South Africa 1960 – 1994

a) Political, economic and social factors contributing to the end of apartheid

The policy of total strategy or counter-revolution as it became known did not stop the anti-apartheid groups such as the ANC, PAC and UDF (United Democratic Front) from protesting for political and social equality for all races in South Africa. Poverty for blacks continued in the townships and homelands. Unemployment was on the rise due to sanctions, and education and housing were still of a third world standard.

The state of emergency failed to make South Africa safer for whites. Many whites were suffering loss of liberties under the censorship and rigid laws of the military state. Moreover, the ANC in exile continued to attack ‘soft targets’ in South Africa including shopping centres and post offices. Many whites were becoming disillusioned with apartheid and feeling the rejection of their society and culture by the rest of the world. Many Coloureds and Indians were becoming openly defiant of the white state demanding nothing short of full democracy for South Africa.

The United Democratic Front (UDF)

In 1983 a multi-racial party, the United Democratic Front was formed with the aim of uniting all resistance groups in the fight against apartheid. The UDF was highly successful because its members became a uniting force and it had many high profile members, including church leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The UDF supporters also include ANC members such as Winnie Mandela. By 1985 the UDF gained over two million members and was a powerful force in demanding the immediate end to apartheid.

The gradual reforms of the Botha government, delivered no real change in South Africa, only cosmetic changes. South Africa could not change and embrace the modern world while apartheid existed. Many white South Africans and politicians began to feel that apartheid was like ‘living on the back of a tiger and they needed to find a way off without being eaten’.1

b) International factors contributing to the end of apartheid

By 1988 the cost of running the military state was staggering and the economic performance of South Africa was poor. Sanctions had driven the economy into recession; ‘sanction busting’ was failing to fix the problem. South Africa was unable to obtain foreign loans or foreign investment. 2

The impact of the Free Mandela Campaign, sporting sanctions, severe international criticism, military and technical equipment embargos and isolation by other African nations in the OAU (Organisation of African Unity) was crippling South Africa. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 removed the Communist threat which underpinned the existence of apartheid since the end of the Second World War. Festering social, political and economic grievances in all sectors of the South African population left the preservation of apartheid completely untenable by the start of 1990s.

c) Problems facing the National Party and the ANC in the transition to democracy in South Africa

In 1984 during townships riots, P.W. Botha declared, ‘I’m giving you a final warning; one man, one vote in this country is out-that is never!”.3 In 1989 after a mild stroke and the failure of Total Strategy, he resigned as President of South Africa. Botha was replaced by F.W.de Klerk.

On 2 February 1990, de Klerk opened Parliament, and in his maiden speech as President began dismantling the apartheid state. He rescinded the ban on the ANC, the PAC, the South African Communist Party and thirty other political organizations. He freed political prisoners and suspended the death sentence. On the 11 of November de Klerk released Nelson Mandela from prison4. South Africa would have one man one vote.

The transition to democracy was a challenging task. Some historians have called it a ‘miracle’. Both the National Party and the ANC struggled to keep South Africa from sliding into civil war in the early 1990s. Meetings were held to lay out South Africa’s new Democracy entitled A Convention for Democratic South Africa (CODESSA). It was in the CODESSA meetings, that the National Party and the ANC debated their differing visions of democracy. CODESSA 1 ended when the ANC walked out of negotiations5. Finally CODESSA II was able to pave the way for a new constitution and a national election.

Problems facing the National Party

• The traditional rulers of South Africa wanted to hold to power as long as possible. They wanted ‘one man, one vote’ to eventuate slowly to protect the white minority.
  
  
• Right Wing extremists’ elements including the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging) vowed to prevent free elections and assassinate Nelson Mandela. They also wanted to create an Afrikaner homeland.
  
  
• Other white extremists were also letting off bombs and interrupting official democracy meetings such as CODESSA.

Problems facing the ANC

The ANC faced a number of difficulties:

• First in dealing with the National Party and with other anti-apartheid parties, especially Inkatha (a political organisation made up of Zulus from the Natal Province)
  
  
• The ANC wanted one person, one vote multiracial democracy immediately, and many of its members were understandably anxious to embrace democracy for the first time.
  
  
• In Natal/KwaZulu Province Chief Buthelezi of Inkatha refused to have anything to do with constitutional negotiations and savage violence between ANC members and Inkatha broke out. This included the assassination of Chris Hani, a national hero of the ANC and member of the South Africa Communist Party. Only a prompt appeal to the nation by Mandela averted a massive reaction.

• The ANC seemed to be losing control of its political base. Many feared that extremist whites were supplying Inkatha with weapons and instigating the fighting between rival black political groups, to prevent South Africa’s march towards democracy.

South Africa’s first democratic Election 27th April 1994

South Africans of all races turned out determined to vote in their first non-racial election on the 27th of April 1994. People lined up in long queues which stretched for miles to cast their historic ballot. The ANC won the election and Nelson Mandela, after spending almost three decades in jail, became President of a free South Africa, F.W. de Klerk became the Deputy President.

At his inauguration as President on the vast lawn of the Union Building in Pretoria Mandela said:

‘Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another… The sun will never set on so glorious a human achievement. Let freedom reign. God bless Africa’.6

Source: NSW HSC Online http://hsc.csu.edu.au © NSW Department of Education and Communities, and Charles Sturt University, 2011

Reagan at the Wall

ON June 12, 1987, the cold war entered a terminal phase, in ways that few could have anticipated, and in fact, almost no one did — with the exception of a president down on his legendary luck.

If in 1984 Ronald Reagan had proclaimed that it was “morning again in America,” three years later the evening was coming fast for a presidency that had spent most of its energy. The Iran-contra scandal had damaged him, and in March 1987 only 42 percent of Americans approved of the job he was doing. Reagan’s diary reveals a president losing focus, with entries registering more enthusiasm for old videos than the crushing business of state. On May 23, 1987, a good day: “Ran a movie about Big Foot & to my surprise I was in it — a shot of me & Bonzo on a TV set.”

But the aging actor still had a trick or two up his sleeve. For months, a trip had been planned to Berlin, a city famous for its stages. John F. Kennedy had given one of the greatest speeches of his presidency there in 1963; it would be a challenge for Reagan to duplicate the excitement of that visit. Like him, the cold war seemed to be losing steam. But Reagan’s loyal aides pitched the idea of a major speech at the Brandenburg Gate, and the writers began to crank out drafts. A single line kept calling attention to itself: an appeal to tear down the Berlin Wall, which ran alongside the gate.

In a way, it was a no-brainer. No one had ever liked the wall, since its construction in 1961. But to express that antipathy in 1987, as tensions were winding down, was impolitic. An encouraging new leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was bravely campaigning for perestroika (restructuring), glasnost (opening) and a third word we don’t remember as well, uskorenie (acceleration). Things were trending in the right direction in United States-Soviet relations. Most of Reagan’s foreign policy advisers opposed adding incendiary language.

There were other complications as well. The Brandenburg Gate offered an impressive backdrop, but it was so close to East Berlin that the Secret Service feared the president could be exposed to Communist snipers. Yet building a protective barrier would erect a wall around him at the same time that he was calling for the wall to be torn down. Worse, it would deny TV audiences a chance to see the wall. An ingenious solution was found — a glass partition that gave a clear view of the wall, and the gate.

But to those attuned to nuance, the gate posed its own problems.

It was not much of a gate, and for most of its history, it was illegal for anyone who was not a member of the Prussian royal family to walk through its central passage. A huge ceremonial structure, it borrowed features from the Acropolis, in tribute to the long fascination ancient Greece exerted upon the German imagination (a fascination that in no way extends to the current German-Greek relationship). For many Germans, however, its ghosts did not conjure Aegean democracy or Beethoven, but helmet-tipped Prussians and goose-stepping Nazis. The Reagan team might have been sensitive on that point, after the controversy caused by his visit to a Nazi cemetery on his previous trip to Germany.

