Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, founder of the one-party Soviet dictatorship, believed that anyone who disagreed with him was an enemy who had to be ruthlessly smashed. He would not have hesitated a moment before arresting the members of the Congress of People's Deputies who decided last week to form a legal opposition calling itself the Interregional Group. At a freewheeling conference in Moscow's House of Cinema, the new faction elected a collective leadership and adopted a platform that called for rewriting the Soviet Constitution to make the system safe for pluralism and basic civil rights. In a direct challenge to Leninism, the...
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