Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Khrushchev’s policies often sowed the seeds of later problems. Perhaps in an overreaction to previous criticisms of his laxness toward Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism, he often demonstrated a tin ear to national sensitivities as when, after a visit to central Asia, he rashly proposed consolidating all the Asian republics into one.77 On a less extreme note, he declared that the country had solved the national question and aimed to achieve a “Soviet national identity” that would replace existing national identities as the various nations of the Soviet Union drew closer together toward “complete unity.” However laudable as an ideal, the promotion of a Soviet national identity had the opposite effect of stimulating nationalist sentiments among those who valued their own national heritage. According to historian Yitzhak Brudny, Khrushchev’s approach glossed over existing national problems and contributed to a rise of narrow nationalist sentiments both among non-Russian nations on the periphery and among Russian intellectuals at the center.78

The policy that most endeared Khrushchev to intellectuals and would serve as the precursor of Gorbachev’s glasnost was the relaxation of censorship. Though the Khrushchev “thaw” was inconsistent and episodic, it did lead for a time to a greater openness toward modern art and films, poetry, and novels critical of the Soviet past. During the thaw, the publication of such previously banned novels as V. D. Dudintsev’s Not By Bread Alone and A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich occurred.79 This openness brought an inevitable underside in the spread of bourgeois economic ideas to Soviet academic circles. According to the Medvedevs, as early as 1953-54 “Western influence began to penetrate many areas of the economy.”80

On many other matters including his views on international relations, the Party, the state, and communism, Khrushchev advanced ideas that caused controversy at the time and since among Communists inside and outside of the Soviet Union. It is beyond the scope of the present work to judge whether these ideas were creative applications of Marxism-Leninism to new circumstances or erroneous revisions of basic principles. What was clear, however, was that Khrushchev’s ideas on these matters consistently leaned toward social democracy, sowed the seeds of later problems, and created a precedent for Gorbachev’s even more extreme views and policies.

On international relations, Khrushchev stressed the policy of peaceful coexistence. He argued that, with the growth of the socialist world, the balance of forces had so shifted that the main struggle consisted of “peaceful competition” between socialism and capitalism and that a “peaceful transition” from capitalism to socialism was possible. Even though these ideas became the centerpiece of the Chinese denunciation of Khrushchev as a revisionist,81 several things could be said in their defense. First, these ideas appeared at the height of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was encircled by a vastly stronger United States that was justifying a bellicose anti-Soviet and anti-revolutionary foreign policy by claiming that an inherently expansionist Soviet Union was bent on worldwide aggression and subversion. In this context, Khrushchev’s ideas forcefully rejoined imperialism’s claims. They undercut the forces pushing for war against the Soviet Union and strengthened the international peace movement. Second, Khrushchev’s ideas on this matter did not break new ground entirely. In a series of interviews before he died, Stalin himself had emphasized the policy of peaceful coexistence and rejected the idea that war was inevitable.82 Thirdly, in practice, Khrushchev did not shrink from defending socialism abroad. He intervened against a counterrevolution in Hungary in 1956 and sent missiles to defend Cuba in 1962. Indeed, at the peak of the Cuban missile crisis, when the fate of the Cuban revolution hung in the balance, Khrushchev insisted on an American commitment not to invade the island before he withdrew Soviet missiles.83 Moreover, Khrushchev never shrank from extending generous material aid and technical assistance to those struggling to make their own way against imperialism, including China (before the break), Egypt, and India. Historian William Kirby called Soviet aid to China between 1953 and 1957, “the greatest transfer of technology in world history.” 84

As appropriate and successful as Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful co-existence was, he may have placed too great a trust in the willingness of the U.S. under President Eisenhower to give up the Cold War. The U.S. never reciprocated Khrushchev’s unilateral reduction in the size of military spending and the Soviet armed forces nor his desire to disengage from the war in Vietnam.85 Moreover, Khrushchev later acknowledged that his idea of peaceful cooperation was seriously undercut in 1960, when just before a planned four-power summit, the U.S. sent a U-2 spy plane over Soviet territory and then denied having done so, until the Soviets produced the downed pilot, Gary Powers. “Those who felt America had imperialist intentions and that military strength was the most important thing,” Khrushchev said, “had the evidence they needed.”86

Khrushchev introduced two new ideas about the Party and the state: the idea that the CPSU had changed from the vanguard of the working class to the vanguard of the “whole people,” and that the dictatorship of the proletariat had become the “state of the whole people.” At some point in the development of socialism, some such transition would surely be in order, but the question was whether the Soviet Union had reached that point. The writer Bahman Azad suggested that these ideas had long-term corrosive effects because they fed illusions about the transcendence of class struggle and about the reliability of certain social groups, such as state bureaucrats.87 Certainly, these ideas de-emphasized the separate interests of the working class. Since socialism supposedly served the interests of the working class, these ideas might have obscured an important standard for measuring socialism’s progress. Moreover, these ideas accompanied other troublesome policies such as leveling of wages, that is reducing the wage differentials. At a certain level of socialist development, wage leveling was appropriate, but as things stood, such leveling tended to sap incentive and productivity.

