Utopia in Power

During the 1960s, the socialist bloc obtained very few Western credits. By 1974 such credits existed on a large scale—$13 billion worth. In 1978 they reached $50 billion and continued to grow. British banks loaned 30 percent of this amount to the USSR and the other socialist countries; 20 percent each was provided by French and German banks, and 13 percent by American banks. In 1975 Western bankers thought that if a debtor nation was devoting 20 percent of its income to interest payments, it should be given no more credits or loans. In 1978 the USSR was paying 28 percent of its income to service its debts.¹³⁵ But one Swiss banker admitted, "Only the Kremlin knows the exact amound of this debt. We're navigating in the fog, because Western banks keeps their relations with the Soviet bloc secret. So we don't know exactly the conditions for repayment of these debts, nor do we know the reasons for these new Russian loans."¹³⁶

After awarding huge credits to the "real socialist" part of the world, the Western banks found themselves loaning still more to help pay the interest on the original loans. In this way, the capitalist world has continued to bind itself to the socialist one by innumerable economic links. The West's main concern thus became preserving the stability of the socialist world (and hence its capacity to pay). The interests of "real socialism" became those of the West. The Soviet Union cannot solve all its economic problems with the help of the "butter," "guns," and credits supplied by the West, but it does solve the most important ones, i.e., those that are unsolvable under the conditions of the socialist system, such as the introduction of the latest technology. At the same time, the Soviet Union gains understand­ing, cooperation, and help from its enemy.

In 1978 the American businessman Armand Hammer, one of the initi­ators and promoters of Western cooperation with the USSR, was decorated with the Soviet Order of Friendship Among the Peoples. "I was very moved by such high recognition and by the letter from Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev," the head of Occidental Petroleum confided. Occidental ranks as the twenty- sixth largest corporation in the United States. "He is an outstanding leader and at the same time a man of heart, warm and simple."¹³⁷ Hammer for more than sixty years has served a model of how Western businessmen can collaborate with the USSR. He crowned his record of collaboration, begun under Lenin, by the signing of a $20 billion contract with Brezhnev in 1973 for the construction of a chemical enterprise. In 1980 after invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops, when President Carter proclaimed an embargo on the export of certain chemical products to the Soviet Union, an exception was made for Occidental Petroleum. The invasion of Afghan­istan, an "unforeseen difficulty," another "temporary detour" or "incident along the road," could not break the ties between Western business and the Soviet Union.

The first half of the 1970s was a time of intense diplomatic activity. Detente facilitated the conclusion of treaties validating the new balance of forces in the world. Most important were the Soviet treaty with West Ger­many in 1970 and the agreement limiting strategic weapons with the United States—SALT I (1972-1974).

The treaty with West Germany was "drafted in haste by Egon Bahr, the West German secretary of state, and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister, then signed just as hastily, in the Kremlin, by Chancellor Brandt and Kosygin," Helmut Allard tells us in his memoirs.¹³⁸ The treaty ac­knowledged Soviet hegemony over the socialist camp and confirmed the existing borders of the Soviet zone. As Allard puts it, the treaty provided the Soviet Union with "the key to carrying further its far-reaching plans in foreign and domestic policy."¹³⁹ Key economic agreements with the United States were also signed in the Kremlin. On May 23, 1972, all the Soviet newspapers carried a photograph on the center of the first page, showing a huge table with many chairs along both sides with Nixon and Brezhnev in the foreground smiling benevolently at one another. No one else was seated at the table. The two were presented as joint masters of the world. Nixon's visit to Moscow underlined the significance of the agreements that were signed. The United States recognized the USSR as an equal partner with which it wished to collaborate. Soviet commentators stressed, above all, the importance of the agreement on scientific and technical cooperation. "In our century of impetuous development of the scientific and technological revolution," wrote Izvestia, "no country can develop its science and tech­nology alone, no matter how strong and developed it may be, without participating in international cooperation."¹⁴⁰ The meaning of this comment is clear: the powerful Soviet Union would receive aid from the United States and could soon "catch up with and surpass America."

All during the Nixon visit the Soviets were careful to emphasize that the rapprochement with the United States was "party policy." This was un­derscored by Brezhnev, who signed the most important agreements in his capacity as general secretary of the Central Committee. It was explained to the surprised American journalists that the USSR Supreme Soviet has the right to empower the person of its choice to sign state documents.

The policy of detente transformed the character of Western diplomacy. The French historian Alain Besangon noted: "A reversal has taken place in the traditional relations between politics and diplomacy. Normally, di­plomacy is an instrument serving politics. A visit by chief of state, for example, is a means to achieving a political accord. ... Now we are doing the opposite, putting politics at the service of diplomacy. We make a political arrangement in order to justify an official visit."¹⁴¹ Nixon's trip to Moscow, and his summit meeting there with the Soviet leaders, had become a political goal in and of itself. Kissinger tells us that from 1970 on Nixon had been trying to arrange such a "summit meeting."

On August 1, 1975, thirty-two European heads of state, together with those of Canada and the United States, took part in another summit meeting with Brezhnev. On that day, the Final Act of the Conference of European Security and Cooperation was signed at Helsinki. The idea of a Europe- wide conference that would confirm the results of World War II had been proposed by Khrushchev in the early 1960s. In 1975 the Helsinki confer­ence above all codified the results of detente.

During the Helsinki conference, in July 1975, the Soviet and American spaceships Soyuz and Apollo met in space. This event was portrayed by the Soviet press as a triumph of detente and of Soviet advanced technology, a triumph that was meant to cover over the defeat in the "race to the moon" and to show the full equality of the two partners.

The Soviet—American meeting in space had determined the character of the meeting on earth, at Helsinki. The final act of the conference consisted of agreements in three problem areas, three "baskets" as they were called in Helsinki. There was first the political problem. The borders established after World War II were confirmed, not only those of the Soviet Union, the only state to enlarge its territory after the war, but also those of an inviolable zone of "real socialism" in Europe. The second "basket" was economic, an agreement to expand economic relations between the two parts of the world. In other words, the West promised to help the Soviet Union and its satellites to modernize their economies. Lastly, the third" basket" expressed the West's hope that the USSR and the other countries of "real socialism" would lift the iron curtain a bit, that is, would respect the rights of their citizens and allow the free exchange of ideas.

The Thiry Years' war culminated in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which established the principle by which the war between Catholics and Protestants would be ended: cuius regio, eius religio. The religion of the subjects was determined by that of their ruler. The Helsinki conference adopted the same principle, but for one side only. The West agreed to respect the "religion" of Eastern Europe, the "Soviet" religion; the Soviet Union refused to consider itself bound by any obligations whatsoever: in­sofar as "the interests of humanity coincide with the interests of the inter­national working class and of socialism... the policy of detente... does not in any way contradict the revolutionary strategy of the struggle for the liberation of peoples from national and class oppression and for social progress."¹⁴²

In a speech given to American trade union leaders during the Helsinki conference, Solzhenitsyn asked, "is detente necessary or not?" "Not only is it necessary;" he replied, "it is as vital as air! It is the only solution for the planet." However, he argued, detente could be real only on three conditions, which he went on to list: that disarmament be applied not only to war but to violence as well, eliminating not only the weapons that are used to destroy neighbors but also those that are used to oppress compatriots; that the "other side" be subjected to the control of public opinion, the press, and a free parliament; and that it reject the use of "misanthropic propaganda," that which in the Soviet Union "is proudly called ideological war."¹⁴³

Thirty years earlier, Arthur Koestler had said:

A state which constructs a Maginot Line of censorship, then fires off its propaganda from behind the shelter of this line, is committing psychological aggression. The Western powers... should demand: (1) free circulation of foreign newspapers, periodicals, books, and films in the Soviet Union: (2) reforms in the Soviet system of censorship (if it must remain in existence) that would allow information about the outside world to circulate freely in the USSR; (3) free access by accredited journalists, parliamentarians, and others to the territory occupied by the Soviet Union; (4) an end to restrictions on the entry of foreigners to the USSR and the departure of Soviet citizens from the USSR; and (5) active cooperation between the USSR and the Western powers in organizing travel abroad through exchange programs for students, teachers, writers, workers, etc.¹⁴⁴

Koestler believed that this "demand for the free circulation of ideas across borders, to revive the damaged flow of the world's circulatory system," should be put forward at the United Nations, at the Security Council, and at every summit meeting. It should be made a precondition for any and all negotiations between East and West.

On the fifth anniversary of the Helsinki conference, Brezhnev found the results "absolutely positive."¹⁴⁵ So they were: having obtained recognition of its hegemony in Europe and economic aid, the Soviet Union dismissed the agreement on "so-called humanitarian matters," that is, increased con­tacts between individuals, broader exchange of information, and greater respect for human rights, labeling it "interference in the internal affairs of the socialist countries."¹⁴⁶ Aleksandr Chakovsky, Brezhnev's court scribe, dedicated an "epic novel" to the Helsinki conference. It was called Victory. Describing two conferences, Potsdam in 1945 and Helsinki in 1975, and two Soviet leaders, Stalin and Brezhnev, Chakovsky developed the theme of the great Soviet victory: Stalin shattered Hitler, despite the fact that Roosevelt, Truman, and above all Churchill tried to prevent this to the best of their ability, and at Potsdam laid the foundations for peace and a new order in the world; Brezhnev completed this work and achieved final Victory. Helsinki only served to confirm it.

In 1975, the postwar period in European and world history came to an end and the next stage in the history began: the history of the Soviet Union and the world. In his speech at the Twenty-fifth Party Congress in February 1976, Brezhnev spoke of plans for the future, plans whose realization became possible after Helsinki. He talked of victories in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Angola. "Detente," he insisted, "does not in any way rescind, nor can it rescind or alter, the laws of class struggle. We do not conceal the fact that we see in detente a path toward the creation of more favorable conditions for the peaceful construction of socialism and com-

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munism.

ORDINARY SOCIALISM

In 1939 Churchill, a master of the bon mot, defined the Soviet Union as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." By the early 1970s the first socialist state in the world, having become the strongest military power in the world, still remained an enigma to the West. Failing to find the means to understand this new phenomenon in the history of mankind, Western Sovietologists tended to view the Soviet Union as a country like any other and to evaluate its achievements "objectively."

'The orientation of Brezhnev's policy" was judged "liberal." To one American Sovietologist, the 1970s were a time of "expansion of individual freedoms" and "increased egalitarianism," which was particularly evident in the fact that the disparity between the salaries of the best paid and least paid white and blue collar workers went from 3.7 percent in 1964 to 3.2 percent in 1970.¹⁴⁸ Another American Sovietologist agreed:

I see the 1960s and 1970s as a very benign period in Soviet history. It is quite possible that future historians will say this was the greatest, the best period in their history. It was a society that for the first time was able to provide both guns and butter, to raise the standard of living a bit, and to reach military equality with the West.¹⁴⁹

In 1975 Andrei Sakharov, a member of the Soviet and the American Academy of Sciences, had this to say:

Today the world press is full of items about inflation, the energy crisis, and growing unemployment in the capitalist countries.... I would nonetheless like to say: You are not dying of hunger... and even if you reduced your standard of living to one-fifth of what it is, you would still be better off than citizens of the world's wealthiest socialist country.¹⁵⁰

Five years later, from exile in Gorky, he noted a worsening of the situation in the Soviet Union: "A country living for decades under conditions in which all means of production belong to the state is suffering serious economic and social hardship. It cannot feed itself without outside assis­tance; and it cannot make progress in science and technology on the con­temporary level without using the benefits of detente.¹⁵¹

Andrei Amalrik began his essay, "Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?"—one of the first free reflections on his country and the world— by expressing the hope that it would have the same interest for Western Sovietologists "that a fish would have for ichthyologists if it suddenly began to talk."¹⁵² The decade that followed the publication of this essay was an era in which the Soviet Union was made wide open for examination: the books, articles, reflections, and testimonies of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Aleksandr Zinoviev, Vladimir Maksimov, Sinyavsky, Bukovsky, and many other writers, social activists, and witnesses revealed the nature of the socialist state that had built its Utopia.

But the "talking fish" made little impression on the "ichthyologists." Many Western specialists, Sovietologists, statesmen, and businessmen who dealt with the socialist world wanted to remain deaf. Even the shock pro­duced by The Gulag Archipelago, the strongest blow ever to the prestige of the Soviet Union, had little effect on those who made the Soviet Union their business. In time, Solzhenitsyn too was classed among the "reaction­aries," which made it possible to ignore his words.

For the West, the Soviet "tsardom of shams" remained a reality that differed only slightly from that of the non-Communist states. Its distinctive features were attributed to Russia's unusual history and the national pe­culiarities of the Russian people. But for the most part, it was considered a country like any other with an economy (including powerful industry and a somewhat backward agriculture, in need only of capital, machinery, and fertilizer); a culture, with its famous ballet—the best in the world: universal literacy; free medicine; mass organizations (unions, the Komsomol, the CPSU); general elections; and a constitution which granted the citizenry broad democratic rights.

The mystery of the Soviet system lies in its exceptional simplicity. Re­jecting what they call the obsolete model of "totalitarianism," some Amer­ican political scientists and Sovietologists prefer to use the term "institutional pluralism" to analyze the Soviet Union and refer to it as a "pluralistic system."¹⁵³ In 1980 Sakharov defined the Soviet system as totalitarian:

A totalitarian system that conducts its policies through control from a single center. Diplomacy, information, and disinformation services inside and out­side the country, foreign trade, tourism, academic and scientific exchange, economic and military assistance to liberation movements (a term that in some cases must be placed in quotation marks), the foreign policy of satellite countries—all these are coordinated from a single center.¹⁵⁴

The foundation of the totalitarian system is ideology.

Ideology is the most mysterious element of the Soviet system. Some deny its importance: "Probably most analysts would agree," one British economist writes, "that ideology (i.e., Marxism-Leninism) is not a powerful force in the Soviet Union today."¹⁵⁵ Others assert that ideology is dead, since no one believes in Marxism-Leninism anymore. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who does not doubt the vitality of this doctrine, hsa tried to persuade the Soviet leaders to abandon it: "Pull and shake off from all of us, the filthy, sweaty shirt of Ideology which is now so covered with blood that it prevents the living body of the nation from breathing."¹⁵⁶ Solzhenitsyn has insisted that it is essential to abandon the ideology of Marxism-Leninism because it is a "false doctrine" and a "worn out ideology" that "has nothing with which to answer objections and protests other than weapons and prison bars."¹⁵⁷ Logical arguments refuting the doctrine seldom harm it. Moreover, it is particularly difficult to regard an ideology as "beaten" when it is spreading over the world with the speed of a forest fire.

