Soviet Union Thirty Years After Collapse: Gains And Losses

Soviet Union Thirty Years After Collapse: Gains And Losses

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

The collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago was a tragedy for half the world but frothed with possibilities for the other half which the West spilt, mistaking rampaging markets for democracy.

My memory of events three decades ago is of a personal nature because I was the only journalist who interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who, on a high wire act of historic reforms, lost control. Foreign Secretary, Romesh Bhandari would not obstruct my interview but he promised the media accompanying Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi to Moscow that “they would all stand around an arena while I did the interview.”

The choreography dictated the set. A circular boxing arena was created, ropes et al, in which four chairs were placed. Two for Gorbachev and his interpreter, one for the interviewer, but the fourth? Since Romesh Bhandari did not wish to be unpopular with the media accompanying the PM by allowing one journalist to steal a scoop. He, therefore, awarded the third chair to a notional representative for the rest of the media. Who could this be but the inimitable Russi Karanjia, the colourful editor of Blitz.

What Romesh did not realize is exactly what Andrei Gromyko, USSR’s longest serving Foreign Minister who stayed on for Gorbachev’s first year in office, immediately did. He peeped into the hall where the “rope-ring” had been set up. After concluding his talks with Rajiv Gandhi, Gorbachev would walk towards this arena.

Imagine the scene. Two interviewers looking at two empty chairs in the ring, and thirty journalists, craning their necks into the arena, clearing their throats and waiting for Gorbachev to take his seat. Gromyko, the old fox, was not going to allow the new Secretary General of the CPSU, in his very first outing with the media, to be exposed to a free for all press conference, a “tamasha”. Gromyko called it off.

My disappointment could not be measured and, for that reason, I persisted. I returned to Moscow the next year to interview Gorbachev, but that is another story. Before I close the Gorbachev segment for this column, a word on what was Gorbachev’s eventual vision for Soviet Russia was? “Something like the Scandinavian welfare state.” This was before neo con excesses during the fleeting unipolar moment and a rushed Murdochization of the media had disfigured much of the world, including Scandinavia.

The second image is of South Block, Ministry of External Affairs split down the middle on the goings on in Moscow. Arundhati (Chuku) Ghosh, that heavy smoking, clean hearted Brahmo, Joint Secretary for Africa, is in a state of anxiety. She is following events in Moscow – the coup, a tense moment for her. She is not clear what she wants, but her DNA demands a “liberal” system, not the Soviet Union. To her it does not matter if Boris Yeltsin replaces Gorbachev.

Round the corner from Chuku, in his room at the far end of the corridor, Foreign Secretary, Muchkund Dubey, a homespun Bihari intellectual, culturally as distinct from Chuku as chalk is from cheez, is on the line to his Ambassador in Moscow, Alfred Gonsalves. The two are classical status quoists. Having spent a lifetime writing position papers mindful of the two blocs, the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union is, for them, like having to walk on one leg.

This brings me to the third question: was the Indian Establishment ever emotionally embedded with the Soviet Union?

On the one hand C. Rajeswara Rao, longest serving General Secretary of the CPI, is shaking with rage at a reporter who asked him if the Soviet Union was collapsing.

“Sir (loaded with satire), not a pin in this world moves without the Soviet Union being involved.”

This touching faith in the Soviet Union was all pervasive among progressive writers and Urdu poets carted to Mumbai by an earlier General Secretary of CPI, P.C. Joshi.

“Kremlin ke minar jaage hue kharey hain.”

(The minarets of Kremlin beckon us.)

This was Javed Akhar’s father Jaan Nisar Akhtar, ecstatic about the Kremlin minarets. A fine ghazal writer like Majrooh Sultanpuri could not resist the pressure of his peers.

“Meri nigah mein hai arze Moscow, Majrooh,

Woh sarzameen ki sitarey jise salaam karein.”

(My eyes are set on Moscow, that blessed place where stars come down from heaven to shower their salutations.)

Poets, writers, painters, actors, film producers, college campuses, and coffee house regulars – a comprehensive segment, under the domain of Saraswati were largely, Left. Wealth was scoffed at. Gentlemen travelled by “tongas”; cars were for upstarts.