Khrushchev made several changes in the way the Party operated that diluted its leadership role. In 1957, following the precedent of his years in the Ukraine, he opened the doors of the Communist Party to mass recruitment leading to a vast expansion in membership. This related to his idea that class distinctions were disappearing and that the “overwhelming majority” of Soviet citizens “reason like Communists.”88 Khrushchev also introduced a requirement that a third of Party officials be replaced at each election, a kind of Soviet term limits. The General Secretary also divided the Party into agricultural and industrial sections, a kind of incipient two party system. Though ostensibly aimed at reinvigorating the Party, such moves as mass recruitment, term limits, and Party division weakened the Party in various ways and generated much opposition. After Khrushchev, the Party abandoned these pet ideas.89 Later, Gorbachev entertained similar ideas, such as splitting the CPSU into two, before deciding to weaken and disestablish it altogether.

In 1964, the Khrushchev period came to an end when the collective leadership forced him to retire. The ideas about economic liberalization and political democratization that Khrushchev came to symbolize did not, however, end with him. Rather, they continued to find expression in what historian John Gooding calls the “alternative tradition.” In the 1960s and 1970s, this alternative tradition found its champions in the editor of Novy Mir, Alexander Tvardovsky, and such economists, sociologists, physicists, historians and playwrights as V. Shubikin, Nicolai Petrakov, Alexander Birman, Roy Medvedev, Andrei Sakharov, Valentin Turchin, and Tatyana Zaslavskaya, and Mikhail Shatrov. For the most part, these intellectuals remained in the Communist Party, admired Lenin, and continued to believe in socialism, but at the same time, they advocated a socialism imbued with aspects of capitalist markets, management, and political formations. Rather than attacking the current system, they believed in achieving their ends by winning the ears of Communist leaders, an effort that they eventually realized with Gorbachev.90

Meanwhile, Leonid Brezhnev soon emerged as the top Soviet leader and remained so until 1982. For Gorbachev and his partisans, Brezhnev became the scapegoat for everything wrong in the Soviet Union. They ridiculed his poor health, expensive tastes, personal vanity, and political weakness. Brezhnev became the symbol of stagnation and corruption. Though this view of Brezhnev lacked balance, it did have a basis. According to the Soviet historian, Dmitri Volkogonov, Brezhnev wanted above all else “peace and quiet, serenity and an absence of conflict.” Brezhnev was “terrified of reform.” Replacing Khrushchev’s office rotation policy with a “stability of cadre” policy, Brezhnev even resisted changes in personnel. At each of the four Party congresses at which he presided, Brezhnev acknowledged shortages, but he resisted bold solutions. Moreover, many in his leadership suffered from advanced age and disability. No one manifested these weaknesses more than Brezhnev himself, who after 1970 was debilitated by ill health. In 1976, he suffered a serious stroke, and between then and his death in 1982, he had several heart attacks and more strokes. In the last five years of his life, he was so sick and enfeebled that he played no active part in state or Party life. In the last years, Brezhnev could not speak without a written text in front of him and without slurring his words.91

Though much of the criticism made of Brezhnev was deserved, it obscured the simple truth that most of the problems the Soviet Union experienced under Brezhnev had their origins under Khrushchev. Moreover, though Brezhnev did little to reverse Stalin’s mistreatment of certain nationalities or to denounce earlier violations of socialist legality, he did reverse some of the more extreme of Khrushchev’s policies. Centralized planning returned. “Cadre stability” replaced term limits. A unitary party organization replaced the division into industrial and agricultural forms. Stricter Party admission standards replaced mass recruitment. The “state of all the people” and the “party of all the people” remained but acquired a different meaning. Pravda explained that these terms did not mean that the CPSU “loses it class character….[Rather,] the CPSU has been and remains a party of the working class.”92 Furthermore, Brezhnev’s policies showed a firm commitment to international solidarity. He achieved military parity with the U.S. and aided the socialist countries in Eastern Europe and Cuba, the revolutionary struggles in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

