Listening to the silent majority

[68]

The Soviet position on Southern Africa has undergone changes since Mikhail Gorbachev began his shock therapy on Soviet thinking by introducing ‘glasnost’ (openness) and ‘perestroika’ (restructuring). At the same time the protracted confusion in the Kremlin clearly simmers through in various foreign policy initiatives, including those vis-à-vis South Africa. The gigantic Soviet bureaucracy has not yet been brought fully into line with brand new directives. This often continues to cause confusion and frustration while we are hoping for better times. I began reporting from Moscow in 1970 - while a resident of the United States - and over the years wrote a few books about the Soviet Union, of which The Soviet Viewpoint, a 300-page interview with Academician Georgii

[p. 86]

Arbatov, Director of the usa Institute of the ussr Academy of Sciences, and an advisor to the Kremlin on Foreign Policy, became perhaps best known. The American edition carries a foreword by Senator J William Fulbright.^48. Actually, the book was a forerunner of ‘glasnost’, since never before had a top Kremlin advisor written a book with a ‘capitalist’ journalist. Twenty years of reporting from Moscow and travelling widely in the ussr have given me a basis for judgement as to Soviet policy towards South Africa. What I have observed is not exactly all roses.

It is a fact that the Soviet Union, and some of its principal negotiators, have been largely instrumental in bringing about the gradual withdrawal of Cuban troops from the region; but then, what did they get in return? The liberation of Namibia, fourth largest producer of uranium. When swapo wins the elections, as some observers assume, it will mean that another Marxist-oriented frontier will have moved considerably closer to Pretoria and Johannesburg than before. So, why shouldn't Moscow have negotiated this deal, especially taking into account that Cuban troops should never have come to Africa in the first place. Why should a Caribbean island that survives on Soviet hand-outs, and where primary foodstuffs are hard to obtain, dispatch an expensive military force to another continent, for any other reason than Marxist-Leninist imperialism? Now the Soviet bloc can conveniently withdraw its proxy and Namibia will fall like a ripe apple into their lap. What else is new? Some of the interviewees in this report were puzzled by Pretoria's move. History will tell perhaps, because the motivation for handing over Namibia at this critical hour in the saga of South Africa, are far from clear.

48. The Soviet Viewpoint, by Georgii Arbatov and Willem Oltmans, Dodd & Mead Publishers, New York (1983)