Soviet Union Hard Lessons and Unhappy Citizens

By William R. Doerner

Not so long ago, the catalog of crises that have recently afflicted the Soviet Union would have been buried in the recesses of the Kremlin, with much of the rest of the world none the wiser. Not anymore. With a newly emboldened press and oratorical skirmishing going on constantly in Moscow's new Congress of People's Deputies, an engrossed world knows practically everything.

The very act of revelation is a central feature in the gradual loosening of Communist strictures that Mikhail Gorbachev is bringing to the Soviet Union, as he grapples with the challenge of revamping the system without completely violating it -- and a stark contrast to the refusal of China's leadership to countenance the slightest openness.

Paying heed to the cataclysmic outcome of that refusal, the Kremlin calibrated its response with great care. Early in the week, the Congress issued a timid resolution urging that "wisdom, sound reason and a balanced approach" prevail in China. Later, caution became less evident. "We hadn't expected this," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, adding that his government was "extremely dismayed" over the events in China. But Moscow's options were limited. After almost two decades of exchanging ideological insults, the Chinese were scarcely prepared to accept a lecture from the Soviets. In any case, admonitions would only feed lingering Chinese suspicions that the Kremlin still harbors hopes of playing schoolmaster to the Communist movement. So what is left, in Moscow's view, is nothing but time and patience. "If you think we don't understand the situation, you are wrong," said a frustrated Soviet observer last week. "Not one Soviet, from the President on down to a schoolchild, approves of China's use of tanks to repress the students. But the only way we can really help is by example, through deepening democracy in our own country."

Last week the world was able to watch that process lurch ahead as debates in the Soviet Congress reached a painful peak of bitterness. Little was hidden from the Soviet people as a pair of new disasters threw the nation into mourning.

Gorbachev's experiment in rambunctious parliamentary democracy adjourned, with moments of high drama to the very end. At the closing session of the Congress, Andrei Sakharov and Gorbachev squared off against each other. Sakharov called for removal of the constitutional provision giving the Communist Party the "leading role" in Soviet political life, while the Soviet leader accused the Nobel Peace laureate of trying to "belittle" the new parliament's achievements. There were also painful disclosures about the dreadful state of the Soviet economy. Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov admitted that some 40 million Soviets, or 13% of the population, live below the poverty level, that the Afghanistan war had cost about $70 billion and that the country's foreign-trade deficit this year will reach $52 billion. (The U.S. foreign-trade deficit last year was $119.8 billion.) In an attack on the economic front, Ryzhkov proposed cuts of almost a third in the military budget until 1995 and the elimination of as many as 18 of the 50 government ministries.

The political challenges that confronted Gorbachev included the first walkout of the session, staged by members from Lithuania, one of the country's three Baltic republics and a hotbed of nationalism. They were provoked by a plan, backed by Gorbachev, to establish a commission empowered to have the final say on constitutional disputes. Baltic deputies viewed the proposal as one more way for Moscow to impose its will on the 14 non-Russian republics. "Our electors ordered us to take care of the sovereignty of our republics," declared Romas Gudaitis, a writer and deputy from Lithuania. Gorbachev was clearly exasperated by the Lithuanians' sudden departure, calling after them, "I ask you to be calm because this is not so simple." In the end, Gorbachev won passage of a compromise measure, placing the commission's charter in the hands of a group that includes leading dissidents.

But that minor eruption paled next to the outburst of violence in Uzbekistan, the fourth largest republic, located in the southern part of the U.S.S.R. The worst outbreak of ethnic mayhem in the modern Soviet era began on the night of June 3, in the city of Fergana (pop. 190,000), 150 miles southeast of Tashkent, as bands of native Uzbeks staged a series of brutal attacks on minority Meskhetian Turks, who were deported from Georgia in 1944 by Joseph Stalin. Most of the 190,000 displaced Meskhetians settled in Uzbekistan, a region that did not always welcome their presence.

Precisely what touched off the violence remained unclear, despite thorough glasnost-era reporting by the Soviet press and television. Some stories said the fighting was touched off by a dispute over the price of strawberries at a local market, while others maintained that the attacks were in retaliation for a fight last month in the tiny market town of Kuvasi.

Whatever the cause, mobs of mostly young Uzbek men went on a rampage against the Meskhetians, hunting them down in their homes and beating them with iron bars and stones. Moscow rushed 9,000 Interior Ministry troops to the scene in an attempt to quell the violence. But fighting erupted in the city of Kokand, 40 miles west of Fergana, where a mob numbering 5,000, some with automatic weapons, attacked government buildings, blocked railroad tracks and set fires.

By week's end at least 80 people, mostly Meskhetians, had been killed and perhaps as many as 1,000 injured. In addition, more than 400 homes, eight factories and six schools had been burned down. Some 11,000 Meskhetians had taken up residence in refugee camps, either because their homes had been destroyed or because they feared for their lives.

Gorbachev acknowledged the violence in sessions of the Congress, the latest outbursts in a growing litany that many conservatives blame on his tolerant governing style. Said the Soviet leader: "Let us again issue an appeal to keep the peace. Please stop and let us trust the legal organs of the country to do everything to protect the lives of the people."

Ethnic disorders were not the only sad news that Gorbachev conveyed to the Congress last week. On Monday, dressed in a funereal black suit, the Soviet leader called for a moment of silence in memory of "several hundred" Soviets who perished over the weekend in a gas-pipeline explosion in the southern Ural mountains. Some three hours before the explosion, technicians apparently noticed a dip in pressure along one section of the pipeline. But instead of searching for a leak, they turned up the gas flow to get the pressure back to normal, allowing huge quantities of propane, butane and other highly flammable gasses to escape and form an atmospheric "lake." Fatefully, two passenger trains on the famed TransSiberian Railway were passing each other when the gases, ignited probably by a spark or a discarded cigarette, detonated with the force of a ten-kiloton bomb (the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima was 12.5 kilotons).

It was the worst train disaster in Soviet history. The explosion thrust a pillar of fire into the nighttime Siberian skies that was visible to observers more than 60 miles away. The bodies of 137 of the 1,200 passengers aboard the trains were recovered, 53 more died en route to the hospital and an unknown number were completely incinerated in the blast, making a precise toll impossible. More than 700 passengers and crew, many of them horribly burned, required hospitalization. The victims included many children on their way to summer camps on the Black Sea. On Saturday a train traveling from that resort area crashed into a bus, killing 31 people and injuring at least 14 others.

Ealier in the week, Gorbachev had visited the scene of the explosion, acre after acre of which was scorched black by fire. "It seems once again that it is a matter of incompetence, irresponsibility, mismanagement," the grim and angry President told the Congress. "It was nothing less than a shameful outrage. There will be no progress in this country if we have such laxness." Gorbachev then exhorted his listeners to "learn hard lessons from what happened." Last week in the Soviet Union, there was no shortage of hard lessons.

With reporting by Paul Hofheinz and John Kohan/Moscow