One of Reagan’s gifts, however, was not to care about the wisps of history, or the contrary advice of his advisers. He insisted that the line be included, and so, midway through the speech, the president said, “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The lines were delivered crisply. It is unusual for a president to use the second-person imperative — it’s one of the reasons we remember J.F.K.’s invocation to “ask not.” Near the end, Reagan spotted a bit of graffiti spray-painted on the wall, and read it aloud: “This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.”

Shortly after, he flew back to Washington. His diary entry for June 12 does not overwhelm with its acuity (“I was surprised that we traveled in bright sunshine for about 8 of the 8 1/2 hour flight. It didn’t get dark until a little less than an hour out and yet it was after 3 A.M. back where we left”). But something had changed in the atmosphere. A gate had opened. And two years later, it was exactly as he predicted. The wall fell — not because Mr. Gorbachev tore it down, but because he did nothing at all.

To this day, Reagan attracts fierce partisans, eager to claim he “won” the cold war, and this speech is often cited in that argument. The claim feels forced, given that the U.S.S.R. outlasted his presidency by two years. But on this day, Reagan’s inner actor proved shrewder than most who would have counseled realpolitik. His theatrical turn on Berlin’s greatest stage stated a great moral truth, the way the best theater does, and proved the accuracy of Mr. Gorbachev’s third concept, uskorenie — acceleration.

Mr. Gorbachev deserves some of the credit, and in fact, the vast majority of young Germans in 1989 felt gratitude to him, not to Ronald Reagan. No one deserves more credit than the young graffiti-painters who protested against the wall for 28 years, and finally liberated themselves. But surely some recognition should go to a president who had the good sense to ignore the advice he was given, and read the writing on the wall.

Source: New York Times

Gorbachev's revolution

NOT ONE OF the grey men who assembled this week 25 years ago to pick a successor to Constantin Chernenko, the greyest of all leaders of the Soviet Union, had any idea what they would set in train. Within hours of his death the Politburo had earmarked the youngest among their number, Mikhail Gorbachev (54), to become the last secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He would later become the first and last President of the Soviet Union and, despite himself, its gravedigger.

Although he would pass from power widely reviled at home – hated by ordinary people for the economic and social impoverishment that would follow him, and by communists for betraying their state and losing their empire – history and the world will judge him more kindly as one of the century’s outstanding figures.

A committed communist and party man, later not averse to using the old methods, Gorbachev was not picked as a reformer. If he believed in it he kept it largely to himself. But he found that to implement his top-down economic programme, “ perestroika ”, he needed to counterbalance the inertia of his own party’s conservatism with a bottom-up revolution, transparency, or “ glasnost ”. Relatively free elections followed. Necessity opened his eyes gradually to the revolutionary logic being ushered through the door he had opened.

Historian Orlando Figes has compared Gorbachev to Columbus, “setting out with high ideals to find one thing and achieving something better by discarding them”. In other respects he was straight out of Russian history: a second Alexander Kerensky, one of the architects of Russia’s first 1917 revolution who would be swept away in its second by the uncontrolable, pent-up forces he had unleashed.

The shaking loose of the party from its control of the state would shake Gorbachev’s own hands from the levers of power, just as the rise of nationalism would break up the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and would make his position as president redundant, and the world a different place.

On the sidelines now, Gorbachev recently returned to familiar ground, accusing Prime Minister Putin’s government of trying to initiate a modernisation programme for Russia from the top down, “practically without the people”. And he attacked the ruling United Russia party of seeking a monopoly on power “like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, only worse”. It seems that although much has changed in Russia, much has not.

The Irish Times. Saturday, March 13, 2010

U.S. Share of Worldwide Arms Market Grows

Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study. Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons agreements in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year — down considerably from the $10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007.

The growth in weapons sales by the United States last year was particularly noticeable against worldwide trends. The value of global arms sales in 2008 was $55.2 billion, a drop of 7.6 percent from 2007 and the lowest total for international weapons agreements since 2005. The increase in American weapons sales around the world “was attributable not only to major new orders from clients in the Near East and in Asia, but also to the continuation of significant equipment and support services contracts with a broad-based number of U.S. clients globally,” according to the study, titled “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations.”

The annual report was produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress. Regarded as the most detailed collection of unclassified global arms sales data available to the general public, it was delivered to the House and Senate on Friday in time for their return from the Labor Day recess. The overall decline in weapons sales worldwide in 2008 can be explained by the reluctance of many nations to place new arms orders “in the face of the severe international recession,” wrote Richard F. Grimmett, a specialist in international security at the Congressional Research Service and author of the study. Mr. Grimmett’s report stated that the growth of weapons sales by the United States was “extraordinary” in a time of global recession, and was the result of new arms deals as well as the sustained cost of maintenance, upgrades, ammunition and spare parts to nations that purchased American weapons in the past.

In the highly competitive global arms market, nations vie for both profit and political influence through weapons sales, in particular to developing nations, which remain “the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by weapons suppliers,” according to the study. Weapons sales to developing nations reached $42.2 billion in 2008, only a nominal increase from the $41.1 billion in 2007.

The United States was the leader not only in arms sales worldwide, but also to the subset of nations in the developing world, signing $29.6 billion in weapons agreements with these nations, or 70.1 percent of all such deals. The study found that the larger arms deals concluded by the United States with developing nations last year included a $6.5 billion air defense system for the United Arab Emirates, a $2.1 billion jet fighter deal with Morocco and a $2 billion attack helicopter agreement with Taiwan. Other large weapons agreements were reached between the United States and India, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Korea and Brazil. Russia was far behind in 2008 with $3.3 billion in weapons sales to the developing world, about 7.8 percent of all such agreements. The report notes that while Moscow continues to have China and India as its main weapons clients, Russia’s new focus is on arms sales to Latin American, in particular to Venezuela. France was third with $2.5 billion in arms sales to developing nations, or about 5.9 percent of weapons deals with these countries.

The top buyers in the developing world in 2008 were the United Arab Emirates, which signed $9.7 billion in arms deals, Saudi Arabia, which signed $8.7 billion in weapons agreements, and Morocco, with $5.4 billion in arms purchases. The study uses figures in 2008 dollars, with amounts for previous years adjusted for inflation to give a constant financial measurement.The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.

Source: New York Times

Georgia says Russian pressure led to changes in UN Caucasus report

Georgia's foreign minister claimed on Tuesday that the UN Secretary General's draft report on the situation in the Caucasus region had been amended due to pressure from Russia.

The Geneva talks, which started on Monday, are backed by the UN, the EU and the OSCE and involve Georgia, Russia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia recognized the former Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states on August 26 last year. The move came two weeks after the end of a five-day war with Georgia which began when Georgian forces attacked South Ossetia to try to regain control of the region.

Friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance treaties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia were signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last November.

Under the pacts, Russia has among other things pledged to help the republics protect their borders, and the signatories have granted each other the right to set up military bases in their respective territories.

Source: Rianovosti

Russian, Italian leaders discuss G8 in Moscow

“I believe it is a very important matter that we plan to discuss today. There are very important opportunities to find answers to the current economic crisis and introduce a new global management method allowing us to supervise the financial and economic world and avoid any chance of a new crisis,” the Italian premier said.

Source: University of Toronto G8 Research Group

Russian troops leave Georgia war zones

Russian forces on Wednesday abandoned military positions deep inside Georgia in a major pull-back the Kremlin vowed to complete by midnight, two months after the South Ossetia war began.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Russia's last tsar rehabilitated

Russia's Supreme Court has ruled that the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family were victims of political repression and should be rehabilitated. The rehabilitation has long been demanded by imperial descendants.

Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their five children, doctor and three servants were shot dead by Bolshevik revolutionaries in July, 1918. Lower courts had previously refused to reclassify the killings, which had been categorised as simply murder. The Romanov family have been canonised as saints by the Orthodox Church, which has enjoyed a post-Soviet revival. For most of the last century, Tsar Nicholas II was officially reviled as a tyrant. To Russia's Soviet regime, he personified all they had tried to destroy in the revolution of 1917. The Romanovs were shot by a firing squad without a trial, in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

The Supreme Court "declared as groundless the repression of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and ordered their rehabilitation", the judge's decision said on Wednesday. The ruling overturned a decision by a Supreme Court panel in November 2007 not to rehabilitate the imperial family.