The failure to comprehend the essence of Soviet ideology can be ex­plained specifically by the fact that it is treated as a religion that requires "faith." In fact, however, Soviet ideology exterminated all the "believers" and declared "faith" to be a dangerous deviation from the "general line" during the Stalin era. When Ivan Yakhimovich, a confirmed Communist, sent a letter to the Central Committee in 1968 protesting the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the trials of the dissidents, events which, in his opinion, had seriously damaged the cause of communism, Soviet psychiatrists de­clared him mentally ill. "He claims," said an expert report,

that never and under no circumstances would he betray the idea of the struggle for a Communist order, for socialism. On the basis of the foregoing the commission concludes that Yakhimovich displays the paranoid devel­opment symptomatic of a psychopathic personality. The patient's condition should be equated with a mental illness and therefore, with regard to the actions for which he has been charged, I. A. Yakhimovich should be con­sidered not responsible. He must be placed in a special hospital for com­pulsory treatment.¹⁵⁸

Soviet ideology has long since ceased to be a philosophical doctrine or even a system of views. It has become a technique for conditioning human consciousness and spirit and for transforming man into Soviet man. As Solzhenitsyn asserted:

The stock phrases of required thinking, not even thinking but rather dictated argument, dinned into us daily from the magnetic gullets of radios, repro­duced by the thousands in different newspapers that are really all identical to one another, and condensed into weekly surveys for political study groups, have maimed us all, leaving almost no undamaged minds.¹⁵⁹

The hero of Aleksandr Zinoviev's The Yellow House, himself a worker on the ideological front, enumerates the forms of ideological work: evening university courses in Marxism-Leninism; the Komsomol schools; newspa­pers; magazines; grade school lessons; radio; and television. He draws this conclusion.

It doesn't at all matter what people think to themselves or in private con­versations. The only thing that matters is that they are constantly in a powerful field of ideological influence and no matter what their attitude toward it, they are still only particles in this field, and from it they receive a certain charge, disposition, orientation, and the like.¹⁶⁰

Ideology never lets go of Soviet man, from the cradle to the grave. Pravda, noting that "man spends one-third of his time at work," rejected the idea that the rest of a man's time is his own: 'The use of free time, behavior in public places or in private life, is not only a question involving the indi­vidual and him alone. As already mentioned several times, it is an issue involving the state as a whole, demanding the most serious attention of party, government, trade union, and Komsomol organizations."¹⁶¹

In the Soviet Union, the ideological army surpasses the army, navy, and air force in number. The secretary of the Kazakhstan Central Committee announced proudly at a routine ideological meeting that besides the kolkhoz workers, "a great number of ideological workers—more than 140,000 po­litical propagandists, lecturers, political educators, and organizers of cul­tural and artistic activities—participated in the harvest of 1979. "¹⁶² This number—140,000—equals approximately ten full-strength divisions. Sus­lov, the leader of the "ideological front," in an address to all his "soldiers" (a conference of ideological workers), referred to the "army of millions and millions of ideological cadres" whose duty was "to encompass the entire mass of the people with their influence and at the same time to reach every individual." The secretary of the Komsomol declared at the same conference that the process of ideological upbringing "must be uninterrupted" and occur everywhere—in the home, at work, and on the streets.¹⁶³

Ideology regulates the behavior of Soviet citizens and, through a refined system of techniques, arouses the emotions and reflexes essential to the party at any given moment. Belief is not required of Soviet citizens. They are supposed to repeat the standard slogans without believing them, even sometimes mocking them (to themselves). They do not even have to repeat them, but merely listen to them. Participation in the ritual alone is adequate for the ideology to penetrate the brain and the blood.

There are two pillars on which this ideology rests: (1) the party is always right because it is leading the way to communism, the bright future; and (2) hatred of the enemy is a quality "Soviet man" cannot do without. "Hatred has become your barren atmosphere," wrote Solzhenitsyn, "a hatred second not even to racism."¹⁶⁴ As though wishing to demonstrate the truth of Solzhenitsyn's words, a Soviet lieutenant colonel Demin teaches his soldiers: "Even today a just and noble hatred of the imperialist aggressors serves as a bright expression of one's love for the motherland."¹⁶⁵ The party, of course, chooses when and whom to hate.

Ideological education begins at a very early age, when the child is in kindergarten. Every summer, 16 million young Pioneers, ten to fifteen years old, take part in a war game called "lightning" (Zarnitsa) at military camps.¹⁶⁶ Every year another military game—"Eaglet" (Orlenok)—is or­ganized for teenagers fifteen to eighteen.

Ideology has a most important function in Soviet society, the infantili- zation of Soviet citizens. Just like the stern father of a lazy and disobedient child, ideology teaches Soviet citizens how to understand events in the world around them, how to behave, how to relate to their families, neighbors, and strangers. At the 1979 ideological conference mentioned above, Suslov presented his army of ideologues with a new mission, as a result of the economic crisis: "to work out an arrangement for meeting people's real needs."¹⁶⁷

Hegel's formula "All that is real is reasonable, and all that is reasonable is real," found a new meaning: "zeal" is what the party considers real, whether it is reasonable or not. This means that without ideology life is impossible. Ideology permits the transformation of fiction into reality and nourishes the population with words.

The first half of the 1970s witnessed the birth of the cult of the general secretary. No decisions made in the feverishness after the ouster of Khru­shchev nor any talk of "collective leadership" could halt the irrepressible

rise of one general secretary. The ideology requires a Leader, a Priest, in whom it can find a formal, tangible incarnation.

The career of Brezhnev, which in its most essential features repeated the careers of his predecessors, Stalin and Khrushchev, allows us to con­clude that it is impossible for a state of the Soviet type to manage without a Leader. The experience of China after the death of Mao, who fulfilled the function of Lenin and Stalin simultaneously, confirms the universality of this system: deified during his life, Mao, several months after his death, began to get in the way of the new leaders, who were involved in a bitter struggle for power. They proceeded with "de-Maoization," all the while selecting the quotes from his works and the examples of his creations they needed in order to eliminate their rivals and take his place.

The struggle against "the rehabilitation of Stalin," which was one of the most important concerns of newly awakened public opinion from the end of the 1950s to the mid-1960s, played a significant educational role. At the same time, it created the illusion of a victory that was never won.

The rehabilitation of Stalin did take place, for he was cleared of all criminal accusations: discarded were accusations of "subjective and uni­lateral judgment" concerning preparation for war with Germany and the course of the war. Brezhnev said solemnly: "Our party had foreseen the possibility of a military confrontation with the forces of imperialism and prepared the country and its people for defense."¹⁶⁸

At the same time, Stalin could not be fully rehabilitated, for his place was occupied by another. The first general secretary was included in the small iconostasis of Leaders, but he took third place behind Lenin and Brezhnev. Brezhnev's rise proceeded in two directions, both leading to the same goal. The first was the consolidation of his personal power. In the course of a fifteen-year "creeping purge," Brezhnev got rid of all his actual and potential rivals in the Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee. This gradual transformation of the leadership bodies was limited to political, not physical, elimination. By 1980 power had been concen­trated in the names of Brezhnev's inner cabinet, headed by Konstantin Chernenko, who was made a member of the Politburo. The members of this "Dnepropetrovsk mafia," Brezhnev's vassals, owed their power to him alone and occupied the key posts in the central apparatus. The first and second deputies to the chairman of the KGB, the minister of the interior, and four deputies to the chairman of the Council of Ministers were all Dnepropetrovsk men. In 1978 a special law was passed on "collectivity in the work of the USSR Council of Ministers,"¹⁶⁹ leaving Kosygin, the head of the government, with only nominal power.

By the fifteenth anniversary of his advent to power, Brezhnev held the posts of general secretary of the General Committee, chairman of the Pre­sidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, chairman of the Council of Defense, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Khrushchev had violated the rule, accepted after Stalin's death, that one person could not simultaneously hold both the post of first secretary of the Central Committee and that of chairman of the Council of Ministers. After Khrushchev's death Brezhnev circumvented this rule by combining the posts of general secretary and head of state (chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium.

The second part of Brezhnev's rise to power which occurred simulta­neously with the consolidation of power, was the transformation of the general secretary into the Leader, and the creation of a Brezhnev cult. The model for the true Leader was sketched by the writer Vsevolod Kochetov, a loyal Stalinist and editor of the magazine October. After Khrushchev's removal, Kochetov wrote a novel portraying a Leader who had failed to justify the power the party had placed in him, and a contrasting figure, a Leader of the required type. Delving into history, Kochetov compared two Russian tsars: Ivan the Terrible and Vasily Shuisky.¹⁷⁰

In order to govern our Mother Russia, one must have, oh, oh, such a great held on one's shoulders! Insolence alone is not enough; wisdom is needed; and unhurried statesmanship. And tremendous erudition. But what was Shuisky like? Nothing special. An upstart, that's all. He puffed himself up and played at being the tsar of Russia, but soon went flying off the throne without a shred of glory.¹⁷¹

The image of Brezhnev as Leader was created on this model: unhurried, reasonable, wise, with "tremendous erudition." Above all, he was credited with an eminent military career and the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. In 1979 his dress uniform bore sixty decorations, while Zhukov, the most prominent military leader of World War II, had only forty-six.¹⁷² Brezhnev was now said to have played a decisive role in the victory over Hitler. He was awarded the Gold Medal of Karl Marx for his "outstanding contribution to the development of the theory of Marxism-Leninism and the scientific study of current problems in the development of socialism and the historic world-wide struggle for communist ideals."¹⁷³ He received the Lenin Peace Prize. Uncovering a bronze bust of Brezhnev sent to his native village, the first secretary of the Ukraine attested: "We are fully justified in saying: lasting peace, just peace in the world, and the name of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev are inseparable."¹⁷⁴

In 1933, responding to a member of the party who had decided to send his decoration to Stalin as an expression of his admiration for the Leader, the general secretary who was known for his modesty, wrote: "Decorations are not made for those who are already famous but for the little-known heroes.... Moreover, I must tell you that I already have two decorations. That is more than I need, I assure you."¹⁷⁵ At the end of his life, Stalin changed his view on this question. And not only, it seems, because he felt that two medals were a beggarly reward for what he had done, but also because he understood the magical power of medals and uniforms.

The mystical and ritualistic aspect of Soviet ideology still awaits an analyst. Rationally inexplicable phenomena are interpreted by the party as natural phenomena. The Old Bolshevik Lazurkina, who was a prisoner for many years in the Stalinist camps, appeared before the Twenty-second Party Congress and related a dream she had had about Lenin. Lenin asked her to remove his tiresome successor from the Mausoleum. And the congress fulfilled the wish of the deceased Leader: it removed Stalin from the Mau­soleum. A Byelorussian poet published a poem in a Minsk journal in which he wrote of a telephone call to Lenin: "We have the right: wake him up! We have the right: call him!"¹⁷⁶

On March 2, 1973, all Soviet newspapers announced that Brezhnev had begun a routine purge of the party—an exchange of membership cards— on March 1, in the presence of the Politburo and the secretaries of the Central Committee. He gave a sample of the new party card, bearing the number 00000001, to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev re­ceived 00000002. The mystical transfer of the symbol of power was com­plete.

On April 21, 1979, "at the request of the workers," Brezhnev was awarded the Lenin Prize for Literature for his three books: The Little Land, The Rebirth, and The Virgin Lands, which told in the first person of Brezhnev's exploits during the war, on the industrial front, and in agri­culture. The general secretary was declared the best writer in the country. Stalin, who had a profound belief in the magic of words, dreamed his whole life of being recognized as a poet. But it was Brezhnev who realized this dream. Markov, chairman of the Union of Soviet Writers, described Bre­zhnev's books as embodying "the science of victory" and asserted that "in their popularity, in their influence on the reading masses, and in their creativity the books of Leonid Ilyich have no equal."¹⁷⁷ Thus, party prop­aganda was officially proclaimed to be literature, and the party's high priest became the guardian of the written word.

When receiving his prize, the winner promised: "If I find the time, if I am able, I will continue my memoirs."¹⁷⁸ In 1964 the cult of Brezhnev seemed impossible, just as the cult of Khrushchev had seemed impossible in 1954, and that of Stalin in 1924. Historical experience shows that the qualities necessary to the general secretary are revealed only in the harshest struggle for power. Until he achieves victory, the general secretary-to-be develops the qualities he has and acquires those he lacks. He is forged until he assumes the necessary form, having demonstrated outstanding talents: cunning, dexterity, prudence, ruthlessness, and a total contempt for all dogma.

Boris Souvarine, a preeminent specialist on bolshevism, explains the origin of the Soviet state in the following way. Lenin was obsessed with two historical precedents: first, the Jacobins, who were defeated because they did not guillotine enough people; and second, the Paris Commune, which was defeated because its leaders did not shoot enough people. Lenin saw it necessary to avoid these errors, and terror surged in a crescendo.

Since October 1917 terror has become an essential element in con­structing the socialist Utopia. In every country that embarks on the path of building the best world, based on the Soviet model, from Cuba to Cam­bodia, from Albania to Ethiopia, from Czechoslovakia to China, resistance to the Communist party is suppressed in the cruelest manner. Terror is considered the sole means of imposing the power of a minority on the majority. In comparison with the Stalinist terror, the persecutions of the Khrushchev era seemed extremely mild. They came to be called repression.

Soviet citizens, including those directly subjected to persecution and imprisonment, and Western observers alike were so accustomed to the scale of Stalin's terror that they considered its replacement with "repression" to be a change in the system.

The German psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who spent time in the Nazi concentration camps and later emigrated to the United States, analyzed the behavior of the SS guards and the prisoners. He noted that an essential part in the process of psychologically destroying the individual is played by ruthless, senseless, and total cruelty to the prisoner immediately after his arrest. Solzhenitsyn wrote a classic description of this process in his novel The First Circle (the chapter entitled "The Arrest of Volodin"). The psychological shock of the prolonged terror under Stalin, something the entire population experienced, left profound traces: the Great Fear sub­stituted for the Great Terror. The heirs of Lenin and Stalin are capable of applying a selective terror whenever it becomes apparent that the Great Fear is beginning to diminish.

