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 Document 6 of 12                                                 Page   1
 Classification:   UNCLASSIFIED       Status:        [STAT]
 Document Date: 12 Sep 90             Category:      [CAT]
 Report Type:      Daily Report       Report Date:
 Report Number:    FBIS-SOV-90-179    UDC Number:
 Author(s):   Vladimir Sokolov, LITERATURNAYA GAZETA editor for
 socioeconomic issues: "Reflections on the Variants of
 Our Immediate Future. To a Market Economy Under the Cover
 of the Army?"]
 Headline:  Possibilities of Military Coup Assessed
 Source Line:  90SVO054A Moscow LITERATURNAYA GAZETA in Russian 12 Sep
 90 pp 11-12
 Subslug:   [Article by Vladimir Sokolov, LITERATURNAYA GAZETA editor
 for socioeconomic issues: "Reflections on the Variants of
 Our Immediate Future. To a Market Economy Under the Cover
 of the Army?"]
 FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE:
 1.  [Article by Vladimir Sokolov, LITERATURNAYA GAZETA editor for
 socioeconomic issues: "Reflections on the Variants of Our Immediate
 Future. To a Market Economy Under the Cover of the Army?"]
 2.  [Text] Every successive shortage in our country is accompanied by
 an outbreak of mass belief in something special. At the height of the
 shortage of detergents, the country agonizingly waited for Gdlyan and
 Ivanov to arrest the entire Politburo, confiscate the stolen
 billions, and hand them out to common working people any minute.
 Later, when drugs began to disappear from drugstores, Chumak and
 Kashpirovskiy began to perform miracles for us on TV in a wholesale
 manner. The salt and vegetable oil panic was accompanied by UFO
 landings everywhere. Nov, tobacco products and bread have
 disappeared.  We have come to believe in market programs.
 3.  1. This belief began to sprout as early as election time.  After
 all, there was not a candidate people's deputy without his own
 program of restructuring the economy of the country, republic, city,
 or rural soviet depending on the level at which the particular
 comrade was nominated.
 4.  As it were, the similarity of the programs of deputies at all
 levels became apparent quite soon.  Actually these were combinations
 of generalities from the perestroyka-minded press.  We the voters
 understood that the resounding phrases of "our" candidate would not
 heal the ills of our society and would not even fill the shelves of
 empty stores. But what if? At any rate, our immortal hope for a
 Approve for Release     Ii
 UNCLASSIFIED
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 miracle helped us justify our choice.
 5.  Compiling programs--once again consisting of generalities, though
 refreshed ones--has become our national sport during the tenure of
 soviets of the new term. As the situation deteriorates the debate on
 the programs becomes increasingly entrancing, and the belief in their
 magic and self-sufficient power becomes increasingly metaphysical.
 Last year, we criticized Ryzhkov for a poorprogram; this year we
 berate him once again for a very poor program. However, by September
 we expect to have a nongovernmental and therefore good program,
 mystically calling it 11500 Days" ahead of time. We also know ahead
 of time that Abalkin's team will come up with a so-so program as if
 we were sitting at horse races and discussing the virtues of trotters
 ever more passionately.  Fervor is easy to understand to a degree for
 the stakes are much too high. However fervor is also mysterious
 because, regardless of who is released by the starting shot, there is
 no track in front of the programs!  Instead there is rough terrain
 full of potholes, swamps, and obstructions, and this impassable
 landscape keeps changing all the time; little local volcanoes swell,
 and in some places it is already burning.
 6.  Switching back from metaphors to plain language, I would like to
 state my conviction that under our current conditions no
 program--even if prepared by the best economists of our country and
 the world, run as a model on the most powerful computers, bolstered
 by the involvement of monetary funds, and so on--can be implemented
 as a logical and coordinated succession of actions by the government
 and the people. I am afraid that it will not be possible to even
 initiate it in the manner conceived by the authors because only God
 himself knows where and when miners may strike or an interethnic
 conflict erupt, where refugees may flood from, whether yet another
 republic may decide to secede with Union enterprises or merely with a
 piece of its neighbor's land, or when yet another chemical combine or
 reactor may blow up; this is to say nothing about political hysteria
 of the kind of railway blockades. After all, any such event will
 easily undermine more than just one point of the program and will
 turn the 500 days into 700, 1,000, and so on, in keeping with the
 painfully familiar calendar of five-year plans.
