Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XLI, Global Issues II

93. Information Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (Schifter) to Secretary of State Shultz¹

Washington, March 28, 1987

SUBJECT

• Human Rights in Gorbachev’s Second Year: “Openness” and “Restructuring”

Summary. Driven largely by domestic concerns, namely his desire to reinvigorate the Soviet Union and improve the operations of the economy, Gorbachev has initiated major programs to open up to public scrutiny and debate governmental operations at the local level. For the same reason he has loosened somewhat the rigid controls recently in effect with regard to cultural activities. Change with regard to other aspects of freedom of expression has been far more limited and driven more by efforts to improve the Soviet Union’s public-relations image. There is no indication as yet of any change in the Soviet Union’s basic structure as a totalitarian dictatorship, in which the fundamental human rights spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (and therefore covered by the Helsinki Final Act) are denied and in which the secret police apparatus plays a central role. End Summary.

The Gorbachev Innovations

At first blush, it seems that confusing and contradictory messages are coming out of the Soviet Union these days concerning respect for human rights. As we try to analyze recent developments, we often speak of “mixed signals.” Some observers suggest that Gorbachev is pressing for liberalization, but that some hardliners, particularly in the KGB, are attempting to sabotage his efforts through acts of a repressive nature.

We cannot speak with certainty as to what goes on in the Soviet leadership behind the scenes. However, the leaders do speak out and their statements are published. A careful reading of these statements, when placed in the context provided by Soviet history and Leninist ideology and terminology, helps provide us with an understanding of the new developments in the USSR.

What the new leaders emphasize and demonstrate is their belief in Marxism-Leninism and their intent, in the spirit of Lenin, to “get the Soviet Union moving again” toward its socialist goals, through more and harder work, improved management, and greater efficiency. This preoccupation with better economic performance appears to influence all aspects of Gorbachev’s program, including the innovations that have human rights implications. What may appear as “conflicting signals” turn out to be part of a logical scheme if we sort out the various strands of the Gorbachev program that relate to human rights.

For purposes of this analysis, the programs of “openness” and “restructuring” are divided into three distinct categories:

(1) Personnel changes and other governmental reforms;

(2) Loosening controls over cultural affairs; and

(3) Other aspects of fundamental freedoms.

(1) Personnel Changes and Other Governmental Reforms

This is the area in which Gorbachev is making the most profound changes, taking the greatest risks, and encountering his most substantial opposition. His motivation is clear. He recognizes the weakness of the Soviet economy and wants to strengthen it. As management of the Soviet economy is an integral part of governmental operations, Gorbachev’s efforts at improving the economy are an essential element of his program of governmental reform.

One of the major problems identified by Gorbachev has been the personal and professional inadequacy of a great many persons in leadership positions. The major culprits, in his opinion, were Leonid Brezhnev and other people associated with Brezhnev in the 18 years in which he led the Soviet Union. Gorbachev and his associates have now replaced Brezhnev and his crew in the principal positions of leadership. But Gorbachev has concluded that that is not sufficient, that the orders from the top are not effectively carried out at lower levels, that it is necessary to reach into the lower rungs of the bureaucracy and shake things up, replace those who take bribes, are drunk on the job, or fail to perform effectively and efficiently.

As the leadership could not possibly identify all the weak links throughout the entire Soviet system, another way had to be found. It was “glasnost.” The bureaucracy, it was made clear to all, was no longer sacrosanct. Persons criticizing public officials would no longer be incarcerated or committed to mental institutions. On the contrary, their comments would be welcomed and action would be taken thereon. In order to effect improvements in the operations of the state and its enterprises, citizens would not be limited in their critiques to the naming of individual wrong-doers. They could also feel free to offer their thoughts on what they might perceive as inefficiencies on the local level, at which they could observe conditions directly. In that way the whole country could become involved in the effort to upgrade economic and other governmental operations.

Closely related to the opening up of the bureaucracy to public scrutiny and criticism is Gorbachev’s emphasis on the rule of law. In a country in which so many aspects of the citizen’s life are regulated by the government, the arbitrary use by local officials of administrative discretion can be particularly oppressive. As another element of “openness” Gorbachev has insisted on the writing and publishing of laws and regulations on a variety of subjects which in the past have been controlled through vague confidential policy guidelines. The purpose of the new approach is to let the officials know precisely what the limits of their authority are and to let the public know these limits so that they can insist that officials do indeed follow the instructions they have received.

