NTERNAT IONA

BACKGROUND

The Soviet Free-Fall

As life in the old Soviet Union gets tougher,
Jews will increasingly be blamed.

HELEN DAVIS

Foreign Correspondent

W

hen poet Josef
Brodksy peered into
his crystal ball, he
saw a post-communist world
that was "sleepwalking into
race war."
That chilling vision is now
being transformed into
terrible reality as national
self-assertion sweeps away
decades of Soviet coloniza-
tion to reveal a panorama of
political chaos, economic
bankruptcy, social disloca-
tion and industrial ob-
solescence.
Having shed its dependen-
cies in Eastern Europe, the
Soviet empire has turned in
on itself and now is in the
process of uncontrolled dis-
integration, collapsing
under the burden of its ac-
cumulated deadweight.
Not even the largest
emergency airlift of human-
itarian aid in history is like-
ly to alleviate the plight of
those in more than 200 cities
and rural areas of the former
Soviet Union who are
threatened with imminent
starvation.

For the airlift, which
started this week from bases
in the United States and
Europe, cannot correct the
endemic, systemic ills that
are fundamental to the
gathering catastrophe.
As winter closes in and
hunger intensifies, all in-
dicators point to a political
and economic meltdown
leading to the outbreak of
widespread violence, not
only between the newly in-
dependent republics but also
between nationalities, eth-
nic groups and tribes within
those republics.
It is too late to expect that
the resignation of Mikhail
Gorbachev and the cosmetic
reconstitution of the Soviet
Union into a "common-
wealth" of independent states
can halt this inexorable slide
into chaos.
Along with Mr. Gor-
bachev, political reformers
like Boris Yeltsin are likely
to be swept away as the
masses drown their
hopelessness and helpless-
ness in a vortex of vodka and
fascism.
Liberal Western democ-

racy has failed to provide the
oxygen to fill the fetid lungs
of the former Soviet Union.
Communist tyranny is being
replaced by virulent nation-
alism which is unleashing
all the old insidious demons
of hate.
It does not take a scholar
to interpret the meaning of
"dark forces," the mythical
agents of evil who are in-
creasingly being blamed for
all that ails the former

Scapegoating is an
integral part of the
Slavic political
culture and Jews
provide the easy
target.

Soviet Union. Inevitably, it
is the Jews who will and
caught in the crossfire and
held up as scapegoats.
After 70 years of Commu-
nist rule, scapegoating has
become an integral part of
the political culture and
Jews provide the easy
target. Only the educated
young are able to analyze
complex problems with soph-

isticated detachment. The
rest fall back on the
simplistic maxim: "If things
are bad, someone has caused
it and someone must pay for
it."
For the moment at least,
the Jews of the Slavic repub-
lics are enjoying a modicum
of protection, a condition
that is likely to continue as
long as the myth persists
that the U.S. will somehow
bail out the republics and al-
leviate the suffering.
When it becomes clear that
there is no quick fix,
however, both the tenuous
protection and the reformist
regimes are likely to disap-
pear from the political map.
Martin McCauley, pro-
fessor of Slavonic studies at
London University, and who
returned to Britain this
week after an extensive tour
of the emergent republics,
warned of "a visceral hatred
for Jews" among the
Pamyat-style Russian na-
tionalists waiting in line to
inherit the Yeltsin throne.
"If these people come to
power, the Jews would be
advised to pack their bags
and leave," he said. "Quite a

number will head for the
Baltic states, particularly
Latvia, but I'm not sure how
welcome they will be in the
Ukraine.
"The new Ukrainian
government has declared its
commitment to minority
rights and its opposition to
anti-Semitism, but the
future is uncertain. There is
a strong right-wing nation-
alist movement which is ad-
vocating a federation with
Poland. That will not be
good for the Jews."
A conservative estimates
is that there are at least 1.4
million Jews in the old
Soviet Union, more than
one-third of them in the Rus-
sian republic, which has
blazed the radical trail but
has not yet produced a
coherent reform program.
"People talk endlessly
about reform and the Rus-
sian parliament passes new
legislation," said Professor
McCauley, "but there are no
structures to apply it. No one
is willing to implement
someone else's reform pro-
gram. No one wants to take
responsibility."
In the meantime, living

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