Volume 37, Number 5 · March 29, 1990
A Manifesto for Soviet Democracy
By Martin Malia
The Declaration of the Democratic Platform Group, published below, has been circulating in the Soviet Union as a leaflet to promote candidates favoring democratic reform who are running in the elections to a special Party Congress this spring. This dissident manifesto was first released at the end of January, but by the end of February, it still had not been published in any Soviet paper. The groups that are circulating it appear to have considerable support throughout the Soviet Union. On Sunday, February 25, 'prodemocracy' demonstrations making largely the same demands as the ones in the manifesto, and organized in part by some of the people who had drafted it, were attended by hundreds of thousands of people in at least thirty Soviet cities. The coming Party elections, and the simultaneous elections to local state governing bodies, are occurring at what is undoubtedly a crucial moment in the five-year history of perestroika; and the declaration raises central questions about the direction in which the Soviet system is now moving and how developments there are to be understood abroad.
Feature, 2319 words
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