Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union

4. Promise and Foreboding, 1985-86

Gorbachev’s first days and months were electrifying. His speeches and person-to-person talks with Leningrad workers put the first cracks in the ice of stagnation. Mike Davidow 220

A struggle still lies ahead for the party. Khrushchev was no accident. We are primarily a peasant country, and the right wing is powerful. Where’s the guarantee to prevent them from getting the upper hand? The anti-Stalinists in all probability will come to power in the near future, and they are most likely to be Bukharinists. V. M. Molotov 221

In place of the old corrupt elements that for decades had been festering in the body of the Communist Party and the society at large, suddenly, in the space of a year or two, came even more horrible and more absolutely corrupt forces that stifled the healthy start made in the Party and the country after April 1985. Yegor Ligachev 222

The policies of Mikhail Gorbachev occupy the center of any explanation of the collapse of Soviet socialism. In 1985, Gorbachev took over a country facing longstanding problems and in short order exacerbated the situation into a system-wide crisis. The kindest judgment that could be made of Gorbachev’s policies is that they failed. Perestroika did not produce its ostensible ends—a democratic, productive, and efficient socialism. Instead, it destroyed the Soviet Union as a state and left in its place a set of balkanized countries dominated by oligarchic and lawless capitalism that after a decade had impoverished the majority of the population. Whatever Gorbachev may have hoped to achieve, it was unlikely that he wanted this. Nor was it likely that he want to become a politician without a party, a president without a state, and a socialist without socialism.

Gorbachev and his defenders said that he inherited a society in crisis. This was false. In any conventional sense, the Soviet Union had not sunk into the throes of a crisis. In 1985, its economic problems did not approach the inflation and instability of Germany in the 1920s or the depression in the United States in the 1930s. Moreover, its political problems fell far short of a crisis of legitimacy. Complaints about shortages, waiting lines, and the quality of consumer goods occurred, but little popular discontent with the system itself existed. Oleg Kalugin, a high ranking KGB officer who served in Leningrad from 1979 to 1986, said he never encountered serious opposition to the system.223 As Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich point out that discontent arose as a product, not a cause, of the reform. Personal consumption of Soviet citizens had increased between 1975 and 1985. Even though the Soviet standard of living reached only one-third to one-fifth of the American level, a general appreciation existed that Soviet citizens enjoyed greater security, lower crime, and a higher cultural and moral level than citizens in the West did. Moreover, empirical studies in the mid-1980s revealed that Soviet and American workers expressed about the same degree of satisfaction with their jobs. As late as 1990, only a small minority favored a transition to a capitalist system. Barely 4 percent of Soviet citizens favored the removal of price controls, and only 18 per cent favored the encouragement of private property.224

The absence of an acute economic crisis and mass discontent did not mean that all was well. Soviet society faced manifold problems in economics, politics, and foreign affairs. A failure to address them might have eventually produced a crisis. Even such Communists as Yegor Ligachev and Gennady Zyuganov, who became strong critics of Gorbachev, acknowledged the severity of the problems that led to the reforms. Ligachev recalled that he “like many other provincial Party secretaries was impatient for change, [and was] uncomfortably aware that the country was headed for social and economic disaster.”225 Similarly, Zyuganov recalled, “The need for reforms had been obvious to everyone.”226

The most threatening domestic problems of all were economic. In his first policy speech to a plenum of the Central Committee on November 22, 1982, Yuri Andropov provided a useful summary of the economic problems. Andropov mentioned the quantity and quality of consumer goods, the shortage of certain foods, the waste of energy resources, the poor performance of transport, and the failure of iron and steel enterprises to meet their targets. What linked many of these problems for Andropov was the failure to employ the discoveries of science and technology. This failure was reflected in unsatisfactory progress in increasing productivity, intensifying production methods, and economizing material resources. These failures were in part traceable to a planning system that placed too much emphasis on the achievement of quantitative production goals. Since improving products and production methods could temporarily reduce or slow production, there was a built-in disincentive to innovate.

Abel Aganbegyan, who headed the Institute of Economics and Industrial Organization of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences from 1967 until 1985, when he became Gorbachev’s key economic advisor, described numerous economic problems. Though overstating the case, Aganbegyan expressed the thinking of Gorbachev’s inner circle. Aganbegyan traced most of the economic problems to over-centralization. These included waste and inefficiency, a lack of worker motivation, an absence of initiative, a weakness in productivity increases, and a poor diffusion of technological innovations. Because of a weak connection between producers and consumers, the system produced more tractors and shoes than consumers needed, but fewer quality items than consumers wanted. Consumer dissatisfaction fostered the black market and corruption. For various reasons, some of which had to do with the depletion of cheap natural resources and the demographic shortage of workers due to World War II, the rate of economic growth began to suffer. Though the economy grew between 1975 and 1985, the rate of growth slacked off in terms of national income, real per capita income, productive capital investment, number of workers in production, and productivity of labor.227 According to Aganbegyan, at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, “stagnation had occurred in the economy.”228

The dissatisfaction with the slow improvement of living standards was no doubt amplified by the increasing ease with which Soviet citizens could make invidious comparisons with the West. As détente, travel, and communication brought greater awareness of how citizens lived in the West, the gap in living standards challenged the claims that socialism was leading to a better life. Fred Halliday said, “Once the living standards gap became evident then the residual legitimacy of the communist political system was swept away and that of the alternative system, the Western variant of pluralism, was enhanced.”229 Public opinion polls contradicted Halliday’s exaggerated claims, yet Halliday may well have captured the fears of Soviet leaders over where a growing gap in living standards might lead.

If economic problems provided the major backdrop of perestroika, political problems ran close behind. The problems within the Party itself had deep roots. World War II had denuded the Party of millions of dedicated cadre who had died at the front defending socialism and the homeland. Khrushchev further weakened the Party by opening wide its doors to millions of non-workers and lowering Party standards. Leonid Brezhnev’s “stability of cadre” doctrine turned Party positions into sinecures, kept Party leaders in office long past their prime, and deprived the Party of fresh blood and ideas. Moreover, as the second economy grew, it increasingly enmeshed and corrupted elements of the Party. Under Brezhnev, corruption—according to one historian—“flourished to a fabulous extent,” reaching even Brezhnev’s own family.230 In many places, nepotism, patronage, protectionism, and sycophancy prevailed. Party meetings became top-down, routine, and formal. Ideology became formulaic, and more and more intellectuals and even Party members refused to take it seriously.

Nothing symbolized the political and ideological ossification more than the senescence, illness, and death in office of the three leaders that preceded Gorbachev. The Politburo’s elevation of Gorbachev, its youngest member, to the post of General Secretary reflected a widespread concern over the perceived decrepitude of the Party leaders. Gorbachev was well aware of this. He later noted that “people were sick” of having a Politburo whose average age was around seventy and many of whose members had held their posts for twenty or thirty years and were too ill to function.231

A third problem in the backdrop of reform had to do foreign relations. Though the Soviet Union had never been free of imperialist pressure, this pressure increased under President Jimmy Carter and increased even more under President Ronald Reagan. Between 1981 and 1986, the Reagan administration launched a “full court press”232 against the “evil empire” designed to shrink its foreign influence and damage its economy. This campaign involved support for the Solidarity movement in Poland and the counterrevolutionary guerillas in Afghanistan, an effort to diminish Soviet gold reserves by driving down the price of oil, an increased propaganda offensive, diplomatic moves to reduce Soviet access to Western technology, the disruption of the Soviet economy by exporting faulty equipment, and an effort to bankrupt the Soviets by initiating a military build-up spearheaded by the Strategic Defense Initiative, Star Wars.233

A few details suggest the scope and results of this campaign. The United States was giving $8 million a year to the Polish opposition group, Solidarity, and supplying it with sophisticated communication equipment, computers, fax machines, printing equipment, and intelligence information. U.S. sanctions against Poland required the Soviet Union to send the country $1 to $2 billion a year in aid. Led by the efforts of CIA chief William Casey, the administration trained Afghans, sent them artillery and rockets, and induced the Egyptians, Saudis, and Chinese to send them aid. The Soviet military effort to protect the Afghan revolutionary government against the American-supported war lords cost the Soviets $3 to $4 billion a year.234

The American government worked systematically with the Saudis and OPEC to lower the price of oil on the world market, a move that aided the American economy while devastating the Soviets, who depended on oil sales for the bulk of their hard currency. The Reagan administration agreed to sell advanced military planes and Stinger missiles to the Saudis in return for greater oil production and lower prices. In 1983, under U.S. pressure, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut the price of oil from $34 to $29 a barrel. In 1985, the Saudis increased their oil production from less than 2 million barrels a day to 9 million barrels. Within five months, the price of oil fell to $12 a barrel. As writer Peter Schweizer noted, “For Moscow, over $10 billion in valuable hard currency evaporated overnight, almost half its earnings.”235

