PSU Magazine Spring 1989

the agricultural cooperative movement, an accepted form of entrepreneurship that has proven quite lucrative for some Soviets. "I even know two KGB officers who quit their jobs and began work on [agricultural cooperatives]," he said. A long-term goal of both the Chinese and Soviet reforms is to streamline the political structure. Specifically, the two countries seek to eliminate the overlap of Party and govern– mental offices and relieve the Party of day-to-day administrative duties. Traditionally, the Communist Party (which comprises 6 percent of the popula– tion in the Soviet Union and 4 percent of the population in China) has overseen every important aspect of planning and administration in these two countries. Every major institution-school , factory, military unit, etc. , has a Party committee. In the new era of economic reform, said panelist Yan Jiaqi from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the socialist countries need to eliminate this ubiquitous "government over the government." In the area of civil liberties, China and the Soviet Union hope to establish a limited right of individual free expression. Realizing that the lack of public surveillance over governmental organs has been a major cause of economic ineffi– ciency, both leaders have broadened the scope of intellectual and journalistic freedom . Gorbachev and Deng hope that more open public debate will prevent abuse of political power, reduce public alienation, and generate support for their reforms. Whereas China has experienced greater economic reform, the USSR has made faster advances in political and cultural reform. Gorbachev has implemented dramatic labor cuts within the Party, hal– ving the number of high-level Secretariats and reducing local- level Party employees by 30 percent. Gorbachev also has in– stituted an electoral system in which Soviet citizens will have ever-increasing powers to select their representatives (theoretically culminating in the right to elect a new president in 1999). Guy Houk, assistant professor of Rus– sian languages and literature at PSU, visited the USSR last summer and observed how dramatically political "Evening" by Andrei Ushin . Art in the Soviet Union. reforms had transformed Soviet cultural life. Intellectuals who in the past never turned on the TV, now break off heated discussions in their kitchens in order to watch the nightly news. Although the Chinese government has achieved a certain amount of political and cultural reform, Deng Xiaoping has made no mention of voluntarily transferring power and he has shown disdain for what he terms the "bourgeois-liberalist" form of democracy. The boundaries of legitimate dissent have expanded under Deng, but the limits he sets on public criticism are precisely those that Mao set in 1957: adhere to the socialist system, Marxism-Leninism, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" under Party leadership. The Chinese Party propaganda ap– paratus still makes many editorial deci– sions that, in the Soviet Union , are now in the hands of individual editors and reporters. Unlike the condemnation of Stalin in Soviet plays and histories, the Chinese have yet to grapple in public with the legacy of Mao. The Soviets have also tolerated a much greater amount of (Continued on page 17) PSU 13