The Union: Haunted By History's Horrors

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More important, a few Soviet intellectuals have begun arguing that a re- examination of the country's bloody past should not stop with Stalin but should go on to -- whisper it -- Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Lenin himself, and to some of his principles, such as the centralization of all power in the Communist Party. Gorbachev often represents his policies as a return to the pure tenets of Lenin that Stalin perverted. But a few voices are suggesting, at least by implication, that the history debate is ultimately about the legitimacy of the Soviet state, a state with no validation other than the sacred rightness of the Communist Party and its doctrine of historical inevitability. "We have no cult of Stalin, but we have a cult of the party," says literary critic Igor Zolotussky in the journal Novy Mir. "The party, and the idea it personifies, is always right. Party activists often make mistakes -- but the party, never. What is this but a new form of idolatry?"

For the moment, only a tiny minority have aired such views. But they illustrate an ancient dilemma that Gorbachev may soon confront: once people are allowed to voice long-forbidden thoughts, how do you get them to stop short of some line that the state considers safe?