This change in the rules under which the Soviet state operates is indeed most profound. For many a Soviet citizen this is what freedom of speech is all about. All that citizen ever wanted to do in exercising freedom of speech was to complain about the wrongdoing in front of his own eyes and about officials who were treating him unfairly and unjustly. He can do that now.

To the government officials the effect of this change in the rules has been equally profound. The entire Soviet bureaucratic system is built on lock-step advancement based on seniority. The road ahead was always safe and secure. All one had to do is engage in apple-polishing, including cooperation in the petty (or not so petty) graft in which one’s superiors were involved. By playing along in this manner, one was fully protected against all criticism. The bureaucracy was sacrosanct.

This system of rule by a sacrosanct bureaucracy, the prohibition of any kind of criticism of its work, had been in effect since the rise of Stalin to one-man leadership in the early Thirties. Khrushchev tried to tackle some aspects of the problem toward the end of his period in office. His efforts along these lines may very well have been a factor in his downfall. What this means is that Gorbachev’s openness and restructuring with regard to the Soviet bureaucratic system is taking the Soviet Union back to the Twenties, the time of Lenin, and that portion of the post-Lenin period in which Stalin had not yet achieved sole and supreme power.

But one of the essential elements of Leninism is that no questioning of the basic structure of the system is allowed. That facet of the system remains unchanged. Openness is limited to the exercise of freedom of expression on local problems. It does not extend to questions of basic governmental policy. The rules prohibiting the discussion of such questions remain fully in force. The lines are clearly drawn.

Nevertheless, the Nomenklatura, the term used to describe the privileged state and party bureaucracy, is troubled and the Nomenklatura is powerful. If Gorbachev falls, his efforts with regard to governmental restructuring will be the principal cause.

(2) Loosening of Cultural Restrictions

In their allegedly classless society, the Soviets recognize as a subgroup of the working class the men and women who work with their brains. They are referred to as the “intelligentsia.” In his analysis of conditions in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev appears to have recognized that this group, in particular, had lost hope, had been affected by a malaise which sapped its vitality. In focusing his attention on the intelligentsia in an effort to change the basic outlook of the group, Gorbachev may have been motivated by a number of factors, namely (a) the recognition that in the information age this is indeed the group whose performance will most significantly affect the future development of the Soviet economy; (b) an understanding that it is the intelligentsia from which dissidents and any dissident movement might spring.

Cynics among the ancient Romans expressed their disdain for democracy by suggesting that all that the people wanted were panem et circenses, bread and circuses. As the Soviet intelligentsia has sufficient bread, Gorbachev appears to have concentrated on the equivalent of circuses, changes in the drab field of Soviet culture. Thus we now see books published or to be published, theatrical plays, and films allowed to be shown, all of which were heretofore on the prohibited list.

What must be underlined in this context is that a close examination of the books now being published raises questions as to why they were prohibited in the first place. Nabokov² may have been prohibited because of the Soviet Union’s insistence on high standards of morality in its literature. (This relates to personal, not political morality.) Pasternak’s³ writings have political implications, but relate to a period in the long-distant past.

Other heretofore prohibited books as well as plays and films which may now be published or shown reflect Gorbachev’s theme of glasnost. They show the cruelty and brutality of the Stalinist system but also its utter senselessness: the victims of the terror were not enemies of the state, just ordinary people who were being persecuted without good reason.

Another aspect of Gorbachev’s “new thinking” is that history is to be rewritten once more. Stalin’s failure as a military strategist in 1941⁴ is again to be noted. And there is even the possibility that old Bolsheviks like Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, all executed in the Stalin purges, who have for decades been non-persons, will be mentioned again. But there is no suggestion at this time that any other aspects of Soviet or of world history are to be reviewed. Lenin’s friends and colleagues will be rehabilitated posthumously, but not the persons he considered his enemies.

Thus, to date there is no indication that the new cultural freedom is reaching beyond the limits which Lenin would have permitted. No books are published, nor plays or films shown, nor history books rewritten which challenge basic Marxist-Leninist assumptions. We must assume the leadership believes that it can keep things that way. Whether it will succeed, or whether the intelligentsia, once its appetite has been whetted, will push beyond the lines of the presently permissible, whether the authorities will resist, and if so, how successful they will be, only time will tell. What must be kept in mind is that the Soviet government’s ability to maintain controls in this field is formidable: it owns the printing presses, the theaters and the movie projectors. It may very well have the power it needs to keep the intelligentsia in check.