Ideologically, Brezhnev wove along an intermediate path between the two traditional poles or tendencies of Soviet politics. The Soviet writer Fedor Burlatsky said that Brezhnev “borrowed” from Stalin and from Khrushchev.93 Stephen F. Cohen likewise places him in the middle of the contending trends in the Party:

At least three movements had formed inside the Communist party by the time Khrushchev was overthrown in 1964: an anti-Stalinist party calling for more far reaching relaxation of controls over society; a neo-Stalinist one charging that the Khrushchev policies had gravely weakened the state and demanding that it be rejuvenated, and a conservative party mainly devoted to preserving the existing post-Stalin status quo by opposing further major changes either forward or backward. During the next twenty years these multiparty conflicts were waged in various largely muted and subterranean ways. The conservative majority headed by Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union with some concessions to the neo-Stalinists for almost two decades. The reform movement barely survived, but in 1985 along with Gorbachev it came to power.94

In spite of Khrushchev’s erratic and failed policies and Brezhnev’s reluctance to tackle problems, the Soviet economy continued to show much vitality. In the 1950s the Soviet Union developed at twice the rate of most advanced countries. Between 1950 and 1975, the Soviet industrial production index increased 9.85 times (according to Soviet figures) or 6.77 times (according to CIA figures), while the U.S. industrial production index increased 2.62 times.95 The Soviet Union employed one fourth of the world’s scientists, and the launch of Sputnik symbolized its scientific accomplishments. Wages and living standards rose steadily. The workweek was set at forty hours a week for most jobs, and thirty-five hours for the heaviest work. A universal pension system was instituted. Consumer goods became increasingly available, and “the gap in the level of economic and social development between the Soviet Union and the USA was rapidly closing.” By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union produced 20 percent of the world’s industrial goods, up from 4 percent of a much smaller total at the time of the revolution. The Soviet Union led the world in the production of oil, gas, ferrous metals, minerals, tractors, reinforced concrete, wool goods, shoes, sugar beets, potatoes, milk, eggs, and other products. Its production of hydroelectricity, chemical products, machinery, cement and cotton was second only to the U.S.96 The annual rate of increase of industrial productivity went up from 4.7 percent in 1960-65, to 5.8 percent in 1965-70, to 6.0 percent in 1970-75.97

In large measure, the economic gains were made possible by the concentrated investments in natural resources and heavy industry initiated by Stalin. Unquestionably, this growth was also aided by the availability of vast amounts of cheap natural resources, particularly oil, gas, coal, and iron ore. In the 1970s, however, both objective and subjective problems eroded economic performance. Three objective problems stood out: first, the relative exhaustion of natural resources, which made the extraction of gas, oil, and coal more expensive; second, the demographic consequences of World War II that had dramatically reduced the size of the workforce; three, the challenge of adopting new computer technology, particularly in the face of defective computer chips deliberately sold to the Soviet Union by the U.S. Even more important than these objective problems were the subjective ones: the problems of policy, particularly the shift of investment from heavy industry to consumer goods; the wage leveling; and the lack of sufficient attention to problems of planning and incentives in the last years of Brezhnev. As a result, while the annual growth rate of industrial production remained positive between 1973 and 1985 (according to some, even stronger than that in the U.S., 4.6 percent compared to 2.3 percent),98 signs of trouble appeared. Between 1979-82, the production fell for 40 percent of all industrial goods. Agricultural output in this period did not reach the 1978 level. “Indicators of efficiency in social production slowed down.” In the 1976-85 period, oil extraction in the Volga fell, as did the extraction of coal in the Don Coal fields, timber from the Urals, and nickel from the Kola Peninsula. According to some, the standard of living stopped rising.99

Brezhnev’s attitude and policies toward the national question reflected his intermediate position. In some respects, Brezhnev evinced complacency akin to Khrushchev. Brezhnev praised the building up of the backward republics and the fostering of “Soviet patriotism.” “The Soviet nations,” he declared, “are now united more than ever.”100 The General Secretary took a decidedly non-struggle approach toward many republics, where he allowed corruption and nepotism to abound. In Uzbekistan, for example, the Party leader had fourteen relatives working in the Party apparat, and bribery, arbitrariness, injustice, and “heinous violations of the law” reportedly ran rampant.101