The repressions of the Khrushchev—Brezhnev era became a real reflection of significant processes underway in society, processes that exposed the fiction of total subordination to ideology. Repression trampled the young shoots of resistance that broke through the crust of an earth scorched by terror.

The primary object of these repressions was the dissident movement. In 1978, the Soviet Small Political Dictionary for the first time included a definition for the term dissidents: "those who deviate from the doctrine of the church (heterodox)." Imperialist propaganda, the dictionary explains, uses the term "to designate isolated renegades, people who have broken away from socialist society and who actually come out against the socialist system, engage in anti-Soviet activity, violate the law, and, lacking any support from within the country, look for support from abroad, from the subversive centers of imperialist propaganda and espionage."¹⁷⁹ This def­inition is broad enough to encompass all who "deviate from the doctrine of the ruling church"—Soviet ideology. The entry, "Dissidents," which sounds more like an accusation, concludes with a verdict formulated by Brezhnev: "Our people demand that these activists, if you will, be treated as opponents of socialism, as people who have turned against their own Motherland, and moreover, as agents of imperialism. Naturally, we are taking and will continue to take measures against them as prescribed by law."¹⁸⁰

Andropov, at that time chairman of the KGB and the number one spe­cialist on dissent, deciphering the general secretary's message, considered dissidents to be people "stirred up by political or ideological errors, reli­gious fanaticism, nationalist deviations, personal grudges and failures,... and finally, in a number of cases, by mental instability." Andropov reminded his listeners that "socialist democracy has a class character." Consequently, "all Soviet citizens whose interests coincide with those of society as a whole enjoy the highest democratic liberties. It is an entirely different matter for those whose interests do not so coincide." In this case: "Let no one lecture us about humanism."¹⁸¹ On the sixtieth anniversary of the October revo­lution, the chairman of the KGB solemnly proclaimed the law of socialist democracy: those who agree with us are totally free to agree with us.

The early 1970s saw the culmination of the first period of the dissident movement, which took as its primary slogan the defense of civil rights and respect for the law. The courage of the dissidents, who made public facts about repression and violations of the law, impressed the world. Solzhe­nitsyn and Sakharov gave press conferences to foreign correspondents. An American journalist signed up Vladimir Bukovsky, Aleksandr Ginzburg, Andrei Amalrik, and Petr Yakir for television interviews, and Ginzburg sent tape recording with his comments from his camp. Yakir defined the new situation in the USSR: "Under Stalin there was always an iron curtain and no one knew what was going on here. Now we are trying to publicize every arrest, every dismissal from work, i.e., we are trying to inform people of what is going on in our country." In 1970 Sakharov, Tverdokhlebov, and

Chalidze founded the Human Rights Committee, the first open dissident group. The awarding of the Nobel prize to Solzhenitsyn in October 1970 was perceived as a victory for the dissidents and a challenge to the au­thorities. The open activities of the dissidents were regarded as a display of weakness by the authorities and a concession to the West, as the price of detente. Struck by their courage, Western public opinion came to their defense. 'The force of the West's enraged reaction was unexpected for everyone and for the West itself, which had long not put up such staunch and massive opposition to the land of communism. The reaction was even more unexpected for our rulers, who simply lost their heads."¹⁸²

The arrest of Petr Yakir in June 1972 illustrated that the KGB had devised tactics for those of dissenting opinion. These tactics remained unchanged throughout the 1970s. Every dissident became the object of vigilant scrutiny, surrounded by agents—secret and open. This period of incubation ended when all the dissident's friends, sympathizers, and ac­complices had become known. Then one or several arrests were made, and a trial arranged. The commotion created by the trial of a known dissident was concentrated on by the West. Under the cover of this commotion other, lesser-known dissidents were arrested; repression spread in concentric circles, like ripples from a stone thrown into the water. The fear returned.

The trial of Yakir and Krasin, organized in August 1973, was the first post-Stalin political trial in which the accused pleaded guilty and repented. The Soviet organs of repression once again used recantation as a means of struggle. The majority of dissidents, however, refused to plead guilty and used their trials as a platform to express their opinions. Samizdat circulated the court speeches of Bukovsky, Amalrik, Orlov, Tverdokhlebov, and others. Conversely, the press and television gave publicity to the "repenting dis­sidents": Yakir (in 1973), the Ukrainian Ivan Dzyuba (in 1976), the Geor­gian Z. Gamsakhurdia (in 1978), and the Orthodox priest Dmitry Dudko (in 1980).

In the late 1970s the KGB destroyed the human rights movements, arresting members of the Helsinki Watch Group created in Moscow in 1975 on the initiative of Yuri Orlov. Then it broke up similar groups in the Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia, and Armenia (1976—1977) and arrested the organizers of free unions (1978—1980), believers, and participants in na­tionalist movements. An Amnesty International report, Political Prisoners in the USSR: How They Are Treated and the Conditions of Their Impris­onment, enumerated the most widespread forms of repression: "Camps, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, in which the prisoners have fewer rights than their comrades in the camps, internal exile, and deportation from the country."¹⁸³

The persecutions to which the dissidents were subjected for their "free­dom of thought" was only one aspect of the state's repressive policy. "The goal of communism is the harmonious and fully rounded development of the individual," Soviet philosophers contend. However, "this goal cannot be reached without active regulation and organization by the state."¹⁸⁴ The repressive policy of the USSR is explained as a pedagogical necessity, a struggle against "remnants of the past." The primary defects in the society of "real socialism" were "theft of state property, absenteeism, and the abuse of alcoholic beverages."¹⁸⁵

Theft and corruption had become so common that a Soviet lawyer was able to conclude that in the 1960s and 1970s the USSR was being trans­formed into a "Kleptocratic state." ¹⁸⁶Alcoholism reached monstrous pro­portions. At a plenum of the Supreme Soviet, the results of an investigation conducted in a region of Lithuania were cited. In 1963, an average of 8 liters of vodka were consumed for every inhabitant; in 1973 the figure was 28.5 liters. The average resident of this region (note that Lithuania is one of the most culturally advanced republics of the USSR) spent 330 rubles on vodka and 3 rubles on books.¹⁸⁷

One of the consequences of alcoholism was a sharp increase in the number of prisoners. In 1974, 600,000 drivers were brought to trial for driving while intoxicated. Each one did a term in the camps.¹⁸⁸

The government, preparing to fight alcoholism, actually encouraged it, because a significant part of its budget comes from profit on the production and sale of alcoholic beverages and also because intoxication stupefied the population, distracting them from their troubles. Likewise, the government went on a campaign against theft and corruption but at the same time closed its eyes to them, since they served as the grease that allowed the wheels of the socialist economy to turn. In the end, general corruption and rampant intoxication strengthened the government: all citizens were guilty and the government was free to punish or forgive them as it chose. In the former case, the government was just, in the latter, it was good; and always, it was right.

Drinking was called a "serious problem" by Brezhnev in his report to the Twenty-sixth Party Congress.¹⁸⁹ But this was the least of the problems plaguing Soviet society.

Since 1975 the Soviet Union has published no figures concerning infant mortality. And for a reason. The last figures published by the Central Statistical Bureau showed that between 1970 and 1975 infant mortality increased by more than one-third. Using various statistics, Western re­searchers have established that the official figures left out some 14 percent of all infant mortality cases. According to their calculations, infant mortality in the USSR reached 40 per thousand, compared to 13 per thousand in the United States and Western Europe. Life expectancy in the USSR has also declined since the early 1960s. It is now six years lower than in the other developed countries.¹⁹⁰ No European country has experienced such a decline. As for infant mortality and life expectancy, the situation in the Soviet Union is now being compared to that in the developing countries of Latin America or Asia (Costa Rica, Jamaica, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Mexico). This condition can be explained, but only in part, by worsening nutrition, the increase in alcoholism, pollution, the destruction of nature, an increased number of accidents at the work place, automobile accidents, and the consequences of frequent abortions. But it is also known that mortality has increased among the metallurgical workers of Kharkov, among middle-aged women kolkhozniks, and so on. In 1975 almost every age group in the USSR had a higher mortality rate than in 1960. In the group over fifty, it increased almost 20 percent; for those in their forties, more than 40 percent. Since 1956 male life expectancy has declined by four years.¹⁹¹

To a large extent this phenomenon is the result of a decrease in the quality of medical service. Researchers have concluded that expenditures for health care have decreased (from 6.6 percent of the budget in 1965 to 5.2 percent in 1978). Funds are spent, not on the improvement of medical service, but on its expansion. Meanwhile, influenza alone kills tens of thousands of infants each year. The USSR has two medical personnel for every one in the United States, but their training is far inferior. Health care professionals are among the lowest-paid categories of workers in the Soviet Union, and the profession of physician is not a prestigious one. The poor training of Soviet medical personnel contributes to a sharp increase in postoperative complications and deaths.

In the Soviet Union medical care is officially free. Here, however, as in other sectors of the economy, corruption flourishes. If you want a good doctor, you pay for it; good care, pay a nurse or companion. The USSR is effectively undergoing a health care crisis. Yet this is but one manifestation of the permanent state of crisis in the economy.

In his memoirs Vladimir Bukovsky records calculations he made con­cerning the total number of prisoners in the Soviet Union: "According to our most careful calculations, the number of prisoners was never less than 2.5 million: 1 percent of the population, one person out of every hundred."¹⁹² The official figures (divulged illegally in the West) cited 976,090 persons sentenced in 1976. On January 1, 1977, Soviet camps and prisons con­tained 1,612,378 prisoners. Moreover, 495,711 people were serving terms "building the national economy."¹⁹³ Yuri Orlov, sentenced on May 18, 1978, to seven years in the camps and five in exile for helping to found the Helsinki Watch Group, and his friends prepared a report on the number of prisoners in 1979. According to their calculations, in the late 1970s the prison and camp population comprised no less than 3 million. To this should be added the approximately 2 million people sentenced to "lesser terms" (up to three years), whose terms are spent "building the economy."¹⁹⁴

The state maintains this high prison population for political, educational, and economic reasons. The law against "parasites" is analogous to England's notorious medieval vagrancy laws. Article 209 of the penal code provides for "deprivation of liberty for up to two years or corrective labor for a term of six months to one year" for "systematic vagrant or begging activity." In November 1970 a resolution of the Central Committee "on the improvement of work to maintain order and to intensify the struggle against crime" signaled a renewal of repression; a "parasite" is defined as one who "does not work for a prolonged period (four months, plus one month's warning)." Following the Central Committee's November 1979 decree, article 209 also applies to those who have a home and do not beg but are in good health and did not work.¹⁹⁵ A new army of convict laborers was thus sent off to toil upon the building sites of communism.

The nature of a state can be defined by various criteria. The number of prisoners is one. Even according to the official figures of February 8, 1977, Soviet inmates numbered 1.7 million. Given an overall population of 260 million in the country in 1979, this is undeniable progress compared to the 15 million prisoners out of a population of 180 million in Stalin's time. If we recall that in the United States in 1979 there were 263,000 prisoners and 140,000 juvenile delinquents in municipal prisons or a total of 400,000 prisoners, and that in Russia in 1912 the number of prisoners was 183,000 out of 140 million inhabitants, the results obtained after sixty years of building a new world speak rather eloquently for themselves.

The October revolution solemnly promised to eliminate the "national problem" in the former Russian empire, which had become the first socialist state. In the age of "real socialism" a formula was found that expresses the past, present, and future of this problem. The past, capitalism, had divided and alienated nations, but socialism had "created new and higher forms of human community." As for the present and future, "the devel­opment of the Soviet people is the guarantee of the future creation of a human community that is qualitatively new, excompassing all the people of the earth who will have embarked on the path to socialism and com­munism."¹⁹⁶

In commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the Soviet constitution (formerly the Stalin constitution), the president of the Council of Nation­alities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recalled, "In previous times, too, there were many attempts to create vast empires, beginning with Alex­ander the Great and ending with Hitler's Reich." Assuming, apparently, that multinational empires has always been the dream of mankind, the speaker concluded, "Only with the birth of the socialist state... has the age-old dream of mankind found true embodiment."¹⁹⁷

The creation of the "ideal empire" has deepened national conflicts and complicated the national question, which has turned into a most convoluted dilemma involving not only the national problems within the USSR but also those of the peoples on the periphery of the Soviet empire, as well.

The awakening of national consciousness among the nations of the USSR has assumed various forms. In the Ukraine there have been calls for "a struggle for national liberation and for democracy."¹⁹⁸ In Armenia in 1968 a clandestine Unified National party was founded "to create an independent Armenian state."¹⁹⁹ Independence slogans acquired widespread popularity in Lithuania. On May 14, 1972, a young worker named Romas Kalenta immolated himself in the center of Kaunas after announcing that he was dying for the freedom of Lithuania. His funeral became the occasion for a demonstration by thousands, which the police dispersed.²⁰⁰ The seaman Simon Kudirka, who in 1972 jumped ship from a Soviet vessel in the United States and was subsequently extradited to the Soviet authorities by the Americans, concluded his trial speech with the words, "I ask that my homeland Lithuania be given independence." In Georgia, the Ukraine, and the Baltic republics there has been mounting resistance to the more vigorous inculcation of the Russian language and the "Russification" of the edu­cational system.

Rome never forced the peoples it conquered to learn Latin. The language of the center of the empire was adopted by all who wanted to make a career in the Roman world. Russian is indispensable to anyone who wants to make a career in the Soviet world or to assimilate Russian culture, but at the same time it is imposed on all Soviet subjects, for it is an essential tool of the ideology. Russian nationalism is a special phenomenon. Vladimir Osipov, editor of the samizdat magazine Veche, which describes itself as "the first organ of a Russian nationalist orientation to appear in the USSR," warned in 1972 that "the Russian nation could disappear" and declared: 'There is no way out of the moral and cultural impasse in which Russia finds itself other than reliance on Russian national self-awareness." For Osipov called the nationalism he advocated in Veche "protective," an expression of "the self-preservation instinct of a vanishing nation."²⁰¹ This call to preserve the Russian nation, which is the dominant nation in the largest empire of the twentieth century, and the fear that the Russian nation might disappear, is necessitated by the danger posed by Soviet ideology, which treats Russian national values with the same ruthlessness it does the national values of other peoples.

