Soviet Union Lifting the Veil on History

By Thomas A. Sancton

Lenin's white statue seemed to gaze down expectantly on Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet leader walked to the podium of the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses, - opened a thick folder and began his 2-hr. 41-min. speech. Between Lenin and Gorbachev lay seven decades of Soviet history, much of it officially ignored or obfuscated -- and nearly all of it haunted by the ghost of Joseph Stalin. But Gorbachev had insisted there should be no "blank pages" in his country's past. Now, in an address marking the 70th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, he had an ideal occasion to demonstrate the glasnost (openness) that has become a watchword of his 31 months in power. What he revealed instead was the limits of glasnost and the cautious path he must tread between foot-dragging conservatives and impatient reformers within the Communist Party leadership.

Gorbachev did, however, fill in a few of Soviet history's most troubling blanks. Not since Nikita Khrushchev's now famous secret speech to the 20th Party Congress in 1956 had a Soviet leader so emphatically denounced the atrocities of the Stalin era -- particularly the terror-filled 1930s, when millions of citizens were arrested or summarily executed, or starved to death as a result of forced collectivization. Declared Gorbachev: "The guilt of Stalin and his immediate entourage before the party and the people for the wholesale repressive measures and acts of lawlessness is enormous and unforgivable. This is a lesson for all generations." Yet Gorbachev tempered his criticism by noting "Stalin's incontestable contribution to the struggle for socialism," and seemed to diminish the extent of Stalin's crimes by numbering his victims in the thousands, rather than millions. Nonetheless, Gorbachev took an unprecedented step. Although Khrushchev had attacked Stalin's legacy with far more passion and detail 31 years earlier, his speech was never published in the Soviet Union; Gorbachev's was carried live on nationwide radio and television.

In other ways too, Gorbachev cracked open new windows in the previously impenetrable wall of Soviet history. He partly restored the reputation of Khrushchev, who died in disgrace 16 years ago, following his ouster in 1964. "It required no small courage of the party and its leadership, headed by Nikita Khrushchev, to criticize ((Stalin's)) personality cult and its consequences and to re-establish socialist legality," Gorbachev told the 5,000 Soviet officials and foreign dignitaries assembled before him in the cavernous modern hall. Khrushchev, who tried to launch decentralizing reforms similar to Gorbachev's, had not been publicly named by a Soviet leader in more than two decades.

Gorbachev cited other historical "nonpersons." Leon Trotsky, an ally of Lenin's who was exiled by Stalin and assassinated by a Soviet agent in 1940, received a brief mention -- but only as a power-hungry schemer "who always vacillated and cheated." More fortunate was Nikolai Bukharin, another close Lenin aide who ran afoul of Stalin and was executed as a spy in 1938. Gorbachev credited Bukharin, who supported Lenin's free market-oriented New Economic Policy and opposed forced collectivization, with helping to frustrate Trotsky's ambitions. Yet Gorbachev felt compelled to cite Lenin's reservations about Bukharin's ideological purity. On that point, as in his unabashed defense of the Kremlin's infamous 1939 pact with Hitler, Gorbachev showed there are limits on how far even he would stray from official versions of Soviet history.

The speech was a letdown to some reform-minded Soviets who had been hoping for a more thorough, hard-hitting appraisal of the party's past mistakes. "I was very disappointed," said Mathematician Naum Meiman, 76, one of the country's most prominent dissidents. "The speech was the result of a compromise between Gorbachev and others in the leadership who are against a true evaluation of Stalin's role." Fellow Dissident Physicist Andrei Sakharov told callers after the address that "not everything satisfied me," adding, "I would have expected, and I hoped for, more." There were indications, in fact, that more would be forthcoming. Gorbachev announced that two special commissions would be set up, one to examine facts and documents dealing with the Stalin era, the other to re-evaluate the history of the Communist Party. It was essential, said Gorbachev, to face up to the "painful matters in our history." Two days later a panel of Soviet historians met with journalists to discuss his call for a franker look at the past. While it was clear that the party would continue to set the ground rules for historical research, the scholars agreed that the veil was being lifted on many subjects. One member of the panel even called for a reconsideration of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Gorbachev's overall caution reflected the delicate balancing act he must perform to keep the party's conservative and liberal factions in line. Internal party tensions flared up dramatically at an Oct. 21 meeting of the policy-setting Central Committee, details of which subsequently surfaced in the Western press. On that occasion, Moscow Party Leader Boris Yeltsin, 56, a nonvoting member of the Politburo and a close Gorbachev ally, reportedly complained that bureaucratic foot dragging was frustrating his reform efforts in the capital and offered to resign. Politburo Ideologist Yegor Ligachev, 66, a leading conservative who has sought to restrain the pace of reform, replied with sharp criticism of Yeltsin's management. Yeltsin is expected to make a speech this week at a meeting of the Moscow party; whether or not he receives a vote of confidence from the group should give a good indication of his fate. A final decision on Yeltsin's resignation may be made by the Politburo later in the week.

Many Western analysts saw Gorbachev's speech as a pragmatic compromise between these two wings. "Gorbachev has been made to walk a fine line," said Marshall Goldman, associate director of Harvard University's Russian Research Center. "The conservatives have said he's gone too far, while the reformers say he's not gone far enough. He's not able to do anything innovative at this point. The speech is an indication that he's had to scale back his plans for reform." Princeton University Political Scientist Stephen Cohen, however, called Gorbachev's performance a "major speech" that "attacked the entire mythology of Stalin." Said Cohen: "Gorbachev showed that he is absolutely defiant, but embattled. He's protecting himself because he's regarded by his critics as a zealot. But he didn't take a step backward."

Although most attention focused on Gorbachev's treatment of the past, he also included some significant remarks about the present. Announcing a potentially dramatic shift in Moscow's relations with its East bloc satellites, Gorbachev declared that "all ((Communist)) parties are completely and irreversibly independent." He stressed this point again in an address to foreign delegates two days later, renouncing the "arrogance of omniscience" that he said had formerly governed Moscow's ties with its Communist allies. Gorbachev's statements appeared to rescind the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, proposing intervention in defense of socialist regimes, that was used to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The Soviet leader reiterated his commitment to the planned superpower summit in Washington next month and served notice on the Reagan Administration that he will demand tangible results from both that meeting and a projected Moscow ; summit in 1988. Insisting on "more than merely a continuation of discussion," Gorbachev called for a "palpable breakthrough" in strategic- arms reductions and in "barring weapons from outer space" -- a reference to the Reagan Administration's Strategic Defense Initiative. There have been recent indications, however, that the Soviets might soften their die-hard opposition to space-based defenses in favor of gaining some predictability about how and when such systems might be deployed. Having held fast on that issue last month while Gorbachev first refused, then agreed to set a summit date, the Reagan Administration just may find a new practicality in the Kremlin. After all, if the Soviets are becoming less self-conscious about their past, they might also be more flexible about the future.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow and Nancy Traver/Washington