbachev, Pugo, and Yazov that the massacre in Lithuania on January 13 had resulted from a personal decision taken by the military commander of the Lithuanian garrison.  This assertion was manifestly untrue.  In fact, the assault was apparently conducted by the Vitebsk and Pskov airborne divisions of the KGB Border Troops, and the responsibility for the bloodshed lay therefore with the KGB and not the army.  Significantly, in the language of the condemnation of Soviet repressive actions in the Baltic which Boris Yeltsin attempted to have passed by the Russian Supreme Soviet (he narrowly failed in the effort), KGB leader Kryuchkov and MVD head Pugo, and not the military leadership, were singled out for censure.

Gorbachev and his generals appear to have been surprised by the vigorous Western response to the attempted suppression of the Baltic states.  The European Community decided to delay consideration of $1 billion in food aid and indicated that it might also reconsider a $540 million technical assistance program.  The U.S. Congress sent a clear signal that it, too, would be receptive to a cut-off of all aid to the Soviet Union if the repression continued.  Canada took action and suspended a $150 million line of credit to the USSR.

Gorbachev and his men may have miscalculated in believing that the West's preoccupation with the Persian Gulf conflict would provide the USSR with a useful cover, as the Suez crisis of 1956 helped partially to shield the regime from Western recriminations at the time of the invasion of Hungary.  If this was the regime's calculation, it turned out to be wrong.  Probably out of fear of losing Western credits and technical assistance, the regime quickly called off its assault on the Baltic and the defiant Lithuanian and Latvian parliaments were not stormed.  The Lithuanian and Latvian "National Salvation Committees" returned to the swamp bogs whence they had emerged.

Since the subterfuge of employing Stalin-era front organizations appeared to have failed, and indeed to have been held up to ridicule both in the West and the Soviet republics, the regime may have decided to dispense with them in the future and to impose "presidential rule" directly, without the fig leaf of appeals from so-called national salvation committees.  There are indications that such a course may already be underway: On January 25, it was announced that, beginning on the first of February, Soviet army troops would be joining the regular police in patrolling all major cities in the USSR, allegedly to combat crime.  The following day, January 26, a decree was issued which extended to the KGB and the police the draconian right to search any apartment or building in the country (except foreign embassies) at any time, without a warrant and without the owner's permission.  These decrees may be seen as tantamount to the beginning stages of "presidential rule."

What will be the future course of the crackdown?  Prognostication is always risky, especially in the case of a seething multi-ethnic entity such as the Soviet Union.  Given the enormous size of the USSR--one-sixth the land surface of the globe--it seems probable that a crackdown will be a protracted process, conducted in stages and with occasional pauses, such as the one that ensued after the bloodshed in Lithuania and Latvia.  The regime may decide first to pacify the core Russian Republic and only then move on to the periphery.  MVD chief Pugo has announced the removal of the police chief of Moscow, who was appointed by the democratically elected Moscow City Council.  This may represent a first step toward dissolving the legitimate, elected bodies of the Russian Republic.

On the other hand, the regime may decide that it is necessary to take on the most threatening situation first and order the pacification of heavily armed and defiant Georgia, where even the local KGB has apparently sided with the republic against the center.  Crushing Georgia's independence, probably at the cost thousands of lives, would provide a stern warning to the remaining republics.  There were indications that an assault on Georgia was being planned for the winter of 1990-91.

It is particularly difficult to predict the regime's future stance vis-[gra]a-vis the Baltic states.  It is possible that they may be cut loose, as a bone thrown to the West and to its perceived obsession with these small republics.  Conversely, the Baltic states might be suppressed, though perhaps at the end, rather than at the beginning, of the crackdown process.

Along with a rolling coup, there will almost certainly be a harsh reversal of the liberalization associated with glasnost.  Soviet central television has already been largely pacified by the new head of Gosteleradio, Leonid Kravchenko, and the immensely popular television program Vzglyad (Viewpoint) has been suppressed for attempting to air a segment on Shevardnadze's resignation.  The independent news agency, Interfax, has been expelled from its offices.  A vigorous attempt is currently being made to remove a leading democrat, Igor Golembiovsky, from the post of first deputy editor of the major newspaper Izvestia; the paper's chief editor is loyal to the regime.

If present trends continue, 1991 will probably witness a purge of the remaining democratic press, such as the daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda and its weekly supplement, Sobesednik, the feisty Moscow News, and the weekly Novoe Vremya.  Yeltsin's new radio station, Radio Russia, may well be forced off the air, and his plans to launch an RSFSR television station, scuttled.  There will likely be a return to Brezhnev-era "unanimity."

The Burnt-Out Star

USSR legislator Vitali Goldanski recently commented to David Remnick of the Washington Post: "We are watching the end of the Gorbachev thaw, and it is even more dramatic and terrible than the end of the reforms under Khrushchev."  Goldanski's assessment strikes me as accurate.  If the present rolling coup does succeed, it will almost certainly exceed the coercive results of the pacification campaign conducted by Brezhnev and his colleagues in the years 1965-66.  Pro-democracy sentiment has gotten out of Gorbachev's control under perestroika, and republican legislatures, many of them enjoying strong support from their electorate, have been provided with popular legitimacy.  To roll back such developments will require the brutal will of a totalitarian regime.  It should not therefore come as a major surprise if in the comparatively near future we witness the arrest and trial of outspoken democrats like Boris Yeltsin, Gavriil Popov, and Sergei Stankevich, and the execution of former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin.  The Gulag Archipelago could soon be back in business.

