Soviet Union In the School of Democracy

This winter may be bleaker than usual in the U.S.S.R. With cold weather fast approaching and an increasingly militant labor force threatening to paralyze the transportation system, supplies of food and fuel could be in jeopardy. Soviet leaders reacted with old-style authority by proposing sweeping emergency measures: a ban on all strikes for 15 months and deployment of troops to break an Azerbaijani blockade of Armenia. But after a dramatic all- night debate, legislators in the Supreme Soviet did what not so long ago was unthinkable. They rebuffed the strike proposal as "unconstitutional" and voted instead to put strict limits only...