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Gorbachev has been badgering and cajoling ordinary citizens to take charge of their own futures in their jobs and in political organizations. He told Moscow editors in September 1988 that he wanted to "rid public opinion of such a harmful complex as faith in the 'good Czar,' the all-powerful center, the notion that someone can bring about order and organize perestroika from on high." His revamping of the legislative organs of the government offered just such an opportunity to assault the old conveyor-belt way of doing things.
In March the Soviet people went to the polls to elect a new 2,250-seat Congress of People's Deputies. The Congress in turn elected the Supreme Soviet, the country's standing parliament. Previous parliaments were no more than tools of the party, but this one has actively debated and even opposed government programs. In the absence of rival political parties, some 85% of those elected to the Congress were party members. But a groundswell of revulsion against entrenched bureaucrats denied almost a third of the country's regional party chiefs seats in the Congress. In May live coverage of Congress sessions gave the spellbound nation a crash course in democracy, as radicals and former dissidents led by the late Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov denounced the KGB as "the most secret and conspiratorial of all state institutions" and counseled against giving Gorbachev, now President of the country, too much power. Here was part of the paradox of perestroika: democratization, so crucial to Gorbachev's principles and strategy alike, emboldened his critics and opponents.
Meanwhile, the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union have had their own reasons for responding enthusiastically to Gorbachev's campaign on behalf of self-reliance and decentralization. The nationalism that had lain largely dormant or been brutally suppressed rose to the surface. In the Caucasus, ethnic hatreds burst into violence. In Azerbaijan, which borders on Iran, the dominant Azerbaijanis, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people, are embroiled in a blood feud with the Christian Armenians in and around the enclave of Nagorno- Karabakh. The region has been besieged for 20 months, its road traffic and railways under attack by Azerbaijani nationalists. Vital supplies are ferried in by helicopter. Some 5,000 troops of the Interior Ministry have been assigned to peacekeeping duties in the area.
In April a peaceful demonstration by Georgian separatists in Tbilisi turned into a horror when army and Interior Ministry troops attacked the unarmed protesters with shovels, clubs and poison gas, killing 20. There have been similar nationalist flare-ups in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tadzhikistan.
Secession, long a virtually taboo word in Soviet politics, has become the avowed aim of several nationalist movements. Although the Baltic states have been granted a high degree of economic autonomy, they were rebuked by the Supreme Soviet in November for passing laws claiming the right to decide which legislation enacted in Moscow would apply in their territory. A week later, Georgia passed the same law. Ukrainian nationalists say they will soon try for economic and possibly political autonomy.
The Empire's Fatal Flaw