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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 15, 1985
PAGE 7
Politburo, with calls for fundamental changes in economic,
organizational and social thinkin � ···· He seems to have the back
ing of the brighter and younger minds in the Soviet leadership.
Nobody in the Soviet leadership is against economic change. The
long lines outside stores alone make any other position politic
ally untenable.
But Soviet thinking on the issue has split
roughly into two trends. On one side are the "hard-liners," men
like [Grigory ] Romanov and Prime Minister Nikolai A. Tikhonov,
whose solution has been to cry· out for more discipline within
existing structures, for stronger centralized control, increased
party supervision, for ruthless treatment of managers who don't
achieve. Against these are ranged the "reformers," with Gor
bachev at their head--men who advocate loosening of centralized
controls, less party meddling, more self-management, greater use
of market mechanisms and financial incentives•••• [The success of
the reforms in China has had an impact on those advocating re
form.]
The greatest barrier before the "reformers" is the institutional
resistance of a party bureaucracy that derives its power and
privilege from things as they are•••• What makes the prospect of
internal change more propitious now is a sense of crisis that
seems to be spreading among Soviet economic managers, l! sense
that something must change and change fast. Oil production has
fallen off, industrial output is climbing at a snail's pace and
agriculture remains in dismal straits. The military is clamoring
for more money to match President Reagan's military buildup, and
consumers are becoming more vocal in their frustration••••
A Soviet Union under Gorbachev or another of his ilk would not be
radically different in the immediate future. Yet Gorbachev is a
man Mrs. Thatcher found likable and possible to do business with.
That and his youth and the pragmatism his statements reflect
probably make him as good a Soviet politician as the West can
expect.
Mr. Gorbachev could indeed be the spearhead of growing Soviet awareness of
the need to cooperate more with Western Europe. In the January 11, 1985 is
sue of the PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT we quoted the advice of Zbigniew
Brzezinski who expressed the belief that "the fear that America may be
turning from the Atlantic to the Pacific•••justifies a wider economic, and
potentially� l! political accommodation between an industrially obsoles
cent Western Europe and the even more backward Soviet bloc, a logical cus
tomer for what Western Europe can produce. Why then should not the next
generation of Soviet leaders," Brzezinski continued [this was before
Gorbachev's election], "be pressed also to come to terms with the fact that
the interests of the Soviet people would be better served by a less frus
trated and oppressed east-central Europe, partaking more directly of the
benefits of all-European cooperation?" The ultimate goal should therefore
be, Brzezinski said, "the emergence of a truly European Europe capable both
of attracting Eastern Europe and of diluting Soviet control over the
region."
In the LOS ANGELES TIMES of March 12, journalist Robert Gillette wrote of
the cautious optimism expressed by influential figures in Eastern Europe in
the article, "East Europe Hopeful Gorbachev Will Be Somewhat Progressive":