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It was precisely this group that ultimately defeated past attempts at reform, most recently those of Nikita Khrushchev and former Premier Alexei Kosygin. Today many top bureaucratic posts are still held by people who were appointed in the Brezhnev era. Often they simply do not want change and are in a position to block Gorbachev's reforms. In a speech last July in Vladivostok, the Soviet leader said acidly, "Those who attempt to suppress the fresh voice, the just voice, according to old standards and attitudes, need to get out of the way."
Many Kremlinologists question whether Gorbachev will be able to win over the bureaucracy. Says Jonathan Sanders, assistant director of the Harriman Institute for Russian Studies at Columbia University: "Glasnost is a lever to break up the static formations of the entrenched interests and corrupt groups that have been so powerful. But the implementation of these policies is hindered because ((Gorbachev)) has not had time to develop the support among mid- and lower-level officials. It's a huge machine, and it's very hard to get a handle on it." Jeremy Azrael of the Rand Corp., a West Coast think tank, says that regional party bosses have become "feudal barons" and that Gorbachev has to gain control over them before he can be master of the national party.
Beyond all the talk of glasnost, Gorbachev's ambitious objective is to get average Soviet citizens to support reform. He said last week that "democratization" means drawing "into the reorganization its decisive force -- the people." Yet those people are reluctant to join a revolution that may someday be reversed by another leader. The state, for example, has been encouraging moonlighting service operations to register as part of a program to bring the underground economy into the open. But a Moscow teacher who offers tutoring lessons in her free time admits that she is not about to step forward. Says she: "What if the party line changes and goes against private enterprise? If you register, they'll have a list of 'capitalists' to arrest."
This week the largest group of U.S. foreign policy experts to visit the Soviet Union in some time will be able to form their own judgments on the changes wrought so far during the Gorbachev era. A delegation of 350 members of the Council on Foreign Relations, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance and ex-U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, is scheduled to be in Moscow for discussions with Soviet officials and academics, and Gorbachev is expected to meet with the group.
While Gorbachev is often pictured as a man in a hurry, he gave party members plenty of time to ponder the thoughts contained in last week's speech. The Soviet leader suggested the convening of an extraordinary national party "conference" sometime in 1988. Its purpose would be to discuss organizational changes like election reforms and to review progress in the current Five-Year Plan. The conference would, in effect, be an extraordinary session of the quinquennial Soviet Party Congress, the most recent of which occurred last year. Such special meetings have been held before, but they are by no means regular events. The last one was called by Stalin in 1941.