Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 47, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 25, 1993 Page: 37 of 43
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TEXAS JEWISH POST, FORT WORTH, THURSDA Y, MARCH 25, 1993- IN OUR 47TH YEAR!- PASSOVER ISSUE
jess jawin
continued from p. 2
ing him or simply getting rid of him.
Yeltsin is the only national elected official Rus-
sia has ever had before and after the Soviet
Union was proclaimed. He knows the inner-
workings of the communists who were rubber-
stamps and are holdovers of the former Soviet
political machine. He also is cognizant of the fact
that his predecessor, Gorbachev, was kidnapped,
held isolated and nearly killed a short time follow-
ing his meeting with President Bush.
Knowing all this, Yeltsin, the Russian White
Bear, who stood on the tanks and prevented a
civil war bloodbath now sees the potential of a
civil war crisis looming. Where to turn? What to
do?
He took the only escape possible. He declared
that he was the elected president and would not
be circumvented by the communist regime which
was hanging on with hopes for the recreation of
the totalitarian state.
One has to know the tenor and tremor of the
Russian people. From travels throughout the
Soviet Union during the 1960’s of the Cold War,
this jaw spoke to hundreds of then Soviet citi-
zens. What did they want? What was their
tenor?
In the mid-1960’s Soviet citizens spoke out
against the regime. They were tired of waiting
seven to ten years for a telephone that didn’t
work or an apartment they couldn’t get. There
were ways and means of obtaining these things
being upped on the list by paying not only rubles
but possessions. Then one may have a chance
to cut the wait down by a few years.
And what about the tremor, the trembling?
Russians looked over their shoulders before
they told you a joke about the commissars and
their henchmen. Someone might be listening.
They plodded their silent ways, most times, con-
sumed huge quantities of vodka to dispel the hurt
and longing and sat in subways trains and buses
with silent eyes. No eyes of hope. Only eyes of
misery knowing that if one was lucky the morrow
would only be a little worse than the day.
Interwoven into this was a supreme love for
Mother Russia. Russians are emotional about
their country. They dance about it, and sing
about it and are willing to die by the millions for it
as proven by the volume of wars they endured
which made their mother earth, Russia, a quag-
mire of blood.
They followed their dictators. Whether it be the
Czar and his robber-barons or the Communists
with their Swiss bank accounts.
On two trips to the then Soviet Union we saw
very little difference even though the visits were a
sabbatical apart. The apartment buildings were
crumbling, the people had little or no personal
cars or conveniences. Research at the time
proved there were several times as many per-
sonal cars in Tarrant County than in all of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with its 250
million population.
Why, one might ask?
Simple. As long as the leadership could cower
the populace into following orders and not asking
any questions, they could get away with all the
stealing from the public purse without retribution.
Aformerlaborcampslave, who was conscripted
to work when he fled from the German Nazi
onslaught into the “protection”: of the Soviet army
was immediately transported to Siberia. This was
in 1942. He tells vividly of how the Commissars
would make trips to investigate the local Soviets
(Committees). Paraphrasing his related story, he
said: “They used to come in and the local commis-
sars knew they were a big bunch of crooks —
even bigger than the locals were. They also knew
they had to thwart their investigations. So what
did they do? We made huge banners welcoming
them to our small city and proclaiming them as
heroes of the Soviet Union. We made speeches
praising them and plying them with vodka and
caviar. After three days, they were so drunk we’d
sweep them in the train and they would have a
long sleep back to Moscow. Immediately after
they left we tore down the banners and resumed
our own brand of stealing.
Sergei N. Khruschev, son of the Soviet Premier
Nikita Khruschev, now a senior working research
scholar at the Watson Institute’s Centerfor Foreign
Policy Development at Brown University, com-
ments in the March 19,1993 New York Times: “If
support for democracy in Russia is difficult, then
how much more difficult is support for its transfor-
mation when the reformers themselves cannot
agree what needs to be done? As things stand
now, foreign aid — as Michel Camodessus, the
managing director of the International Monetary
Fund has recognized — would most likely disap-
pear without a trace into the secret accounts that
Russian bureaucrats and industrial managers
hold in Western banks.”
The Ides of March have a few more days to run.
We must remember, too, that April is still a very
cold month in Russia. Even if the oppositionists,
meaningthe communists, bureaucrats andother
party hacks and hangers-on do not succeed in
March they may go for the kill in April. We must
remember these are almost the same people
who engineered Gorbachev’s kidnapping, near
murder and eventual downfall.
Thedilemmawillnotfade. Notsoon. It will take
years. But the United States should stay in the
vanguard and do its utmost to give the Russians
a chance for democracy and a good market
economy.
It will take a long time. But it is better than the
alternative.
Much better!
And what might that be if the Ides of March are
successful-even if it goes into a shower of April
civil war?
Russia and some of the republics of the former
Soviet Union have over 30,000 nuclear bombs.
In the wrong hands - and if they are not dis-
mantled with precision and alacrity -- they could
bring a holocaust which could extinguish the
world as we now know it.
It would be much wiserto use our expertise and
the persuasion of a moral political stand and help
the Russians help themselves.
Reform? Indeed.
Follow it by a Clinton Plan, akin to the Marshall
Plan, with contributions from many productive
nations that would put Eastern Europe and the
Russian Federation on a productive highway to
a market economy. Let the people learn how to
use their natural resources - they have the
world's largest -- to build homes, highways, fac-
tories that work and to gamer the American
know-how for abundant agricultural production.
This is geared to production and construction.
It is truly much betterthan the alternative which
is destruction and decimation.
Beware the Ides of March by working now to
prevent it!
COMMUNIST sympathizers listen t° a speech in M°sc°w Tuesday denounc- RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT members during debate on possible Yeltsin im-
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 47, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 25, 1993, newspaper, March 25, 1993; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth754866/m1/37/: accessed August 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .