After seven decades of totalitarianism, the Soviet Union is dismantling its monolithic old power structures and taking a leap into the unknown.
As the Soviet Union undergoes this political cataclysm, the Free World can best react with optimism tempered by caution.Optimism is appropriate because the Soviet people are clearly fed up with communism and want a change that can provide more freedom and prosperity. The extent of their discontent is forcefully reflected in the decision to remove communism's founding father, Lenin, from his honored mausoleum in Moscow and in the toppling of the statues of Stalin and other historic communist figures.
Caution is prudent because the new governmental structure being glued together this week is only temporary at best, because no one can be sure what will succeed the transition government, because the Soviets are acting not entirely voluntarily but out of necessity in hopes of avoiding chaos and maybe even civil war, and because the Soviet people have little experience with freedom or the personal responsibility that must go with it.
Though few except a core of unrepentant hard-liners mourn the passing of centralized power in the Soviet Union, the fact is that the new transition governmental structures rest on some flimsy footings.
The key change creates two new parliamentary chambers. The Council of the Republics includes republican delegations ranging in size from 20 to 52. Each republic has only one vote. The second chamber, the Council of the Union, is to be drawn from the existing Soviet Congress, with the republics nominating delegations in proportion to their population.
An Inter-republic Economic Committee is to control economic policy and reform, drawing strongly on help from the West.
But the ultimate fate of the Soviet Union could be decided in the third major body. The State Council, supreme executive body, will consist of the leaders of the republics that choose to take part, under the chairmanship of Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Kremlin would retain control only of foreign policy and common defense.
The central weakness of the plan is that only 10 of the 15 Soviet republics have agreed to go along. In addition, the vital Ukrainian heartland and explosive Armenia are wavering over whether or not they will stay signed up.
At the same time, the State Council has yet to decide whether it will govern by consensus or majority vote - an issue that could test the new alliance between Gorbachev and Russian republic leader Boris Yeltsin.
Another potential problem is the difficulty the Soviet Union has long had when it comes to translating political documents into reality. On paper, the Soviet constitution for decades has been similar to the U.S. Constitution. But in practice there has been little, if any, resemblance between the two countries.
By all means, free people throughout the world should welcome the Soviet Union's attempts to throw off the stifling grip of communism. But the outcome of this effort is anything but certain. About all that's sure at this point is that the end result is still mainly in the hands of the Soviet people, who can get the freedom they want only if they are willing to keep making sacrifices for it.