The Soviet state uses diverse methods in the struggle against nationalist movements, which not only refuse to die out but also display as irrepressible a tendency to grow. The first tried and true method of the authorities is repression: arrests, the camps, and psychiatric hospitals. The stronger the national movement, the more severe the repression: nationalists, particu­larly in the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Romania, are subjected to especially harsh persecution. On January 30, 1979, the Soviet news agency TASS reported that three Armenian nationalists, Stepan Zatikyan, Akop Stepan- yan, and Zaven Bagdassaryan, had been shot. Arrested in November 1977 and accused of exploding a bomb in a Moscow subway station on January 8, 1977, they were sentenced to death in a closed session in spite of the fact that many witnesses had corroborated their alibis. Their execution, the first resulting from a political trial since the death of Stalin, was an unambiguous warning to all nationalists.

In the arsenal of combat techniques against nationalism, the idea of "Soviet patriotism" is of utmost significance because it represents a further elaboration of the old notion of national bolshevism. In the Soviet Union in the late 1960s there were articles in Soviet journals which actually advocated the ideas of national bolshevism.²⁰² But they were served up with a new sauce: "neo-Slavophilism." The notion of the special mission of Russia which was brought into being through the socialist revolution was promoted and supported. This "authorized" nationalism swept through lit­erature, the fine arts, and other cultural areas. In cases where it assumed the hysterical forms of Black Hundred-style Russian chauvinism, the guard­ians of Soviet ideology applied the brakes, warning: 'The realm of relations between nationalities... in a multinational state like ours is one of the most complicated areas of social life." An overemphasized Russian na­tionalism, if too strong, could provoke a reaction in the form of "local nationalisms. "²⁰³

The Soviet Communist party uses Russian nationalism to enlarge the sphere of activity of Soviet ideology. The recantation of the priest Dmitry Dudko was composed in the spirit of "Soviet patriotism":

I realize that I have yielded to the voices of the propagandists who strive to undermine our way of life. ... My activities have acquired an even more anti-Soviet character because they were initially stimulated, and lately also directed from abroad. ... I regret that my actions have brought harm to my country, to my people, as well as to the Orthodox church.²⁰⁴

The clergyman thus confesses that he has caused damage—first to the country, then to the people, and only then does he acknowledge damage to the church.

Those who express nationalist views exceeding the bounds permitted by Soviet ideology are subjected to repression. Vladimir Osipov himself, who sincerely believed in Russian nationalism, was able to publish nine issues of Veche between January 1971 and March 1974. He was then arrested and sentenced to seven years in camp and five years of internal exile. Nor do authorities encourage the open adherents of nazism, who have called for anti-Semitic pogroms and reproached the party for excessive lenience. Soviet ideology began to absorb Russian nationalist ideas as early as the 1920s, adapting them to its own needs. But Soviet ideology could not become nationalistic, the way nazism did, for then it would lose its essence and cease to be open to multiple interpretations. Not having principles— except the absence of principle—it cannot really adopt the principle of nationalism.

Punishment was meted out when signs of nationalism appeared in the Communist parties of the non-Russian republics. As a rule this was the nationalism of local satraps who wished to grab a larger chunk of the power for themselves, to become a little more independent of the central government. In 1972, for example, there occurred the fall of Petr Shelest, first secretary of the Ukranian Central Committee. One of the initiators of the intervention in Czechoslovakia and an advocate of the harshest of measures and reprisals against all displays of dissent in the Ukraine, the USSR, or the Warsaw Pact countries, Shelest showed himself to be excessively independent in the eyes of the rest of the Politburo—and his career ended.

The system by which the non-Russian republics are governed from Mos­cow is based on certain administrative guarantees. The second party sec­retary of each republics's central committee is a Russian. As a rule, the head of the KGB in each republic and the commander of the military district are also Russian. But the most reliable guarantee of the republic's loyalty to Moscow is the fact that the first secretary of the republic's central committee and all the other party and government leaders devotedly serve the cause of Soviet power. With few exceptions—and such exceptions are quickly discovered and eliminated—the nomenklatura in the national re­publics is firmly committed to Moscow, for that is the source of their power. Russians who live in Georgia, Latvia, Uzbekistan, and other republics do not perceive themselves as representatives of a colonizing master race, as Englishmen did in India. Likewise, in Moscow, in the Politburo, some key positions were held by Ukrainians in the late 1970s. Those Russians who settle in the national republics do not bring Russian culture with them; they bring Soviet culture. And the Ukrainians in the Politburo pursue not Ukrainian but Soviet policies.

In Isaac Babel's Tales from Odessa the cavalryman Leva Krik gave the following reply to a rabbi who had reproached him, saying that a Jew should not ride horseback: "A Jew on a horse ceases to be a Jew." By the same token, a Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian, or Kazakh who becomes a Central Committee secretary loses his nationality and becomes a component of the party's power. Every blow against that power is a blow against him per­sonally. This same system supports the CPSU in its relations with the Communist parties of the "fraternal socialist countries."

In the struggle against nationalism a very important part is played by official anti-Semitism. The first openly anti-Semitic book officially pub­lished in the Soviet Union was Iudaizm bez Prikras (Judaism Without Embellishment), by T. Kichko, published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1964. This booklet, with its vulgar tone and crude illustrations lifted from the Nazi periodical Der Stiirmer (The Stormtrooper), aroused protest and dismay in the West. Khrushchev, shortly before his fall from power, felt obliged to disavow the booklet and remove it from circulation for the time being. When it was reprinted in the 1970s, it seemed even mild in comparison with the most recent anti-Semitic literature. The Six Day War in 1967 opened a new chapter in the history of Soviet anti- Semitism. After that, the authorities ceased to be ashamed of anti-Semitism, and it acquired full rights. Zionism became the latest approved and au­thorized object of hatred, just as Nepmen, wreckers, and kulaks had once been. In books and periodicals, published in millions of copies, and in movies and television broadcasts, Zionism was depicted as a most serious threat to the Soviet state. A Permanent Commission was established under the Social Sciences Section of the USSR Academy of Sciences "to coordinate research dedicated to the exposure and criticism of the history, ideology, and practical activity of Zionism."

The model and primary inspiration for anti-Semitic publications was a book by Yuri Ivanov, an official of the party's Central Committee, entitled Danger, Zionism! It was published in the late 1970s in an edition of 400,000 copies. Anti-Semitic novels also appeared by such authors as Shevtsov, Pikul, and Kolesnikov. The "struggle against Zionism" is an outstanding example of the omnipotence of Soviet ideology. With the aid of quotations from Marx and Lenin anti-Zionism is presented as a form of class struggle. Soviet ideologists have added a new chapter to Lenin's theory of imperialism as the last stage of capitalism: Zionism as the last stage of imperialism.

Within the USSR anti-Zionism is used to mobilize the country's peoples against a common enemy: the Jews. One of the greatest victories of Soviet ideology during the 1970s was the United Nations resolution pronouncing Zionism to be a form of racism. In the repertoire of Soviet propaganda, "racism" used to be one of the rare terms that had but a single meaning. Following the resolution, its meaning became manifold, like the terms "formal democracy," "real freedom," "bourgeois democracy," "social de­mocracy," "pseudo-humanism," and "proletarian humanism." Soviet ideo­logues managed to complete Hitler's work: anti-Zionism (equated with anti- Semitism) ceased to be the property of reactionaries and fascists. It became a Marxist, i.e., scientifically justified form of the national liberation strug­gle. "Anti-Zionism" has become the proletarian internationalism of the epoch of "real socialism."

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the national question in the USSR has acquired particular importance in connection with the demo­graphic changes occurring in the country. The 1970 census bore testimony to a regressive trend in Soviet population statistics. Between the census of 1959 and that of 1970 the growth of the population was approximately equal to the growth between 1925 and 1939. But the 1930s were a time of upheaval—collectivization, famine, and terror—while the 1960s were a period of peace and of a relative rise in the standard of living. Based on the results of the 1959 census, demographers expected a population of 250 million in 1970: there turned out to be 10 million fewer than that.

The most unexpected aspect of the 1959 census were the figures showing the dropping birthrate of the Russian population. Conversely, the republics of Central Asia experienced a demographic explosion among the peoples traditionally classified as Muslim, although the exact number of those practicing Islam remains far from clear. Islam in the USSR is for the most part a cultural tradition, rather than a religion per se. In 1970, the Russian Republic (the RSFSR) accounted for 53.7 percent of the population of the USSR; Central Asia, 13.7 percent; and the Caucasus, 5.1 percent. The figures for 1980 were 52 percent, 15.9 percent, and 5.5 percent, respectively. The forecasts for the year 2000 are 47.2 percent, 23 percent, and 6.6 percent.²⁰⁵ In absolute figures this means that by the beginning of the twenty-first century the Soviet Union will have 310— 320 million inhabitants, nearly 100 million of whom will be indigenous to Central Asia and the Caucasus.²⁰⁶ It is especially significant that the age structure of the population will shift to the advantage of the so-called Muslim population. If this prediction proves accurate, by the end of the century the population of the RSFSR will consist of 21.8 percent children under fifteen years and 21.8 percent people over sixty. In Uzbekistan, the respective proportions will be 40 percent and 8 percent; in Tad- zhikistan, 45.6 percent and 7.4 percent; in Turkmenistan, 39.5 percent and 7.9 percent.²⁰⁷

The rapid growth of the indigenous populations of Central Asia during the 1970s refutes all the demographers' predictions. The forecast was for 10 percent growth between 1971 and 1980; in fact, the increase was 27 percent. Instead of the expected 6 percent increase, the population of Kazakhstan grew 13 percent, and in Azerbaijan the disparity between the projected and actual figures was even more spectacular: instead of the 5.5 percent anticipated by 1980, the population had grown by 18 percent already in 1979.²⁰⁸ (In the period between the 1970 and 1979 censuses, the Uzbek and Tadzhik populations increased 36 percent, the Turkmen 33 percent, the Kirghiz 31 percent, the Kazakh 24 percent, and the Azerbaijani 25 percent.²⁰⁹) Those Soviet peoples designated as Muslim inhabiting re­gions other than Central Asia and Azerbaijan have shown a significantly smaller growth: 6.5 percent for the Volga Tatar population, for example.²¹⁰ The demographic explosion in Central Asia is partly explained by the traditional inertia of the indigenous population, who migrate little, and by the traditional life of the family clan particularly; whether an increase in the population of Central Asia will lead to a change in the political balance in the federal structure of the USSR, and to a change in the systematic policy of Russification, is a rather controversial question. It depends, in part, on how long the Muslim community can continue to prevent intrusion into its traditional way of life by passive and sometimes purely instinctive resistance. For example, the census of 1979 showed that the young gen­eration in the republics of Central Asia has a better and better command of the Russian language, which, for them, is an indispensable condition for a future career.²¹¹

Demography confronts the Soviet state with two difficult problems. The first is that of manpower; this dilemma was officially acknowledged as such at the Twenty-sixth Party Congress.²¹² The projections were that the Soviet population would grow from 243 million (the 1970 census) to 267 million in 1980. In 1979 it was barely above 262 million.²¹³ The drop in the birthrate especially affected the Russian and Ukrainian populations. In 1979 the Russians comprised 52.4 percent of the entire Soviet popula­tion.²¹⁴ The Russians as a proportion of the total Soviet populations had decreased by 1 percent in this brief ten-year period. All the Soviet repub­lics, with the exception of those in Central Asia, suffered a decline in the growth of the labor force. The principal industrial regions are located in the western part of the Soviet Union and in Siberia. This problem is ex­ceptionally complex. Actually, workers from Central Asia are continually imported to the European part of the country. They constitute the majority of the working class in the new industrial centers of Uzbekistan. Whether Central Asia can be used as a labor reserve and if so, how, remain to be seen.

The other problem to which the drop in the birthrate among the Slavic peoples contributes is that of the national composition of the armed forces, especially of the officer corps.

At the Twenty-fifth Congress of the CPSU (1976) Brezhnev defined Soviet society as "a society where a scientific and materialistic concept of the world dominates." Nevertheless, Soviet ideologues recognize the persis­tence of "religious survivals under socialism." Sociological research conducted by the Pskovsky party committee showed that "approximately 12—13 percent of the city's residents consider themselves believers."²¹⁵ We may assume that this is the official figure for the percentage of Russian orthodox believers in the Soviet population as a whole.

Pilot and Cosmonaut 0. Makarov, who has been in space and thus is considered a specialist on philosophical problems, wrote: "The word 'faith' is often associated with 'religious faith.' But I am profoundly convinced that we cannot live without faith. The only problem is: What should we believe in?" And he explains: "Like millions of other Soviet citizens, I have faith in science, which is all penetrating and knowing. I believe in the moral strength of human reason."²¹⁶ Pskov's believers were seeking a "universal source of moral education" in religion rather than science.²¹⁷

Six decades of atheistic propaganda have been unable to eradicate the human need for faith in God, for religion. On the contrary, there is some indication of a growing interest in religion. This can be judged above all by the intensifying waves of repression crashing down on believers. Nu­merous cases of such repression have been documented by the Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers' Rights in the USSR, founded in Moscow in 1976, by the Chronicle of the Catholic Church of Lithuania, which began publication in 1972, as well as by the samizdat periodical Jews in the USSR and by other samizdat publications. Many churches have been closed; in two years, from 1959 to 1961, the number of active Orthodox churches went from 20,000 to 7,000.²¹⁸ Raising children in a religious manner remains strictly forbidden and is punished severely. The government jealously guards its monopoly on matters of the upbringing of Soviet man. A specialist on atheist propaganda explained that "two diametrically op­posed influences" result in "an inner struggle that is harmful to a child's mental health... causing nervous exhaustion and may possibly lead to serious illnesses."²¹⁹

Persecuting believers is only one method of combatting religion. A second is control over the church, which is exercised by the Council for Church Affairs, whose task is to eliminate religion little by little and to make use of it while it still exists, in the interests of the state. A secret report to the council, recently published in Paris, gives an idea of its objectives and forms of control over the Orthodox church. There is no reason to think that the council deals with other religious bodies, those of the Catholics or Muslims, any differently.