The descendants' lawyer, German Lukyanov, argued that the lack of a trial was not sufficient grounds to reject the plea that they be considered victims of political repression. Coercion by state bodies, restricting the freedom and rights of citizens for class, religious or social reasons, constituted repression, he told the court.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, official attitudes to the royal family have changed dramatically. In 1998, their remains were reburied with great ceremony in St Petersburg. The BBC's James Rodgers in Moscow says the supreme court's decision is largely symbolic - but has been welcomed by monarchists and the tsar's descendants.

Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, a Romanov descendant who led the campaign to get the imperial family rehabilitated, "expressed her joy and satisfaction after the decision," her spokesman Alexander Zakatov told the AFP news agency.

A spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, Georgy Ryabykh, said the decision "strengthens the rule of law, restores historical continuity and 1,000 years of state tradition".

Source: BBC News

South Africa's Human Rights Reputation Tarnished

As a member of the United Nations security council for two years, South Africa has had many opportunities to speak out forcefully for human rights - or to join those speaking out against them. Again and again, it has chosen the latter course. The South African government's unwillingness to confront President Robert Mugabe on his extremely abusive governance of Zimbabwe is well known to South Africans, and justly controversial. Less well known are the many other important international issues on which the South African government has sided with reactionary rather than progressive forces.

Burma is the best-known case. With Russia and China, South Africa has blocked efforts to condemn the military government's lethal crackdown on peaceful protesters last year. Perhaps the department of foreign affairs has forgotten that, when Burma was still democratic, it demanded that the evils of apartheid, including the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, should be brought before the security council.

The international solidarity movement against apartheid constantly confronted the argument that what happened inside a country's borders was none of the rest of the world's business. That is precisely the argument that the South African government now makes frequently at the security council. It narrowly defines what constitutes a "threat to international peace and security", and insists that all other matters be taken up at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Meanwhile, in Geneva, outside the limelight, South Africa has demonstrated a similar pattern - failing to support key resolutions condemning human rights abuses in countries from Iran to Uzbekistan, and aligning itself with countries whose human rights records are, by anyone's standard, abysmal.

At the UN this month, a diplomatic struggle is shaping up to be South Africa's lowest moment yet. The issue is Darfur, and more specifically the request by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president. The accusation: genocide and crimes against humanity, the world's most serious crimes. News of the warrant request was greeted with joy among the millions of Darfuris who have been driven from their homes by government forces acting in concert with janjaweed militias. Tens of thousands of Africans have died in this civil war, most of them civilians, and most of them as a result of Sudanese government actions.

The Sudanese government has begun a concerted campaign to evade justice for these crimes and the South African government has become its accomplice. Together with Libya, also on the security council, South Africa has been leading an effort to suspend the International Criminal Court's request for the next 12 months. Suspending the request for an arrest warrant would send a clear signal, not only to the Sudanese government, but also to tyrants everywhere that they can continue to cheat justice through international political machination. I was present at the negotiations on the treaty for the International Criminal Court 10 years ago in Rome, and listened with admiration to the speech of Dullah Omar, the South African justice minister, in ringing support of this important new human rights institution. Achieving a strong treaty at those talks was an uphill battle, but we won. Only the steadfast leadership of South Africa, along with a handful of others, overcame the opposition of major powers such as the United States, China and Israel.

The International Criminal Court is not an anti-African institution, as some have alleged. It is a pro-African institution: pro-civilians in Darfur whose villages have been burned to the ground, pro-women in the Democratic Republic of Congo who have been raped in wartime, pro-children in northern Uganda who have been abducted as child soldiers. It is opposed to government and rebel leaders responsible for such crimes, no matter where they live.

The prosecutor has also been looking into situations in Colombia and Afghanistan, as well as crimes committed in the Russian-Georgian armed conflict. It is truly heartbreaking to see South Africa preparing to abandon the court at a critical juncture in its history. Sadly, it appears to be part of a trend that is putting Pretoria's foreign policy on the wrong side of history. Perhaps only a fervent and sustained outcry from South African society can restore the country to its rightful path and begin to repair the damage that has already been done to its reputation.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Russia's G8 presidency event of the year – Foreign Ministry

One of the main foreign political events of 2006 was Russia's first presidency of the Group of Eight, according to a report on the Foreign Ministry's work in 2006 posted on the Russian government's website on Monday.

This will be the first time that Russia will chair this respected international forum. I hope that the experience we have accumulated since joining the G8 will ensure respect for tradition and consolidation of our efforts.

Russia, as the presiding country, regards it as its duty to give a fresh impetus to efforts to find solutions to key international problems in energy, education and healthcare.

This year, we plan to urge our partners to redouble efforts to ensure global energy security. We believe that today, it is crucial to find a solution to a problem which directly influences the social and economic development of all countries, without exception.

I am convinced that our efforts towards attaining this goal should be comprehensive and must stimulate stabilization of the global energy markets, development of innovation technologies, use of renewable energy sources and protection of the environment. We believe that today, we must think very seriously about ways to bridge the gap between energy-sufficient and energy-lacking countries.

The spread of all kinds of epidemics in the world emphasizes the need to step up the fight against infectious diseases. We are convinced that the creation of a global system to monitor dangerous diseases, the development of regular interaction between experts from different states, and broader exchange of research information about dangerous viruses will have a major positive influence on the solution of these serious problems.

In addition to the current agenda, we also plan to raise the issue of education in the G8. In our opinion, the time has come to focus on ways to improve the quality and effectiveness of national education systems and professional training. We must find tools for encouraging the international business community to increase investment into this sector.

Other major international issues we will concentrate on during Russia’s Presidency are counterterrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the settlement of regional conflicts, the development of the global economy, finance and trade, as well as protection of the environment.

I hope that the official site of Russia’s G8 Presidency will help you to get your bearings in the multitude of questions and problems facing us, as well as to learn more about the efforts of G8 member states to solve them in order to promote the sustainable development of humankind.

Source: G8 Summit 2006

The Long Shadow of Chernobyl

Twenty years after a nuclear reactor exploded, blanketing thousands of square miles with radiation, the catastrophe isn't over.

Twenty years ago this month, life in Pripyat came to a shuddering end. Before dawn on April 26, 1986, less than two miles south of what was then a city of 50,000, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's number four reactor exploded. Thirty people died in the blast and fire or were exposed to lethal radiation. The destroyed hulk burned for ten days, contaminating tens of thousands of square miles in northern Ukraine, southern Belarus, and Russia's Bryansk region. It was the worst nuclear accident the world has ever seen.

Source: National Geographic

Czech student kills himself in protest against war and corruption

The death by self-immolation of a 19-year-old student in Prague in protest against conditions in the Czech Republic has shaken that country. On March 6, at 7:30 in the morning, Zdenek Adamec, a straight-A student, poured gasoline on himself and set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square in front of horrified commuters and other onlookers. A policeman attempted to put out the flames, but Adamec died after attempts to resuscitate him failed.

Adamec, who lived with his parents in Humpolec, 60 miles from Prague, committed his desperate act only a short distance from the spot where philosophy student Jan Palach set himself ablaze in January 1969 to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops.

Various factors contributed to Adamec’s suicide. Police had been investigating the youth in connection with his hosting a web site for a group of “darkers”—computer hackers who used computer and electrical engineering skills to cut the electrical power to whole neighborhoods. Adamec asserted that he had simply done a favor for a friend. According to his father, the police had been threatening him with two years in prison to extract information: “They had constantly exerted pressure on him so that he gave the information, but he was of a timid and vulnerable nature. It is awful that the police behaved so selfishly.”

The youth was apparently a loner, religious, somewhat eccentric, most content working at his computer. His mother said, “He thought they would put him in prison and he would have no books, no school, no Internet and no life.”

In a note Adamec left behind, he described himself as “another victim of the democratic system, where it is not people who decide, but power and money.” He criticized the conditions in Czech schools, asserting, “Drugs, violence, money and power—these are the watchwords of our civilization.”