The Reagan administration also engaged in technological warfare. Beginning in December 1981, Reagan instituted an embargo of American gas and oil equipment to the Soviet Union. In June 1982, he extended the sanctions to American licensees and subsidiaries abroad. In November 1982, Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive NSDD-66, whose principal author described it as “a secret declaration of economic war on the Soviet Union.” Among its goals was to deny high technology to the Soviet Union and reduce European imports of Soviet gas and oil. By 1983, American high-tech exports to the Soviet Union were valued at only $39 million compared to $219 million in 1975. This economic warfare did not stop with denying the Soviets access to high-tech; the U.S. also sabotaged the goods the Soviets did receive. In 1984, for example, the U.S. supplied the Soviet Union with faulty blueprints for gas turbine components and through middlemen sold the Soviet Union defective computer chips. Such moves cost the Soviet Union untold time and money.236

Part of Reagan’s destabilization effort involved an escalation of the ideological warfare waged by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Between 1982 and 1986, both stations increased the number and sophistication of their foreign-language broadcasts, as well as the number of their listeners. As glasnost reduced and then eliminated jamming in 1988, Radio Liberty reached 22 million Soviet listeners a month. Both stations fomented nationalism, stirred up outrage over the Chernobyl disaster, encouraged opposition to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, provided a platform for pro-market advocates like Yeltsin, and aired unsubstantiated corruption charges against the Party leader, Yegor Ligachev, after he opposed Gorbachev.237

The most serious part of the U.S. strategy called for increasing the military pressure on the Soviet Union, a strategy that some American analysts called “spending them into bankruptcy.”238 In his first news conference as president, Reagan declared the Soviet Union would “commit any crime,” would lie and cheat to achieve its goal of world domination. Shortly thereafter, Reagan began “the largest peace-time military buildup in American history.” This meant a military expenditure of $1.5 trillion in five years and plans to develop a Stealth bomber, to build hundreds of MX missiles, Multiple Independently-Targeted Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVed missiles), cruise missiles, and new B-1 bombers, and Trident submarines. The keystone of this ratcheting up of military pressure would be a fabulously expensive and futuristic missile defense system. On March 23, 1983, in a speech on national defense, President Reagan announced that he had decided to embark on the research and development to build such a system. Two years later, Reagan asked Congress for $26 billion to launch the Strategic Defensive Initiative.239

The Reagan policies cost the Soviet Union billions of dollars of income because of falling oil and gas prices and lost oil and gas sales. It cost extra billions for aid to Poland and Afghanistan and to compensate for unavailable technology and sabotaged technology. Though some Soviet experts dismissed SDI as a bluff, others thought it, along with the other American moves, represented a real threat.240 According to Roald Z. Sagdayev, who headed the Soviet Space Research Institute, after 1983 the Soviet Union spent tens of billions of dollars responding to Star Wars. Gorbachev’s predecessor, Chernenko, said, “The complex international situation has forced us to divert a great deal of resources to strengthening the security of our country.”241

In March 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU, he quickly established himself as a leader who was willing to confront problems and undertake bold, new initiatives. At first, Gorbachev resumed the course charted by Andropov. Gorbachev’s initiatives met with some success and were enthusiastically greeted at home and abroad, including by the Soviet Communist Party, where in spite of some grumbling that he was either going too far or not far enough, no determined opposition arose. Before his first two years were over, Gorbachev began departing from Andropov’s style and substance and started adopting policies that resembled Khrushchev’s.

Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, a farming village of 3000, located in the southern agricultural krai (region) of Stavropol, 124 miles from the city of Stavropol. This area of the Caucasus grew wheat and sunflowers and contained mineral spas and resorts. In the early 1930s, Stavropol participated in the collectivization of agriculture, in which Gorbachev’s grandfather had played a role. During the war, in which seven of Gorbachev’s relatives died, the Germans occupied and destroyed much of Stavropol. The destruction was still visible from the train that Gorbachev took to Moscow to attend Lomonosov State University in 1950. The Red Banner of Labor that Gorbachev achieved as a combine operator aided his acceptance at the university, where he studied the Western intellectual tradition and public speaking and obtained a law degree. Gorbachev would become the first General Secretary since Lenin with a college degree. While a student, Gorbachev joined the Communist Party, and according to one who knew him, “venerated”242 Lenin. Also, while a student, Gorbachev married Raissa, a philosophy student.

After graduation, Gorbachev returned to Stavropol, where he remained for the next twenty-three years. Instead of practicing law, Gorbachev undertook the life of a Party professional and became known for his devotion and hard work. Through correspondence courses, he attained a second degree in agronomy. A Czechoslovak friend from college, who kept in touch with Gorbachev, reported that Gorbachev sympathized with the Czech leader, Alexander Dubcek, whose reforms led to the Soviet intervention in 1968. Such views did not impede Gorbachev’s steady rise. In 1970, at the age of thirty-nine, Gorbachev became the first secretary of the Stavropol region, a position roughly equivalent to the governor of a state of 2.4 million people. At the same time, he was elected to the Supreme Soviet. The following year, Gorbachev became a member of the Central Committee. In these posts, Gorbachev gained respect as an authority in agriculture. In 1978, partially through the influence of Andropov, who also came from Stavropol, Gorbachev gained appointment as the head of the Central Committee’s agricultural department, a position that brought him to Moscow. The next year, he became a member of the Politburo, where his youth, vigor, hard work and long hours made him stand out.

At the time of his selection as General Secretary, Gorbachev had considerable assets. Along with being educated, charming, and energetic, he had training and talent as a public speaker. When widespread concern existed about the vitality of the Soviet leadership, he had the advantage of being the youngest member of the Politburo. He was married to an intelligent and stylish woman. As early as 1983, he had made it clear that he favored reform. In December 1984, in a speech to an ideological conference of the Central Committee, Gorbachev called for glasnost (openness) in public communications and perestroika (restructuring) of the economic system.243 Nonetheless, Gorbachev seemed to be a cautious and reliable team player. He had particularly acquitted himself well during Chernenko’s sickness, when according to Andrei Gromyko, he had chaired Politburo meetings “brilliantly.”244

Still, Gorbachev had manifest weaknesses that became more glaring over time. All bureaucracies rely to some extent on patronage for advancement, and Gorbachev’s rise proved no exception. It depended less on original accomplishments, even in his chosen field of agriculture, than on the fortunate attention of well-positioned patrons, like Andropov. His acquaintance with many national Party leaders who vacationed at the spas in Stavropol probably aided Gorbachev’s advancement as well. Moreover, his education notwithstanding, Gorbachev had little experience with Soviet life outside of agriculture and the Party. Before becoming General Secretary, he had traveled more widely in Western Europe and Canada than in the outlying republics of the Soviet Union, and unlike every previous Soviet leader, he lacked any experience living or working in the non-Russian parts of the country.245 He also lacked experience with the military, foreign affairs, industry, science, technology, and the trade unions.246 Though he liked to toss out quotations from Lenin, he lacked a deep knowledge or understanding of Marxist theory and Soviet history, both of which he distorted to suit his purposes. Historian Anthony D’Agostino said that a skeptic might well have noted that Gorbachev “was a lawyer who had never practiced law, who had spent a long career in agriculture, who knew nothing of foreign affairs, who had got the attention of his superiors because he was First Secretary in a resort area, whose qualifications were rather like those of Prince Rainier of Monaco or the mayor of Las Vegas.”247

Moreover, Gorbachev suffered from the contradictions of an educated provincial. For most of his life he had been a big fish in a little pond. This helped make him vain, condescending, and ruthless to subordinates but deferential to the powerful and worldly. It also gave him a taste for fine wine, good food, and the other trappings of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Several incidents revealed his arrogance. Even though Andrei Gromyko, the senior member of the Politburo, nominated Gorbachev as General Secretary, four years later Gorbachev did not attend his funeral.248 Similarly, Gorbachev condescended to other Politburo members, all of whom were his senior, by addressing them in the familiar but belittling thou (ty) form. Gorbachev’s ruthlessness was on full display on November 11, 1987, when he ordered his critic, Boris Yeltsin to leave a hospital bed, where he was having chest pains, and attend a meeting of the Moscow City Party Committee that berated him for hours and then removed him as Moscow Chair.249

As General Secretary, Gorbachev initially followed Andropov’s policies. Like Andropov, Gorbachev called for an acceleration of scientific and technological progress, the improvement of management, and an increase in discipline. In foreign affairs, particularly in terms of relations with the U.S., Andropov had been constrained by hostile circumstances not of his making. Nonetheless, he had shown a desire to reduce tensions with the U.S. and to make progress on nuclear disarmament, and had shown flexibility in hopes of advancing toward these goals. Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin believed that in a more favorable international situation than the one he inherited, Andropov “would have been ready for serious agreements with Washington, especially in limiting nuclear arms. In this he somewhat resembled Mikhail Gorbachev, who was his protégé.”250 In tackling political stagnation, Andropov had called for a restoration of Leninist standards: collective leadership, self-criticism, discipline, modesty, honesty, and hard work—standards to which he had held himself. Andropov had started to rid the Party of time-servers, corruption, formalism, and cynicism, to revive an interest in ideology, and to elevate such honest and diligent local leaders as Yegor Ligachev and, supposedly, Gorbachev.

