When we met last year, the situation in the Soviet Union, although fluid, was still hopeful. One year later, things seem to have become immeasurably worse. Some will, perhaps, dispute this assessment and argue that the situation is even more hopeful than it was in the past. Such arguments remind me of socialists who think that now is the time to build socialism in Eastern Europe. Clearly, the situation in Armenia and Azerbaijan is out of control. I need not remind you of the Lithuanian “events,” to use that memorable Soviet term, the miners' strikes in mid-1989, and last, but not least, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, which is the decisive event of that year and, perhaps, of the second half of the twentieth century. Communism's demise obviously casts a totally different light on the nationality question in general and on the dynamics of the Soviet empire in particular.

Without a thorough grounding in the pre- and post-1917 historical dimension of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, one will have difficulty comprehending the depth of sentiment, indeed passion, it arouses among the disputing parties, in this case among Armenians, whether inside or outside the Soviet Union.

The roots of prying Nagorno-Karabakh from Muslim control via Russian intervention go back to the seventeenth century when Armenian emissaries contacted the Romanovs and urged them to liberate fellow Christians from Muslim domination. This, in part, led to the eighteenth century Russian campaign to conquer Transcaucasia, the Tsarist court encouraged by the possibility of local Christian support. Through Muslim eyes (a conviction held to this day), this was an act of political sabotage casting the Armenians in the role of political collaborators in collusion with the new Tsarist overlords, a suspicion that finds its modern echoes today as Armenia and Azerbaijan compete for Moscow's support in determining the status of the autonomous region.

Before the 1980s one hardly spoke of any significant social movements in the Baltic republics. Political apathy, bordering on hopelessness, as far as the masses were concerned, and an emphasized apoliticism of the intelligentsia, whose members never tired of stressing that their only concerns are professional, cultural, maybe aesthetic, but not at all political—that was the social situation in the Baltic states most of the time under Soviet rule.

This overall image of apathy, complacency, and acquiescence was, however, not entirely correct. Underneath there were many things happening, as very few Balts indeed were total conformists and total loyalists of the Soviet regime. Most of them were, rather, “conservationists.” That is a special term I use for people outwardly loyal to the Soviet system, working within that system, trying to comply with the rules of the system, but at the same time using whatever position in the system they have to preserve their nation's economic, cultural, and historical heritage. They were trying especially hard to safeguard their nation's economic well-being, ecological situation and, of course, spiritual identity and heritage, by promoting art, literature and other activities, mainly under the slogan “national in form and socialist in content,” but more and more national in form and less and less socialist in content, as far as the circumstances allowed it. These people wore the disguise of Soviet loyalism for the benefit and the advantage of their own nation; that was the attitude I call conservationism in the Baltic states and that was the attitude that was prevalent among most native Balts.

The big news is no news. I mean the new constitution that, presumably, is going to define the official relationship between the federal structure and the republic structure. It is being drafted by a constitutional drafting committee consisting of some very distinguished persons. But so far they have not been able to produce a draft, at least not a draft that has been published for the rest of the world to see. They probably have one in their own office.

The events presently taking place in the Baltic are so interesting that I am almost prepared to cede my time to Alex Shtromas. Pamiat’ is clearly a less intriguing phenomenon than the issues he has been discussing.

I have been asked to talk about Pamiat’ as a social movement and basically my response is that it is not one. It is not a social movement. Pamiat’ would like very much to be one, but recent events have made clear that the response of ethnic Russians living in the RSFSR to Pamiat’ has been very restrained. We know this due to various polls which have been published in the Soviet press and due to the elections to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, which showed that Pamiat’ had little support. I suspect that the upcoming elections in March 1990 to the RSFSR Supreme Soviet will also demonstrate the same lack of support for Pamyat'. (They did so, conclusively.)

On the economic scene, 1990 has brought several new developments. There is a new law regulating center-periphery economic relations published on April 10, 1990. Unfortunately, it does not fit well with the notion of a loose confederation in the Soviet Union. Thus, there will be some interesting questions regarding the fit between the new union treaty and this new law on center-republic economic relations.

It was more than evident last year that the ideology of the Brezhnev period—that coherent world view, that set of concepts that structured Soviet reality—was on its last legs. Significantly, that particular ideology is now quite dead. It is no longer on its last legs; it is no longer dying; it has been eliminated from political discourse within the Soviet Union. One may go so far as to say that Marxism-Leninism is virtually absent from Soviet discourse as well. One example is this year's May Day slogans. They could have been found at any peace demonstration in the United States. They have nothing to do with that which we knew as communism in the Soviet Union.

The human rights situation has continued to improve as glasnost matures and as Gorbachev's plan to establish a law-based society unfolds. The loosening of restraints, which has been linked to the process of democratization, has had a dramatic impact on human rights. At the same time, the nature of the human rights issue in the Soviet Union has shifted from what it was even last year. Large-scale demonstrations are now mundane events, as is the right to speak one's thoughts freely or to go to church. What has changed is that the process of enforcing or guaranteeing rights is now being generated from below, whereas in the beginning this process started from above. The reform process now has a life of its own among the people, who are demanding all sorts of things.

I will be focusing on unofficial or informal social-political activities that Soviet workers have been engaged in over the course of the last several years and, particularly, over the course of the last several months. But first, as a way of introducing that discussion of informal or unofficial activity, I would like to step back to 1987 and look at attempts on the part of the Gorbachev regime to preempt unofficial activity on the part of workers, both in order to be better able to control those activities and to use them for Gorbachev's own political purposes. From this discussion I would make the case that the failure of those attempts has lead more recently to the growth of unofficial activity among Soviet workers.

My topic is foreign relations. I would like to look at the implications of the nationality problem for Moscow, for some of the union republics, for the United States, and for other Western countries. It is always difficult to draw a line between foreign policy and domestic policy, but, when one considers the implications of the nationality problem for foreign policy, it becomes especially hard to pull them apart.

There has been a tremendous proliferation of informal groups in the Soviet Union, by which I mean any organization that comes into being that is independent of the state, where citizens come together, create a group, promote their various intersts, be they political or nonpolitical. Pravda estimates approximately 60,000 of them this year alone; it gave a figure of 30,000 just one year ago. This phenomenon is hard to measure and most Soviet commentators, writers and sociologists basically throw up their arms and say that there are thousands and thousands of these various groups popping up everywhere: some small, some obviously larger with greater networks. I would like to sketch out some of the problems that I found, some of the areas that are worth investigating, and put forward some proposals that we may want to tackle in the discussion subsequent to this panel presentation.

These have been very stimulating presentations. The conclusion we can draw from all of them is somewhat bleak—that the Soviet system is in something of a life-threatening crisis. A major part of the problem is economic. Indeed, each of the presentations provides evidence for the view that there are important economic aspects to the problems addressed by the speakers.

I am not entirely satisfied with the term “informal groups.” The terminology is borrowed from the Soviets; it is the term they use most frequently. Many of these informal groups are in fact very formal, they are very sophisticated with committees and subcommittees, agendas, charters, mechanisms for leadership turnover, for membership selection, and in a few cases, some of them are even registered with the State as officially registered unofficial informal groups. I tend to use the terms “social groups” or “social action groups.” Perhaps “unofficial groups” would be a better term.

It is an established tradition of this conference to exchange views on subjects related to political, economic, and other developments in the Soviet Union, and I very much welcome the invitation extended to us to take part in the discussion. I really appreciate this opportunity to listen to your views and to be able to share our opinions. What is the sacrosanct formula American diplomats usually use?—“My views do not necessarily reflect those of my government.”