Adamec posted another letter on the Internet a few hours before he made the trip to Prague and committed suicide. Confused as parts of it may be, Adamec’s note reflects the response of the most sensitive and intelligent young people to the situation produced since the downfall of Stalinism in 1989. The student directly identified himself with Palach, who termed himself “Torch number one,” by heading his note, “Action Torch 2003.”

He wrote: “We didn’t get any better even after the Velvet Revolution [in November 1989].... The so-called Democracy we gained is not a Democracy. It’s about the rule of officials, money and treading on people.” He went on. “The whole world is corrupted by money and is spoilt, depraved.

“It’s not too late for salvation, but if we continue like this we will soon suffocate in the filthy air or in war. You may have read it in newspapers or have seen in on TV. Every weekend there is shooting, even at schools. And who is the cause of all this?”

Adamec condemned war, and the US war plans in Iraq in particular: “And wars? Never-ending nuclear wars tests, we are all the time inventing new measures to kill each other. People should unite, not fight against each other.... Why do you think that Americans attack Iraq and look for another Osama? It’s just a population manipulated by the media and by the government. Iraq has the oil and Americans want it too, that’s the reason. Korea has nuclear weapons—it doesn’t excite them as much.”

Adamec returned a number of times to the degraded state of American society and its influence in the world. “Civilization leads to self-destruction. Have you ever seen the dumping grounds in the USA? Never-ending mountains of rubbish. And we all do the same every day—we come home and go immediately to the TV.”

He spoke about international violence and violence in everyday life: “And look at relationships among people? Look around you. Never-ending violence, almost every week a murder, in all the bigger cities there are homeless people. Mostly it’s not their fault. Addicts wandering on the streets, bribes and corruption everywhere, and what encourages it? The way we let our children grow up. We put them before the TV and that’s it. It’s easy. Already 10-year-old children look at violent movies.... And if you by chance have some problem, everyone turns his back. People like to see others suffer. It’s easy to hurt someone but very difficult to help. It takes a lot of work, but we should try.”

Jaroslava Moserova, who treated Jan Palach as a doctor in 1969 and is now a senator, told the press, “The situation in this country is not the same as it was then. But I have to say there is a great deal of despair arising among young people.”

Some commentators noted the coincidence of Adamec’s self-immolation with the inauguration of right-wing Vaclav Klaus as president. Joseph Broz, a freelance writer, suggested that the election of Klaus February 28 might have influenced Adamec. “This tragedy is a direct impact of the symbol in the Castle [referring to the seat of the presidency].”

Klaus is a reactionary mediocrity elected by the Czech parliament in its third attempt. Former dissident Vaclav Havel stepped down February 2 after 13 years in office. Klaus served as finance minister after the collapse of Stalinism and is closely identified with the introduction of free-market policies. He became prime minister after Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.

In last year’s parliamentary election, Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party received only 24.5 percent of the vote, its worst showing ever. The unreconstructed Communist Party obtained 18.5 percent of the vote, in an election marked by a high protest vote and a low overall turnout (58 percent of eligible voters).

While a small layer has enriched itself, economic conditions for wide layers of the Czech population are worsening. The unemployment rate in one of the most prosperous former Stalinist-ruled countries is 10 percent and rising, and in industrial areas in northern Moravia and northern Bohemia it is 25 to 30 percent.

The real income of working class families has dropped by 13 percent since 1989, and by 1997 the value of basic social benefits as a share of GDP had fallen by 44 percent. The purchasing power of retirees on pensions is 10 percent lower than before the “Velvet Revolution.” Social tensions are increasing, with racism against the Roma encouraged by right-wing, nationalist elements. The future for young people is bleak.

Nor is the despondency felt by Adamec unique to the Czech Republic. In his condemnation of corruption, the power of money in all aspects of life and the cynicism of politicians and the media, in his disgust with American dominance, he no doubt reflects the feelings of large numbers of youth all over the world.

That he felt this despair and saw no way out except through suicide is not primarily his fault. It is largely a measure of the prevailing ideological filthiness in eastern and central Europe, where the rule of the “free market” has been economically and morally disastrous for the vast majority. Nonetheless, Adamec’s tragic act is one that must not be emulated by others.

Without minimizing the depth of the Czech youth’s feelings or drawing fatuous lessons from his death, it is a reality that the global wave of protest and revulsion against the US war in Iraq opens up a different prospect for young people. Trotsky once noted that “peoples never resort to suicide.” He continued: “When their burdens are intolerable, they seek a way out through revolution.”

Source: World Socialist Web

Social inequality, bureaucracy and the betrayal of socialism in the Soviet Union

This lecture was delivered by Professor Vadim Rogovin at the Ruhr University in Germany in December 1996.

Today when many speak of the collapse of socialism, it is appropriate to pose the following question: what has collapsed with the ruling regimes in the Soviet Union and other countries? What were the aims of socialism and to what extent were they realised in the so-called socialist countries? Why was socialism in the Soviet Union twice betrayed, first by Stalin and the Stalinists and a second time by Gorbachev and his clique?

When we consider these questions, we arrive at the conclusion that the aim of socialism is the establishment of social equality among men.

It is no accident that official public opinion has always judged the conditions in those countries with nationalised property from the standpoint of the extent to which the principles of social equality were upheld. In this regard one sometimes comes across interesting examples.

One of my colleagues, who is frequently in Spain, related the following story: a well-known singer, a dissident from Cuba, recently appeared on Spanish television. With tears in her eyes she spoke of the privileges which existed in Cuba. She reported that party bureaucrats who were sick got single rooms in the hospitals, i.e., enjoyed privileges. All those who heard the program could only think "look at the privileges they have in Cuba!"

No one noticed that on the same day, a Madrid newspaper reported that the president of a leading stock company didn't attend a major shareholders' meeting because he had flown to his doctor in America, in a private aeroplane, for a consultation. The incident didn't provoke any particular attention. After all who could expect any sort of social equality and justice under capitalism?

Although such facts have been often used for openly demagogic purposes, ordinary people using their moral and social instincts have regarded the privileges which existed in the Soviet Union and the other nominally socialist countries as something which has distorted their picture and ideal of socialism.

Marxism has repeatedly raised the question of social equality and attempted to resolve it, in both a practical and theoretical sense. In their estimation of the Paris Commune, Marx and Engels regarded the fact that the wage of an official was not to exceed that of a worker to be of great significance. They regarded this measure as an effective way of preventing the state from being transformed from an instrument which serves society into an institution which stands above society.

Lenin developed this idea in his book The State and Revolution. He wrote that the masses yearned for a government which guaranteed low prices and fair wages and which itself did not consume too much money. Such a government is in principle impossible under capitalism.

Lenin emphasised that in the Second International at that time there was a tendency to pass over these Marxist ideas in silence, treating them as naive conceptions out of sync with the times, rather like those ideologues of Christianity who, following the transformation of the church into a state institution, forgot that Christianity was originally revolutionary.

Shortly after the October Revolution a number of measures were adopted with the aim of reducing the social differences between specific groups. In order to preclude privileges for the functionaries, a so-called party maximum was introduced, i.e., an upper limit for the incomes of party officials. In the 1920s, for example, the following was standard practice: a factory director who was a party member received 300 rubles for his work. The director of a similar factory who was not a party member could expect an income of 500 rubles.

In the 1920s there were workers who for a time occupied the position of town party secretary and then returned to their original place at the work bench. This didn't occur because of any blot on the record of the worker/party secretary. Rather it was a perfectly normal transition.

The situation changed in 1923 when Lenin, as a result of his illness, withdrew from leading positions. Now the emerging bureaucracy worked towards securing definite privileges.

It was no accident that the Left Opposition came into being in 1923 and attracted many of the old Bolsheviks. From the beginning it sounded the alarm regarding the development of bureaucratic methods inside the party and the workers state.

At the time, in the conflict between the ruling faction and the Left Opposition, relatively little was said about the question of privileges. But the social essence of the acute struggle between the two wings can only be understood in connection with the opposing positions taken regarding social equality and justice.

In 1925 a leader of the Opposition, Zinoviev, wrote that the working class strove for more social equality. It was just a brief comment in a long article. Zinoviev was not objecting in principle to the difference in wages for skilled and unskilled work. Stalin, however, concentrated his report to the 14th party conference on this small passage.

