'THESE PEOPLE have got a problem' said the chair of the US Senate's Intelligence Committee last week. He was referring to the American state's spying and terrorist network, the CIA, which, at an estimated cost of $3bn a year, faces the spending axe.
And indeed they do have a problem -a seemingly irresistible tide of Communist and crypto-Communist victories throughout Eastern Europe and the for: mer Soviet Union. Not only have the CIA failed to stem this flood, but they do not even appear to have collated the readily available facts which add up to this astonishing picture.
How much damage did Russian super-mole Aldrich Ames do to US security? And who is keeping quiet about the facts on Capitol Hill?
In one of the greatest iro nies of our times it falls to Socialist Outlook to assume the mantle of defence of the free world and put the ques tion straight: who lost Belarus?
First of all, there are the election victories of successor parties to the old ruling Communist parties and close allies in a series of countries over the past two years. These have occurred in Lithuania, Romania and Poland - in the latter case ousting a government of the elite of the Solidarity movement that did so much to shake the Stalinist edifice in Eastern Europe in the 1980s.
In many other countries similar parties view their political future with rising confidence.
One example is Hungary, long seen as a front-runner in pro-Westernism and privatisation. The Socialist Party is showing up in the polls as the most popular party WORLD NEWS with 27 per cent support, up from 11 per cent at the 1990 elections.
And then there is East Germany, where the former-Communist PDS may pull ahead of the governing party, the right-wing CDU, in this year's series of regional and national elections to become the second strongest party after the Social Overshadowed Perhaps most important is Russia, where, overshadowed by the spectacular entry of Vladimir Zhirinovsky onto the front of the political stage, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and its associated Agrarian Party gained 100 seats between them, well ahead of Zhirinovsky (63) and the leading pro-Western formation, Gaidar's Russia"'s Choice (76) in the December 1993 elections.
Alongside these party victories. a series of leading figures from the old days of the Soviet bloc have risen phoenix-like from the dustbin of histor Tanks repress nationalist sentiment in Azerbaijan Yeltsin advisor Kagalovsky with Major Notable cases are those of Gorbachev's former foreign minister Edward Shevardnadze, now back in power in his native Georgia, and Gaidar Aliev, all-powerful first-secretary of the Azerbaijan "The 'democratic' governments were often little more than figureheads" Communist Party between 1982 and 1987 and reinstated in June 1993.
And finally, Belarus. Here nationalist leader Stanislau Shushkevich was recently voted out as chairman of the Supreme Soviet and replaced by a figure from the old nomenklatura. This means the abandonment of Belarus' neutrality as this former Soviet republic is firmly reintegrated into the Russian economic and security space.
This trend, which will continue, exposes the fact that the 'democratic' governments were in many cases little more than figureheads. The main centres of power remained in the hands of the former nomenklatura.
Furthermore. the Russian government has used its raw material supplies. and particularly its control of the region's oil reserves, to discourage displays of excessive independence on the part of the countries of the Near Abroad. The inability of the postSoviet opposition governments to deal with the geopolitical realities - "so far from Washington and so near to Moscow' - is but one aspect of the utopianism prevalent in these circles, which led them to make promises they cannot At the heart of the perspectives of the free market enthusiasts lays a mistaken view of the international political and economic system which wholly ignores its discriminatory and power political qualities. Detached from all histórical and geographical bearings, the liberal democratic systems and the world capitalism market are seen as perfectible systems without inherent defects.
According to this view, the problems of the world flow from the obstacles to the perfect functioning of the system presented by cultural backwardness, and among other things, by the Soviet-style regimes. Remove these obstacles so the theory went and the American model can, with American expert advice, be installed.
In reality, of course, the capitalist powers have no interest in creating competitors and their aim in the former Soviet bloc is to make a quick buck, exploit cheap labour in pursuit of competition with one another and get their hands on sources of raw materials.
Nationalist
As well as the pro-Western strand, the opposition has also had an extreme nationalist element. In both Georgia and Azerbaijan regimes came to power pledged to win conflicts with internal and external enemies.
As it became clear that there would be no such victory, the former rulers, with their networks, contacts in key ministries and agencies in their own republic and throughout the Soviet bloc came back in. Thus in Azerbaijan pro-Turkish nationalist Abulfaz Elchibey had to flee after from the • Helen Armenian advances in the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The former CPs have revived because they are the parties of powerful interests firmly rooted in social and economic realities. The Supreme Soviet in Belarus which replaced Shushkevich is full of collective farm chairmen and state enterprise managers.
The membership of the Hungarian Socialist Party is dominated by skilled workers, professionals and middle managers. Recent local elections in Russia brought overwhelming victories for members of the nomenklatura - managers, party officials and the like.
Voters
Underneath the leadership layers are the voters, all those millions adversely affected or threatened by market reforms and social disintegration. While insisting that the 'reform process' will continue, as a Romanian newspaper put it 'the government... has two faces, like Janus. It says one thing to the IMF and World Bank and another at home. Its aim is to keep the status quo and protect state property'.
However, these parties, even when in government, have no clear plan to restore the former Communist system. That system collapsed partly because its rulers decided to abandon it - because it was not viable.
Whole waves of technological innovation were passing these countries by as easy sources of fuel and raw materials were exploited to the point of collapse. As one Hungarian privatiser put it 'we do not advocate for or against a monopoly, but we have to get together a functional telephone service'.
But it is not just their problem. The Soviet bloc was part of the Cold War arrangement devised as a means of keeping 'the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans under'.
A new push from the Western European left is needed to get the Americans out, the Russians in and provide the circumstances for German industrial power to be put to the common benefit.
Such a push would also make for job creation for the American intelligence community as they tried to find out Who lost Europe'.
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