In other respects, Brezhnev’s approach resembled Lenin’s and Stalin’s willingness to deal sharply with reactionary nationalists, while trying to win others to socialism. For example, Brezhnev replaced leaders in the Ukraine and Georgia who were fanning nationalist and anti-Russian sentiments. He also adopted what historian Yitzhak Brudny called a “politics of inclusion” toward Russian nationalists. While some viewed this as an unMarxist pandering to Great Russian chauvinism, others viewed it as a legitimate effort to win the support of some Russian nationalist intellectuals on the basis of a shared aversion to Khrushchev’s liberalization and market reforms, and the intrusion of Western influence. This initiative resembled Stalin’s effort to broaden and deepen support for the war by appealing to Russian patriotism. Brudny concluded that Brezhnev’s policy of inclusion ultimately failed to win lasting support because it tried to give the nationalist intellectuals “a material stake in the system without satisfying their principal [ideological] concerns.”102 Thus, Brezhnev’s national policies and their results were a mixed bag. At their best, they showed a willingness to engage nationalists—either combating backward national sentiments or trying to win over the Russian nationalist intellectuals—that was lacking in Bukharin, Khrushchev, and later Gorbachev. Moreover, however flawed, Brezhnev’s policies never produced the open ethnic warfare that occurred under Gorbachev.

By the late Brezhnev era, many economic, social, political, and ideological problems had accumulated. It would be misleading, however, to see the situation as consisting of reformers who saw the problems and Brezhnev “conservatives” who did not. Though not everyone gave equal weight to the problems, a general agreement existed among Party leaders and outside experts that productivity and economic growth were matters of concern. The Brezhnev leadership addressed these issues at the end of the tenth five-year plan in 1979.103

Recognizing problems on the one hand and explaining their origin and devising their solution on the other hand were of course two entirely different matters, and matters on which Communists disagreed. In general, the analysis of the economic problems fell into the two traditional camps: the camp with ideological links to Bukharin and Khrushchev and the camp with links to Lenin and Stalin. The former saw the problems as due to over-centralization, and for it the solution was decentralization, the use of market mechanisms, and the allowance of certain forms of private enterprise. Writing in 1975, Moshe Lewin said, “It is astonishing to discover how many ideas of Bukharin’s anti-Stalinist program of 1928-29 were adopted by current reformers.”104 Soviet economists of this mind represented only a minority, but they dominated three of the four leading academic institutes.105 A leading economist in this camp was Abel Aganbegyan, who later became a key advisor to Gorbachev.

The majority of economists believed in reforming and modernizing the centralized planning system. For them the problems of growth and productivity had arisen because planning and management methods had not kept pace with the development of the productive forces. In some respects, the problems resulted not from centralization but from insufficient centralization. In construction, for example, the excessive time to complete projects and the profusion of unfinished projects occurred because central planners failed to prevail against local authorities that launched projects for which insufficient resources existed for timely completion. Insufficient coordination between engineers, industrialists, and builders also delayed the completion of projects.106

Productivity was often impaired by antiquated management methods and payment systems.107 Some mainstream economists wanted to use wage incentives to increase productivity. For them, the Soviet wisecrack, “they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,” was not a product of Stalin’s incentive system, where productive workers could earn big wages, but of the later wage leveling. In 1980, Victor and Ellen Perlo described other debates among mainstream economists over the ways to increase production and productivity. Noting that immediately after Khrushchev the Soviet Union had faced and overcome falling productivity, the Perlos said, “Again, as in the early 1960s, there are broad discussions underway in the USSR, heading up to a further modernization and improvement in the methods of economic planning and management…. Past experience gives reason to believe that the problems facing the Soviet economy will be solved.”108

The Soviet Union had excellent chances to tackle these problems after the death of Brezhnev, when Yuri Andropov became the General Secretary of the CPSU. Andropov had admirable personal qualities, a solid grounding in Marxist-Leninist theory, rich leadership experience, a broad grasp of the problems facing the Soviet Union, and clear and forceful ideas about reform. One thing that Andropov did not have was time. Three months after taking office, Andropov developed serious kidney problems, and in fifteen months he was dead. Nevertheless, the “Andropov Year” (1983) unveiled a promising reform path completely different from the ultimately disastrous one chosen by Gorbachev.