The theoretical basis for the council's functioning, it seems from the report, is the conviction that "religion has always adhered and will always adhere to positions alien to Marxism," but that "as a result of constant political work with the high clergy, they... are increasingly taking a pa­triotic stand." Control over the church takes the form of control over the clergy, from the patriarch to the humblest lay brother. Admission to the three seminaries (in Moscow, Leningrad, and Odessa) and the two church academies (in Moscow and Leningrad) is strictly controlled. Each candidate is selected by the "local authorities," that is, the local committees of the KGB, guided by the principle that there should be as few clergymen as possible, and each of those that does exist should not only demonstrate "loyalty and patriotism toward socialist society... but also be truly con­scious of the fact that our state is not interested in raising the role of religion and the church in society and, understanding this, should not be especially active in spreading Orthodoxy among the population."²²⁰ As a result of a steady reduction in the number of clergymen, on January 1, 1975, there were 7,062 operating churches and 5,954 clergymen.²²¹ A good number of priests and bishops were evaluated positively in the report: they did not proselytize. As an example of a "good pastor" they cite Bishop Jonas: "He does not demonstrate particular zeal in Mass. ... He preaches regularly, but his services are very brief, not very expressive, and without enthusiasm. Almost every sermon ends with an appeal to the believers to live in peace, to struggle for peace in the world, to work well and produce.²²² The work of Bishop Viktorin is also evaluated favorably, because he "educates the flock entrusted to him in the spirit of love for our beloved homeland."²²³

The "good pastors" are trained in church institutions, for example, at the Odessa Seminary, where the future priests hear lectures on the following subjects: 'The Success of the CPSU and the Soviet government in the struggle to Realize the Program of Peace, Elaborated at the Twenty-fifth Party Congress," "V. I. Lenin and the Cultural Revolution," "Lenin's Teach­ings on Communist Morality and the Fundamental Principles of Moral Education," "Educating the New Man: The Most Important Task in the Construction of Communism," and the like.

The report proudly emphasized the successes achieved by the Council on Church Affairs in its endeavor to transform the Russian Orthodox Church into an instrument to educate Soviet citizens in the spirit of "Soviet patri­otism" and love for the socialist homeland.

Decades of control and efforts to demoralize the Orthodox church led Father Dmitry Dudko, not long before his arrest and "recantation," to refer to the church hierarchy as "prot6g6s of the godless." He asked, "But what do they believe in?" He could not answer. Dudko explained that the KGB manipulates the church, playing on "Russianness: You are Russian, we are Russian, we should be together."²²⁴ In The Gulag Archipelago. Sol­zhenitsyn recalls that in 1922, at the trial of the SRs, the defendants were urged to confess with the argument, "After all, you and we are revolution­aries!" In 1924 Savinkov was given the same argument at his trial: "After all, we are all Russians." In 1937, the same bewitching melody was played: "After all, you and we are Communists!"²²⁵

This "tamed" religion allows Soviet ideology to enlarge its vocabulary and its sphere of activity. The album The Madonna of the Don was published with a preface explaining that "the deeply emotional image of the Don Madonna is the embodiment of the progressive ideas of the Russian people formed in the course of their struggle for independence."²²⁶

On the sixtieth anniversary of the October revolution, the poet Smirnov sang the glories of the "remarkable Soviet people" and concluded his poem with these words: "May god plus Soviet Power preserve them."²²⁷ The Soviet poet wrote "god" with a small letter and "Soviet Power" in capitals. His formula is a paraphrase of Lenin's famous statement: Communism is Soviet power plus electrification. For Smirnov, "god" plays the role of electricity in this new stage, in which Soviet power is stronger than ever before.

In April 1933 Hitler declared to the Reichstag. "You can be Christian or German, but you can't be both at the same time." The Soviet citizen could be a believer only if his faith did not hinder him from being, above all, a Soviet patriot.

Soviet power has encountered the greatest difficulties in Lithuania, where the majority of the population is Catholic. To the Lithuanians, religion and national identity are inseparable. The number of Catholic churches has continually diminished in Lithuania, as is true of all other churches in the USSR. In 1974, there were 629 churches and 554 priests in Lithuania.²²⁸ But if it is considered that the population of the Republic was 2.8 million in 1979, then, comparatively, Catholic churches are far more numerous than Orthodox in Lithuania. The Lithuanian Catholic Council of Bishops "demonstrates a tendency to submit to the pressure of the authorities, but it is not a blind instrument of the Communist leaders. "²²⁹ The example of the Catholic church in neighboring Poland and the selection of the Polish

Cardinal Wojtyla to become Pope John Paul II, strengthened the position of the Lithuanian Catholics.

The second largest religion in the Soviet Union, in order of importance, is Islam. With its Muslim population of 50 million, the USSR is the fifth largest Muslim state after India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia. The Soviet government's relations with Islam are similar to its relations with all other churches. The government seeks to eliminate Islam but in the mean­time uses it for its own interests.

In 1959, before Khrushchev's antireligious campaign, there were some 1,200 mosques. By 1977 the number had diminished to 300.²³⁰ The two Islamic universities (in Bukhara and Tashkent) turn out about fifty clerics a year. Soviet policy toward Islam, adopted in the 1930s, envisaged a first phase (sblizhenie), in which the Muslim peoples would be brought closer to the other Soviet nationalities, and a second stage (sliyanie), in which they would be assimilated biologically, culturally, and linguistically with their "big brothers," the Russians. The vitality of Islam outside the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s needs no commentary. The distractiveness of Islam as a religion enables the clergy to affirm the unity of all Muslims, whether they are believers or not. The Muslim clergy found new ways of observing rites that did not lead to conflicts with the authorities but per­mitted the Muslims to feel their ties with the rest of the Islamic world.

The most important element of Islamic ideology in the USSR is based on the thesis of "peaceful coexistence" between Islam and communism. At the Congress of Soviet Muslims in Tashkent in 1970 it was said: "Soviet leaders believe neither in Allah nor his Prophet. ... Nevertheless, they carry out the laws dictated by God and explained by his Prophet." Or: "I admire the genius of the Prophet, who proclaimed the social laws of so­cialism. I am happy that a large number of the socialist principles are realizations of Muhammad's commandments!!"²³¹ The Muslim clergy ac­tively promote Soviet foreign policy. Alexandre Bennigsen, a leading spe­cialist on Soviet Islam, described Mufti Zia ud-Din Babakhan, head of the clergy of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, as one of "the most efficient representatives of the Soviet establishment in the non-Soviet Muslim world." The mufti travels widely in the Islamic countries, "testifying by his presence that Islam in the Soviet Union prospers and is free."²³²

The uniqueness of Soviet Islam is that side by side with the "official" religion, controlled by the Council on Religious Affairs, there exists a "parallel" Islam, secret Sufi brotherhoods called the Tarikat. They are well organized, dynamic, and hostile to the Soviet regime. Thanks to them, Islam has been able to survive as a religion and a "way of life."

The combination of these two forms of religious life allows "social" Islam to make compromises, to perform its propaganda functions for the Soviet government, and to obtain certain concessions in return. The Muslim clergy orient their policy toward "eternity"; the Soviet government's policy is aimed at immediate gain. In the 1960s and 1970s there were no dissidents in the Muslim republics. It was reported in the Western press that the first wave of Soviet troops entering Afghanistan was composed of units from the Central Asian military district containing large numbers of native Central Asians. After the invasion of Afghanistan Soviet Muslim representatives were sent to other Islamic states to seek support for Soviet actions. At the Twenty- sixth Congress of the CPSU in February 1981, Brezhnev spoke openly of Soviet willingness to support those Islamic movements that contributed to the expansion of "the national liberation struggle," but he immediately warned that Islam might just as easily bear the banner of counterrevolu­tion.²³³

The Soviet leaders themselves decide when Islamic movements are to be considered progressive and when they are reactionary. In this regard, Soviet leaders have already much experience.

The symbiosis of Islam and Marxism in the Soviet Union leaves for the future to decide which will come first: the Islamization of Marxism or the Marxization of Islam.

"A third method of combatting religion, which supplements persecution and 'adaptation'—is the creation of new rites." Convinced that people are attracted not so much by faith as by religious rituals and celebrations, the spokesmen for "scientific atheism" have decided to try to influence not only reason but emotions as well. In 1979, the second all-union seminar conference on socialist ceremonies (the first took place in 1964) assumed the task of "extinguishing the illusory sun in the minds of believers," as Marx called religion, and turning on the "Soviet sun" in their minds in­stead.²³⁴ The conference summed up the "theory of Soviet rites" and the effects on Soviet citizens of monuments (chiefly—Lenin's Mausoleum), wedding palaces, Red Saturdays, and the like. The work of existing com­missions on rites and holidays in other republics, akin to the Vatican's Congregation of Rites, was also reviewed at the conference.

The most important ceremony is "political education." In 1978 more than 22 million people (nearly 12 percent of the population, including infants) "were taking courses within the system of party education." Noting this, Suslov, the country's chief ideologist, recommended organizing special "unified political days" (edinie politdni) once a month or once a week. On such days the entire population of a city or region, including those groups of the population who do not receive sufficient attention,²³⁵ can get a "concentrated dose of ideology" by carrying out the ritual.

• • •

Soviet culture in the era of "mature," or "real," socialism is both a product of the system and the most important means of its formation. As in all other areas of Soviet life, the upheavals of the Stalin era and the zigzags of the Khrushchev era had come to an end. Socialist culture was established, and its forms have become permanent and its monstrous weight rests heavily on society, preserving it in the state achieved thus far. From the past it takes whatever it needs. Above all, the merits of Zhdanov are highly valued. "His speeches on the problems of science, literature, and the arts," wrote Pravda, "have made a significant contribution to the ide­ological education of the Soviet people and to the development of their spiritual culture."²³⁶ The idea that there was a cultural renaissance after Stalin's death and the Twentieth Congress was rejected: 'The start of the renewal should be dated earlier than the usual date of 1956." As this historian of Soviet literature sees it, the "renewal" began during Stalin's lifetime. Hence the Brezhnev era began—under Stalin.²³⁷

The results are plain to see. Soviet ideology sociologists studied high school graduates in both rural and urban areas and concluded, "A com­parison between graduates of the 1950s and 1970s with high school grad­uates of the 1920s has shown that, on the whole, students today have reached a level of political and social maturity which in the 1920s was characteristic only of the finest representatives of the young workers and peasants."²³⁸

Georgy Markov, head of the Soviet Writers' Union, defined the dualities required of the creators of Soviet culture today: "correct ideological ori­entation, enthusiasm for the party, maturity in socialist thought, the pen­etrating insights of the writer," and, at the very end, "great professional mastery."²³⁹ It is perfectly clear that not one of the great Russian writers or artists, who possessed only "professional mastery," would have passed the test for a master of socialist culture.

"Correct ideological orientation," named first among the most important criteria, constitutes the foundation of Soviet culture and makes it a unique phenomenon in history. One of the guardians of the ideological purity of Soviet writers, while acknowledging that, as is well known, "truth is the highest artistic criterion in literature," nevertheless rejected the traditional bourgeois conception of the truth: 'The whole problem is in knowing what the truth must serve."²⁴⁰ Marietta Shaginyan, a writer from the old guard, explained the superiority of the new society using a historical example and its culture: 'Two thousand years ago, a certain Roman dignitary named

Pilate asked a popular leader, a simple fisherman, preacher, 'What is truth?' The man could not answer, he was silent. ... In our time, a new man had come who organized society in a new way. ... He has answered the ques­tion, What is truth? The truth is specific."²⁴¹

"The truth is specific." Consequently, only the party knows the truth, and the "correct ideological orientation" is therefore to follow the party.

Censorship in socialist society begins with self-censorship. It operates in the heads of writers, historians, and philosophers. "The truth is specific." Therefore, one must know what can be written without fear and what things are better left unsaid. In selecting a research topic or a novel theme, it is essential not only to clarify a given theme's chances of "passing" at a specific historical moment but also to anticipate all possible objections by the ideological authorities. That is where censorship begins. The rest of the work is completed by the "competent" authorities, the censors, whose duty is to supervise the press and protect readers and authors alike from deviations from the truths of real socialism. Any who deviate from self- censorship and official censorship face serious difficulties.

We have only rare and fragmentary bits of information on how the cen­sorship works in practice. Several works by Soviet writers have been pub­lished in the West in their complete form and can be compared with their censored editions. A much fuller picture of the principles and methods used by the agency that allows the "necessary" truth to pass and withholds the "unnecessary" truth can be found in The Black Book of Censorship in the PP/?,²⁴² which consists of documents from the Polish censorial offices— a "book of prohibitions and recommendations," instructional materials, and annotations and comments by censors. It makes clear the technique by which human consciousness is deliberately worked upon. There is $very reason to assume that the Soviet censorship served, and still serves, as the model for the Polish censorship.

The idea behind censorship is not to distinguish between correct and incorrect information. The censor intervenes to prohibit the publication or broadcast of texts not because they are false but because some truths are "harmful," while others are "useful." The censorship attempts to block any access for the real world to information. Books, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television should present the fictitious world of socialism.

For example, an informational note of the Polish censorship on materials censored December 1—15, 1974, contains the reminder that it is forbidden to "publish information on food supplies to the population (including meat) and on the standard of living."²⁴³ Meat will not appear as a result of not writing about its absence, yet the implication is that the absence of infor­mation about the absence of meat is supposed to create the illusion that the meat exists.