He maintained that Zinoviev was rejecting the thesis put forward in the Critique of the Gotha Program, where Marx maintains that in the transitional period between socialism and communism differences with regard to wages would continue to exist. The Opposition, according to Stalin, was attacking the income of the skilled worker as well as the meagre wages of the hard-working peasant. In reality, behind these demagogic words lay the attempt to defend those privileges which the bureaucracy had begun to accumulate.

Looking back, Trotsky remarked that Stalin's supporters, like those of the Left Opposition, belonged to the same social milieu. But the latter consciously broke away from their social interests and defended the interests of the sans-culottes -- the workers and peasants.

Following his victory over the Left Opposition, Stalin introduced decisive changes into the ideology of the ruling party. He put forward the thesis that the main principle of socialism was that everyone should be paid in accordance with his performance. In an attempt to elaborate on the content of this principle, none of the Soviet economic experts were able to explain how it was possible to compare the work of a miner with that of a doctor, the activities of a ballerina with those of a steel worker.

After Stalin's death, despite criticism of his political rule, none of his successors questioned this principle. All of them vigorously opposed what they called "levelling."

In reality the principle of payment for performance is a bourgeois principle. It only has significance when one interprets it in a liberal fashion: everyone is rewarded according to the results of his or her work, and this is realised on the free market in the interaction of supply and demand. It is clear that an immediate consequence of such market economy principles is the growth of inequality. The function of the bourgeois state is precisely to maintain this inequality.

Marx and Lenin predicted that every state arising from a socialist revolution would have a dual character: on the one hand a socialist character which defends socialised property against capitalist restoration, and on the other hand a bourgeois character, in so far as the state is obliged for a period to maintain certain privileges for a minority and preside over inequality. They therefore described the transitional state as a "bourgeois" workers state, even though there would be no bourgeoisie. According to Marxist doctrine this inequality must recede the more society develops in a socialist direction and the state correspondingly begins to wither away.

Since the middle of the 1920s, the situation in the Soviet Union developed in an opposite direction. The ruling bureaucracy excluded the workers from any sort of participation in the distribution of material goods and transformed itself into a powerful caste of those controlling the distribution of these goods. By the mid-1930s the disproportion with regard to inequality and the lack of social justice in the Soviet Union exceeded that which existed in the developed capitalist countries.

When we speak of the privileges in the Soviet Union, we must bear in mind that in the 1920s and 1930s the country was very poor and backward. That is why for us today the privileges at that time can appear inconsequential in comparison with modern-day Germany. But for the consciousness of the ordinary people, they had enormous significance. A new atmosphere developed in society. Whereas in earlier periods wealthier citizens were somewhat ashamed of their wealth, now they were proud of it.

The wife of the well-known Soviet poet Ossip Mandelstam, Nadezhda Mandelstam, wrote in her memoirs: "With us it was often the case that even a piece of bread was reckoned as a privilege." She related the case of a young man in a distribution station where the privileged received special food rations. The young man was eating a piece of beefsteak which had been allocated for his father-in-law and commented: "It tastes so good and pleasant because no one else has it."

Mandelstam added that medicine was also distributed in this way. Better medicine was reserved for the social elite. On one occasion she was admonishing a pensioned functionary when the latter retorted in an astonished voice: "What are you thinking of? Should I be treated like a cleaning woman?" Mandelstam added that this official was in reality a very decent and good-natured man, but that such attitudes had become widespread at the high-point of the struggle against levelling.

In attempting to overcome its isolation, the bureaucracy allowed other sections of the population to share in the privileges: the aristocracy of the working class, the kolkhoz (collective farm) aristocracy and, above all, the top layers of the intelligentsia. The securing of privileges could not be carried through without arousing resistance from a large part of the Communist Party. In this respect Trotsky wrote: "In a country which has undergone the October Revolution, it is not possible to cultivate inequality other than by resorting to ever more severe measures of repression."

Trotsky traced the totalitarian character of the state and its resort to mass terror to the drive of the bureaucracy to secure and retain its privileges. It could not permit social protest to spill over into open forms of class struggle.

Following Stalin's death, the social development of the Soviet Union did not follow a straight line. After the loss of its main lever of totalitarian power, the bureaucracy was forced to make certain concessions to the masses' strivings for equality.

Immediately after Stalin's death, various social reforms and social programs were introduced to improve the situation of the poorly paid and less fortunate layers of the population. In the following decade their standard of living improved, while the situation of the ruling bureaucracy, and also the better-off sections of the intelligentsia, worsened in a relative sense.

The concealed conflict between these layers of the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy, which broke out into the open in the 1960s and '70s, was rooted in this development. The external expression of this conflict was, on the one hand, the dissident movement, and, on the other, emigration.

The source of this conflict was not only the intelligentsia's striving for greater intellectual and spiritual freedom and access to power. It was also a reaction to the loss of privileges and material advantages which this layer had enjoyed under Stalin. As for the bureaucracy, it responded to the loss of privileges with an unprecedented level of corruption.

Despite the general improvement in living standards in the 1960s, one could describe the social conditions with Trotsky's words: although there was no exploitation in the classic sense of the word, the conditions of life for working people in the Soviet Union were still worse than those of workers suffering exploitation in the capitalist countries. Because it did not possess its own forms of property, the bureaucracy did not represent a propertied class in the real sense of the word. Nevertheless, it exhibited all the negative attributes of the previous ruling class.

In the consciousness of the popular masses, the formation of deep-going social differences devalued the great social achievements of the October Revolution -- the socialisation of the means of production and of the land. In the eyes of working people and the peasantry, the bureaucracy brought socialism into disrepute. It drove them, to a certain extent, to seek a solution other than socialism.

Trotsky had shown that the contradiction between the forms of property and the forms of distribution could not continue to develop indefinitely. The contradiction would have to be resolved one way or another. Either the forms of distribution would have to accommodate themselves to the socialist property relations, i.e., they would have to become more egalitarian, or the bourgeois principle would reach beyond distribution and consume the forms of property.

Proceeding from this thesis, Trotsky developed many prognoses which contained two possible variants. The first might be called revolutionary, the second, counter-revolutionary. Unfortunately the second, counter-revolutionary alternative was realised. And it was realised to an astonishing degree in conformity with Trotsky's warnings, albeit with some delay. (If even the most brilliant prognoses were realised to the letter, i.e., exactly as their authors had imagined, then we would be talking about prophecy, and history would have a mystical character.)

As Trotsky had foreseen, the first serious convulsion led to the social antagonisms rising to the surface. In the first years of perestroika, nothing indicated that things would end with the restoration of capitalism. On the contrary, in 1985, '86 and '87 Gorbachev called for more socialism and the restoration of the Leninist vision of Bolshevism.

In this context, it is interesting to note that the only politician of significance who attacked Gorbachev from the left was Yeltsin. As you are all familiar with the present-day politician Yeltsin, it is interesting to hear a few of his political utterances from earlier times.

At the 1986 party conference, Yeltsin enthusiastically and approvingly quoted Lenin's words: "Social inequality destroys democracy, leads to the decay of the party and diminishes the reputation of the party."

Three years later, he posed the rhetorical question in parliament: "Why do millions of people in our society live below the poverty line, while others literally live like lords and wallow in luxury?"

In his book, which appeared in 1991, one can read the following passage: "I cannot eat sturgeon when I know that my neighbours are not even able to buy milk for their children. I am ashamed to use expensive medicine because I know that many of my fellow citizens are not even able to afford aspirin."

And in his election campaign he promised that his policies would, in the first instance, serve the people whose incomes fell below the average. It was only due to this slogan, which appealed to the popular sense of justice, that Yeltsin was able to come to power.

The development of perestroika since 1988 has confirmed that the dismantling of the socialist foundations of society culminated in a capitalist order, or more precisely, in a capitalist chaos. This process has been accompanied by a catastrophic decline of culture and the economy.