Andropov was born in 1914 in Stavropol. His father was a railroad worker. Andropov left school at sixteen and worked as a telegraph operator and boatman on the Volga. Beginning in 1936, Andropov held a series of positions in the Komsomol (Young Communists), becoming First Secretary of the Komsomol in the Karelo-Finnish Autonomous Republic (Karelia) that bordered Finland. During the war, the Germans occupied Karelia, and Andropov joined the partisan movement against them. After the war, he became Second Secretary of the CP of Karelia. In 1951, Andropov went to work for the Central Committee in Moscow. In 1953, he became Counsellor to Hungary and in 1954 Ambassador to Hungary. From 1957 to 1962, Andropov worked for the Foreign Affairs Department of the Central Committee, where he dealt with other Communist countries. In 1962, he became Secretary of the Central Committee. In 1967, Andropov became Chairman of the KGB, a post he held for fifteen years.109

The details of Andropov’s career were even more impressive than the résumé. On his way up, Andropov worked with three of the great figures of the CPSU. While in the Karelo-Finnish Republic, Andropov became the protégé of the old Bolshevik, Otto Kuusinen. Kuusinen had been a comrade in arms with Lenin since 1905, was the founder of the Finnish Communist Party and the First Secretary of the CP of Karelia, when Andropov was Second Secretary. Kuusinen, who remained an important figure in the CPSU until his death in 1964, doubtlessly helped bring Andropov’s abilities to the notice of others. As Ambassador to Hungary, Andropov worked under the Foreign Minister, the old Bolshevik, Molotov. As Ambassador to Hungary, Andropov also developed a close relationship to Mikhail Suslov, who became his second mentor after Kuusinen. Suslov’s career in the Party stretched back to 1918, when he had joined the Young Communists. Suslov was a serious student of Marxism-Leninism and a leading ideologist of the Party under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Some commentators believed that Andropov modeled himself after Suslov, since Andropov’s austerity, intellectuality, and work ethic resembled that of the older Suslov. When Suslov died in 1982, Andropov replaced him as the Party’s leading ideologist.110

Andropov’s career was studded by occasions that demanded great courage, calmness, and tough-mindedness. First was his war work as a partisan. Then came the Ambassadorship to Hungary. Andropov’s actions in Hungary remain somewhat uncertain and the testimony of others is often contradictory, yet it was clear that he navigated successfully through extremely troubled waters. The Hungarian Communist Party was trying to build socialism in a predominantly peasant, Catholic country that had just emerged from twenty-five years of a fascist dictatorship that included an alliance with Nazi Germany during World War II. At the time of Andropov’s arrival in 1954, the Hungarian Communists faced numerous problems including internal divisions and popular unrest. At the end of October 1956, the Hungarian uprising occurred, in which fascist gangs took advantage of popular discontent to assassinate, beat, and lynch Communists and their supporters. It ended only after the Soviet military intervened early in November.111

During the height of the crisis, Andropov operated out of the Soviet Embassy in Budapest, along with Moscow representatives, Anastas Mikoyan and Suslov. These three men, along with Marshall Georgii Zhukov, handled the Soviet response, advising Hungarian Communists and eventually directing Soviet troops. During the crisis, as divisions sapped Communist unity, and the Prime Minister Imre Nagy increasingly capitulated to rightwing pressure, Andropov apparently persuaded the popular Communist Janos Kadar to take over the leadership of the Hungarian party. In the following two decades, Kadar became the most reform-minded leader in Eastern Europe. He introduced decentralization, profit-sharing, and cooperative farms, allowed various kinds of private enterprise, and re-established popular confidence in the Communist Party. How Andropov, who left Hungary in March 1957, assessed the Hungarian reforms remained a mystery. Nonetheless, during the crisis itself, Andropov’s wisdom in favoring Kadar and his coolness under fire apparently increased Suslov’s admiration of Andropov.112

After Hungary, Andropov handled other tough assignments. In 1963, he joined a delegation headed by Suslov that engaged in tense negotiations with the Chinese in an unsuccessful attempt to heal the recent breach between the Chinese and Soviet parties. Later, as head of the KGB, Andropov took responsibility for the crackdown on dissident intellectuals, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Andropov’s willingness to defend these actions openly and to withstand the criticism of Western commentators and such Soviet intellectuals as Yevgeny Yevushenko, strongly suggested that Andropov would have avoided Gorbachev’s blunder of turning the media over to anti-socialist elements. As head of the KGB, Andropov also showed courage and conviction by investigating corruption in high places. On his KGB watch, the entire Party Presidium and government of Azerbaijan were dismissed for corruption, bribery, and embezzlement. Moreover, in 1981, Andropov’s deputy exposed and arrested some of the “black market-ridden dolce vita crowd” that included Brezhnev’s daughter and son-in-law. Even investigating crime in the General Secretary’s family did not daunt Andropov.113