 7.  Undoubtedly both reformers and the immediate authors of the
 programs--future scapegoats--understand this very well. For example,
 after a report by the A. Aganbegyan commission to the Presidium of
 the USSR Council of Ministers, many speakers emphasized that
 stability as well as the rule of law and order in the country are key
 conditions for a transition to a market economy. However nobody said
 how these conditions are to be ensured, at least not in the 18 August
 TV broadcast.
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 8.  2. At present the sociopolitical situation in our country is the
 focal issue rather than the program. Peasants will not take land free
 of charge--to say nothing of taking it for a fee--until they come to
 believe firmly that nobody will ever again take away their lots,
 their crop, and their belongings. City dwellers will not invest their
 savings in their own businesses--to say nothing of investing their
 entire lives--until they make sure that racketeers will not stick
 saved-off shotguns between their ribs and laws will not change "just
 like that." Foreigners will not come to us with their technology
 until their investments are 100 percent safe from revolutionary
 expropriations. Neither domestic nor foreign capital will finance all
 of them in the absence of certainty that debts will be repaid, and
 with interest at that. This means that the STABILITY of laws and
 economic contacts, the CONTINUITY of obligations of changing
 authorities, and PROTECTION against crime and social disturbances are
 more important than all other conditions for these main players in a
 market economy--peasants, industrialists, financiers, and foreign
 businessmen.
 9.  For now everything is the other way around in our country. If
 laws are not repealed they are not used; new soviet chairmen cancel
 the instructions of the previous leadership; crime is rampant; and by
 now the explosions of discontent of the working people frequently
 cannot be distinguished from it. However, the main trouble is that
 economic contacts are being severed by the mounting waves of
 separatism, the barbaric strikes of monopolistic producers, and the
 blockage of transportation arteries.  The results of this are now
 already apparent, however in the future they will threaten our
 economy with outright paralysis. Whatever the adherents of
 "sovereignty" say about direct contracts, the disintegration of the
 USSR as a united state means the disintegration of a Union market. A
 power struggle inside "sovereignty" will interfere with the
 execution of most of these contracts; others are going to be
 frustrated as soon as the first hard-currency buyer appears. From the
 economic point of view this turn of events will set "sovereign"
 republics far back, including the RSFSR [Russian Soviet Federated
 Socialist Republic], even under a peaceful scenario. If on top of
 this quarrels break out--as well as the division of land, water, and
 enterprises--and if on top of this the division begins to be
 accomplished by force... God save from this our children and all the
 rest of humanity who are not at faultl
 10.  However, what forces are capable of opposing the disintegration
 of the national-economic complex of the USSR at present?
 11.  There was a time when the administrative-command system was the
 most powerful force of this nature. Its remnants continue to manage
 the economy of the country. However, republic echelons intercept the
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 management of property from the center vigorously and in full view of
 everyone while retaining this property as state-bureaucratic at their
 republic level. In the course of its decay, the
 administrative-command system turns from a unifying force into almost.
 the main destructive force pulling the economic complex apart into
 regions and republics with a view to maintaining previous
 arrangements "in the field."
 12.  The feeling of commonality of the people, of common goals,
 common threats and challenges, common pride in accomplishments, and
 common history and culture should apparently be a unifying force.
 This is the case with other states. In our country, common fear of
 the camps was the main part of the "common" for too long.  It
 appears that when this fear disappeared the Soviet people's main
 category of commonality collapsed. The Soviet people dispersed with
 unimaginable ease into nations, strata, and groups which turn into
 mobs at the first opportunity.
 13.  Concern about the efficiency of the economy has also ceased to
 unify us. First, we have impressed on ourselves that the economy is
 inefficient anyway, otherwise why restructure it? Second, at present
 the leaders of the periphery, from prime ministers to strike
 committee chairmen, could not care less about the problems of the
 recipients of their products in other republics to say nothing of the
 hated center. Third, the center itself has already shown a-good
 number of examples of reckless bravado in its economic decisions,
 from the anti-alcohol campaign to writing off the debts of collective
 and state farms. Fourth... actually, the fingers will not be enough
 in this case. It is significant that apparently the only people who
 are concerned about the crisis of the USSR economy are those who by
 virtue of their positions are responsible for it to the Supreme
 Soviet and the president. Besides, given our liberal times it is not
 clear what kind of responsibility this is....
