Mr Gorbachov has run up against the inevitable – failure of the economy to deliver. He has admitted as much in so many words in an address to Soviet editors and cultural officials. He has said: “We are going; slowly, we are losing time and this means we are losing the game” and added: “It turns out that there is a gap between our goals and our work”. Clearly he is angry, if not desperate. He is facing criticism from both the Right (conservatives who are critical of his attempt to do way with the Stalinist system) and the Left (radicals who themselves are divided on the question of the proper balance between the market and social justice). That is presumably why he has accused the press of muddling the issues. “In some speeches and publications you almost get the idea that perestroika has aggravated the economic situation, thrown finances out of balance, sharpened housing and other social problems”, he has said. The Soviet press is in fact divided between the neo-Stalinists and the reformers so much so that, as Mr Gorbachov himself put it, it is possible to say “which letters will be published in this journal and which in that one”.
None of these developments could have come as a surprise to so experienced and shrewd a political leader as Mr Gorbachov. It was just unavoidable that a Right and a Left would emerge as a result of his policy of glasnost (openness). Indeed, what is glasnost about if it is not to produce a debate in which rival viewpoints are pressed? And the Russians are known for their addiction to endless controversies. Witness the intensity of debates in the decade before the October revolution when first Lenin and then Stalin put an end to them. Similarly, it was only to be expected that like other members of the intelligentsia, the mediamen too would polarise. Indeed, such a polarization too can be only a temporary phenomenon. If free expression has taken roots, which is by no means certain, it can only be a matter of time before scores of viewpoints emerge. But all this does create serious problems for Mr Gorbachov. For, all his rhetoric notwithstanding, he favours change from above which he can control and direct, that is, change which removes those features of the old Stalinist system which threaten to drag the Soviet Union down to the status of a third world country without undermining the foundations of the Soviet system itself. That is like the proverbial attempt to square the circle. It is just not possible to order change in desired doses.
As is well known, Mr Deng Xiaoping has been involved in a similar effort in China. He too has had to zigzag, sometimes tilting towards the liberals and sometimes towards the diehards, the so-called “democracy wall” being followed by extensive arrests and so on. Apparently the Chinese leader has settled for a policy which gives first priority to modernization of the economy. Perhaps he has concluded that only when the economic foundations have been securely laid would it be possible to move towards a more liberal political order. The validity of this proposition, this is in fact Mr Deng’s assessment, remains to be tested on the ground. In theoretical terms, it appears to be tenable. Freedom cannot be rationed. A political system must rest either on the concept of consent or of coercion.
That apart, however, the widespread assumption has been that concentration on the modernization of the economy has been possible for Mr Deng because Mao Zedong had, during the so-called great proletarian cultural revolution, so weakened the internal cohesion of the Communist party and its hold on the people that its cadres were not in a strong enough position to resist changes in the economic system ordered from above. In respect of the Soviet Union, the assumption has been that the Communist party had become so well entrenched in power, especially during the Brezhnev era, that Mr Gorbachov had no choice but to promote glasnost before he could think of perestroika. There is an element of truth in this contrast. But there are other equally formidable differences. Unlike the Chinese, the Russians have not been known for being great entrepreneurs. And the Russia peasants emerging from serfdom in the 19th century have been reduced to wage earners who are not attached to land as their Chinese counterparts still are despite the excesses of the Maoist period. It is not clear how a modern economy can be built on such weak foundations.