Word: factionalization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ruthlessly smashed. He would not have hesitated a moment before arresting the members of the Congress of People's Deputies who decided last week to form a legal opposition calling itself the Interregional Group. At a freewheeling conference in Moscow's House of Cinema, the new faction elected a collective leadership and adopted a platform that called for rewriting the Soviet Constitution to make the system safe for pluralism and basic civil rights. In a direct challenge to Leninism, the central dogma of the Soviet Union, the organizers agreed that the power to rule should be taken from the Communist...
That was brought to vivid life by the Interregional Group. In the first issue of its new newspaper, Moscow Deputy Sergei Stankevich assured his colleagues that they no longer had to believe that organizing a political opposition was a crime against the state. A struggle among dissenting factions, he said, "is the only possible method of existence for a legislative body." Counting absentees, 388 Deputies said they were willing to associate themselves with this departure from Communist rectitude. Though that is a distinct minority of the 2,250-member Congress, the surprising thing is that an opposition faction exists...
...group's members insist they are not so much an opposition faction as ardent advocates of perestroika eager to speed its implementation. Said Leningrad's representative Anatoli Sobchak: "I am not a member of the opposition; I am a supporter of the struggle for a normal economic and political life in our country." But there is a hint of criticism of current as well as past party leaders. President Mikhail Gorbachev, said historian Yuri Afanasyev, an elected official of the group, "is justifiably regarded as the man who launched reform. But the time has passed when he can successfully remain...
...double time to recapture the loyalty of its straying core supporters. The most immediate concern is to find a replacement for Uno. As the search began last week, assertive Young Turks were working to put forward one of their own. But the Old Guard resisted, still bound by tradition, faction loyalty and a determination not to relinquish power. In a seeming capitulation to the young, however, the party agreed at week's end to leave the selection of a new leader to a party vote, rather than the back-room politicking that gave rise to leaders like Uno. "Our defeat...
...threats to Gorbachev and his program, one of the most immediate comes from the conservative faction inside the party. Gorbachev has been chipping away at the conservatives since he took power 4 1/2 years ago, and now sometimes gives the impression that he is willing to destroy the party in order to save it. By creating a new legislature and making himself head of state, he has built a fallback power center from which he can bombard the party's hard-liners and, if necessary, defend against their counterattacks...