The first demand of literature, awakening after the death of Stalin, was for sincerity.²⁴⁴ The illusion that it was possible to have a literature based "not on a sermon, but on confession" continued even after Doctor Zhivago was denied publication. The publication of Solzhenitsyn's stories and no­vellas gave birth to hopes for a "thaw," but the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel dealt a fresh blow. Fifteen years later, a group of writers who had not lost hope of publishing uncensored literature, tried unsuccessfully to publish in Moscow the literary anthology Metropol, "an attempt at a cultural com­promise, an attempt to improve the climate, to infuse some new blood into an increasingly decrepit body."²⁴⁵

The history of Soviet literature in the Brezhnev era—and literature can serve here as the model for Soviet culture in general—was marked by a constantly recurring phenomenon. A talented writer would appear, his first works would be published, but as soon as he began to present a true picture of reality his work would no longer be printed. Then he would begin either to write for "his desk drawer" in the hope of being published later or outside the USSR, or he would censor himself and becomes a genuine Soviet writer. The first path was chosen by such writers as Vladimir Maksimov, V. Voi- novich, Georgy Vladimov, Yuri Dombrovsky, and Andrei Sinyavsky. Sol­zhenitsyn, too, tried at first to publish his novels in Moscow. The second path was chosen, for example, by Sergei Zalygin, author of the novel On the Irtysh, the best book about collectivization written in the post-Stalin era.

Two literatures and two cultures came into existence—one officially authorized, the other not. In 1974 it suddenly became possible to measure the relative merits of these two bodies of literature. In connection with the paper shortage the book-selling network announced that it would sell some real works of literature—fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and Lev Tolstoy and Alexandre Dumas's Queen Margot—in exchange for twenty kilos of "junk literature" (imakulatura), in order to recycle the paper. So much "junk literature" turned up (officially published works that people didn't really want) that the offer had to be withdrawn. There wasn't enough "real" literature to trade for the "junk."

Since the early 1970s, Soviet culture has undergone a general purge. Writers who lost all hope of being published felt obliged to emigrate, along with artists who could not exhibit their work and musicians who did not have the right to play the music they wished. Emigration was a different kind of purge. Stalin used to kill the artists, writers, and musicians who had the misfortune to displease him, so that the survivors would understand that "truth is specific." For an artist, exile is a heavy blow. For the culture, the loss of its most talented representatives is a death sentence. Thirty- five years after the end of the war, Germany still feels the loss of leading figures in German culture as a result of Hitler's twelve-year rule. Defending the authorized culture against its rival, KGB agents and the police used bulldozers to destroy an outdoor exhibit in Moscow on September 3, 1974. Most of the organizers and participants in that exhibit have since been forced to emigrate.²⁴⁶

A key component of Soviet culture is the obligatory ten-year public school education, whose principal task is "to instill a scientific and materialist world view and Communist convictions in its students."²⁴⁷ Another is the publication of millions of books, among which first place is occupied by the works of Lenin, of which there were 15 million copies in print in 1980,²⁴⁸ and the "remarkable works of Leonid Brezhnev," of which there were 17 million copies in print by early 1980, "but the number continues to grow; these books are printed virtually non-stop."²⁴⁹

The number of clubs, theaters, and schools may serve to define the level of culture. But it was defined just as well in a speech by Valentin Kataev, a prominent writer who has authorized numerous books and who has been active in literature for some sixty years. Thanking the author of the new constitution on behalf of the intelligentsia, Kataev declared:

We have all been accorded the greatest honor and confidence, and I would like to thank with all my heart the Soviet people, the Communist party, its Central Committee, and the chairman of the Constitution Commission, our dear comrade and friend, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. He has accomplished a truly titanic job in the creation of the new Soviet constitution. History will never forget his feat.²⁵⁰

Arkady Belinkov defined art as a "dynamometer of the vileness of a tyrannical regime."²⁵¹ In the Brezhnev era, culture sank to a level signif­icantly lower than that reached in the preceding period. The death of Aleksandr Galich, the King of the Bards, in 1978 (in exile) and of Vladimir Vysotsky in 1980 in Moscow were a kind of symbol of the silence that would ensue: the "unauthorized voices" that sang about real life were stilled.

The October revolution was the cause of the first mass Russian emigration of the twentieth century. The second wave occurred as a result of the Soviet— German war. A third wave rose in the early 1970s. The origin of this emigration differentiates it from its predecessors.

The crack that opened up during the NEP was sealed tight in the last half of the 1920s; thereafter the Soviet Union was totally isolated from the world. Khrushchev, reflecting in retirement on the nature of the state he had ruled for ten years, marveled: "It is incredible, after fifty years, to keep a paradise under lock and key."²⁵² The former general secretary's reasoning was logical: "Our social organization is undoubtedly the most progressive in the world... in this phase of human development. ... Our people live and build socialism because of their convictions, not because they are forced to. ... We must therefore make it possible for them to leave."²⁵³

Khrushchev began to think logically only after he was removed from power. The turning point in the official attitude toward the emigration path was the trial of a group of Jews in 1970 who were arrested at the Leningrad airport and accused of trying to hijack an airplane in order to leave the Soviet Union. The unusually severe sentences (two death sentences, nine long sentences in the camps) aroused the indignation of world public opin­ion, which was already high, as it occurred at the very moment that Spanish terrorists were sentenced to death in Burgos. In December 1970 even the Communist parties of the West were compelled to protest the death sen­tences in the socialist USSR as well as in Franco's Spain.

The harsh sentences did not inspire fear, as the authorities had antici­pated, but rather an upsurge in the movement of Soviet Jews seeking the right to emigrate to Israel. The Soviet government decided to permit em­igration. Like every decision of this type, however, the authorization was ambiguous: "It is not the Soviet citizen's right to leave and return to his homeland: it is a gift from the state, which first grants the right, then revokes it, only to grant it again later."

Those applying to emigrate became pariahs; they were fired from their jobs, defamed in the press, attacked and beaten in the streets, and some­times forced to wait for their exit visas for years or to pay "ransom" in the form of an exorbitant fee.²⁵⁴ But emigration increased steadily. In 1970 there were 1,000 emigrants; in 1973, 34,783. The number fell to 13,222 in 1975,²⁵⁵ and rose again to 43,000 in 1979.²⁵⁶ The Volga Germans also rushed toward the open door: from 1970 to 1976, 30,000 of them left for West Germany or other countries in the West.²⁵⁷

Permission to emigrate was a very important concession won from the authorities by the pressure of a mass movement of Soviet Jews and dissidents and supported by world public opinion. However, the Soviet government wished to turn this defeat into victory.

By the beginning of the 1970s the world already had some experience with "socialist emigration." Any country where a Communist party came to power immediately put its "paradise" under lock and key. Opportunities for emigration, however, varied from country to country in the socialist bloc. In the years 1946—48, Poland and Czechoslovakia allowed the exit of Jews to the new state of Israel, for at that time the Soviet Union thought of making Israel its outpost in the Middle East. In 1956 the Jews were again allowed to leave Poland during a wave of liberalization generated by the "Polish October." The events in Hungary in 1956 forced hundreds of thousands of Hungarians to flee. Many Czechs and Slovaks did the same after the occupation of their country in 1968. The most numerous was the emigration from East Germany, for up until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 emigration could have hardly been easier—it sufficed just to cross the street and be in a free country with the same language. In 1968, for the first time an exodus was deliberately organized in Poland: Jews were forced to leave the country. Gomulka's government wanted to find a scapegoat for the country's difficulties. Moreover, the Jews had played an important role in the prewar Communist party; they occupied very high posts after the war. When exile opened up these posts, apartments, and so on, the Soviet government learned from all these experiences.

There was a further consideration. In allowing Jews to emigrate, the government could also name a concrete enemy which would come to embody everything hostile to the USSR, its people, and socialism. Emigration singled the Jews out from other peoples of the USSR and gave them a right that was possessed by no one else; it turned them into potential "traitors," a "fifth column." That is how Gomulka characterized them in 1968.

Emigration, as in the time of Lenin, made it possible to purge the country of its malcontents by forcibly expelling them or compelling them to leave "voluntarily." In February 1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested, placed on an airplane and flown to Germany. This was the first case of deportation abroad since that of Trotsky in 1929. Solzhenitsyn's exile occurred within the framework of "Jewish emigration," and although Europe greeted the exile as no other since Garibaldi, it was not difficult to spread a rumor through official channels in the Soviet Union that Solzhenitsyn was a Jew.

The traditional distrust of Russians toward the West and the hostility toward emigres that was carefully cultivated by the state, which portrayed them as mortal enemies—all this was reinforced by the government's anti- Semitism. Jews were equated with dissidents, dissidents with Jews, and both were said to be spies for foreign intelligence services. A White Book published in Moscow in late 1978, dedicated to the dissidents and emigr6s and intended for propagandists, KGB agents, and the police, placed an official equals sign between all these "enemies of the USSR." This White Book was the work of the Association of Soviet Jurists and was supplied with a foreword by L. Smirnov, chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

Allowing people to emigrate served certain practical purposes as well.

In 1977 Bukovsky was sent to the West in exchange for Luis Corvalan, head of the Communist Party of Chile. In 1979 five Soviet dissidents were freed from camps and prisons and deported to the West in exchange for two Soviet spies seized in the United States. The GDR converted the trade in dissidents into an important source of revenue: they were sold to West Germany for hard currency or goods in short supply. Thus far the Soviet Union has used dissidents as bartering chips only sporadically. There is also the very real possibility that the KGB might use emigration as a vivarium for its agents.

The "third emigration" is composed primarily of Jews, but it also includes members of other Soviet nationalities. The common feature of the "third wave" is that it consists of people educated and raised on the Soviet regime: they breathed Soviet air from birth. In comparing the third wave to the first, a difference can be discovered in their attitudes toward the world, reality, their homeland, and each other. Emigres recreate the milieu they leave behind. It is typical, for example, that the Russian emigres of the early 1920s immediately reconstituted the rainbow of political parties that had existed in Russia before the revolution, while the third emigration has not created any political organizations. The only political organization func­tioning in emigration is the NTS, established in the 1930s.

But the absence of political organizations does not signify an absence of political discussion. This goes on among the representatives of the three views that were born with the dissident movement.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn bases his hopes on a moral and religious revival among the Russian people. He criticizes the democratic system, believing that it is powerless before totalitarianism, unjust, and founded on chance, because it has replaced general consensus with the law of the mathematical majority. He also considers it hollow, because it lacks any transcendent principle. Solzhenitsyn has proposed a "a slow, even descent from the cliff of chilling totalitarianism... [a] slow and smooth descent via an authori­tarian system (because for an unprepared people, a jump directly from that cliff into democracy would mean a fatal slam into an anarchistic pulp)." Critics have paid no attention to the writer's qualifying statements. The authoritarian system he conceives of is based on "love of one's fellow man," with a "solid basis in laws that reflect the will of the people, a calm and stable system" that would not "degenerate into arbitrariness and tyranny." It would renounce "secret trials, psychiatric violence," and "the brutal, immoral trap of the camps." It would include "the toleration of all religions, without oppression," "free publication and free literature and art."²⁵⁸

Many share the views most persuasively elucidated by Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Peace prize laureate who has been subject to persecution in the Soviet Union. Sakharov believes in the coming of a "moral movement which would instill in human consciousness the foundations of the democratic and pluralistic transformations that are essential for the country [the USSR] and necessary to all mankind for the sake of peace on Earth." He is convinced that nationalist ideology is dangerous and destructive even in its "dissident" forms, which at first glance may seem most humane.²⁵⁹

Finally, there are the supporters of Marxist historian Roy Medvedev, who continues to write in Moscow. For him, "the situation in Moscow could be changed by nondogmatic Marxists, who would be capable of giving socialism a new look." He believes that "if younger and more intelligent men came to power," the situation could change. "Perhaps even Andropov understands the problems of the intelligentsia better than Suslov or Kirilenko."²⁶⁰

Writers play a leading role in the third emigration. It is they who produce the magazines containing fiction, poetry, and political and social commen­tary. Kontinent, whose editor-in-chief is Vladimir Maksimov, is a traditional Russian "thick journal." It tries to make available a broad platform to unify all the enemies of "red and black fascism" and devotes much space to literature and the intellectual life in the countries of Eastern Europe. Among the numerous other emigr6 periodicals, two should be mentioned: the po­lemical journal Syntax, whose editors are Andrei Sinyavsky and M. Roz- anova, and the literary magazine Echo, edited by V. Maramzin and A. Khvostenko. Also, the oldest emigfe publication, founded in 1925: Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement, which has many readers in the USSR. With the third wave of emigration, the Bulletin has had an infusion of new blood.

The emigr6 literature is interesting not only in itself but because it is beginning to influence the literature produced inside the USSR. This free literature is becoming the measure by which the quality of what is written in the Soviet Union can be judged.

Among the carefully cultivated myths in the USSR, one of the most important is that a Russian writer cannot write if he leaves his native soil. This myth is refuted by the books written by Ivan Bunin, Mark Aldanov, Vladimir Nabokov, and other writers from the first emigration, as well as by outstanding works from the third wave.

At the Twenty-second Party Congress in 1961, which adopted a new party program promising to complete the construction of communism in the near future and announcing that the Soviet state was "a state of the people as a whole," Khrushchev announced it was necessary to prepare a new

constitution. A commission was formed in 1962. It took fifteen years to write the new constitution, the fourth since the revolution. It was adopted in 1977.

The essential core of the Brezhnev constitution (the anniversary of which is celebrated every year on October 5) was taken from the Stalin constitution of 1936 (whose anniversary was celebrated every December 5). The changes the country had undergone in forty years are expressed in the accentuated role of the party.

The preamble of the 1977 constitution asserts: "In the USSR a developed socialist society has been built." Furthermore, "developed socialist society is yet another step forward on the road to communism. The supreme ob­jective of the Soviet state is to build a classless society." The first two constitutions only implied the leading role of the party. By the Stalin constitution, article 126 stated that the CPSU was "the vanguard of the workers in their struggle to build a Communist society" and represents "the guiding nucleus in all the workers' organizations, both social and govern­mental." In the Brezhnev constitution, article 6 of the first chapter is devoted to the party; it states

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system and of all state and public organizations. The CPSU exists for one people and serves the people. Armed with the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, the Communist party de­termines the general perspectives of society's development and the course of domestic and foreign policy of the USSR, directs the great constructive activity of the Soviet people, and imparts a planned, systematic, and sci­entifically substantiated character to their struggle for the victory of com­munism.

Thus the Brezhnev constitution codified the party's total power over the country.

Like its Stalinist counterpart, the Brezhnev constitution grants broad rights to the workers, but there is a qualifying clause: 'The exercise of rights and liberties by citizens must not be detrimental to the interests of society and the state or to the rights of other citizens" (article 39). Freedom of speech, the press, assembly, meetings, and public demonstrations is guaranteed in cases where such liberties are "in accordance with the in­terests of the workers and the aims of building communism" (article 47). The right to education is assured, but article 25 declares: "In the Soviet Union, there is a single educational system, which serves Communist ed­ucation."