The crackdown, carried through with ruthlessness, cunning, and determination, could well succeed; and if it did, the consequences would be long lasting.  Former Gorbachev adviser Nikolai Petrakov has warned that if power is successfully appropriated by the opponents of reform, the result will not be a temporary retreat but a "rout" lasting "not one year, and not five years."(2)  Indeed, ten years of harsh dictatorship represent a feasible scenario.  During such a period of intense repression, one likely aim of the regime would be the abolition of the fifteen Soviet republics and their replacement by forty to sixty meta-ethnic, American-style states.  Such a program of ethnocide has been favored by important Gorbachevites for some time; I recall its being discussed by influential Soviet visitors to the Hoover Institution several years ago.(3)

There is, however, another scenario which has been recently discussed by Western analysts: the possibility that the army and the security forces will split, and that something like the "Romanian variant," which led to Ceausescu's removal and execution, could occur.  This convulsive process, which might entail army regiments battling the security forces or even the security forces fighting among themselves, should certainly not be discounted.  Sixty-four KGB officers from Sverdlovsk recently wrote Yeltsin a letter expressing their support for him and for democratization.  On January 18, Yeltsin reported that a group of ten Soviet generals had approached him and stressed the need for the creation of a separate Russian army.  Even parliamentarians from such relatively conservative areas as Byelorussia and Central Asia have expressed support for the Lithuanians in their struggle against the "center"; the issue of republican rights is seen as being at stake.

At the time of his dramatic resignation on December 20, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze prophesied that "the dictatorship will not succeed" and that "the future belongs to democracy and freedom."  Nobel prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz concurred when he affirmed after the bloodshed in Lithuania that "naked force, after ideology disintegrates, is doomed to failure."  Lithuania, he wrote, had been hit by "the thrashing tail of a wounded totalitarian beast."(4)  It is to be hoped that the predictions of these two perceptive men come true and that the crackdown does indeed fail.  At the same time, the cry of despair of a recent emigre reverberates in one's mind: "There is no hope.  We are going to see a thousand-year socialist Reich."

What position should the West take toward the current Soviet crackdown?  The first and essential conclusion is that the time to "help Gorby" has long passed.  As the noted Soviet democrat Tatyana Zaslavskaya recently put it, Gorbachev "has exhausted his resources as a reformer....He doesn't want those changes that are the logical extension of what he started."(5)  Gavriil Popov, the reformist mayor of Moscow, expressed it more graphically: "There is an effect in astronomy known as the burnt-out star.  After the star burns out, planets far away still receive its light and believe it is still there."(6)  Gorbachev will not again emerge as a reformer, and the West must cease paying homage to the author of a bloody crackdown.  Rather than "helping Gorby," it should be helping those republics committed to democracy and market reform in their severe struggle against a resurgent neo-totalitarian center.

The West understandably welcomed the reforms associated with glasnost and democratization, and it was proper to help an innovator perceived as moving his country in the direction of pluralism and the free market.  It is just as logical that the West should penalize a dictator who has now turned his back on his own reforms.  In words which Andrei Sakharov penned during the last year of his life:

...the West should encourage the process of perestroika, cooperating with the USSR on disarmament and economic, scientific and cultural issues.  But support should be given with "eyes wide open," not unconditionally.  The opponents of perestroika should understand that their triumph, and a retreat from reform, would mean the immediate termination of Western assistance.(7)

The ranks of these opponents now include Gorbachev.

As the short-term prospects for democracy in the Soviet Union look grim, it is all the more important to stress that the historical tide is strongly in favor of liberalization.  Given any serious measure of resolution on the part of the West, the chances that Milosz's "wounded totalitarian beast" can prevail are slight.  Not only will its commitment to a command economy ensure a deepening impoverishment, but it will also be a totalitarianism built around an ideological void.  On August 25, 1968, following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, seven brave dissidents conducted a sit-down demonstration on Execution Place in Red Square.  Six of them were promptly arrested and a seventh was given a forensic-psychiatric examination and declared to be of unsound mind.  On January 20, 1991, by contrast, a crowd of 100,000 marched to the Kremlin to protest the Baltic bloodletting, shouting "Dictatorship won't do!"  The populace has unquestionably come a long way since 1968.  It is the moral and creative forces which have been released in the Soviet Union over the past six years which represent the ultimate pledge of renewal and which must eventually emerge supreme.

John B. Dunlop is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace in Stanford, CA.

1. Los Angeles Times, January 14, 1991.

2. Trud, December 27, 1990.

3. While leading Soviet officials avoid discussing this controversial scheme in public, it has been aired in several major articles in the Soviet press.  See for example, the pieces by Vladimir Sokolov in Literaturnaya Gazeta, August 2, 1989, and Vladimir Tarasov in Literaturnaya Rossiya, November 30, 1990.

4. New York Times, January 15, 1991.

5. Wall Street Journal, January 28, 1991.

6. Boston Globe, January 30, 1991.

7. Moscow and Beyond, 1986-1989 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 13.