The capitalism which is now emerging will not be a new edition of pre-revolutionary Russian capitalism, because the world has moved closer together since 1917. International finance capital is incomparably more powerful. For this reason, Russia's return to a state of semi-colonial exploitation is the only possibility. In achieving this, the forces of capitalist restoration can only realise their aims through years of civil war and the plundering of the country which Soviet power built up.

Conditions in the country over the last five years can be described in a phrase which has become quite popular in Russia of late, "creeping civil war." This creeping civil war discharges itself from time to time in a shooting war, for example with the bombarding of parliament in 1993, or the war in Chechnya which cannot be brought to an end, despite all the promises emanating from ruling circles.

As far as the country's devastation is concerned, history has never witnessed such destruction of the productive forces in peacetime as has taken place in Russia and the other former republics of the USSR over the last five years. A certain continuity between the earlier and present regimes can be observed. One could say that the present regime has taken over the bad sides of the former Soviet regime and has multiplied the evil with the addition of the bad sides of capitalist society.

Trotsky said: "The secret income of the bureaucracy is nothing other than theft, and outside this relatively legal theft exists an illegal ultra-theft to which Stalin" -- and today Yeltsin -- "closes his eyes because these thieves are his closest social support." The ruling bureaucracy cannot react in any other way than to resort to systematic thievery. This creates a system of bureaucratic gangsterism.

When one considers the tragic fate of our country, one can justifiably say that the October Revolution brought much more for the workers in other countries than for the workers of the Soviet Union. The challenge of socialism forced the capitalist countries to make quite large social concessions to their working classes. The intervention of the state into the relations of production, distribution and exchange in order to resolve social problems is a general law of this century which present day capitalism still has to take into account.

In all the capitalist countries in the second half of the 20th century there was a certain limitation of capitalist freedom. This included, for example, a minimum wage and other guarantees for working people in the advanced capitalist countries. Over decades an active redistribution took place: on one side, the development of social programs for those possessing little, on the other side, a strict control over income, and based on this a strict taxation policy. These measures not only influenced the social situation, but also the economic. They increased demand in the population and were a countervailing tendency to overproduction in the developed capitalist countries.

However, capitalism has still not been able to abolish social inequality. This inequality can be seen in every country, and also between developed and less developed countries -- in the current terminology, between North and South.

It is important to note that the break-up of the Soviet Union into a series of second-rate states has presaged the destruction of the welfare state in the advanced capitalist countries. The attempt is being made to eliminate social gains which were achieved over decades.

At the same time, I would like to stress that up until now no real socialist path has been attempted in any country which called itself socialist. The socialist alternative, which was developed by the Left Opposition in the 1920s and '30s, consists in containing inequality by strict economic measures and, with the increasing development of society, ensuring that the different social groups become more and more equal.

As long as the contradiction between the privileged and the poor exists in the world, the basis remains for the development of new social and political movements. The success of these movements will depend on the degree to which they draw lessons from the negative and positive experiences of socialist construction.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

THE END OF THE SOVIET UNION; Text of Accords by Former Soviet Republics Setting Up a Commonwealth

Following are the texts of declarations signed Saturday in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, at the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, as distributed in translation by the Tass press agency. The first five declarations were signed by all 11 leaders of the republics joining the commonwealth, and the sixth, on nuclear arms, was signed by the leaders of the four republics that have nuclear arms on their soil.

PROTOCOL TO COMMONWEALTH PACT

The Azerbaijani Republic, the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Byelorussia, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Kirghizia, the Republic of Moldavia, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tadzhikistan, Turkmenia, the Republic of Uzbekistan and Ukraine, on an equal basis, and as high contracting parties, are forming a Commonwealth of Independent States.

The agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States comes into force for each of the high contracting parties from the moment of its ratification. Documents regulating cooperation in the framework of the commonwealth will be worked out on the basis of the agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, taking into consideration reservations made during its ratification.

This protocol is a constituent part of the agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Done in Alma-Ata, on Dec. 21, 1991, in one copy in the Azerbaijani, Armenian, Byelorussian, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Moldavian, Russian, Tadzhik, Turkmen, Uzbek and Ukrainian languages. All texts are equally valid. The authentic copy is kept in the archive of the government of the republic of Byelorussia, which will send the certified copy of this protocol to the high contracting parties.

ALMA-ATA DECLARATION

THE INDEPENDENT STATES -- the Azerbaijani Republic, the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Byelorussia, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Kirghizia, the Republic of Moldavia, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tadzhikistan, Turkmenia, the Republic of Uzbekistan and Ukraine,

SEEKING to build democratic law-governed states, the relations between which will develop on the basis of mutual recognition and respect for state sovereignty and sovereign equality, the inalienable right to self-determination, principles of equality and non-interference in internal affairs, the rejection of the use of force, the threat of force and economic and any other methods of pressure, a peaceful settlement of disputes, respect for human rights and freedoms, including the rights of national minorities, a conscientious fulfillment of commitments and other generally recognized principles and standards of international law;

RECOGNIZING AND RESPECTING each other's territorial integrity and the inviolability of the existing borders;

BELIEVING that the strengthening of the relations of friendship, good neighborliness and mutually advantageous cooperation, which has deep historic roots, meets the basic interests of nations and promotes the cause of peace and security;

BEING AWARE of their responsibility for the preservation of civil peace and inter-ethnic accord;

BEING LOYAL to the objectives and principles of the agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States;

ARE MAKING the following statement:

Cooperation between members of the commonwealth will be carried out in accordance with the principle of equality through coordinating institutions formed on a parity basis and operating in the way established by the agreements between members of the commonwealth, which is neither a state nor a super-state structure. In order to insure international strategic stability and security, allied command of the military-strategic forces and a single control over nuclear weapons will be preserved, the sides will respect each other's desire to attain the status of a non-nuclear or neutral state.

The Commonwealth of Independent States is open, with the agreement of all its participants, for other states to join -- members of the former Soviet Union as well as other states sharing the goals and principles of the commonwealth. The allegiance to cooperation in the formation and development of the common economic space, and all-European and Eurasian markets is being confirmed. With the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceases to exist.

Member states of the commonwealth guarantee, in accordance with their constitutional procedures, the fulfillment of international obligations stemming from the treaties and agreements of the former U.S.S.R. Member states of the commonwealth pledge to observe strictly the principles of this declaration.

ON THE MILITARY

Proceeding from the provision, sealed in the agreement on the establishment of a Commonwealth of Independent States and in the Alma-Ata declaration, for keeping the common military-strategic space under a joint command and for keeping a single control over nuclear weapons, the high contracting parties agreed on the following: The command of the armed forces shall be entrusted to Marshal Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, pending a solution to the question of reforming the armed forces. Proposals concerning this question shall be submitted by Dec. 30, 1991, for the consideration of the heads of state.

ON INSTITUTIONS

A supreme body of the commonwealth -- a "Council of the Heads of State" -- as well as a "Council of the Heads of Government" shall be set up with a view to tackling matters connected with coordinating the activities of the states of the new commonwealth in the sphere of common interests. The plenipotentiary representatives of the states of the new commonwealth shall be instructed to submit proposals concerning the abolition of the structures of the former Soviet Union, as well as the coordinating institutions of the commonwealth for the consideration of the Council of the Heads of State.

ON U.N. MEMBERSHIP

Member states of the commonwealth, referring to Article 12 of the agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States,

PROCEEDING from the intention of each of the states to fulfill its duties stipulated by the U.N. Charter and to take part in the work of that organization as equal members;

TAKING into account that previously the Republic of Byelorussia, the U.S.S.R. and Ukraine were members of the United Nations organization;

EXPRESSING satisfaction that the Republic of Byelorussia and Ukraine continue to be U.N. members as sovereign independent states;

BEING full of resolve to promote the consolidation of world peace and security on the basis of the U.N. Charter in the interests of their nations and the whole of the world community;

HAVE DECIDED:

1. Member states of the commonwealth support Russia in taking over the U.S.S.R. membership in the U.N., including permanent membership in the Security Council and other international organizations.

2. The Republic of Byelorussia, the Russian Federation and Ukraine will help other member states of the commonwealth settle problems connected with their full membership in the U.N. and other international organizations.