 14.  However, nature abhors a vacuum; if old centripetal forces are
 weakening, this does not yet amount to a sentence. New forces may
 appear with the same center-bound vector; the forces nobody reckoned
 with yesterday may grow stronger. Thus the interests of the world
 community are becoming a new "center-bound" force.  The developed
 countries have a vital interest in the integrity of the "Soviet
 empire" regardless of their attitude toward the Union's past and the
 personalities of our leaders. We see that they are cool toward our
 separatists and prepared to aid reforms issuing from Moscow. We will
 yet see that these countries are prepared to pay increasingly more as
 they grasp their dependence on the outcome of our trials.
 15.  "Aliens" are a force we did not notice before. At issue is a
 tremendous number of people who, as it turned out when nationalism
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 mounted, reside in republics other then `their own." Tens of
 millions of Russians live outside the RSFSR and an equal number of
 people hailing from other Union republics are present in Russia.
 "The ancestral lands" of non-Russian peoples are suddenly becoming
 distinct inside Russia, and here we have Russians fleeing Tuva.
 Territorial claims made by "sovereign" republics against each other
 are in store for us, and even inside the republics there is much
 sorting out of the purity of blood lines to be done. Our country has
 tens of millions of obvious half-breeds--where is their land?
 16.  "Aliens" are merely maturing into a political force, but the
 lot of hundreds of thousands of refugees speeds up this process.
 "Aliens" are the most reliable social base for anyone who will
 engage in a struggle for the unity of the country. I will observe
 that separatists understand this and will not reconcile themselves to
 the presence of "aliens" in "their" republics regardless of the
 ethnic harmony they promise after secession.
 17.  Finally there is a third force--third in terms of the free flow
 of my reflections but not at all in terms of significance. The most
 venturesome of the secessionists seem to fail to notice this force,
 which of course does not cancel the fact of its existence. Go and try
 canceling this force; being one of the mightiest in the world,
 well-organized and equipped, possessing its own infrastructure and
 tremendous material resources, under the same command from Brest to
 Chukotka, from Novaya Zemlya to Kushka, and finally armed, it may
 itself cancel anybody. Of course it is clear to you that I mean not
 only the Army but also the entire military-industrial complex of the
 USSR.
 18.  3. So far the position of the military-industrial complex is not
 very distinct. However, reality is already infringing on the vital
 interests of this complex, and quite painfully on occasion. At issue
 is not conversion or the stock of weapons; incredible stocks have
 been accumulated and we can spend a lot of time disarming. But here
 we are withdrawing our troops from East Europe, and we immediately
 run into not just a problem but a fire-breathing dragon: housing.
 Tens of thousands of career officers are without apartments, and
 one-third of them are pilots, the elite of any army! Now they are
 saying in the republics as well that alien troops--that is, those of
 the Union-- should leave the sovereign territory. Where are they to
 go to? Who is waiting for still more homeless lieutenants and
 colonels? Would you have them fight their way into the blocks of
 Russian cities and use tanks to pack in peaceful residents?
 19.  Military installations are another sensitive problem of any
 military-industrial complex. What is to be done about defense
 industry plants and their suppliers dispersed over one-sixth of the
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 globe without anticipating "sovereignty?" What is to be done about,
 say, air defense complexes somewhere in a southern republic? Where
 are billions of rubles to be found for building new complexes, and on
 what border are they to be built--that of Moscow Oblast? What is to
 be done about existing complexes?  Are they to be left to the
 sovereign republic?  This may turn out to be sovereignty that bites.
 Are they to be dismantled, destroyed? This costs a lot of money.
 Should a treaty be signed for them to remain with the status of a
 foreign military base? However this very southern republic will form
 its own armed forces which after a while will develop their own point
 of view on this treaty....