(3) Other Aspects of Fundamental Freedoms

The “mixed signals” referred to at the beginning may be a reflection of the major changes in the behavior of Soviet authorities in the areas of local governmental reform and of culture, which contrast with the minor changes in the Soviet behavior pattern in all other areas affecting human rights. To be sure, there have been hints of further changes in the offing and some observers have expressed great hope that there will be a general relaxation of controls. This memorandum concentrates only on what is and does not seek to predict future developments.

When we examine the field of human rights beyond the areas of local governmental reform and of culture, we come up against the limitations imposed on Soviet citizens because of their political outlook, their religion, their desire to maintain their native culture, or in the case of Jews and Crimean Tatars, their ethnic descent. In all these areas there appears to have been no basic change. Public expressions of dissent and failures to adhere to regulations governing the formation of associations, including religious associations, remain punishable.

Whereas the changes set forth in (1) and (2) above seem to be driven by domestic imperatives, concern over the Soviet image abroad seems recently to have brought about some relaxation in the treatment of dissent. The most significant evidence of such relaxation has been the release from prison, exile and mental institutions of about 100 political dissenters, including Andrei Sakharov⁵ and other personalities well known in the West.

The limited significance of the prisoner releases is underlined by the following:

(a) more than 600 persons remain on the list of known political prisoners; estimates of the total number of political prisoners range from 1,000 to 10,000; no one has been released from Special Regime Labor Camp 389/36–1 at Perm, known as the most brutal of the camps, where many political prisoners have died;

(b) as distinct from Stalin’s prisoners, whom Khrushchev, declared “rehabilitated,” i.e. totally exonerated, the recently freed prisoners merely had their terms cut short; Irina Ratushinskaya told us that the KGB officer who told her that she would be released added expressly that she was not being rehabilitated;⁶

(c) persons released from confinement were required to sign statements that they would henceforth refrain from “illegal activities;”

(d) released prisoners who are believed less likely to cause harm abroad than at home are pressed to leave the country.

The recent prisoner-release program, it should be noted, is neither a large-scale “rehabilitation” effort nor a large-scale amnesty. The Soviet authorities have announced that releases are based on case-by-case reviews of the files. It would appear that with the political dissident movement destroyed and the Jewish emigration movement focusing on departure from the country, the release of persons associated with either group is deemed tolerable. The religious and nationality movements that are committed to staying in the U.S.S.R. are deemed greater threats and persons affiliated with either of them seem to have a more difficult time getting released.

What must be kept in mind, therefore, in analyzing the present state of human rights in the Soviet Union, is that hundreds if not thousands of political prisoners remain in jail, exile or mental institutions, that we don’t know of any change in the treatment of these prisoners, that the power and practices of the KGB have not changed, that the same is true of the laws and regulations governing religion, that abuse of psychiatry has not been ended, that private organizations may not be formed, that no Samizdat (“self-published”) literature is now circulating (as it did in the Seventies), that all media remain under central State control, that the one-party system remains untouchable, and that the same is true of what Lenin called “democratic centralism,” i.e. control of the party from the top.

Note: Discrimination against Jews and the emigration issue will be dealt with in a separate memorandum.⁷

1. Source: Department of State, Subject and Chron Files, 1985–1986, Lot 89D56, Human Rights. Confidential. Drafted by Schifter on March 27. Copies were sent to Ridgway, Solomon, Abramowitz, Derwinski, Kampelman, and Adelman. There is no indication that Shultz saw the memorandum.
2. Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American novelist and lepidopterist, 1899–1977.
3. Boris Pasternak, Russian poet and novelist, 1890–1960.
4. Reference is to the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
5. The Soviet Government loosened restrictions on Sakharov’s travel in December 1986.
6. Soviet poet Irina Ratushinskaya was released from Soviet custody in October 1986.
7. In an April 10 information memorandum to Shultz, Schifter addressed anti-Semitism and Jewish emigration in the Soviet Union. (Department of State, Correspondence File—Ambassador Richard Schifter CHRON and Subject Files, 1984–1991, Lot 94D411, R. Schifter’s Monthly Chron—April 1987)