Andropov had other equally impressive personal characteristics. Though his formal education did not go beyond some work at the Rybinsk technical school and the Higher Party School, Andropov unquestionably possessed a first class mind, informed by wide reading and broad cultural tastes. While Ambassador to Hungary, he learned Hungarian and studied the history and culture of Hungary, feats that endeared him to his hosts. Through his daughters, Irina, who was married to a famous actor of the Moscow theater, Alexander Filipov, and a second daughter, who was an assistant editor of a music magazine, Andropov had links to the world of artists and entertainers. He learned English, read American newspapers, magazines, and novels, and liked Glenn Miller and Miles Davis. In travel, while Gorbachev preferred the West, Andropov confined his visits to socialist countries — Hungary, Vietnam, North Korea, Outer Mongolia, Yugoslavia, China, and Albania. In habits and demeanor, Andropov inspired confidence. He was quiet, well-spoken, calm, controlled, and sincere. Moreover, under Brezhnev, when old age, infirmity, and laxness eroded “Leninist norms” among many at the top, Andropov lived modestly and gained a reputation as a workaholic.114

Communists took hope in Andropov’s grasp of the problems, his ideas for reform, and his decisive implementation of changes. The American scholar, Stephen Cohen, said that Andropov was the “most reform-minded” of Brezhnev’s Politburo and the only PB member that the orthodox Communists trusted to handle reform wisely.115 Yegor Ligachev said, “Andropov possessed the rare, true leader’s gift of translating general tasks into the language of concrete jobs.” Ligachev said that Andropov had “a clear vision of the prospects of the country’s development,” and unlike Gorbachev, he “disliked improvisation and hit-or-miss approaches.” At the same time, Andropov “planned the renewal of socialism, understanding that it needed some deep, qualitative changes.”116

Andropov’s analysis of the Soviet Union’s problems and his policy proposals occurred in three speeches that he delivered to the Central Committee in November and December 1982 and June 1983, and in an article he wrote in 1983 to mark the centenary of Marx’s death. Unsurprisingly, Andropov concentrated on economic problems. The year 1982 not only set the worst record in Soviet history for labor productivity and economic growth, but also represented the fourth year in a row of poor harvests.117 In his first address to the Central Committee as General Secretary, Andropov laid out a plan of reform that would guide his short tenure in office. Entitled “The Better We Work, the Better We Will Live,” the speech outlined the main economic problems facing the country: inefficiency, waste, poor productivity, a lack of labor discipline, slow growth in living standards, and an insufficient quantity and quality of some consumer goods and services—particularly in housing, health care, and food. In defining the problem of consumer goods, Andropov distinguished his approach from Khrushchev’s. Andropov stressed that the living standards did not reduce themselves to simple competition with the West for greater incomes and more material things. Rather, socialist living standards meant much more: “the growth of the consciousness and cultural level,” “reasonable consumption,” “a rational diet,” quality public services, and “a morally and aesthetically adequate use of free time.”118

According to Andropov, poor planning and outmoded management, the failure to utilize scientific and technological innovations, reliance on extensive rather than intensive methods of production, and the lack of labor discipline caused the economic shortcomings. Andropov called for the “acceleration [uskorenie] of scientific and technological progress.” Andropov visualized a modernization of production through the application of computer technology. Beyond this, he called for standing commissions on energy that would correct the “uneconomical use of resources.”119

Andropov also advocated attacking the economic problems by “a radical improvement of planning and management” at the top of Soviet society and by an improvement of discipline and incentives at the bottom.120 In many cases, management needed to become smaller and simpler.121 Andropov recognized that current planning and management methods often discouraged efficiency and the introduction of computers, robots, and flexible technology, since the adoption of new production methods could delay the fulfillment of an industry’s plan. A change in “planning methods” and “material incentives” had to insure “that those who boldly introduce new technology do not find themselves at a disadvantage.”122 Andropov acknowledged that some experts thought that the economic problems occurred because of too much centralization and that a solution demanded granting greater independence to enterprises and collective and state farms. From personal experience, with decentralization under Khrushchev and Kadar, Andropov knew that it could lead to parochialism and inequality. Andropov did not reject decentralization outright, but he opposed the course Gorbachev would later embrace, a rash plunge into decentralization. Rather, Andropov said it was necessary “to act with circumspection, to experiment if need be, and to weigh and consider the experience of fraternal countries.” Most importantly, any extension of independence must be combined with “greater responsibility and with concern for the interests of the entire people.”123