Done in Alma-Ata on Dec. 21, 1991, in one copy in the Azerbaijani, Armenian, Byelorussian, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Moldavian, Russian, Tadzhik, Turkmen, Uzbek and Ukrainian languages. All texts have equal force. the original copy will be kept in the archive of the Government of the Republic of Byelorussia, which will send the high contracting parties a certified copy of this protocol.

For the Azerbaijani Republic A. MUTALIBOV

For the Republic of Byelorussia S. SHUSHKEVICH

For the Republic of Armenia L. TER -PETROSYAN

For the Republic of Kazakhstan N. NAZARBAYEV

For the Republic of Kirghizia A. AKAYEV

For the Republic of Moldavia M. SNEGUR

For the Russian Federation B. YELTSIN,

For the Republic of Tadzhikistan R. NABIYEV

For Turkmenia S. NIYAZOV

For the Republic of Uzbekistan I. KARIMOV

For Ukraine L. KRAVCHUK ON NUCLEAR ARMS

Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, called henceforth member states,

CONFIRMING their adherence to the non-proliferation of nuclear armaments;

STRIVING for the elimination of all nuclear armaments, and

WISHING to act to strengthen international stability, have agreed on the following:

Article 1: The nuclear armaments that are part of the unified strategic armed forces insure the collective security of all members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Article 2: The member states of this agreement confirm the obligation not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Article 3: The member states of this agreement are jointly drawing up a policy on nuclear matters.

Article 4: Until nuclear weapons have been completely eliminated on the territory of the Republic of ByeloRussia and Ukraine, decisions on the need to use them are taken, by agreement with the heads of the member states of the agreement, by the R.S.F.S.R. [ Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic ] President, on the basis of procedures drawn up jointly by the member states.

Article 5:1: The republics of Byelorussia and Ukraine undertake to join the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty as non-nuclear states and to conclude with the International Atomic Energy Agency the appropriate agreements-guarantees,

Article 5:2: The member states of this agreement undertake not to transfer to anyone nuclear weapons or other triggering devices and technologies, or control over such nuclear triggering devices, either directly or indirectly, as well as not in any way to help, encourage and prompt any state not possessing nuclear weapons to produce nuclear weapons or other nuclear triggering devices, and also control over such weapons or triggering devices.

Article 5:3: The provisions of paragraph 2 of this article do not stand in the way of transferring nuclear weapons from Byelorussia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to R.S.F.S.R. territory with a view to destroying them.

Article 6: The member states of this agreement, in accordance with the international treaty, will assist in the eliminating of nuclear weapons. By July 1, 1992 Byelorussia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine will insure the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons to central factory premises for dismantling under joint supervision.

Article 7: The Governments of Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake to submit a treaty on strategic offensive arms for ratification to the Supreme Soviets of their states.

Article 8: This agreement requires ratification. It will come into force on the 30th day after the handing over of all ratification papers to the government of the R.S.F.S.R. for safekeeping.

Done in Alma-Ata in one certified copy in Byelorussian, Kazakh, Russian and Ukrainian languages, all texts being equally authentic.

Source: New York Times

SOVIETS RECOGNIZE BALTIC INDEPENDENCE, ENDING 51-YEAR OCCUPATION OF 3 NATIONS

The Soviet Union's new ruling council recognized the independence of the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, today at its first meeting. The move formally freed the three small republics, which were incorporated forcibly into the Soviet Union in 1940 but renewed their drive for independence in the era of glasnost. Their campaign was bitterly resisted by Moscow until last month, when central controls unraveled in the wake of the failed coup and a procession of foreign governments granted the Baltics diplomatic recognition. In matching proclamations for the three republics, the council also called for negotiations on disentangling the complex economic, political and military ties between the new states and the rest of the Soviet Union.

The declarations were the first action by the State Council, a committee of republic leaders and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev that was granted sweeping emergency powers by the national Congress on Thursday to control the rapid disintegration of the Soviet Union. The proclamations were read later in the day by Foreign Minister Boris D. Pankin. Other changes continued to reverberate in the wake of the failed coup, with the city of Leningrad winning a battle to change its name back to the original St. Petersburg. The move, approved by residents in a referendum in June, was formally affirmed today in a decree of the Russian federated republic's Parliament, the press agency Tass reported.

Mr. Pankin reported, for example, that the chairman of the Georgian Parliament had attended part of the session, although Georgia had not necessarily been expected to take part. The Soviet news reports indicated that the main order of business, aside from independence for the Baltic states, was to initiate action on the nation's two most urgent concerns: the economy and the military. The decision on the Baltic republics effectively acknowledges a fait accompli, since more than 60 nations, including the United States, had already recognized the three states since the coup and Western ambassadors were already taking up residence.

Official Soviet recognition of the Baltic states had been expected at the Congress of People's Deputies, but republic leaders evidently decided not to raise the issue in the assembly for fear of increasing the momentum for secessionist moves in other regions.

The proclamations declared that Moscow would support the entry of the three republics into the United Nations. All three declared their hope of becoming integrated into Europe and the "world community."

Source: New York Times

SECESSION DECREED BY SOVIET GEORGIA

The republic of Georgia declared its independence today, further confounding President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's uncertain hold on the deeply troubled Soviet nation. The unanimous decision by the southern republic's Parliament was made in a surprise session in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, nine days after a plebisicite in the republic in which more than 98 percent of the voters favored independence. The Parliament's action was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the killing of 19 civilian protesters at the hands of Soviet troops in Tbilisi.

The declaration turned the anniversary day of mourning into a street festival that continued long into the night as Georgians congratulated one another and celebrated a further step in regaining a freedom they counted lost since 1921, when Bolshevik troops first occupied the republic. But the parliamentary vote was not the final step, as the Georgian President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, conceded in his celebration speech when he declared that "this act of independence is not a de facto withdrawal from the Soviet Union." He said it would have to be followed in the next two or three years by a series of legal steps to fully establish self-rule.

Still, for President Gorbachev, the declaration was another blow against his campaign to preserve the Soviet Union as a nation of heavily centralized authority and not as the federation of largely sovereign or independent republics that a dozen separatist movements are demanding of him. Georgia is a proud, ancient land of five million people, many of whom have long made clear their animus toward Communism and the Kremlin's central rule. Its long-established, long-suppressed independence drive gained considerable momentum in elections last year, when the Communists lost control of the Parliament to an insurgent coalition led by Mr. Gamsakhurdia.

As a practical matter, the declaration did not radically alter the current state of confusion over power sharing between the Kremlin and the republics, and in fact only compounded it. Mr. Gorbachev has been trying to interest the republics in his proposal for a new union treaty, which he has promised would insure greater self-rule, but many republics are skeptical, particularly in the face of the Gorbachev Government's continuing resort to central authority in dealing with the Soviet Union's deepening economic and political crisis.

Georgia is following the lead of the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in making a unilateral claim to restoration of a state of independence that was forcibly ended by Soviet military power, rather than pursue the formal, drawn-out secession process theoretically permitted under the Soviet Constitution. Mr. Gamsakhurdia said Georgia would need support from other nations to secure its claim. He pleaded for recognition of its historic state of independence, which is rooted in an ancient culture whose previous peak was as a Caucasian empire presided over by Queen Thamar at the end of the 12th century.

Modern Georgia is an economically shaky land, clearly dependent to some degree on aid from Moscow. It recently became a hotbed of Soviet nationalist clashes, with the Georgian majority represented by the Gamsakhurdia government trying to put down a separate independence claim within its borders by the no less ancient South Ossetian minority of 65,000. Fighting in Breakaway Region More than 60 people have been killed in South Ossetia in factional fighting as Mr. Gamsakhurdia has demanded that Mr. Gorbachev withdraw Soviet troops dispatched to the region, in northern Georgia, after a state of emergency was declared by the Soviet Parliament.

There was no Kremlin reaction to he Tbilisi declaration of independence, although by coinicidence President Gorbachev today offered his latest "anti-crisis" plan for holding the nation together. He emphasized the importance of last month's referendum endorsement by the Soviet nation at large of his vague call for a "renewed" Soviet Union in which he has promised greater sovereignty for the 15 republics.