Addressing the Central Committee for the first time as General Secretary in March 1985 in a speech entitled, “Our Course Remains Unchanged,” and a second time in April 1985, Gorbachev invoked Andropov’s name and slogans. He called for social and economic acceleration, transferring the economy onto “the rails of intensive development,” and quickly attaining “the most advanced scientific and technical positions.” He also called for “strengthening discipline” and perfecting “the entire management system.” Gorbachev advocated the elimination of wage leveling. In a swipe at the illegal parts of the second economy and corruption, he called for a struggle against “unearned incomes” and all “phenomena that are alien to the socialist way of life.” In foreign policy, Gorbachev reaffirmed such traditional Soviet positions as the support of national liberation, peaceful coexistence, and cooperation with the West on “principles of equality.” He gave special emphasis on ending the arms race and freezing nuclear arsenals. In politics, Gorbachev proposed “strengthening” and “heightening” the leading role of the Party, a “strict observance of the Leninist style of work” and the elimination of “false idealization” and formalism in Party meetings. Gorbachev spoke of the need for glasnost, or “greater openness and publicity” about the work of the Party, state and other public organizations.251

In deeds as well as words, Gorbachev resembled Andropov. In 1985, Gorbachev’s economic policies had two thrusts. The first was to improve the “human factor” through the promotion of new cadre and through increased “discipline.” The second was to move from “extensive” to “intensive” growth by changing investment policy in order to retool and modernize existing factories. Gorbachev encouraged discussion on ways to improve discipline and restructure the economy.252 In May 1985, to improve work discipline, Gorbachev launched a campaign against alcohol consumption, a serious social problem that for years had eroded family life and health, as well as reduced labor productivity. Andropov had increased the penalties for public drunkenness; Gorbachev went further. He slashed the production of vodka and limited the hours of vodka sales.253 In June 1985, Gorbachev devoted a plenary of the Central Committee to the scientific and technological revolution. This resulted in the creation of twenty-three new technical research complexes.254 In October, Gorbachev changed the five-year plan in order to increase investment in machine-building and raise the technical level of production.255 Gorbachev accompanied these moves with an explicit rejection of market reforms. In May, Gorbachev said, “Many of you see the solution to your problems in resorting to market mechanisms in place of direct planning. Some of you look at the market as a lifesaver for your economics. But, comrades, you should not think about life-savers but about the ship, and the ship is socialism.”256

Gorbachev made two other economic moves that resembled Andropov’s. In order to raise the quality of industrial goods, nineteen enterprises initiated quality control measures similar to those that worked effectively in the armament industry. In early 1986, the Council of Ministers created a state quality control body (gospriemka) with the authority to regulate the quality of production at the most important enterprises, including those producing consumer goods. Gorbachev also launched an attack on wage leveling, a practice that had reduced the differential between the wages of an industrial specialist and an average worker from 146 percent in 1965 to 110 percent in 1986. Under the new system, the wages of industrial specialists and of workers in research, development, education, and health care would increase more than the wages of other workers.257

During his first year, Gorbachev tried to break the logjam in American-Soviet relations. The situation he faced was daunting. Soviet-American relations had deteriorated since 1979, when the United States began arming the counterrevolutionaries in Afghanistan, and the Soviets had responded to the Afghan government’s call for help by sending troops. To punish the Soviet Union, President Carter ended arms negotiations and imposed an agricultural boycott. Thereafter, for six years, not a single meeting of the U.S. and Soviet high officials had occurred.

In the spring of 1985, Gorbachev reaffirmed the traditional elements of Soviet foreign policy while initiating some new moves. He repeated the Soviet commitment to peace and peaceful co-existence on the basis of a military and strategic balance with the West. He underscored the Soviet Union’s solidarity with socialist states and with peoples fighting for their freedom and independence. Gorbachev supported the new revolutionary government of Nicaragua.258 He intensified the Soviet military effort in Afghanistan.259 He increased the Soviet support of the African National Congress (ANC), including the military training of ANC activists.

At the same time, Gorbachev took steps to improve the international atmosphere with the U.S. and Western Europe. In May, he accepted a proposal from President Reagan for a summit. In July, he announced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. In September, he proposed a 50 percent reduction in strategic nuclear warheads. In October, while visiting France, Gorbachev announced a unilateral reduction in Soviet intermediate-range missiles directed at Europe.260 In November in Geneva, Gorbachev and Reagan held the first summit meeting in years. Though no substantive agreements emerged, a frank and friendly exchange of views occurred. At this time, Gorbachev told Reagan some accommodation might be possible on Afghanistan.261 Gorbachev’s actions in 1985 produced a palpable relaxation of international tensions.

Gorbachev also took steps that looked like efforts to address the political stagnation, corruption, and ideological weaknesses of the CPSU, though in many cases they simply involved promoting his supporters. At the top, Eduard Shevardnadze replaced Gromyko as Foreign Minister. N. I. Ryzhkov replaced Nikolai Tikhonov as premier. Boris Yeltsin was appointed head of the Moscow Party. While criticizing the “personal loyalty, servility, and protectionism” that marked the operation of the Party in many republics, Gorbachev replaced officials in Latvia, Lithuania, and Byelorussia. Moves against corrupt local officials occurred in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Kirghizia. The shakeup was far-reaching. Within a year, Gorbachev replaced over 50 percent of the full and candidate members of the Politburo. He replaced fourteen of the twenty-three heads of Central Committee departments, five of fourteen heads of Republics, and 50 of 157 first secretaries of krais (regions) and oblasts (districts). Gorbachev replaced 40 percent of the ambassadors, shook up many ministries, and removed fifty thousand managers. In the Ministry of Instruments (in charge of computers and electronics), Gorbachev had a thousand personnel replaced.262

Serious Communists especially welcomed Gorbachev’s early treatment of ideology. Not only did Gorbachev recognize the preeminent role of ideology, but also he recognized that over the years the Party’s ideology had become ossified and formulaic, and parts diverged from reality. In particular, Gorbachev modified two ideas that had gained a new meaning under Brezhnev. The first was the idea that capitalism had entered a period of general crisis, and the second was the idea that the Soviet Union had entered the period of “developed socialism.” Earlier, Andropov had recognized the inadequacy of these concepts. He asked how it could be that under capitalism in crisis workers were living better than under developed socialism. In a similar vein, Gorbachev said, “Divergence of words from reality dramatically devalues ideological efforts.”263 While not discarding the concepts of the general crisis of capitalism and developed socialism, he changed their meaning. Gorbachev pointed out that the general crisis of capitalism did not imply that capitalism was not still growing and mastering science and technology. More importantly, Gorbachev demoted the idea of developed socialism by saying that its realization was dependent upon the acceleration of economic and social progress. Moreover, he said that the idea of developed socialism had shifted over time giving rise to unwarranted complacency. Under this idea, he said, “things were not infrequently reduced to just registering success, while many of the urgent problems…were not given due attention. Willy-nilly, this was a peculiar vindication of sluggishness in solving remaining problems. Today when the Party has proclaimed and is pursuing the policy of accelerating socio-economic development, this approach has become unacceptable.”264

Gorbachev also ushered in a style or culture of Party life that seemingly drew inspiration from both Lenin and Andropov. He called on the Party “to build a bridge to Lenin, to connect Lenin’s ideas, Lenin’s approach to the problems of those years and the issues of our own day.”265 He adopted a style of speaking forthrightly and bluntly about problems. At Party meetings, he dispensed with the practice of everyone speaking on every question and of everyone routinely praising Party leaders. He called on Communists to struggle systematically “against ostentation, arrogance, eulogies, and bootlicking.”266 He asked editors of newspapers and magazines to stop “personal adulation.”267 Gorbachev called for Communists to become political leaders and not just officials and administrators. Following his own advice, Gorbachev traveled around the country and met with workers on collective farms, factories, and markets. He invited intellectuals, cultural figures, and media representatives to the Kremlin. His public appearances with his wife, informal meetings with foreign leaders, and interviews with foreign editors and reporters signaled a modern, assertive, and open style that was long overdue and breathtakingly fresh. The American Communist correspondent, Mike Davidow, who was stationed in Moscow, said, “Gorbachev’s first days and months were electrifying. His speeches and person-to-person talks with Leningrad workers put the first cracks in the ice of stagnation.”268

