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C00002 00002	gorbac[w87,jmc]		What should the U.S. do about Gorbachev?
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gorbac[w87,jmc]		What should the U.S. do about Gorbachev?

	My answer is, not much, but something.

	To begin with,  all thinking about what the advent of Gorbachev
as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
means to the world should start with a confession of ignorance.
There are many possibilities, some bad, some good.  Moreover,
the U.S. has only a few ways of affecting the situation.

	Thinking about Gorbachev might well begin by reading
 {\it Khrushchev Remembers}, the autobiography of the last
Soviet party boss in a similar situation.  Khrushchev also got
a lot of power and wanted to reform the Soviet Union.  However,
he had no very clear vision of exactly what reforms he wanted.
Gorbachev may be in a similar situation.  Probably Gorbachev
represents a larger group than Khrushchev who really seems to
have been alone in many respects.  At least, when Khrushchev was
ousted, there was no-one so identified with the policies the
Brezhnev cabal objected to that he had to be ousted along with
Khrushchev.  On the other hand, there are indications that
Gorbachev represents the dissatisfaction of a substantial number
of Party officials of his age group and younger with the way
the Soviet Union was going.

	That a large group were dissatisfied and are presently supporters
of Gorbachev, i.e. don't object to the direction of the orders he is
giving, is very likely.  It is far less likely that this group has any
unified view of the direction in which they think the Soviet Union should
evolve.  Remember that the Soviet Union has no magazines of opinion, even
secret ones, that would have allowed critical discussion of the Brezhnev
policies.  Gorbachev could not do what President Reagan did --- decide
that he agreed with Jeane Kirkpatrick's articles about how
the U.S. should act in the U.N. and appoint her Ambassador to the U.N.

	What reformist trends can we see in the Soviet Union?

	1. Some people including Gorbachev object to the drunkenness
at all levels of Soviet society, find it harmful to the country in
many ways, and support Gorbachev's fairly drastic restrictions on
alcohol.  It has been effective in reducing the vodka supply, but
the Soviet moonshiners may catch up, develop their stills and their
ability to take advantage of corruption.

	2. I believe that many people at all levels in the party
think the dissenters have been treated unjustly and welcome
treating them less harshly.  However, they
weren't inclined, from caution or lack of conviction, to take a
stand on the matter.  They will accept Gorbachev's leniency.
However, many will support another crackdown if they see
the Party's power threatened.  It will probably be threatened
to some extent, because any democracy leads to demands for more.

	In the matter of treatment of dissenters, Western protest
has played an important role and will continue to do so.  This is
especially true of protests in favor of particular individuals.
The reason is that people who feel badly about mistreating the
dissenters and refuseniks for humane reasons have not dared express
these reasons but will go out of their way to find practical
reasons for mollifying Western opinion.  At least this was my
interpretation of Soviet yielding to a rather feeble threat of
a demonstration at a scientific meeting in Tblisi and allowing a refusenik
to take part.  He told me that people who had avoided him in
Moscow came up and greeted him warmly at the meeting.

	3. The argument that efficiency requires more openness
meets considerable support.  I worry that the hoped for efficiency
may not develop.

	4. There is a hypothesis that Gorbachev is a liberal at
heart and that concessions from the U.S. are required so that he
will hold power against the hard-liners.  That this idea should
prevail in U.S. policy making circles is to the advantage of the
Soviet Union.  For this reason, Soviet propagandists such as
Arbatov leak it all the time in their ``off-the-record'' conversations
with prominent Americans.  Moreover, many Americans of liberal
persuasion or against the Administration on arms control also like
the idea.