To improve productivity and the quantity and quality of goods and services, Andropov proposed greater discipline and better incentives. In particular, Andropov launched a campaign against poor work, absenteeism, drunkenness, moonlighting, and irresponsibility. Those so guilty would have to pay in a “direct and inexorable way” by lost wages, reduced positions, and diminished “moral prestige.”124 In “Operation Trawl” in early 1983, the authorities “flushed out absentee workers in shops, bars, and steam baths.”125 The media joined the campaign for greater discipline, and Andropov personally took the campaign to a Moscow machine shop.126 Andropov proposed punishment for public drunkenness and for such offenses as leaving work to shop or go to the baths. According to Zhores Medvedev, Andropov’s efforts, particularly to reduce waste, brought “immediate and striking” results. Newspapers began openly criticizing inefficient farms and incompetence in the food industry.127

Andropov vigorously opposed wage leveling, such as had occurred under Khrushchev, as a violation of the fundamental socialist principle of “to each according to his work.” He believed that unless productivity increases accompanied wage increases, greater wages would stimulate a demand that could not be fully satisfied and thus would produce shortages and other “ugly consequences,” like the black-market. Properly conceived, incentives could do more than reward good work; they would stimulate quality work and an involvement in the activities and plans of the collective and of the entire people.128

In foreign affairs, Andropov had no taste for the kind of retreats and unilateral concessions that would mark Gorbachev’s foreign policy. Andropov upheld the policy of peaceful co-existence and the avoidance of war, but he insisted that the principle of class struggle still prevailed internationally.129 In the 1970s, he repeatedly warned that by raising issues of “dissidents” and “human rights” and by increasing the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, the imperialists were actually intensifying their ideological and psychological warfare against the Soviet Union.130 In his first speech as General Secretary, Andropov said Soviet foreign policy would remain “exactly as it was.”131 At that moment, Afghanistan represented the fulcrum of international struggle, and on it Andropov did not waver. Months before becoming General Secretary, Andropov said that the CPSU remained faithful to its international duty and would do everything it could to strengthen “solidarity and cooperation with its class brothers abroad.”132 Within days of becoming General Secretary, Andropov told the President of Pakistan to stop pretending that it was not a partner with the U.S. in the war against Afghanistan and assured him that “the Soviet Union will stand by Afghanistan.”133

Andropov tried to improve the prospects for peace with the United States, but he did not have a lot of room for new initiatives. He took office at the nadir of Soviet-American relations, in the middle of what Soviet ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Dobrynin, called the “new Cold War” that began under Carter and worsened under Reagan.134 After Reagan called the Soviet Union the “evil empire” and announced plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative, Soviet-American relations reached a state of what Andropov called “unprecedented confrontation.”135 Andropov grounded his approach to the United States in the conviction “that peace cannot be obtained from the imperialists by begging for it. It can be upheld only by relying on the invincible might of the Soviet armed forces.”136 Consequently, Andropov rejected Reagan’s lopsided “zero option” proposal (later acceded to by Gorbachev), under which Western European medium range missiles would remain, but the U.S. would refrain from installing medium range missiles in Europe, if the Soviet Union would withdraw all its existing European-based medium range missiles. Andropov had no interest in what he viewed as unilateral concessions. The Soviet Union’s “entire experience,” Andropov said, showed that “one cannot go to the imperialists, hat in hand, and hope to win peace.”137 Instead, Andropov made a number of disarmament proposals based on strict parity, while making it clear the Soviet Union would settle for nothing less.

In his short time in office, Andropov showed flexibility and initiative in his dealings with the U.S. He managed to restart high level discussions with Washington after a complete absence of nearly two years. When Reagan met for the first time with Dobrynin and raised only one substantive issue, the granting of exit visas to Pentecostals who had taken refuge in the American embassy in Moscow, Andropov agreed to act and allowed the Pentecostals to leave. Even though Andropov believed Reagan hoped to achieve military superiority and even contemplated a first nuclear strike, the Soviet leader instructed his arms negotiators to stop threatening to withdraw from the talks, and he re-opened the confidential communications channel that had been shut down since Carter. Andropov also instructed Dobrynin to be alert to any signs of Reagan’s willingness to improve relations. In the end, Andropov’s efforts to open a dialogue with the U.S. came to little. In September 1983, when a Soviet aircraft mistakenly shot down a Korean passenger plane and Reagan spokesmen reacted with a rhetorical rampage, any chance of improving relations vanished.138