 20.  In a word, the military-industrial complex will calculate all
 variants using its computers and may determine that the most
 inexpensive and reliable way is to stage the very military coup that
 politicians and journalists have been scaring each other with for
 about two years now, making the populace shiver. It is surprising how
 much we like tweaking a genie's nose and imagining that we can stuff
 it back into the bottle at any time!
 21.  At this point many readers holding democratic beliefs will shrug
 it off: "Oh really! A coup is impossible, a civil war will begin!"
 22.  I maintain that no civil war will begin in our country.  Not a
 single rayon soviet in the country is capable of organizing potato
 harvesting on its territory. The Communists are fiercely dividing up
 party assets. People's fronts are not in a position to disarm bandits
 in their republics. Who is going to rally the people to fight the
 Army? What people? In the name of what will neighboring nations that
 hate each other face automatic weapons fire? "Equality, fraternity,
 and happiness?" Also take into account the fact that no foreign
 country will censure this mode of action by the military or aid the
 eventual resistance because for the outside world this scenario will
 mean first of all a step toward the desired stability in this
 indefatigable USSR and regaining at least some control over nuclear
 weapons, nuclear power stations, and other sources of a global
 threat.
 23.  However, such a coup will signify the end of perestroyka, will
 it not? To my mind, it will. In this case generals will be able to
 lean on only the most conservative strata of the population, and they
 will have to crack down on the reformers. Otherwise they will not be
 able to explain their coming to power to the people. Naturally,
 glasnost will be replaced with propaganda, and parliaments will be
 "temporarily" dissolved forever. Parties will be "suspended" and
 so on in keeping with the routine of many military regimes.
 24.  Rationed sales, combating crime, production losses, and
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 speculation under martial law will improve the life of the common
 people perceptibly and win back the sympathy of the masses for state
 property, leveling, and the communist perspective. "The defense
 sector" will once again be able to skim off the cream of the best
 resources of society and rival the imperialist Strategic Defense
 Initiative.  There will be more generals with dachas and without
 troops than we have now. The military-industrial complex will begin
 to bite off even larger slices of the budget of the country. This is
 how we will smoothly return to stagnation for generations to come.
 25.  4. If we do not desire the above we should not pretend that only
 politicians and economists act in the course of perestroyka and that
 the military exists in order to have somebody to disarm and
 reeducate. It is time for us, together with servicemen of all ranks,
 to figure out the actual mood and political objectives of the
 gigantic organism called the Soviet Army.
 26.  I do not doubt that specialists will do it better; they may have
 already done it. Yet I would like to outline for the readers my
 judgment about the attitudes of various echelons and generations in
 the Army.
 27.  Most of the generals, while having formal power are hardly moral
 authorities for their subordinates because they have served to
 advance to their positions in a time of peace and stagnation. Many of
 them have been persecuted by the press and are as angry as can be.
 The best means to hold on to their positions for these people is to
 restore the treasured past in keeping with the above scenario. As we
 see, separatists in the republics are their best helpers in this
 instance.
 28.  Senior officers, and together with them a number of young
 generals, are not just the next generation but also a different
 formation; these are different people. Most of them have experienced
 Afghanistan, have been under fire, lost friends, and gained real
 combat experience for which servicemen have no substitute. They have
 a feeling of frontline camaraderie. Their authority in the units and
 among the people is equally high, but many are profoundly
 disappointed by the fact that, as it turns out, they were not
 fighting a righteous war--incidentally, on orders from the military
 commanders of the time of stagnation. They carry out the orders of
 the latter at present as well.  However, they are aware of their
 right to advance to key positions in the Army. But for what purpose?
 In order to move into dachas themselves and carry on the "invincible
 and legendary" traditions of Stalin?  Or in order to create a
 modern, well-equipped, and well-trained Army of professionals that is
 capable of carrying out any mission in combat rather than in
 patriotic songs?
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 29.     If the latter is correct--speeches in the Supreme Soviets by
 deputies who are servicemen of this generation leave no doubt as to
 this--this formation of officers and generals desperately needs a
 market economy. They need economic reform. They already know, for
 example, what the U.S. Army is about. They clearly understand that
 only a market economy will provide enough funds and domestic
 technologies for a leap ahead. They do not need a military
 dictatorship because they do not need an economic impasse; they do
 not want to languish in humiliating and dangerous poverty compared to
 a rival who is pulling further ahead and higher.