For the first time a chapter on foreign policy was included in a Soviet constitution. The first paragraph of article 28 asserts: 'The Soviet state consistently conducts the Leninist policy of peace and supports the rein­forcement of the security of the peoples of the world and broad cooperation." The second paragraph of the same article states in part: 'The foreign policy of the USSR is aimed at assuring international conditions favorable for building communism in the USSR, reinforcing the position of world so­cialism, and supporting the struggle for national liberation and social prog- ress.

The changes introduced into the Soviet anthem are very illustrative of the type of changes instituted in the new constitution. Stalin's hymn, which in 1944 replaced the Internationale, became a "song without words" after 1956, for it mentioned the leader by name. Since September 1, 1977, the Soviet anthem once again has its words. The refrain has been modified: instead of the lines, 'The party of Lenin, the party of Stalin / Leads us from victory to victory," the new anthem has: 'The party of Lenin, the strength of the people, leads us toward the triumph of communism."

The innovations were minor: the elimination of Stalin's name and an elaboration on the glorious ultimate goal. "From victory to victory" means, of course, to the victory of communism.

FROM HELSINKI TO KABUL

The five years following the Soviet victory at Helsinki was a time of in­creasing economic difficulties. The innate flaws of the Soviet system were aggravated by the economic crisis in the West which was felt immediately in the USSR. There was a statistical decline in the growth rates, which was important because statistics are used as an element of ideology. Of more immediate practical importance, the food situation, which was already unsatisfactory, became worse.

A new attempt to "resolve the food problem," in other words, to provide the population with a minimum of food, merely confirmed once again the catastrophic situation in Soviet agriculture. In 1977 V. A. Tikhonov, a member of the USSR Academy of Agricultural Sciences, admitted, "the private plots (of collective farmers and urban dwellers) supply approximately 28 percent of our country's gross agricultural product. '^,261 On the kolkhozes and sovkhozes such individual plots measure 0.25 hectares, while the urban plots are smaller—0.06—0.09 hectares. All together, these plots account for only about 1 percent of all cultivated land. According to official figures published in 1978, private plots supplied the country with 61 percent of its potatoes, 29 percent of its vegetables, 29 percent of its meat, 29 percent of its milk, and 34 percent of its eggs.²⁶²

Since the era of collectivization the attitude of the Soviet state toward private plots has been hostile. Theoretically, this hostility is explained by the fact that a private economy generates bourgeois instincts. Practically, it is because by providing for themselves, Soviet citizens become, at least in one area, less dependent on the government. In particularly difficult periods, the private plots have been authorized, only to be prohibited and then again permitted later on. In the early 1970s an active campaign was waged against the spread of private farming. In 1978 the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued a decree permitting the development of private plots in both rural and urban areas. Particular attention was paid to the development of auxiliary farming at enterprises and other institutions, which were urged to feed their own employees. The army was given the same task.

The desperate food situation forced Brezhnev to make an appeal at the Twenty-sixth Party Congress for the rural private plots and the auxiliary farming at industrial enterprises to be used more efficiently.²⁶³

The five years following Helsinki were a period of a systematic offensive against dissidence: any manifestation of dissent was harshly suppressed. Certain observers, in assessing the results of the Helsinki accords, saw a positive gain in the emergence of several Helsinki Watch groups. By 1980 nearly all the members of these groups had been arrested. In 1982 the few remaining members announced the disbandment of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

Despite the censorship, actions by workers in various parts of the country in defense of their economic rights became increasingly well known. The workers movement in the USSR gained new impetus from the struggle of Polish workers in 1970, 1976, and particularly in 1980-81.

Twice, in 1970 and 1976, Polish workers in Baltic ports came out in defense of their rights. These movements were suppressed by the author­ities, but the strike committees continued to exist. In 1980, in connection with a severe worsening of the economic situation in Poland and the attempts by the authorities to get out of the crisis by lowering the already low standard of living, the workers of the Gdansk shipyards went on strike. The movement spread to other regions and culminated in the formation of a network of free trade unions called Solidarity. Lech Walesa, an electrician, became its head. Ten million Polish workers were organized into free unions. Their example was followed by the peasants, who demanded recognition of their own union. The movement to renovate Poland also seized the intelligentsia.

Students demanded and partially achieved academic freedom. In certain regions, the population called for the replacement of corrupt local leaders. The Catholic church showed cautious support for the movement.

Gierek, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the United Polish Workers' party, who had come to power on a wave of a worker movement in 1970, was forced to step down. He was replaced by Stanislaw Kania and, in March 1981, the minister of defense, General Jaruzelski, was appointed head of the government. For the first time in the history of the Soviet empire, a career general was heading the government. The Polish government was forced to acknowledge the legality of the new unions and their right to strike.

The victory of Solidarity became a turning point not only in the history of Poland, but in the entire Soviet empire as well. Soviet leaders made undisguised threats of military intervention and demanded that the new Polish leadership repress the workers' movement. Polish dissidents, who had already won the right to a semilegal existence, worked hand in hand with Solidarity. Acting on orders from Moscow, the Polish authorities began police persecution of the dissidents' leaders, Kuron and Michnik. Solidarity quickly demanded an immediate halt to these persecutions.

The Soviet leaders preferred that the workers' movement be repressed by the Poles themselves. An armed intervention into a country of 37 million, which had proved on many occasions in its history that it was ready to sacrifice anything for the sake of independence, could have had unpre­dictable consequences. That is why the Soviets primarily used political demands, whose aim was to isolate the free Polish unions from the dissi­dents, then to create disputes between the workers and the rest of the population, and thus destroy the forces of opposition one by one. When this failed—when it became obvious that the reforms proposed by Solidarity could cause the Polish economy to recuperate—General Jaruzelski intro­duced martial law on December 13, 1981. There were mass arrests of Solidarity members, workers, scientists, scholars, writers, and artists. The party realized that as a result of the reforms it would lose its power in the country, would cease to be the "leading force," and would be reduced to a merely political party; it thus resorted to armed force and declared war on the people.

Martial law did not resolve even one of the problems Poland was facing. However, it was the only way for the party to retain its power.

In February 1978 a group of workers who had gathered in Moscow announced the formation of a free union of Soviet workers. In an open letter "to world opinion," on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of the formation of the USSR, they wrote: "We believe we number in the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands... .We are the numerous army of the Soviet unemployed, thrown out of our jobs for demanding our right to lodge a complaint, the right to criticize, and the right to speak freely."²⁶⁴ The main organizer of the group, Vladimir Klebanov, was arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital.²⁶⁵ After the first attempt, another followed. A new free union was formed using the name Free Interprofessional Association of Workers (Russian acronym, SMOT). Many of its members were arrested, and one of them, Vladimir Borisov, was deported from the Soviet Union in June 1980.

One of the prominent figures in the Soviet free trade union movement was Aleksei Nikitin, who gained popularity among the miners of Donetsk by standing up for their rights. Since 1969, Nikitin had repeatedly defended the rights of workers in conflicts between the management of the Butovka mine and the miners. In 1970 he was fired. On December 22, 1971, there was an accidental explosion at the mine where he had previously worked in which several miners were killed and more than one hundred injured. Nikitin had repeatedly warned the management of the dangers of such an explosion. He was soon arrested, and his ordeal in the prisons and psy­chiatric hospitals began. In December 1980 he managed to organize a meeting between Donetsk workers and the Moscow correspondents of the London Financial Times and the Washington Post, David Setter and Kevin Klose, respectively. The workers and inhabitants of Donetsk spoke frankly to the foreign journalists of their difficult living conditions. The journalists concluded that the causes of industrial unrest in Poland were present to an even greater degree in the Soviet Union.²⁶⁶

By the end of 1980 and early 1981, workers' unrest had surfaced at enterprises in Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad, Voronezh, Minsk, Petrozavodsk, and Vilnius. These workers expressed their solidarity with the workers of Gdansk.²⁶⁷

The five years that followed Helsinki were a time of spectacular Soviet expansion. In the Khrushchev era the Soviet Union began to extend its influence beyond the bounds set by the Yalta agreement, primarily in the direction of the Middle East. Castro's advent to power enlarged the zone of Soviet interests to the Western hemisphere. In the 1950s and 1960s the USSR did suffer defeats from time to time. The Soviet Union was forced to remove its missiles from Cuba, for example, and to recall its advisers from Egypt, and it lost its influence in Ghana. But these failures were always far from the Soviet Union's own territory. In certain parts of the globe the offensive has slowed, but not stopped.

As soon as the final act of the Helsinki accords was signed, the Soviet

Union achieved victory in Angola. Commenting on the establishment of a pro-Soviet regime in Angola, Pravda wrote: "The entire world knows that in Angola the Soviet Union seeks not economic profit, not military profit, nor profit of any other kind. There is not a single Soviet man bearing a weapon on Angolan territory. '^,268 This phrase was an application of Lenin's famous prescription: true in form, but in essence a mockery. The men who were fighting on Angolan territory with Soviet arms were Cuban. The Cuban expeditionary corps was then used to support the pro-Soviet government in Ethiopia and in other regions that had become the object of Soviet attention. The Cubans became the Soviet foreign legion.

Rejecting the timid objections of the U.S. secretary of state, who ex­pressed the opinion that the Soviet—Cuban expansion expansion affected regions "where neither the USSR nor Cuba had any historical interests," Pravda explained: "Concerning expansion, this is untrue. As for historical interests, they are not what the U.S. secretary of state has in mind. They consist rather in the Soviet Union's full and permanent support for the struggle of the peoples for liberty and independence."²⁶⁹

In 1977 this obligation to "support the struggle of the peoples" was to be inscribed in the Soviet constitution. In 1978 a new edition of the Small Political Dictionary added two entries, "Ideological Struggle" and "Class Struggle."

Henry Kissinger writes in his memoirs that he did not believe that Brezhnev had a plan under his pillow to establish world hegemony. 'The Kremlinologists often tend to interpret the acts of Soviet leaders as part of an elaborate plan in which each detail flows inexorably from the preceding one."²⁷⁰ The former U.S secretary of state is correct. There is no carefully detailed plan. There is, however, a view of the world as an object for expansion, as mere plunder.

In a speech at a conference of "ideological workers" in October 1979, Boris Ponomarev listed the successes of the "peoples' struggles": Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, and Af­ghanistan. 'There is an inexorable process of replacing outmoded reac­tionary regimes with progressive regimes that are more and more of a socialist orientation."²⁷¹ Ponomarev divided the world into four zones, set­ting forth a modernized version of the "Lenin—Brezhnev" doctrine. The first zone is the zone of developed socialism—the Soviet Union. The sec­ond consists of the "fraternal countries," the world socialist commonwealth. In the third zone are the "progressive regimes," notably Iran and Nicaragua. The fourth zone is the capitalist world.²⁷² Three of these zones make up the Soviet Union's legitimate sphere of activity, defined by historical laws. The time had long passed since the first socialist state considered itself to be a "besieged fortress." At the end of the 1970s it was the fourth zone, the capitalist world, that became the besieged fortress. 'Today the global problems that face mankind, as well as the obvious necessity of finding urgent solutions for them, constitute some of the even more weighty ar­guments in favor of socialism and communism, for the full social and national liberation of mankind."²⁷³

The strategic mission was set: socialism for all of mankind, as a means of resolving the "global problems." The tactics—complete the mission to strike at the weakest links of the fourth zone.

The invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was a practical appli­cation of the right that the USSR had conferred on itself. After the coup in April 1978, which brought the Afghan Communist party to power, Afghanistan became part of the third zone. The operation was conducted on the Czechoslovak model: "an invitation," occupation of the capital's airport, an assault landing of the tank-borne infantry, then the invasion of the army.

The first surprise for the Soviet Union was the reaction of the United States. After the April coup in Kabul, the New York Times wrote: "United now, the Carter administration has remained completely calm regarding the coup in Afghanistan, where the leaders of a small Communist Party took power in Kabul. ... Ten years ago, every Communist victory was considered a clear defeat for the United States. Today, the majority of Americans believe the world is more complex."²⁷⁴ For the Soviet leaders, the passing of Af­ghanistan from the third zone to the second was indisputable grounds for intervention, including military. Carter's decision to place an embargo on any further grain sales to the Soviet Union (beyond the quota stipulated by the five-year accord) and the call to boycott the Olympic Games were perceived as hostile acts.

Carter's policy was criticized by American supporters of detente at any price. George Kennan supported the Soviet thesis that "the introduction of a limited Soviet military contingent in Afghanistan was a necessary measure for the government of the USSR, and was not an easy decision." "The events in Afghanistan," said the former American ambassador to Moscow, "concern two countries above all, the USSR and Afghanistan."²⁷⁵ The Western European nations, with the exception of Great Britain, refused to support Carter's policy. The scenario of 1956 and 1968 was repeated: after some anxious misgivings and hesitations, France and West Germany re­sumed the diplomatic dialogue with Moscow. Western Europe began to forget the "incident along the road."

Soviet strategists had correctly estimated the Western reaction to the invasion of Afghanistan, which one American commentator described con­cisely as business as usual, adding: "Afghanistan had not been attached to the West, and the Soviet occupation did not in itself affect the world strategic balance."²⁷⁶ On the other hand, Soviet strategists made a mistake in their estimation of the Afghan reaction.

Their first error was their underestimation of the weakness of the Com­munist party, which had been formed on the eve of the April 1978 coup by the fusion of two factions, the Khalk (The People) and the Parcham (The Flag), which were closely connected with Moscow. The union did not last long, however. The Khalk monopolized power and initiated a rapid Soviet- ization of the country, eliminating all its opponents, including even members of the Parcham. Under the authority of Taraki and then Amin, a regime of bloody terror was established in Afghanistan. As is usual in conflicts among Communist groups, it was not ideological disagreements but the struggle for power that was of importance. In Afghanistan this struggle was inten­sified by national divisions. The Khalk recruited partisans principally from the Pushtu tribes, the Parcham from the Tadzhik tribes. Among the Soviet advisers were many Tadzhiks who spoke Farsi, one of Afghanistan's lan­guages. In spite of the fact that it was the Khalk who tried to impose a Soviet-type regime on Afghanistan, a hostile attitude toward the Tadzhiks spread among the advisers from the USSR.