This entire lot was marginal to the pro west establishment, big industrialists whose “proximity” to Gandhiji gave them an all pervasive influence. Before V. Shankar, ICS, could join Deputy Prime Minister, Vallabh Bhai Patel’s office, he had to be interviewed by Ghanshyam Das Birla, leading industrialist in whose house Gandhiji died.

Marwari owned newspapers which Indira Gandhi dubbed the “Jute Press” never posted a correspondent to Moscow even in days when the Indian Ambassador had direct access to the Central Committee. Instead, correspondents were posted to London and Washington where they had no access. A much valued qualification for these correspondents was their ability to arrange for vegetarian food without onions or garlic preferably from their own kitchen for families of proprietors.

The only Indian journalist in Moscow was the towering figure of Masood Ali Khan, a pathan to boot, representing the CPI organ, New Age. He had phenomenal access to the otherwise impenetrable Soviet system. He was a mandatory fixture for all visiting Indian journalists, diplomats, progressive writers. When the Soviet Union collapsed Masood fell into abject penury. His salary which the Soviet system had arranged through the Red Cross was stopped. He died on the box-sofa of his one room tenement close to a metro station. Beneath the cushion on the sofa, were lined hundreds of 78 rpm records of western classical music he had collected during better days at the BBC in London.

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Farmers’ Agitation Inspired The Movement For Change In Chile

Farmers’ Agitation Inspired The Movement For Change In Chile

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

Indians must note that the farmers’ movement in the country, was one of the inspirations for the historic regime change in Chile.

That Gabriel Boric 35, a candidate of the Left with Communist support, trounced the far Right, Jose Antonio Kast, to become Chile’s youngest President is now a reality. And the Indian angle is heartwarming. The popular movement which brought Boric to power had in its final stretches, drawn inspiration from the farmer’s movement in India. Thomas Hirsh, member of the Chilean parliament representing the Humanist forum closely associated with Boric, was the point man in touch with the farmer’s leaders for guidance and support. The farmers said that they would refrain from endorsing Boric’s candidature but would support the people’s movement. “Just as we have steered clear of politics here.”

Dr. Ashish Mittal, General Secretary, All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha, wrote to Thomas Hirsch, “Our struggles present many similarities in the challenges we face from the cruel and dehumanizing neo-liberal regimes attempting to destroy the well being of our people…..and opening the way to control these resources and markets by transnational corporations.”

Boric is yet to announce his cabinet, Chileans are eager to see which important posts Communists are invite to occupy: after all they played a key role in Boric’s victory. The leader of Chile’s Communist party, Guillermo Teillier, explained the reason for supporting Boric. “He is the only one who can bring together a broad movement that will lead the people of Chile to prevent the rise of neo fascism.”

Fear of “fascism” is justified on many counts. First, the opponent, Kast, the conservative who lost was the darling of the copper magnates, other corporates and, ofcourse the CIA. Also, he was a fan of Pinochet, known for his unspeakable brutalities. Given Latin America’s roller coaster shifts, Kast may be down but cannot be counted out for good. Recent Latin American experience fits the image of the pulley: people bring to power their governments which vested interests work hard to replace. Chileans, indeed Latin Americans, have an abiding memory of Salvador Allende and the Chilean spring of 1973 which was snuffed out by corporate interests and direct US support. The Truck owners, CIA, corrupt armed forces and, ofcourse Augusto Pinochet, who staged the coup d’état, all combined to bringing down Allende. The dramatic footage of the Presidential palace bombed by British Hawker Hunters is all part of Patricio Guzman’s superb documentary –– The Battle of Chile. Then there is that permanent danger from that great global compact between imperialism and neo-liberal establishments. Corporates are the lynchpin in this plan.

During the Cold war, all People’s Liberation movements were legitimate. After the Soviet collapse, these became terrorist movements. Likewise wherever people bring into power governments on issues of bread and butter, health care, pensions, inequality, the media, at the instance of the corporates who own them, focuses elsewhere. It amplifies issues of identity, ethnicity, migration, even Covid, a pandemic though it is. Remember, the Shaheen Bagh movement against the Citizens Amendment Act (CAA), which had spread nationwide, was wound up following the earliest Covid scare in 2019. The Covid “scare” even when real can also be misused by cynical states. For instance postpone elections in UP if defeat looms.