 30.  However, they will likewise hardly agree to the disintegration
 of the Union which will destroy the integrity of the Soviet Army,
 split the officer corps by nationality, and in some cases force them
 to fire on former comrades in arms. This is why this generation may
 obey the fateful order at a dramatic moment of perestroyka when it
 seems that the motherland is indeed in mortal danger.
 31.  Still, the interests of this generation in the main cannot
 coincide with the interests of stagnation-time generals.  They are
 coming to contradict the separatists in the most serious manner, and
 they are more and more clearly drawing closer to the political
 interests of the adherents of a renewed federation.
 32.  5. Of course, only our readers in uniform may confirm or refute
 these reflections. However, if I am right, the leaders of our country
 should have started thinking long ago about who to bet on in the
 Army, what to promise, and what tasks to assign to whom. So far the
 public has seen no signs of that. Well in this case it is all the
 more useful to recall something that the world knows well: A
 transition from a socialized--or destroyed, or just poor--economy to
 an efficient market economy is quite frequently carried out under a
 state of emergency or even war. Successful examples such as Greece,
 South Korea, and Chile come to mind. These countries, which have been
 under the much-abused "black colonels" and which our newspapers
 have mourned and grieved for, have long surpassed us in affluence.
 Even such brilliant examples of prosperity as the FRG and Japan laid
 the foundations of their success when occupied rather than as
 democracies. In these countries the U.S. Army was a guarantor of
 stability and of the practicability of the Marshall Plan and other
 programs to restore these semidestroyed states. We denounced the
 occupiers in every way possible; meanwhile they were hard at work
 forming parliaments, preventing parliament members from fighting,
 organizing local business, teaching business to the population which
 had grown dull due to what it had gone through, apprehending bandits,
 and making all people without distinction comply with the norms of
 civilized coexistence.
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 33.  Of course nobody is going to occupy us, even if we pay them for
 it. However, with every passing day we are becoming convinced that we
 need a guarantor as well, and much more than the ethnically
 homogeneous Germans, Japanese, or Koreans. Who may and should become
 such a guarantor in our country?
 34.  The reader will expose me: "Here it is! After all, he is
 calling for a coup!"
 35.  No, I am not calling for it. I am researching some of the
 variants of our immediate future and trying to understand what we are
 prepared for, what evil may be awaiting us, and if it is unavoidable
 how to turn it into the necessary benefit and transform it into good.
 36.  I see a possibility that does not run counter to either our
 peculiarities and conditions or the experience of other states.
 37.  Nobody should interfere with the development of democratization
 in regions where it proceeds peacefully, even if through arguments
 and mistakes. We will become wiser and more civilized, work better,
 and live better; thank God for that. However government will
 inevitably be taken over by representatives of the USSR president and
 performed by military authorities in areas where bloody conflicts and
 mass disturbances erupt and where the infrastructure of the country,
 its vitally important organs, are endangered--railways, ports, air
 routes, communications systems, power industry facilities (especially
 nuclear), large monopolistic enterprises, sources of the most
 important raw materials, and so on. So the military authorities
 should guarantee the application of the key laws of the economic
 reform by order of the president, unlike their current narrow
 role--in Karabakh, Frunze, Baku, Dushanbe, and so on small forces of
 the Internal Troops merely ensure a minimum of order.  These are
 first of all the laws on land, ownership, enterprises, taxation, and
 entrepreneurs.
 38.  Yes, this is exactly what I want to say--new economic relations,
 new estates and classes may begin to emerge not only in the thus far
 prosperous areas but also here (perhaps first of all here) in
 territories driven to desperation and mutiny. Without wasting
 precious time we may embark on creating new owners here by protecting
 their property against the ups and downs of the period of transition
 by means of military force. After all, civil administration, even if
 it has been elected democratically many times over, still does not
 control the situation in places where it has come to pogroms and it
 will not be able to oppose the class hatred of mobs reduced to
 lumpens. The Army may be able to.
