Volume 37, Number 13 · August 16, 1990
For Whom the Bell Tolls
By Elena Bonner, Translated by Antonina W. Bouis
Moscow: Once again the country has been watching a congress on TV. Not everyone was watching this time, and not as intensely as they had been watching the Second Congress of People's Deputies in June of last year, when hope still prevailed over distrust. But both then and today most of the delegates sitting in the Kremlin Palace were supported by a minority of the Soviet people that has been growing smaller and smaller. Now the gap between the Party elite and the people has almost reached its limit. On July 3 it was announced on television that 92 percent of Muscovites support the Democratic Platform calling for political and economic pluralism. Yet of the 4,500 delegates in the auditorium, only about one hundred were supporters of the Platform.
Feature, 1109 words
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