Gorbachev’s early initiatives evoked nearly universal approval. In the West, Communist Parties, the peace movement, liberal politicians, and common citizens hailed his call for new thinking about peace. Gus Hall, head of the Communist Party of the United States, praised the Soviet leader’s “new thinking” for having reduced anti-Sovietism, lessened world tensions, and shrunk the danger of nuclear war.269 At home, enthusiastic crowds greeted Gorbachev’s visits to markets and workplaces. In 1985, Soviet citizens sent 40,000 letters a month to the Kremlin, and in following year 60,000 a month, most of which supported what Gorbachev was saying and doing.270 Even though Gorbachev removed many people from their positions in the Party and ministries, his support remained solid. In the face of new demands, some griping and inertia in the bureaucracy inevitably occurred, but no organized opposition. Even Yegor Ligachev and Boris Yeltsin, who would become Gorbachev’s leading critics on the left and the right, fully supported perestroika. Before 1987, when Gorbachev alluded to the opponents of reform, he was largely engaging in a pre-emptive strike rather than responding to any real threat.

The widespread support for Gorbachev was quite under-standable. He was addressing problems that were perceived as central to the Soviet system by academic researchers, Party professionals, and the man and woman on the street. His moves on disarmament began to address the economic drain of the arms race. His replacement of cadre, exposure of corruption, and calls for greater openness and criticism attacked the political stagnation that had become so pervasive.

If Gorbachev initially followed a reform path that resembled Andropov’s, he eventually would adopt a different path—adopting market solutions and private property, weakening the Communist Party, abandoning international solidarity, and making unilateral concessions to the West. When and why did Gorbachev change his course? Neither question is easy to answer. When the move began is difficult to specify because the rhetoric and the policies of reform sometimes moved in contradictory directions at once. Still, as we shall see, some clear signs of a move against socialism became evident within the first two years of Gorbachev’s tenure, though it would not become dominant until after January 1987. Why Gorbachev changed is also hard to answer because fathoming anyone’s motives is problematic. Consequently, the best we can provide is a plausible explanation.

Before examining the first signs of change, let us suggest three hypotheses as to why this shift occurred. We will argue that the first two hypotheses are flawed and that only the third provides a plausible explanation. The first hypothesis is that Gorbachev was always a social democrat or a Communist with capitalist sympathies and that his early Andropov-sounding rhetoric and policies just represented political gamesmanship to keep his opponents off balance until he had the strength and opportunity to push his real agenda. The second hypothesis is that Gorbachev turned to market-oriented and Party-weakening reforms because the Andropov-type reforms proved ineffective. In other words, Gorbachev turned to capitalist economic ideas because improving the economy within the boundaries of Soviet socialism proved too difficult. He began weakening the Party because he saw the Party as an obstacle to far-reaching economic reforms.

The third hypothesis, the one advanced here, is that Gorbachev turned away from socialism and toward capitalism because he lacked the strength and sense of purpose to withstand the anti-socialist interests unleashed by the reform process. These interests had developed for years in those parts of the society and the Party enmeshed in illegal, private economic activity, but they had remained more or less dormant until the upheaval of reform. The second economy had exacerbated the chronic problems of Soviet society, had eroded confidence in socialism and the Communist Party, and had created a sizable, confident and growing social base of would-be capitalists. Hence, even before 1985, the second economy had created conditions favorable to anti-socialist and pro-capitalist ideas and policies. Gorbachev’s early reforms galvanized this sector’s demands for “freedom” and legitimacy. Theoretically weak, inexperienced, impulsive, and ambitious, Gorbachev vacillated and then capitulated. His desire for quick, painless, short-term success and for the adulation and political security this would bring led him to throw his lot with the growing stratum of bureaucrats and petty entrepreneurs tied to the second economy and their defenders and sympathizers among the intelligentsia.

Many who hate Gorbachev for destroying socialism, as well as some who applaud him for doing so, find the first hypothesis appealing. To be sure, some evidence supported the idea that Gorbachev had social democratic sympathies even before he became General Secretary. For example, two of his friends before 1985 were Alexander Yakovlev and Edward Shevardnadze, two of the most extreme social democratic elements in his administration. Other evidence suggested that Gorbachev held private objectives that went beyond his public views. Yakovlev said that as early as the fall of 1985, Gorbachev expressed secret sympathy with the idea of dividing the Communist Party in two but warned that such a move was premature. The present state of knowledge makes it impossible to say with absolute certainty that Gorbachev was not dissembling when, for example, he declared his fealty to Lenin and socialism. Even more information might not reveal Gorbachev’s true thoughts and motivations, which are always difficult to know of anyone.

Yet, to believe that Gorbachev held social democratic or pro-capitalist views before becoming General Secretary confronts some intractable questions and stubborn facts. If Gorbachev did not adopt these ideas after becoming General Secretary, just when did he adopt them? How was it possible for someone with these views to conceal them so successfully and rise to the top while holding them? Gorbachev himself never claimed to have had a calculated and coherent plan to destroy the Communist Party and institute a free market and private property. Moreover, Ligachev and others who worked closely with the Soviet leader did not suspect him of harboring a secret revisionist agenda. This idea does appear in the writings of such outsiders as the economist Anders Aslund, who asserted that as early as 1984 Gorbachev had “a clear idea” of market-oriented economic reform. On close inspection, however, Aslund’s evidence showed no more than that early on Gorbachev advocated an eclectic mix of reform ideas. He entertained some ideas like cost accounting and increased competition that vaguely foreshadowed his later embrace of the market, but he mainly proposed ideas pioneered by Andropov such as a changed investment policy to promote new technology and new measures to enhance discipline and crack down on unearned incomes.271 Ellman and Kontorovich are nearer the mark than Aslund, when they note that Gorbachev’s economic contributions in 1982-84 revealed not only no plan but also no coherence.272

What was true was that Gorbachev’s background and experience made him uncommonly sympathetic to the second economy and susceptible to pro-capitalist ideas. For one thing, Stavropol, his home base, had a highly developed private or second economy with its attendant petty bourgeois mentality.273 Moreover, he had traveled more widely in the West than many other Soviet leaders, and he may well have been influenced by Italian Eurocommunism, whose ideas later echoed in his speeches.274 Thirdly, early on Gorbachev surrounded himself with advisors who held pronounced social democratic views. For example, he relied on such market-oriented intellectuals as Tatyana Zaslavskaya and Abel Aganbegyan.275 In 1986, he hired as a consultant the philosopher, Alexander Tsipko, a self-admitted anti-Marxist, who later claimed that Gorbachev’s idea of elevating “universal human values” over class values came from him.276 Gorbachev’s path would soon resemble the one Shevardnadze had followed in Georgia, the republic with “the largest second economy in the USSR,” where Shevardnadze had tried to co-opt the second economy “by making the official economy more market-oriented.”277

The hypothesis that from the start Gorbachev had a secret agenda to destroy Soviet socialism and move toward a Western European model is a hard sell. At best one could say that some things in his background might have predisposed him to move in that direction. After his initial reforms shook things up, Gorbachev—who lacked any plan—succumbed to this predisposition and abandoned Andropov’s path because his own weakness and inexperience made him ill-equipped to deal with the forces released by change, because he hoped to buy time and obtain resources by giving in to pressure from U.S., and most importantly, because doing so won him the passive support of those disaffected with the system and the active support of the ascendant stratum of entrepreneurs and corrupt Party officials tied to the second economy.

The second hypothesis involves the assumption that the problems of the Soviet economy stemmed from socialism itself. It assumes that the economy could not be improved while retaining socialized property and central planning. This hypothesis appeals to Gorbachev supporters who see him tragically driven to an extreme and ultimately disastrous course by the immutability of both the economic system and the Party. This hypothesis also has the appeal of common sense. Common sense would say that if Gorbachev’s initial efforts had revitalized the economy, Gorbachev would have had no need for stronger medicine. Therefore his initial efforts must have failed either because of the inherent constraints of the economic system or because of their undoing by those in the Party opposed to reform. History, however, does not always follow the logic of common sense, and history’s truth is often counter-intuitive. Only an examination of the actual history can provide an answer.