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 39.  Presidential rule supported by the military may cut one more
 Gordian knot which is too tough for democracy-- the problem of
 ownership and ethnicity. Who will be able to become a full-fledged
 owner of land in, say, Nagorno-Karabakh? Armenians only? Azeris only?
 Will one of the feuding republics rebel? Can both rebel?
 Nationalists in both republics will not go along with this.  Only an
 armed force of different ethnicity will be able to shelter the
 residents of Karabakh from the ambitions of their neighbors, defend
 their work on their own land, and allow them to perceive themselves
 as the people of Karabakh regardless of language and culture.
 40.  In regions such as the Fergana Valley, the release of property
 by the state is hardly conceivable except under military protection.
 They tried to transfer several hectares of land in Osh Oblast which
 were farmed by the Uzbeks to the Kirghiz in an administrative manner,
 and look what happened! What kind of a flareup will there be if you
 sell regardless of ethnicity?
 41.  This form of government will make it possible to accomplish
 several tasks at the same time: to unerringly marshal the resources
 of the state to where they are needed the most--the territory itself
 sends a signal to the center that things are unbearably bad here
 already!--using them with the best return by setting in motion the
 market mechanism of self-development; to weaken "the dissatisfaction
 of a transition" to market arrangements because people stand to lose
 nothing in places where the civilian administration has failed; to
 implement, in places where the civilian administration is coping, the
 reforms at a slower pace and naturally with smaller losses. It is
 easier to monitor and guarantee the rationality of foreign aid on
 territories under presidential rule; this is where they may begin to
 solve the problems of the Army as well since market mechanisms take
 years to emerge, units should be set up rapidly and formidably,
 including quality housing for officers which will later be sold to
 the local populace. Professional units may be formed here and the
 territorial militia principle may be tested. Finally, along with new
 owners--farmers, merchants, industrialists, shareholders, and so on--
 genuinely new parties will begin to emerge that will unite people
 speaking different languages and lay the foundation of new civilian
 democratic authorities.
 42.  6. Indeed, I would like very much to see us make a transition to
 a new condition of our society in a civilized and noble manner,
 making intelligent decisions in parliaments and executing them
 precisely at our work stations. I would very much like the force of
 reason to be the only driving force of perestroyka, and the
 calculations of economists and wisdom of leaders to be the only
 arguments. I dream about the struggle of ideas remaining as the only
 type of struggle in our long-suffering motherland, and platforms and
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 newspaper pages being the arena for it.
 43.  However, here I am writing it as still new abscesses continue
 swelling on the political map of our country.  Here the Lithuanians
 declare Soviet border guards dismissed, there the Abkhaz declare
 their republic sovereign, and in response the Georgians block a
 railway. In Chelyabinsk the Russians ransack their own city due to
 the lack of vodka. Armenian commandos shoot an Armenian people's
 deputy calling for peace. The country, inflamed with shortages and
 speculation, boils and rocks. People have begun murdering for
 clothing. In Moscow retirees are drying out bread to make rusks, and
 the harvest is of no use; the output of the most needed items is
 falling. The resources of society are more tightly controlled by the
 new national-officialdom tighter than before, and talk of a market
 economy remains just that--talk. We are waiting for a program.
 However nobody in the country has enough power to improve the
 situation of the people even a little. Meanwhile even the small
 groups of fools in the apparatus, politicos, and terrorists are now
 capable of making this situation worse, which occurs on a daily
 basis. Academician Shatalin was right when he softly made his remark:
 "We are proceeding toward the sovereignty of oblasts, settlements,
 and streets, but we do not have the main one--the sovereignty of
 individuals."
 44.  Perhaps some people like living in a sovereign oblast in keeping
 with the instructions of the oblast chief. However, I hope that a
 considerably greater number of my fellow citizens would prefer to
 become sovereign individuals in a modern, rich, and strong state
 capable of defending their rights on its entire territory and
 everywhere in the world. It is possible that in our case this is only
 attainable through a period of emergency measures.
 45.  How can we walk along the blade of democratization without
 falling into either a military dictatorship or the chaos of
 disintegration? We will have to ponder this no matter how unpleasant
 such reflections are for us. We will not find the right way if we
 squint blissfully, or if we are blinded by the blood of fury and
 ambition.