Two facts are worth noting. Boric’s movement and the farmers’ agitation, both succeeded despite the media being arrayed against them. Is the declining credibility of the media a global reality? This is a serious problem for manipulated democracies.

Can the Boric euphoria be ended just as Allende was? Not impossible. In fact, corporates, elements in the Armed forces and the CIA must already be in a huddle in secret locations. Chile is the world’s top producer of copper and iodine. This is what the corporates and their supporters in the US were not comfortable leaving in “Communist” hands in 1973.

We in India had experienced the world’s first communist government come to power through the ballot box when E.M.S. Namboodiripad became Chief Minister in 1957. President’s Rule was imposed in 1959 at Nehru’s behest.

For the US, obsessed as it was with the Monroe doctrine and Domino theory, a duly elected communist President in the western hemisphere was worse than anathema; it was like another fall of man. American fingerprints were therefore, all over the military operation which killed Allende.

One motivation then was also to prevent the Soviet Union from finding hospitality in Latin America. Boric in Santiago offers a threat of another kind. In 1973 the US and Europe were interested in mineral resources. Today, the most voracious consumer of minerals is China, with whom an open “competition” has been declared by the US. What competitive action can the US be pushed into to protect its interests in Chile? This is where a major factor makes 1973 very different from 2021 –– the decline of US power.

A weakened power will not punch above its weight but, like pugilists on the wane, will not hang up its gloves either. With big powers it will not risk major conflict but it will make it known that it is still around. And around it is. Look at the way it imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran, Venezuela –– there are atleast 30 countries on the list.

The other asset the US has is the western media, always ready with cans of black paint to tar those nations the US does not approve. Once Boric is sworn in as President in three months, he will be in the line of fire, just as Cuba, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia are.

It is universally acknowledged that Boric won the election fairly. Does this entitle him to be on President Biden’s invitation list for the next “summit for Democracy”? To the last such jamboree on December 9-10, 80 world leaders were invited. Among the distinguished invitees was Juan Guaido, a Venezuelan non entity sporadically touted by Washington as the “interim President” of Venezuela. By this yardstick, the far right Pinochet admirer, Antonio Kast, roundly trounced by Boric, may well be looking for sources who will carry the following message to Washington –– “Barkis is willing.”

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Kashi Corridor: A Wonderful Project And A Hurtful Ceremony

Kashi Corridor: A Wonderful Project And A Hurtful Ceremony

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

 

Ganga, the eternal symbol of life and death, a continuity measureless to man, registered another episode this week which was billed as an extravaganza – the opening of the new Kashi corridor.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked imperiously on the spotless red carpet, he had the airs of someone who knew he was making history. Cameras from myriad angles committed the event to posterity. It is romantic to imagine that the strains of music that Bismillah Khan played at the temple would have enhanced the choreography around the majestic expanse. I suspect such a suggestion would be politically incorrect.

I may be forgiven for feeling a little bit like Shambhu in Bimal Roy’s masterpiece, Do Bigha Zameen. Shambhu, on whose land a factory has come up, regards his plot from behind barbed wires, he bends down and picks up a fistful from the field he once ploughed. Oh, my numerous visits to Kashi with my friend and outstanding architect, the late Satish Grover.

All rivers have a lore for people settled on their banks and beyond, but Ganga is different because it is special to us.

“Ai aab rooy e Ganga, woh din hain yaad tujhko,

utra tere kinare jub karavaan hamara?”

(O Ganga, our very pride

is bound with you

Do you remember our caravan,

which rested on your banks – forever?)

Iqbal was not remembering Aurangzeb; he was celebrating the dawn of a civilization on what the British called the Indo-Gangetic plain.

Ganga was part of our songs, similes and metaphors. As children we never forgot to toss coins in the great river and make a wish whenever the train crossed the bridge. During the Urdu-Hindi debates, my grandfather could only fall back on the image of Ganga:

“Hai dua yeh, ki mukhlif jo hain dhaarey mil jaaen

Aaj phir kausar O Ganga ke kinarey mil jaaen”

(Streams of Urdu and Hindi should

flow together, not in opposite directions.