When and why Gorbachev began moving to the right, toward capitalism, pivots on the answer to three questions: 1. What were the results of Gorbachev’s early efforts at economic reform? That is, were the results a failure, and did they reveal the impossibility of moderate reform? 2. What was the Party’s response to the economic problems? Did it resist reform? 3. Did Gorbachev’s first rightward moves involve the economy? Only if the answers to these questions clearly showed that the moderate reform failed that the Party resisted economic reform, and that Gorbachev’s first moves to the right concerned the economy could the second hypothesis be true. In all three areas, the truth was far different.

The hypothesis that Gorbachev turned to the right because moderate economic reform did not work could be true only if the initial economic reform failed. This was not true. The economic changes brought about by Gorbachev’s early policies were not an unalloyed success, but they brought definite signs of improvement. In 1985 and 1986 both production and consumption increased.278 Economic growth went up 1 to 2 percent in the early reform period. Productivity increased from 2-3 percent to 4.5 percent. In 1986 in the machine industry alone, capital investment increased by 30 percent, more than in the preceding five years. The same year agricultural production grew by 5 percent.279 The consumption of goods and services increased by 10 percent in 1985 and 1986, about one and a half time greater than in the preceding years. Improvements in health care and other areas increased life expectancy for the first time in twenty years and lowered infant mortality.280

Gorbachev also registered some notable failures, particularly when he acted rashly. This happened with the anti-alcohol campaign. Gorbachev slashed alcohol production and sales, but this spawned rampant bootlegging. The production of illegal vodka depleted the stores of sugar and drained billions of rubles in tax revenue from the state budget. Had he based his policies on experiences elsewhere, Gorbachev would have realized that reducing the production of alcohol was bound to lead to illegal production and sales, just as Prohibition did in the United States. A campaign based on consumption taxes, education, counseling, and rehabilitation would have held greater promise. Within two years, Gorbachev abandoned the anti-alcohol campaign.281 Similarly, Gorbachev’s policy of accelerating production simply led to the increased production of shoddy goods. When Gorbachev countered with a system of state inspectors, the amount of goods rejected as substandard was so great that an outcry arose among workers who found their income reduced. Gorbachev had to abandon the inspectors just as he abandoned the anti-alcohol campaign.282 These failures involved impulsive measures aimed at quick returns. They were not representative of the economic reforms of the first year, which yielded positive results.

The hypothesis that Gorbachev turned to the right because the other Party leaders opposed any economic reform is also false. It was far from the case that Party leaders resisted efforts to improve the economy. Ellman and Kontorovich, who based their study of economic reform on interviews with Soviet insiders, said that their interviews “provide no evidence of resistance to reforms.”283 The very reverse was true. The economist Aslund, who lived in Moscow in the 1980s and was himself a partisan of market reforms, nonetheless acknowledged that “all the new Soviet leaders want change.” Even the Brezhnevites on the Politburo—Gaidar Aliev, Viktor Grishin, Dimukhamed Kunaev, Vladimir Shcherbitski and Nikolai Tikhonov—supported economic changes to move the Soviet economy toward the model of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Moreover, Aslund identified three other economic reform currents among Soviet leaders that were more far-reaching than the Brezhnevites but still short of the marketization and privatization later advocated by Gorbachev’s group. One group led by Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov saw the solution to economic problems as residing in greater efficiency and the intensification of production. This group advocated such measures as the better utilization of scientific results, a new investment policy concentrated on machine building and experimentation with self-financing at enterprises. Another group led by Lev Zaikov, who became Central Committee Secretary for the military-industrial complex in July 1985, supported changes in investment policy to encourage machine building and scientific and technological progress, as well such measures as quality inspection, wage differentials, and the promotion of shift work. This group, however, was less enthusiastic than Ryzhkov’s about self-financing or anything that smacked of markets and competition.284

A third group led by the Party’s second in command, Ligachev, put its major emphasis on improving discipline. Ligachev favored the anti-alcohol campaign, and moves against consumerism, the second economy and corruption. Ligachev favored wage differentials, and he favored strengthening and streamlining centralized planning and increasing the efficiency and responsibility of individual enterprises. He supported, for example, experiments in self-financing, better enterprise accounting, and collective contracts but adamantly opposed any moves toward private property and a market economy. Ligachev endorsed changes in the economy outlined at the scientific and technical conference in June 1985 but added that the changes would occur “within the framework of scientific socialism, without any aberrations whatsoever in the direction of ‘market economy’ and private enterprise.”285

The receptiveness of Party leaders to economic reform was reflected in the widespread economic experimentation at the regional and local level that began under Andropov and continued under Chernenko and Gorbachev. For example, in 1983, the Central Committee and Council of Ministers began what was called the “large-scale economic experiment,” which involved reducing plan indicators and using bonus systems in five ministries. The experiment was no panacea, but it did lead to improvement in the delivery of goods and to greater labor efficiency. Eventually, the experiment expanded to embrace twenty-one ministries by 1985 and half of industrial production by 1986. In 1985 two experiments in self-financing began at the VAZ plant in Togliatti on the Volga, a car manufacturer, and in the Frunze plant in Sumy in the Ukraine, a manufacturer of natural gas equipment. This experiment involved simplifying the payment transactions between the firms and the state to a simple “tax” based on profits and correlating wage increases with productivity increases. Both experiments produced impressive results in terms of profits and productivity. Other experiments were under way in the service industry and in agriculture.286

The point to be made is that in the period 1984 to 1986 a great receptivity to economic reform existed and a great deal of economic experimentation was occurring. Such debate and experimentation was occurring within the boundaries of socialism and had hardly reached a dead-end when Gorbachev began introducing more extreme ideas. The economist Aslund explained this paradox this way: “[For the reform economists around Gorbachev] the actual economic results [of these experiments] were of little interest, while their political impact was everything. Many experiments were designed to perfect the system, while leading Soviet economists and the Gorbachev camp wanted to replace it with a more market-oriented system.”287 In other words, certain economists and advisors in the Gorbachev camp were already committed to market reforms and privatization, and they used the experiments within the existing framework mainly to provide arguments for going further. In 1987, the main opposition to the first economic reforms came not from Party leaders, but from the economists around Gorbachev who were eager to push onward to expanded markets and private property.

The third underpinning of the hypothesis that Gorbachev turned to the right because of the failure of the initial reform and Party opposition is as lacking as the first two. Gorbachev’s first moves to the right did not arise in the economic arena. Rather, they occurred in politics, ideology, and foreign policy. In these areas as well, Gorbachev’s policies bore the most problematic results.

The Twenty-seventh Congress of the CPSU meeting in February 1986 provided an early sign that Gorbachev was taking the reform process in a new, untried direction. This first occurred less as a new policy than as a new ideology of reform itself. Instead of continuity with the past, Gorbachev started stressing a break with the past and referring to the Brezhnev years as a period of stagnation. He said in both domestic and foreign affairs, developments were at a “turning point” and that “truly revolutionary change” was necessary. He replaced Andropov’s term, “acceleration of scientific and technological change” with the vaguer, broader, and potentially more troublesome term, “acceleration of economic and social development.” In case anyone missed the shift in meaning, Gorbachev stressed that he was not confining change to the economic field, but envisaging changes in methods of work and political and ideological institutions. At this time, Gorbachev began replacing, uskornie (acceleration), with the words, perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness),288 while infusing these old terms with new meanings. In April, Gorbachev said perestroika meant total change. In June, he said it meant the change of all of society. In July, he said it meant revolution. This broadening gave the concept of perestroika dramatic appeal, but it also contained real danger. Namely, these changes in terminology robbed reform of the clear goals it had had under Andropov. Perestroika’s meaning became redundant, restructuring for the sake of restructuring; the goal of reform became circular, change for the sake of change.289 These changes undermined the unity and purpose of the Party that was supposed to lead the change. Inside and outside the Party, the door was thrown open to a variety of interpretations of the ultimate reform goal. For some, the goal remained the perfection of socialism, but for others the goal was national separatism, social democracy, market socialism, capitalism or simply personal enrichment.