In his brief tenure, Andropov also addressed problems related to Party standards, personnel, democracy, ideology, and the national question. He made clear that the Party would not tolerate corruption, bribery, or embezzlement. He insisted on a restoration of “Leninist norms.” According to Ligachev, after Andropov became General Secretary “everyone went from an abbreviated workday to a longer one.”139 Andropov also abolished Brezhnev’s “stability of cadre” policy and forced out the old and incompetent and brought in new and effective Party and state officials. One of his first moves was to replace the head of the Transport Ministry, which had been a source of persistent bottlenecks in the economy.140 To improve democracy, Andropov attacked the excessive formalism of Party meetings and demanded an end to their scripted character.141 He demanded the removal of obstacles to initiatives in the workplace, and according to Ligachev, introduced “the practice of holding preliminary discussions of Party and government decisions in work collectives and factories.”142 In June 1983, Andropov devoted a plenary meeting of the Central Committee to a discussion of the improvement of ideological work.143

Unquestionably, Andropov understood the problems facing the Soviet Union and the CPSU and undertook serious reforms. Some writers in the West suggested that the Soviet leader was a closet liberal, but they were wishing to make it so.144 Nothing in Andropov’s words or deeds showed the slightest interest in the path that Gorbachev would follow after 1987. It was not simply that Andropov quoted Marx and Lenin and hewed to the Party line. The Party expected no less of any Party leader. Rather, Andropov distinguished himself, as his speeches between 1964 and 1983 show, by the creative application of Marxist-Leninist ideas to immediate problems, the bold defense of tough policies, and the ability to rebut Western criticism with strength and sophistication. In precisely those areas, where Gorbachev would exhibit the most vacillation, Andropov showed the greatest steadfastness.

Similarly, Andropov took a more tough-minded approach to socialist democracy, nationalism, and the second economy than Gorbachev would. Andropov scored Stalin’s breaches of socialist legality and Party democracy, but proclaimed the revolution’s right and need to defend itself with force.145 Andropov also had no sympathy whatsoever for manifestations of the second economy. No aspect of Soviet life drew more of Andropov’s censure than “money-grubbing,” “the plundering of the people’s property,” and the use of public posts for “personal enrichment.”146 Personal acquisitiveness could not be harnessed or encouraged for the benefit of socialism. It reflected a bourgeois value that socialism had to transcend. In what may have been his last article, Andropov said, “The turning of ‘mine’ into ‘ours’…is a long and multifaceted process which should not be oversimplified. Even when socialist production relations have been established once and for all, some people still preserve, and even reproduce, individualistic habits, a striving to enrich themselves at the expense of others, at the expense of society.”147

On the national question, Andropov took a tack that differed from the complacent optimism of previous General Secretaries and from the later indifference of Gorbachev. Far from assuming that socialism had solved these problems, Andropov asserted that national distinctions lasted much longer than class distinctions and that national self-awareness actually increased with economic and cultural progress. National problems, Andropov said, were “still on the agenda of mature socialism.”148 He called for the rectification of past and present policies that injured national sensibilities but insisted on an intolerance of national arrogance, conceit, or exclusiveness.149 Andropov specifically called for a kind of “affirmative action” to “insure the proper representation of all nationalities” in all Party and government bodies.150 Such a call by a Communist leader might seem entirely ordinary, but it contrasted sharply with Gorbachev’s abrasive bumbling of national problems. Indeed, the eruption of nationalist sentiment that occurred in the mid-1980s served as much as a measure of Andropov’s prescience as of Gorbachev’s blindness.

There is every reason to think that Andropov’s approach to reform would have worked. As a Communist leader, he had everything going for him except his health. Such cynics as the historian Dmitri Volkogonov asserted that Andropov’s course was “ineffective.” In all fairness, however, Andropov accomplished a great deal in his fifteen months, which in any case was a very short time to reform an entire society. His accomplishments were all the more impressive considering that illness consigned him to a hospital bed for half of this time and his successor lacked the capacity to continue what Andropov had started. Volkogonov acknowledged that the next General Secretary, Konstantin Chernenko, was “a total mediocrity, hardly educated, without any of the vision needed by a leader of Party and state.”151

Some of Andropov’s economic experiments did continue after him, but other reform ideas remained on the drawing board. Others barely got started. Most of them withered on the vine during Chernenko’s two years in office. Consequently, most of the problems of the economy, Party, and foreign relations that had worsened under Brezhnev remained. When Gorbachev assumed the office of General Secretary in 1985, other Communists knew he favored reform but the path Gorbachev would choose remained a mystery, most likely even to the new General Secretary himself.