May the banks of Ganga and

‘kauser’, the river of paradise, become one)

To fight penury, the great poet Ghalib (1797-1869) embarked on a journey to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to have an old pension revived by the British authorities. He travelled on horseback, carriages, on foot and river barges. He disliked Allahabad but found Benaras so compelling that he put down anchor for an extended stay. Here he wrote his longest poem – Chiragh e Dair or The Lamp in the Temple. He sees Benaras like a beautiful woman who sees her face in the Ganga at all times:

“Ibadat khana e naqoosian ast

hama na kaaba e Hindustan ast”

(This is a place of worship where people

make music from conch shells,

This truly is the Kaaba of Hindustan)

Ghalib was not the first to compare Benaras with Kaaba. Sheikh Ali Hazin from Isfahan, in Iran, found it impossible to separate himself from Benaras which, he wrote in Persian, is all mankind’s place of worship:

“Har Barahman pisare Lakshman-o-Ramast een ja”

(To me every Brahmin here looks like the very son of Ram or Lakshman)

When Mohsin Kakorvi (1826-1905) sketched the elements in ecstasy on Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, the most picturesque image he could conjure up were of clouds floating over Kashi and drifting towards Mathura.

“Samt e Kashi se chala jaainbe Mathura badal”

Ali Sardar Jafri (1913-2000) positions himself in “Benaras” when he seeks cultural commerce with friends in Lahore:

“Tum aao gulshan e Lahore se chaman bar dosh

hum aayen subhe Benaras ka baankpan le kar”

(You come to us with breezes from the garden of Lahore;

we bring to you the exquisite dawn of Benaras.)

If I have inflicted on you a surfeit of poetry it is for a compelling reason. This is my way of reestablishing my claim to the civilization bound with Kashi and the Ganga, and from which I was distanced by the choreography of the pageant last Monday.

By firing the Aurangzeb missile, you froze us in our tracks. If we reiterate what some of us have proposed for a long time it will be seen, in the current jingoism, as our having succumbed to pressure. A reasonable conversation on such charged issues as Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura are possible when the communal temperatures drop.

Just as every musical score requires a counterpoint there are plenty of Muslim busybodies willing to take hard positions that will keep communal tension at boiling point. There is, after all, no Papacy in Islam. No edict can be issued which insures that the community will fall in line. The Muslim Personal Law Board, to remain alive, must take a stand which represents the mainstream devouts. In other words “dig your heels in” which is precisely what the Hindu Right wants.

The late Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, a liberal to boot, maintained that a Muslim can spread his prayer mat anywhere facing Mecca and say his prayers; a Hindu’s deity is in the temple. By this logic, the mosques in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura represent medieval assertion and will only hurt the Hindu.

Mir Taqi Mir had shown us the way in the 18^th century:

“Mut ranja kar kisi ko ki apney to etiqaad,

Jee dhaye ke jo Kaaba banaya to kya kiya”

(Don’t hurt a fellow human being;

It is my belief that even building the Kaaba is not worth it if hearts are broken in the process.) the verse applies to both sides.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of the many singers of Benaras were to set the following verse to music:

“Kooch a e yar ain Kashi hai

Jogia dil wahan ka baasi hai”

(My beloved’s lane is like holy Kashi

The yogi of my heart has taken up residence there.)

The poet is Wali Gujarati (1667-1707). His grave outside Ahmedabad’s main police station, was razed to the ground by rioters in February 2002.

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The Economist, Mamata, Prashant Attacked The Gandhis: Congress Indispensable

The Economist, Mamata, Prashant Attacked The Gandhis: Congress Indispensable

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

 

The Economist, Mamata Banerjee and Prashant Kishore, in sequence, landed a triple punch on the Gandhi trio’s chin but it did not knock them out. In fact Rahul Gandhi carried on, regardless, to London where he met editors of papers like the Economist and The Financial Times and heaven knows who else.

Recent attacks have been on the Gandhis not on the Congress. To separate the two is an urgent, dynamic, political process. The unionists who see the two as Siamese twins are the coterie who require the furniture at 10, Janpath under which they can crawl and nibble.

Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena says that a front which is parallel to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) would be self-defeating because it would divide the opposition’s effort to replace Narendra Modi. Raut cannot be expected to say anything else. After all the Shiv Sena led government depends on Congress support in Mumbai.