Gorbachev also subtly changed and expanded the meaning of glasnost in ways that undercut the traditional role of the Party and the function of criticism and self-criticism. During his first year in office, Gorbachev used glasnost as Andropov had, to mean greater openness and publicity on the part of the Party, government, state, and other public organizations and more exposure of corruption and inefficiency. In April 1985, for example, Gorbachev called for the release of more administrative information to the public. Soon, Gorbachev transformed glasnost’s meaning from openness by the Party and other bodies, to open criticism of the Party and its history. In June, the General Secretary met with media officials and urged them to support the reform effort by making “open, specific, and constructive” criticisms of shortcomings. Soon after, the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya criticized the Moscow Party head, Viktor Grishin. Gorbachev then replaced him with Boris Yeltsin, a presumed ally.290

The full extent of the problems caused by Gorbachev’s version of glasnost would not become evident until 1987. The basis for these problems, however, occurred in the moves Gorbachev made as early as the fall of 1985. In short, Gorbachev began to encourage intellectuals and the media to criticize the Party and Party history, while simultaneously diminishing the role and authority of the Party over the media. Indeed, he did not simply diminish the Party’s oversight of the media, he actually turned the media over to people who were hostile to the CPSU and socialism. While some moves toward the relaxation of censorship and a more relaxed approach to publications and culture were overdue and would have been widely supported in the Party, it nonetheless was a transition that demanded a delicate handling if it were not to lead to instability. Like so much else, Gorbachev’s approach to glasnost was rash and reckless and would ultimately prove to be extremely foolhardy and destructive not only for the Party and but also the whole society.

In his memoirs, Gorbachev disingenuously claimed, “Glasnost broke out of the limits that we had initially tried to frame and became a process that was beyond anybody’s control.”291 This is not accurate. By word and deed, Gorbachev himself fostered the very excesses about which he acted helpless. He was enamored with the media and intellectuals, sought their help and approval, met with them frequently, relied on them to build him a base of support outside the Party, incited them to criticize the Party and Party history, and then refused to exercise any restraint whatsoever. At the Twenty-seventh Party Congress, Gorbachev opened the door to criticism without limits. “It is time for literary and art criticism to shake off complacency and servility…and to remember that criticism is a social duty.”292 The next month, Gorbachev and Ligachev met with representatives of the mass media, and Gorbachev said that “the main enemy is bureaucratism, and the press must castigate it without backing off.”293 A truly anomalous situation thus emerged. The General Secretary, who was the leader of the Party and who had the power to reform the Party and government, was inciting attacks from the outside on those very entities, as if he were a mere bystander, not ultimately responsible for them.

This was certainly a major revision of Communist practice. At the very least, it implied that the traditional way of dealing with Party and government weaknesses through collective criticism and self-criticism lacked the force to revitalize the Party. Gorbachev turned to outside criticism as a first rather than last resort. No evidence existed of Gorbachev trying and failing to undertake criticism of the Party, or of his encountering any notable opposition. Yet, in June 1986, Gorbachev told a group of writers that they must function as the “loyal opposition.” It was as if the Soviet leader was invoking an old-fashioned, idealized image of the role of the media in liberal democracy—this time as a guide to socialist reform. “We have no opposition [party],” Gorbachev said. “How then are we going to control ourselves? Only through criticism and self-criticism; but most importantly through glasnost.”294 Even more consequential than these words were Gorbachev’s deeds. While instigating an opposition, Gorbachev systematically reduced the Party’s control of the mass media and placed it in the hands of anti-socialists.

Two bodies exercised control of the mass media. The Central Committee’s Department of Agitation and Propaganda (Agitprop) that dated from 1920, had ultimate authority over editors and the press. Glavlit, a body created in 1922, exercised censorship and approval over every publication and broadcast. In 1985, Gorbachev named Alexander Yakovlev the head of Agitprop.295 In this position and as one of Gorbachev’s closest advisors, Yakovlev would wield the most powerful and pernicious influence of anyone on the entire reform process.

Born in 1923, Yakovlev joined the Communist Party while serving in the navy during World War II. After the war, he attended a pedagogical institute and then became a full-time worker for the Party in Yaroslavl.296 Yakovlev attended the Central Committee’s Academy of Social Sciences from 1956 to 1960 and spent the academic year 1958-59 as a graduate student at Columbia University in New York. After graduation, Yakovlev worked for the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, and by the mid-1960s had become the head of the radio and television section. In 1965 he became first deputy director of the Propaganda Department, a position he held until 1973, when a revealing episode led to his removal.297

During the so-called intellectual thaw that occurred under Khrushchev, Russian nationalism grew in popularity particularly in literary circles, a development that under Brezhnev caused a debate within the Party, in which Yakovlev played a prominent part. In 1973, Yakovlev upbraided a Party journal for not being more critical of Russian nationalism. Yakovlev claimed to be upholding Marxism against the danger posed by nationalism, but in actuality, his rigid rejection of national appeals sounded more like Bukharin than Lenin. Moreover, Yakovlev’s argument betrayed a pronounced attraction to the West. He argued that Russian nationalism fostered hostility to the West, while he held that Russian development could not be separate from the West.298

Meanwhile, Yakovlev’s views alienated the Brezhnev leadership and resulted in his transfer abroad. He requested a posting to an English-speaking country and was granted the post of ambassador to Canada. Yakovlev served in this capacity for ten years, which would give him more experience in the West than any other Politburo official.299 In 1983, Gorbachev visited Canada and spent a week with Yakovlev. Within a month of this trip, Gorbachev helped get Yakovlev appointed director of the prestigious Institute for International Relations and the World Economy (IMEMO) in Moscow.

Thereafter, Yakovlev’s rise was meteoric. In 1984, Yakovlev became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. In 1985 Gorbachev appointed him head of the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda (Agitprop). The next year, Gorbachev promoted him to Secretary for Propaganda. By then Yakovlev not only exercised authority over the media and cultural affairs, but also enjoyed great influence in foreign policy.300

As head of Agitprop, Yakovlev worked on several fronts to bring about a total transformation in leading personnel and procedures. He urged the creative unions of writers and filmmakers to adopt a liberal approach to culture, and he pushed some partisans of Gorbachev into leadership positions. For example, at the December 1985 meeting of the Russian Republican Writers’ Union, Yakovlev encouraged the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko to call for a loosening of restrictions on the publication of banned works. In April 1986, at the Congress of the Film Makers Union, Yakovlev personally nominated an ally, Elem Klimov, as First Secretary, and Klimov was elected. Yakovlev also successfully supported the election of Kiril Lavrov as head of the Theater Workers’ Union. (Yakovlev’s similar attempt to name the head of the Russian Writers’ Union failed.)301 Yakovlev also undoubtedly helped effectuate a major change in Glavlit. Some time in late 1985 or early 1986, without any apparent discussion in the Politburo, Glavlit relinquished its traditional oversight of publications, and this power fell to the editors of publishing houses and journals.302 As editors gained new authority over the content of publications, Yakovlev began appointing new editors of major newspapers and journals and new cultural officials who were partisans of fast and far-reaching changes and critics or opponents of the Party. These included the editors of Novy Mir (the leading literary monthly), Znamya (a journal), Ogonyok (a mass circulation weekly), Moskovskie Novosti (a newspaper), Sovetskaya Kultura (a newspaper), and Voprosy Literaturny. He made Yury Voronov head of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture and Vasily Zakharov Minister of Culture.303 Yuri Afanasyev, soon a partisan of Boris Yeltsin, became head of the Moscow State Historical Archives. These men soon took leading roles in criticizing Stalin and the Party and pushing the most rapid and extreme reform measures.

Gorbachev and Yakovlev had a direct hand in determining the direction of glasnost. Their actions and sometimes their words implied that they thought glasnost editors and intellectuals could best aid the reform effort and put potential opponents on the defensive by attacking Stalin and criticizing the government and Party. As early as late 1985, Yakovlev had permitted the publication of Anastas Mikoyan’s memoirs with their criticism of Stalin’s wartime policies.304 In September 1986 in a speech in Krasnodar that was broadcast nationwide on television, Gorbachev went further than ever before to invite attacks on the government and the Party. He identified the enemy of reform as the bureaucracy in the ministries and conservatism in the Party. He said that the “Party is at the service of the people and its managing role does not represent a privilege. To those who have forgotten this, I am now reminding you.” For the first time, he called for “democratization.” According to Roy Medvedev, this speech caused a “sensation.”305 It opened the floodgates of criticism, particularly criticism of Stalin. Just as in the West, criticism of Stalin was often a cover for attacks on Lenin and socialism.

