Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...official monopoly of power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, proud inheritor of Lenin's mantle, vanguard of world revolution...
...ranked among the most wildly farfetched. But last week the prospect of abolishing the party's "leading role" in the U.S.S.R. gained momentum when the Lithuanian legislature voted 243 to 1 in favor of a constitutional amendment legalizing rivals to the Communist Party. While Lithuania thus became the first Soviet republic to do so, in neighboring Estonia the Communist Party Central Committee approved a similar proposal that should easily pass the legislature next month. In Armenia angry crowds surrounded parliament after legislators rejected a multiparty system. This week Andrei Sakharov and other members of the Congress of People's Deputies...
Gorbachev, who has called a multiparty system "rubbish," has good reason to worry. Many non-Russians in the Soviet empire -- Ukrainians and Azerbaijanis as well as Armenians and Balts -- would flock to new parties seeking autonomy from Moscow. The Baltic republics already sport popular fronts and other freshly minted political groups whose members ran as independent candidates in national elections earlier this year and trounced establishment party hacks. In the Russian Republic itself, there is mounting anger and frustration with empty shops and suffocating bureaucracy that could easily swell the rolls of a gaggle of independent parties. Politburo member Yegor...
...even the Kremlin realizes that Article 6 as now written is out of date. This provision entered the Soviet constitution only in 1977, at the height of what is now denounced as the "era of stagnation." Sakharov and other liberals have made the repeal of Article 6 a litmus test of the leadership's commitment to genuine progress. They have substantial support. The Supreme Soviet voted 198 to 173 last month to debate Article 6; only 28 abstentions kept the measure off the agenda of this week's session of the Congress of People's Deputies. Gorbachev recognizes that...
Once again the task before Gorbachev is to enhance his power by co-opting the demands for radical change while at the same time persuading conservative foot draggers to join his cause. But to contain the rising tide of dissent in the Soviet Union, now bubbling up through many unofficial groups and opposing factions within the party itself, before it reaches the flood levels prevailing in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party will have to demonstrate that it deserves the support of the people without relying on the crutch of Article...