Source: New York Times

GORBACHEV CALLS LITHUANIA'S MOVE AN 'ALARMING' STEP

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev today described Lithuania's declaration of independence as ''alarming,'' but he gave no indication of what the Kremlin's next move would be. He said the decision on Sunday by the Lithuanian parliament should be examined by the Soviet national legislature, which convened today in a special session. But neither Mr. Gorbachev nor other other Soviet officials said whether Moscow would recognize the independence of Lithuania, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 after 22 years as a sovereign nation. ''The information coming from there is alarming,'' Mr. Gorbachev said. ''The decisions that are being taken affect the fundamental interests and destiny of the republic itself, of the people and of our entire state.''

Mr. Gorbachev has struggled over the last few months to persuade Lithuanian leaders to abandon their campaign for independence. The Soviet President's remarks, at the opening of the special session of the Congress of the People's Deputies, offered no indication of whether he would negotiate with Lithuanian leaders. Lithuania's resolution was the first issue raised by Mr. Gorbachev before the congress, which was hastily convened so that it could adopt a new law expanding the executive powers of the presidency. He said the congress should begin analyzing the implications of Lithuania's proclamation, which was approved by the Baltic republic's parliament in a 124-to-0 vote.

Source: New York Times

Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987

President Reagan's remarks on East-West relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987.

For more information on the ongoing works of President Reagan's Foundation, visit us at http://www.reaganfoundation.org

Source: Regan Foundation

SOMALI LEADER GETS 99.9%

Somalia's official radio announced today that President Mohamed Siad Barre had won a new seven-year term with more than 99.9 percent of the vote in an uncontested election. The Somali radio, in a broadcast monitored in Nairobi, said 4,887,592 people voted for General Siad Barre and 1,486 against him in the election on Tuesday.

The President was seriously injured in an automobile accident in May, and there have been conflicting reports as to the extent of his recovery. But he was nominated for another term last month by the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, the country's only legal political party. Virtually the only overt opposition in Somalia is a sporadic insurgency by two guerrilla groups.

General Siad Barre has governed his East African nation since 1969, when he took power in a military coup. He has presided over a radical shift in his country's foreign policies. His army invaded a disputed area of southeastern Ethiopia called the Ogaden in 1977 when Somalia was allied with the Soviet Union and adhered to Marxist policies. At about the same time, Ethiopia split with the United States and became more closely aligned with the Soviet Union. With the help of Cuban troops and billions of dollars' worth of Soviet weapons, the Ethiopians turned back the Somalis.

General Siad Barre subsequently denounced the Russians and Marxism, and the United States has emerged as Somalia's chief ally. The Government continues to exercise extensive control over the economy, but the private sector has expanded sharply in the last two years. Secretary of State George P. Shultz is tentatively scheduled to visit Somalia next month.

Source: New York Times

SOVIET ANNOUNCES NUCLEAR ACCIDENT AT ELECTRIC PLANT

The Soviet Union announced today that there had been an accident at a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine and that ''aid is being given to those affected.'' The severity of the accident, which spread discernable radioactive material over Scandinavia, was not immediately clear. But the terse statement, distributed by the Tass press agency and read on the evening television news, suggested a major accident.

The phrasing also suggested that the problem had not been brought under full control at the nuclear plant, which the Soviet announcement identified as the Chernobyl station. It is situated at the new town of Pripyat, near Chernobyl and 60 miles north of Kiev. The announcement, the first official disclosure of a nuclear accident ever by the Soviet Union, came hours after Sweden, Finland and Denmark reported abnormally high radioactivity levels in their skies. The readings initially led those countries to think radioactive material had been leaking from one of their own reactors.

The Soviet announcement, made on behalf of the Council of Ministers, after Sweden had demanded information, said in its entirety: ''An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as one of the reactors was damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to those affected. A Government commission has been set up.'' The mention of a commission of inquiry reinforced indications that the accident was a serious one. United States experts said the accident probably posed no danger outside the Soviet Union. But in the absence of detailed information, they said it would be difficult to determine the gravity, and they said environmental damage might conceivably be disastrous. The Chernobyl plant, with four 1,000-megawatt reactors in operation, is one of the largest and oldest of the 15 or so Soviet civilian nuclear stations. Nuclear power has been a matter of high priority in the Soviet Union, and capacity has been going into service as fast as reactors can be built. Pripyat, where the Chernobyl plant is situated, is a settlement of 25,000 to 30,000 people that was built in the 1970's along with the station. It is home to construction workers, service personnel and their families. A British reporter returning from Kiev reported seeing no activity in the Ukrainian capital that would suggest any alarm. No other information was immediately available from the area. But reports from across Scandinavia, areas more than 800 miles to the north, spoke of increases in radioactivity over the last 24 hours.

Scandinavian authorities said the radioactivity levels did not pose any danger, and it appeared that only tiny amounts of radioactive material had drifted over Scandinavia. All of it was believed to be in the form of two relatively innocuous gases, xenon and krypton. Scandinavian officials said the evidence pointed to an accident in the Ukraine. In Sweden, an official at the Institute for Protection Against Radiation said gamma radiation levels were 30 to 40 percent higher than normal. He said that the levels had been abnormally high for 24 hours and that the release seemed to be continuing. In Finland, officials were reported to have said readings in the central and northern areas showed levels six times higher than normal. The Norwegian radio quoted pollution control officials as having said that radioactivity in the Oslo area was 50 percent higher. Since morning, Swedish officials had focused on the Soviet Union as the probable source of the radioactive material, but Swedish Embassy officials here said the Soviet authorities had denied knowledge of any problem until the Government announcement was read on television at 9 P.M.

The first alarm was raised in Sweden when workers arriving at the Forsmark nuclear power station, 60 miles north of Stockholm, set off warnings during a routine radioactivity check. The plant was evacuated, Swedish officials said. When other nuclear power plants reported similar happenings, the authorities turned their attention to the Soviet Union, from which the winds were coming. A Swedish diplomat here said he had telephoned three Soviet Government agencies - the State Committee for Utilization of Atomic Energy, the Ministry of Electric Power and the three-year-old State Committee for Safety in the Atomic Power Industry -asking them to explain the high readings over Scandinavia. All said they had no explanation, the diplomat said. Before the Soviet acknowledgment, the Swedish Minister of Energy, Birgitta Dahl, said that whoever was responsible for the spread of radioactive material was not observing international agreements requiring warnings and exchanges of information about accidents.

Tass, the Soviet Government press agency, said the Chernobyl accident was the first ever in a Soviet nuclear power plant. It was the first ever acknowledged by the Russians, but Western experts have reported at least two previous mishaps. In 1957, a nuclear waste dump believed related to weapons production was reported to have resulted in a chemical reaction in the Kasli areas of the Urals, causing damage to the environment and possibly fatalities. In 1974, a steam line exploded in the Shevchenko nuclear breeder plant in Kazakhstan, but no radioactive material is believed to have been released in that accident. Soviet authorities, in giving the development of nuclear electricity generation a high priority, have said that nuclear power is safe. In the absence of citizens' opposition to nuclear power, there has been virtually no questioning of the program. The terse Soviet announcement of the Chernobyl accident was followed by a Tass dispatch noting that there had been many mishaps in the United States, ranging from Three Mile Island outside Harrisburg, Pa., to the Ginna plant near Rochester. Tass said an American antinuclear group registered 2,300 accidents, breakdowns and other faults in 1979. The practice of focusing on disasters elsewhere when one occurs in the Soviet Union is so common that after watching a report on Soviet television about a catastrophe abroad, Russians often call Western friends to find out whether something has happened in the Soviet Union.

Construction of the Chernobyl plant began in the early 1970's and the first reactor was commissioned in 1977. Work has been lagging behind plans. In April 1983, the Ukrainian Central Committee chastised the Chernobyl plant, along with the Rovno nuclear power station at Kuznetsovsk, for ''inferior quality of construction and installation work and low operating levels.'' Donald T. Regan, the White House chief of staff, said today that the United States was willing to provide medical and scientific assistance to the Soviet Union in connection with the nuclear accident but so far there had been no such request.

Source: New York Times