In 1986 previously banned works that were critical of Stalin began to appear. Tengiz Abuladze’s 1984 film Pokayaniye (Repentance) about the repression of the thirties opened to limited audiences in Moscow. According to Roy Medvedev, the showing of this film, which Gorbachev liked, marked a “political, not merely a cultural, turning point.”306 Also, in Moscow, Mikhail Shatrov’s anti-Stalinist play, Diktatura Sovesti (The Dictatorship of the Conscience) opened at the Leninisk Komsomol Theater.307 Over objections by Ligachev, Gorbachev personally approved the publication of Anatoliy Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat.308 Over the objections of the head of the Writer’s Union, Novy Mir announced that in 1987 it would begin publishing Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.309 In another signal, Gorbachev personally ended the internal exile of the dissident, Andrei Sakharov.310 While many in the West were hailing these moves, Mike Davidow, a Communist journalist stationed in Moscow, rued, “Never in history did a ruling party literally turn over the mass media to forces bent on its own destruction and the state it led, as did the leaders of the CPSU.”311

After the Twenty-seventh Congress, Gorbachev also veered from Andropov’s path with regard to Party reform. As with glasnost, Gorbachev’s turn with regard to Party reform first occurred at the level of rhetoric, the full implications of which would not become clear until 1987. According to the historian Graeme Gill, a consensus existed inside and outside the Party that the organization had some serious problems—corruption in some republics and cadre policies based on loyalty, servility, and protectionism. Following Andropov, Gorbachev had initially called for exactingness, transparency, and discipline. The Congress adopted new rules providing for more openness, criticism and self-criticism, accountability, and collectivity. Gorbachev, however, failed to implement these decisions, but instead, in September 1986 he lurched off in a new direction by calling for the Party to “restructure itself.” Whereas the Congress had called for restructuring society and strengthening the Party, Gorbachev shifted the focus to the restructure and “democratization” of the Party. The first rumblings of discontent in the Party leadership occurred at this point.312

Meanwhile, parallel to what was occurring with ideology and politics, Gorbachev began dubious moves in foreign policy. In this area, as in the others, no sharp break would occur in terms of Soviet support of national liberation struggles until 1987 or even later, but moves in this direction occurred. In this area, as in the others, the first sign of a change in direction came rhetorically. Lenin had defined the essence of right opportunism as sacrificing fundamental principles, particularly the principle of class struggle, for immediate gain and as making unnecessary compromises with the class enemy in hopes of finding a quick and easy advance toward socialism. This sounded a lot like the path Gorbachev began to follow. In April 1985, before he changed, Gorbachev had blamed “imperialism” for creating international tensions and for stepping up its subversion against socialist countries. By the fall of the year, however, the words, imperialism, capitalist countries, and national liberation, began disappearing from Gorbachev’s discourse, though not from the world.313 In his speech to the Twenty-seventh Congress, imperialism only appeared once, in reference to Afghanistan.314 Eventually, Gorbachev would argue that “new thinking” required the de-ideologization of foreign affairs, that is, the replacement of class-based ideas with ideas about the priority of eternal, human values of peace and cooperation.315 Meanwhile, this rhetorical re-orientation subtly began to manifest itself in policy.

Gorbachev had begun by making bold, new initiatives for peace and disarmament. He had unilaterally stopped Soviet nuclear tests and reduced the number of intermediate range missiles aimed at Europe. He had helped end the freeze in American-Soviet relations by meeting with Reagan in Geneva. He had forwarded such new proposals as the cutting of strategic arms by 50 percent. While these moves reduced international tensions and won Gorbachev international acclaim, they had a disturbing underside, noted by few outside of the Kremlin. Namely, Gorbachev showed a troubling tendency to make concessions to the United States while getting nothing in return. This tendency assumed a new form in early 1986. Since 1981, the Reagan administration had drastically increased military spending while putting forth a novel disarmament proposal known as the zero option. Under the zero option, the U.S. expected the Soviets to dismantle their expensive European- based missiles in return for the U.S. not deploying missiles in Europe in the future. In truth, the zero option reflected the Reagan administration’s complete lack of interest in disarmament. It was a preposterously one-sided idea that demanded real reductions on the Soviet side but no reductions of existing weapons by Americans or Europeans. It was designed to convince world opinion that the Reagan administration was interested in peace while offering nothing to the Soviets. To the astonishment of the Reagan administration, Gorbachev reversed the previous Soviet rejection.316 In an address on January 15, Gorbachev proposed the complete elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2000 and agreed to the zero option.317 If Gorbachev had limited his concessions to these, and they had opened a new stage of arms talks or led to concessions on the American side, then he would have gained something. Instead, Gorbachev’s concessions produced no reciprocal compromises on the American side. Nine months after the dramatic reversal on the zero option, Gorbachev met with Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland, in a summit in which Reagan offered nothing but empty promises and refused to budge on SDI.318

At the end of 1985 and early 1986, Gorbachev also began a retreat from the Soviet commitment to Afghanistan, even though a complete capitulation was two years away. Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan began in 1979, after the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) that had seized power the previous year made repeated requests for Soviet help to repel attacks by CIA-backed warlords. While attempting to modernize one of the poorest and most backward lands on earth, the PDPA had redistributed land, promoted religious freedom, given greater freedom to women, and initiated a literacy campaign aimed at the 90 percent of the population that could not read. Almost immediately, the government had faced armed resistance from local warlords, who began a counterrevolution by assassinating the rural teachers of girls.319 The warlords soon gained money and arms from the CIA, whose aid predated and intentionally provoked the Soviet intervention. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor later said, “We knowingly increased the probability that they [the Soviets] would [intervene].”320 This CIA support eventually amounted to its largest covert operation since World War II.321 The Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko governments viewed the Soviet aid to Afghanistan as international solidarity against the “hand of imperialism.”322

When Gorbachev assumed office in April 1985, he intensified the Soviet military effort in Afghanistan, a sure sign that he initially viewed the war as neither immoral nor unwinnable.323 In the fall of 1985, however, Gorbachev began to back away from the Soviet commitment, first by signaling Reagan at Geneva that some accommodation on Afghanistan was possible. 324 Then in February 1986 at the Twenty-seventh Congress, while blaming imperialism for the Afghan conflict, Gorbachev sounded a new, defeatist note. Instead of viewing Afghanistan like past leaders as a victim of imperialism, the General Secretary referred to the country as “a bleeding wound.”325 Still, the real turning point in Gorbachev’s thinking apparently did not occur until after the Reyjavik summit in October 1986, when Gorbachev and his advisors decided that any favorable response by the U.S. on arms control required a Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. According to Sarah Mendelson, who studied the Soviet archives, the decision to withdraw resulted neither from public pressure at home nor from defeats on the battlefield. Rather, the real reason for Soviet decision was Gorbachev’s belief that the success of perestroika required a cooperative international environment, the price of which was the abandonment of Afghanistan.326 At a Politburo meeting on November 13, 1986, the General Secretary said, “We have been at war in Afghanistan six years already. If we don’t change our approach we will be there another 20-30 years.”327 After November a debate began in top Soviet circles. The next month, Gorbachev told Afghan leader, Najibullah, that the Soviet Union would begin recalling its troops in 1988, though at this time the assumption was that the Soviet action would be accompanied by some reciprocal abatement of American interference and some guarantees of Afghan neutrality. According to Yakovlev, soon after this meeting, Gorbachev decided to use glasnost, that is to say journalistic coverage of the war, to counter the opposition to withdrawal on the part of some Soviet leaders.328 As Mendelson makes clear, however, neither morality, nor defeat, nor popular pressure motivated the change in Soviet policy. Instead, it was Gorbachev’s willingness to sacrifice international solidarity on the altar of perestroika.

Even though signs of a move in new directions on domestic and foreign policy began as early as the fall of 1985, the ultimate danger they represented were more apparent in hindsight than they were at the time. In 1985, where Gorbachev was heading was unclear. The signs were contradictory. After all, Gorbachev still spoke of reinvigorating Leninism and perfecting socialism. He said that he was neither revising nor abandoning socialist ideology, just adapting it to new global circumstances. Even as he signaled a retreat in Afghanistan, he actually increased the Soviet support of the African National Congress.329

Though the cutting edge of Gorbachev’s moves to the right first occurred subtly and hesitatingly in ideology, politics, and foreign policy, where he could act with the greatest independence, by 1986 moves consistent with these also occurred economic policy. The problematic aspects of Gorbachev’s economic ideas resided in the weakening of centralized planning and state ownership. These were the notes Gorbachev sounded at the Twenty-seventh Congress. Gorbachev advocated autonomy for enterprises, saying they should become totally responsible for running their own affairs on a profitable basis. The central economic bodies should get out of the business of day-to-day management and concentrate on long-term planning and scientific leadership. Enterprises should have the right to sell products that exceeded plan requirements to other enterprises. Enterprises should be responsible for their own wage fund, which should be dependent on their sales. As central planning receded, republic, regions, cities, and districts should assume a greater role in planning. As radical as these changes sounded, Gorbachev assured the Congress that innovations meant no sacrifice of “the unquestionable priority of the interests of the whole people” and no “retreat from the principles of planned guidance,” only a change in “methods.”