This is Raut’s regional compulsion, not his roadmap for power in Delhi. Mamata has no such compulsions. She has trounced the BJP, CPM and Congress, in that order. Among Mamata’s opponent in West Bengal happen to be two disabled national opposition parties. Of these two, Congress and CPM suffer from a self-defeating obsession: they are aching to revive on their own, the CPM in West Bengal and the Congress nationally. Both are impossible aspirations.

Mamata and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi, can both claim similar records albeit on different scales. Both have trounced the BJP and the Congress repeatedly. Mamata is so much on top of the situation in Bengal that she is now looking for expansion. The fear of TMC making inroads into neighbouring Tripura caused the BJP to throw the state in tumult: in the recent local bodies election 112 of the 334 wards went uncontested. No elections were held in these wards. Notice of the mayhem was given in October when, for reasons unknown, opposition party offices were attacked. This is BJP’s nervousness, not triumphalism.

Mamata has another card up her sleeve. She was once with the Congress which she left in 1997.

As Ghalib said:

“Go waan naheen, pa waan ke nikaale huwe to hain”

(I may not be there now; but I was once there.)

Trinamool Congress, after all, is a regional version of the Congress. Those Congressmen who are unhappy with the present leadership are welcome: her doors are open. The group of 23 letter writers asking the leadership to pull up its socks are only a representative few, a mixed bag of successful professionals and spare “has-beens”. Much the larger number of Congress workers, voters, sympathizers, in whose hovels one can still find tattered posters of Congress bullocks as party symbol, or a hand, photographs of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi – these are the party orphans Mamata has her eyes on. The idea is to squeeze the Gandhis out – exert external pressure to induce a settlement within the Congress.

Kejriwal may not have Mamata’s Congress affiliation, but he too is looking for turf being vacated by the Congress in states neighbouring Delhi. His expedition to far off Goa is to leave something of a footprint wherever he can. This effort of his, and of Mamata, will be interpreted by observers as being helpful to the BJP. To disrupt the Congress, says this school, is to help the BJP. This is an old ruling class chant: don’t weaken tweedledee because tweedledum will gain.

Under the Gandhis, Tweedledee is a consistent, persistent, habitual loser of elections. To focus extensively on Priyanka Gandhi in Lakhimpur Kheri, her taking a dip in the Ganga or championing the farmers is to keep the searchlight deliberately on the weakest aspirant in the opposition line up. Greater focus on Rahul would be possible if only he didn’t fly away so frequently. It was said of Vinoba Bhave that no one knew when he would pick up his stick and walk.

The tailwind of Bengali nationalism enables Mamata to carry the 30 percent Muslims in the state, thwarting the BJP’s urge to polarize. After all, her Hindu credentials are impeccable. Kejriwal has no linguistic regionalism to fall back on. He therefore has to play a straight “good” Hindu card to neutralize a “bad” Hindu one. Credit must go to Narendra Modi: he has made Nehruvian indifference to safronized religion a negative value in politics. Every political party, including CPM’s Pinarai Vijayan in Kerala, must now be conscious of Hinduism in public life.

The fact that Kejriwal occupies the Delhi stage is his handicap as well as his advantage. The advantage is obvious: though Delhi is only a Union Territory, Kejriwal is amplified nationally. His national projection, however, must not outshine the regime at the centre. So, the centre, via the efficient agency of the Lt. Governor, keeps Kejriwal’s one hand tied behind his back. But where there is a will there is a way. Kejriwal is out, both guns blazing, with Hinduism tied to welfare as his unstated plank. A promise of Ram Mandir within reach, pilgrimage after pilgrimage for the elderly arranged by “your son, Kejriwal”, Hanuman Chalisa on tap.

Add to these, free water, cheap electricity, neighbourhood clinics, focus on government schools and you have a brand new model: a Hindu friendly socialist state. It does not offend Muslims either: no lynchings, no love jehad campaigns. Yes, AAP says nothing about the riots in North East Delhi but there is a clever reason for this silence: because the BJP would then play up AAP as “pro Muslim” and polarize the vote. So Muslims have to lump it so long as the current politics of division lasts.

Everybody in the opposition knows there can be no credible opposition to win in 2024 without the Congress. On this TMC, AAP and others are all agreed but with a proviso: the Congress becomes an active player in opposition ranks only if a Gandhi hat is not prematurely in the ring for the leadership stakes.

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