In his speech to the Congress, Gorbachev also opened the door to non-state property and even private enterprise. He said that “cooperative property” had “far from exhausted its possibilities in socialist production” and that the “utmost support should be given to the establishment and growth of cooperative enterprises.” This may have been true about genuine cooperatives, but what Gorbachev meant by “cooperative enterprises” turned out to be private enterprises, most likely not what his listeners had in mind. Gorbachev even expressed sympathy with private enterprise in the second economy by saying, “We must not permit any shadow to fall on those who do honest work to earn a supplementary income.”330 Nevertheless, Gorbachev tempered these remarks by a condemnation of the “unearned income” of those who stole from the socialist economy, took bribes, and developed a “distinct proprietary mentality.” He stressed that “the consolidation of socialism in practice should be the supreme criterion” of reform.331 Gorbachev thus masked new initiatives favoring private property by duplicitous language and contradictory intentions.

Following the Congress, the contradictions in Gorbachev’s approach to economic reform persisted. On the one hand, Gorbachev supported a law to penalize unearned incomes and supported the formation of a new state control agency to improve the quality of goods. On the other hand, and more importantly, the General Secretary initiated three steps toward economic liberalization that ended up encouraging private economic activity. In August, he allowed greater foreign economic activity for state-owned firms, including investment abroad. In October, he legalized a type of producer cooperative, which was really just a disguised form of private enterprise. In November, he made a small expansion in the scope of permissible private economic activity. According to Gregory Grossman, these moves had three consequences, though the full impact would not come into play until 1987 and after. The foreign arrangements “turned into a cornucopia from which just-privatized capital gushed abroad by the billions of dollars.” The co-ops “turned into a captive legal entity for asset- and profit-stripping activity in the state sector on a vast scale.” The law on private activity “did more to shelter the expansion of illicit private (‘shadow’) activity than to promote lawful small-scale activity.”332 These moves would ominously augment the petty bourgeois layer of the second economy, and it would create sections of the state-owned sector and Party with a vested interest in private enterprise. Consciously or not, Gorbachev was augmenting a base for further capitalist-oriented policies.

The contradictory nature of Gorbachev’s policies and the almost universal desire for reform among Party leaders explain the failure of a vocal left wing opposition to appear during Gorbachev’s first two years. The course followed by Yegor Ligachev illustrated the slow development of a left wing opposition. Born in Siberia in 1920, Ligachev was raised in Novosibirsk, where his father worked in a factory. After becoming an aviation engineer in Moscow, Ligachev returned to Novosibirsk, where he worked in a plant building fighter planes used in World War II. After joining the Communist Party in 1944, he rose in the ranks, in 1959 becoming the head of the Novosibirsk district. In 1961 to 1965, he worked in the Central Committee offices in Moscow, and then at his own request he became the head of the Tomsk Province Party, a position he held for seventeen years. Ligachev, who always rejected the exaggerated idea that the Brezhnev years were a period of stagnation, recalled with pride his accomplishments in Tomsk during the Brezhnev years. Ligachev said, “I was building socialism. And there were millions like me.” Historian Stephen F. Cohen said of Ligachev in these years: “Teetotaling, self-confident, hard-working, and a scandal-free family man, he modernized the province’s industry and agriculture, developed new enterprises, preserved Tomsk’s historic wooden buildings, patronized the arts, and minded the Party’s monopolistic interests wherever necessary.” In 1983, General Secretary Andropov brought Ligachev to Moscow, where like Gorbachev he became one of the reform-minded members of the Politburo.333

During the first stage of reform, Ligachev represented the most thoroughly grounded Leninist of any of the top leaders. As the person in charge of Party cadre, he also occupied the second most powerful position in the Party, second only to Gorbachev. Ligachev supported the general thrust of Gorbachev’s reforms, which he thought were long overdue and which he believed would simply revive the course that Andropov had charted, a course to which Ligachev seemingly remained loyal. As an enthusiast of reform, Ligachev failed to see the rightward drift of Gorbachev’s policies and even furthered some of them himself, moves he later regretted. For example, Ligachev helped select the editor of Ogonyok, who turned into one of the most anti-Party of all editors. Moreover, Ligachev later admitted that he “did not understand” the motives of the fast-paced reforms pushed by the media. Only after 1986, did he realize that ceding power over the media to Yakovlev “was clearly a big mistake.”334

By the end of 1986, Gorbachev’s reforms had become either Janus-faced, looking both left and right, or two-faced, looking left and marching right. Though some measures had failed, others showed promise. Though the ultimate direction and fate of his policies remained very much up in the air, Gorbachev maintained the support of the Politburo and the masses. Then in December from unexpected quarters a crisis arose, a sudden outburst of nationalist extremism in Kazahkstan that foreshadowed even more serious problems ahead. The crisis was clearly traceable to Gorbachev’s weaknesses.

In ways that reflected his provincial Russian background, Gorbachev had repeatedly slighted the national interests of the Soviet republics on the periphery. Historian Helene D’Encausse said, “He paid scant attention to national sensitivities, and he blithely overlooked the rules for national representation that had been in effect since 1956.” Whereas under Brezhnev, the Politburo contained three non-Russian members who were leaders of their republics, under Gorbachev, the PB had only one non-Russian republican leader, Scherbitsky of the Ukraine. Moreover, whereas under Brezhnev full members and deputies had represented the Muslim republics of Central Asia and from the Caucasus, Georgia, and the two Slavic states, the Ukraine and Byelorussia, under Gorbachev, “all the Muslim republics and the Caucasus disappeared from the Politburo.” On top of that, other than Shevardnadze, no one in the leadership even had significant experience in the border republics. According to D’Encausse, the result was that the periphery felt “ignored and even scorned.”335

Naturally, the problems in Kazakhstan did not begin with Gorbachev. The grievances of the Kazakhs had deep roots. Over the years, internal migration had reduced the Kazakhs to a minority (40 percent) in their own republic. Policies to develop local leaders and promote bilingualism had fallen short of their goals. Russian remained the language of public life. Consequently, some Kazakhs felt like outsiders in their own land. If such grievances provided the tinder, Gorbachev himself applied the torch. He simply refused or was unable to recognize the seriousness of the national question and was tone deaf to national sensitivities. At the Twenty-seventh Congress earlier in the year, he had said nothing about ethnic differences and frustrations, but had simply mouthed what D’Encausse called “celebratory rhetoric.” While glasnost was giving people the license to criticize, Gorbachev’s highhandedness was giving them something to criticize. After having previously expelled half of the secretaries of the Kazakh Central Committee, in December 1986 Gorbachev replaced the General Secretary, Dinmukhamed Kunaev, a native Kazakh, with Gennadi Kolbin, a Russian with no experience in Kazakhstan. This was either a huge mistake or a calculated provocation of monstrous proportions. Ten thousand students and others took to the streets of Alma Ata chanting nationalist slogans—“Kazakhstan for the Kazakhs and only the Kazakhs!”— and attacking public buildings and the Party headquarters. The army had to suppress the riot. According to D’Encausse, Gorbachev learned nothing from having provoked the worst ethnic uprising in the history of the Soviet Union, and his statements afterwards revealed “his constant discomfort with the national question, even an inability to grasp the facts.”336

The shards of broken glass in the streets of Alma Ata reflected the problematic course reform was taking. When Gorbachev departed from Andropov’s precedents, he began exhortations for revolutionary change without a well-thought-out plan. He began entertaining the ready-made ideas of a Party reformist tradition stretching back to Khrushchev and Bukharin, ideas that reflected the interests of much of the intelligentsia and the sector of entrepreneurs and Party bureaucrats profiting from the second economy. Subtly, with tacking and weaving, and traditional rhetorical cover, Gorbachev began jettisoning traditional Marxist-Leninist ideas. In politics and ideology, Gorbachev departed from traditional notions of criticism and self-criticism and the Party’s control of the media for his own version of glasnost, a model of the press drawn from Western liberalism. In foreign affairs, he began sacrificing both the ideas of class conflict and international solidarity and the policies of equality and reciprocity for the idea of eternal human values and the policy of unilateral concessions. In economic reform, Gorbachev began entertaining the ideas of those who advocated moving from centralized planning toward enterprise autonomy and the market, from state ownership toward cooperative and private enterprise, from suppressing the second economy to unleashing it. Moreover, when confronted with setbacks or opposition, Gorbachev showed a disturbing tendency to plunge ahead, “to escape forward.”337 It was a dangerous and uncharted course. The riots in Alma-Ata showed that this course could have consequences of a frightening magnitude.