The first action by the Soviet troops, after occupying Kabul and installing Babrak Karmal as president (Karmal was a member of the Parcham), was to kill President Amin, a head of the Khalk. This resulted in a mystery that continues to puzzle the world. According to the official explanation, Soviet troops had been invited by the Afghan government, but their first act was to kill their host.

Once in power, Karmal and his supporters began to persecute the Khalk. The social base as well as the membership of the Communist party were reduced to practically nothing.

The principal error made by the Soviet strategists was to underestimate the Afghan people's desire for independence. The Soviet press depicted the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan using the model of 1968. The newspapers could not restrain their desire to describe the joy of the local population. First place goes without doubt to Izvestia, which reported that an Afghan peasant, on seeing the Soviet soldiers, "prostrated himself to a tank and kissed its dust-covered armor."²⁷⁷

It took eight months to "normalize" Czechoslovakia, whose population put up only passive resistance. Eight months after the invasion of Afghan­istan, close to 1 million inhabitants of a population of 17—18 million had fled the country to escape the bombardments. The Afghan army had col­lapsed.

Numerous partisan detachments battled the occupying forces, taking advantage of geographical conditions in their country, which were extra- ordinarly favorable for this type of resistance. The Soviet army, numbering 80,000, controlled a few large cities and the principal roads with difficulty. The use of the most modern arms, which could inflict heavy losses on the guerrillas and the civilian population, did not save Soviet troops from steadily growing losses.

Outwardly the situation is reminiscent of the situation of the American army in Vietnam. A huge, heavy military machine, equipped with the latest technology, faces an enemy that maneuvers freely on its own territory, thus compensating for the weakness of its weaponry. On the one hand are soldiers sent to a foreign country; on the other, people fighting on home territory and for their own homes. But the essential difference between the two situations is that the Americans were fighting a television war in Vietnam. It was the first war in history that the public could follow every day and every hour. The U.S. army suffered defeat in Vietnam because the American people did not want to continue the war; the government could not continue fighting against the will of the people. The Soviet army is conducting a war about which the Soviet people know nothing; except for rumors and funeral announcements received by the families of Soviet soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is closed to all foreign journalists (with the exception of some Communist newspapers).

Like their American counterparts, Soviet generals have a vested interest in continuing a war that has given them the opportunity to test new types of weapons, to perfect their tactics, and to give their soldiers and officers combat experience. In contrast to the United States, however, where the government is responsible for everything the army does, in the Soviet Union the party, which provides the political leadership of the army, always denies responsibility for the military's failures. The credit for victory is claimed by the party; the blame for defeat falls on the military.

The difficulties encountered in Afghanistan prompted the Soviet gov­ernment to request Western aid, particularly American. "If the United States wanted peace in this region (i.e., Afghanistan)," wrote a representative of the Central Committee just two months after the invasion, "then it would be sufficient for the president of the United States to give the command to stop the invasion of the territory of Afghanistan, stop the delivery of arms, and eradicate the bases of mercenaries; in short, to cease all forms of interference directed against the government and the people of Afghani­stan."²⁷⁸

Six months later, he repeated more clearly and with even more insistence: 'The key to the political normalization of the Afghan situation can be found

in Washington."²⁷⁹ The Soviet leadership anticipated that the West, above all the United States, would help the Soviet Union find a favorable political solution to the "Afghan problem," which would in fact mean assisting the USSR in suppressing the Afghan resistance. The same theme was heard distinctly in Brezhnev's report to the Twenty-sixth Party Congress in Feb­ruary 1981. All the blame was laid on the United States.²⁸⁰

The invasion of Afghanistan compelled the U.S. government and several of the Western powers to take a firmer position against the Soviet Union's expansionist policy. The United States imposed an embargo on the sale of grain to the USSR (but lifted it in April 1981). Washington called for a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow and put a freeze on projected economic agreements with the Soviet Union. At the United Nations, 104 nations condemned this armed intervention by a foreign country in Afghanistan. Historical experience nevertheless suggested to the Soviet leaders that they could expect forgetfulness and myopia from the West. Hardly had the new U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, come to power, how­ever, than he revoked the embargo on grain deliveries. By skillfully ex­ploiting the fear of nuclear war, the Soviet Union showed the world once again that detente was divisible.

THE END OF THE BREZHNEV ERA

By the end of Brezhnev's eighteen-year rule everything was on the decline. More and more the upper echelons of the party felt the need to "tighten the screws," to strengthen discipline and "restore order." But first it was necessary to find a successor to Brezhnev.

Aleksei Kosygin, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, whose name at one time had been closely linked with unwarranted expectations of economic reform, was retired in 1979. He died a year later. The effective withdrawal from activity of Kirilenko, the second secretary of the Central Committee, due to illness, and the death of Suslov, the party's chief ideologist, in January 1982 intensified the struggle among the possible candidates for the post of general secretary. The leading figure in this competition was Yuri Andropov, who in May 1982 at the age of sixty-eight returned to the Secretariat of the Central Committee from the KGB just one year and three months after the Twenty-sixth Party Congress delegates had unanimously reelected Brezhnev—who was growing senile—as general secretary. The other candidate was seventy-one-year-old Konstantin Cher- nenko, who with the help of his patron, Brezhnev, had moved with dizzying speed from head of the secretariat of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet

(1964) to secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1976) and member of the Politburo (1978). He was also in charge of the Leader's personal secretariat.

The ruling class had never experienced such good times as under Bre­zhnev. Besides a sense of personal security and confidence, which it had been denied in the Stalin era and, to an admittedly lesser extent, during Khrushchev's "glorious decade," it had acquired a sense of stability and, consequently, growing self-esteem. The bestowing of every possible priv­ilege upon its members resulted in an unusually high standard of living in all areas: work conditions, vacation and recreation facilities, supplies of food and other essentials, living quarters, educational opportunities, and influence over the fate of those beneath them. All this greatly strengthened their innate or acquired feelings of envy, greed, self-indulgence, and con­tempt for the law and stirred up hatred for anyone who might disrupt this stable and well-favored way of life, whether dissidents, "hostile voices" from abroad, fault-finding writers and artists, or simply anyone who com­plained, not to mention, of course, the Jews.

During these years, the Soviet elite built themselves special apartment blocks according to the most modern Western models, with swimming pools, saunas, underground garages, special shops, and even two bathrooms (something they had not dared to dream of earlier). The country wide standard for housing space in Soviet cities, nine square meters per person, did not apply to high-ranking officials. What counted was the post one held. One's housing became a matter of social status and prestige. In Moscow, Leningrad, and other major cities homes were built for the top bureaucracy in areas isolated from the rest of the city's residents. The centers of the cities were rebuilt along new lines and became the homo­geneous preserve of the elite and of a few foreigners. The primary example, of course, is Moscow. The streets and narrow lanes of the Arbat were revamped, many old buildings were torn down, and new ones "of the highest quality" were erected in their places. The Kremlin hospital had already been there for many years, along with the Central Committee hotel that accommodates high-level functionaries of the world Communist movement.

The former residents of the Arbat (blue collar and white collar workers and writers, artists, and similar professionals) were forced to relocate to new "microdistricts" (mikroraiony) on the city's outer edges. Thus, the top- ranking officials, both civilian and military, who took over the center of the city, were spared the hostile atmosphere often found when rich and poor live side by side.

Bulat Okudzhava, a native of the Arbat, poet, singer, writer, and some­time "Frondeur," commented on these social changes:

Evicted from the Arbat, Fin an Arbat emigrant. On Bezbozhny Lane today my talent shrivels. Around me—alien faces, hostile places. Across the way a sauna, but not the same fauna.

The imperious walk. The haughty set of the mouth.

Ah, the florals still the same, but not the fauna.

I live and bear my cross, an Arbat emigrant....

But the rose has frozen and all its leaves are gone.

In the reconstructed New Arbat there was a nightclub for foreigners. On the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment a whole complex was built for these representatives of the hostile capitalist world. It was a true colonial-style foreign settlement, with the one difference that its residents did not enjoy the right of extraterritoriality and were constantly under the watchful eye of the KGB. One block contained the offices of foreign banks and corpo­rations. Next door were apartments and a hotel for foreigners, as well as bars, restaurants, and the nightclub. Only foreigners and their invited guests were allowed there, as well as high-class prostitutes. Prostitution is forbidden by law in the USSR, but the authorities made concessions in this case, not only for the entertainment of their valued foreign guests but also, if things went well, for the extraction of useful information. Thus, to a limited extent, the Soviet elite allowed foreigners into its native habitat. Nonetheless, that did not protect the foreigners from being reminded from time to time of their proper place—that is, slightly below the Soviet bu­reaucrat.

David Shipler, a New York Times correspondent in Moscow, noted:

What is so enervating is that the danger comes in large measure from inside your own mind. Enveloped in official lies, swathed in vranyo (hokum) and ironic smiles, smothered in warm and generous friendliness that can turn cold at an order from above, you exist in the knowledge that at any moment of the state's choosing, it can manipulate your surrounding environment gradually or dramatically to cause slight discomfort or excruciating pain.²⁸¹

Social barriers were reinforced in the field of education as well. In the late 1950s special schools, with instruction in foreign languages from the second grade on, had been established in a number of major Soviet cities. Gradually the system of special schools expanded in accordance with the growth of the ruling class and its needs. The percentage of workers' children in these schools was minimal. Associating constantly with one another, the children breathed in an atmosphere of exclusivity; a feeling of privilege "by right of birth" entered the bloodstream, and later the bonds of exclusive

association would be made fast through marriage. Dynasties of a certain kind were thus established. The CPSU is not against dynasties. Time and again in the pages of Soviet newspapers there have been stories about "workers' dynasties"—generations of steelworkers, miners, machinists. Sometimes they even write about dynasties of scientists. The government called upon the children of workers and collective farmers to accept the baton of their fathers and grandfathers. There has been no mention, how­ever, of the political dynasties of those at the helm of power. The most noteworthy example was the Brezhnev family. Brezhnev's son was the deputy minister of foreign trade; Brezhnev's daughter, the wife of the deputy min­ister of internal affairs; the sister of Brezhnev's wife was the wife of Shche- lokov, the minister of internal affairs. The family of Foreign Minister Gromyko provides another example: his son is a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and director of its Institute of Africa, while his son- in-law is a law professor at the Diplomatic Academy. The same holds true in the republics. For example, the Sturua family: the head of the family, now deceased, was chairman of the Presidium of the Georgian Supreme Soviet. One of his sons was first a secretary of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist party, then director of the Institute of Marxism- Leninism in Tbilisi. The second son is an international journalist, a cor­respondent for Izvestia in the United States, England, and France.

A special form of nestalgia was typical of the Soviet ruling class in the Brezhnev era—a nostalgia for the past, for illustrious genealogies. Many were busily searching for distinguished ancestors. Worker or peasant origin was useful only to put on official questionnaires. While insisting on ide­ological purity in the line of duty, quite a few high-ranking party officials were surreptitiously buying up paintings by artists who were branded or not officially acknowledged, such as abstractionists and primitives.

The pursuit of pleasure in all its forms became a way of Soviet life at the upper levels: hunting and fishing in specially set aside areas; travel abroad, paid for, as a rule, either by the government or by foreign firms trading with the USSR; shopping in the network of exclusive stores; seeing foreign films not shown to audiences at large; and privileged access to theaters and concert halls.

The nomenklatura has a keenly developed social sense—those who be­long to it seldom associate with workers or collective farmers, even in their own country, not to mention abroad. "Proletarian internationalism" has its own distinctive meaning. While outside the boundaries of the USSR on official business or special visits, Soviet representatives and delegates meet, as a rule, only with the upper crust; after all, these are their class brothers and sisters. For example, a delegation of the Committee of Soviet Women

visiting the United States in December 1983, headed by the committee's vice-president, Eliseeva, was received by the upper-middle-class ladies of New York and Boston. The life of the American working class did not interest them.

Members of the nomenklatura also lead the "sweet life" in the union republics, where rank is valued even more highly, where the chain of dependence upon one's superiors is firmer, and where corruption is simply a fact of everyday life.

Over the eighteen years of Brezhnev's rule the annual growth in the country's national income dropped from 9.0 percent to 2.6 percent, while industrial growth slowed from 7.3 percent to 2.8 percent. Growth rates for labor productivity in industry also declined sharply, and in agriculture turned negative.²⁸² Despite enormous capital investments, reaching the level of 27 percent of all capital investments in 1975, agriculture continued to stagnate.²⁸³ The land was no longer fertile, owing to soil exhaustion, and the collective farmers did not want to work because of the poor compensation for their labor. In order to keep food prices in state stores fairly low, the government constantly resorted to subsidies. The population had to adapt itself to the specific conditions of a system in which famine is warded off only by imported agricultural products or by those grown on the miniscule private plots and "auxiliary farms" at large industrial enterprises.

Seven decades after the revolution, after eleven five-year plans, the creation of an industrial base, significant achievements in space and ther­monuclear weaponry, and the organization of a powerful ocean-going navy, the Soviet superpower is still a backward country, where mining and the extraction of fuels predominate over manufacturing and machine building. The extraction and processing of raw materials and fuel "consumes up to 40 percent of all fixed capital and labor resources,"²⁸⁴ yet output of these raw materials fell by 8 percent between 1950 and 1980.²⁸⁵ In an age of precipitous technological progress even in recently colonial countries the share of manual, unmechanized labor in Soviet industry remains as high as 40 percent.²⁸⁶

During the Brezhnev period, the amount of freight handled by the trans­port system decreased, and there was a shortage of loading and unloading equipment; the country's transport system generally is in a state of tech­nological and organizational decline.²⁸⁷ G. Marchuk, chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology, stated that "quite a few of today's enterprises are in need of radical reconstruction. Transport and commu­nications are lagging behind the growing demands of the economy. Capital construction is also in need of better organization."²⁸⁸

Several months before Brezhnev's death, the deplorable condition of the economy and its causes were subjected to criticism by none other than Pravda, which published an article by Academician Vadim Trapeznikov, head of the Institute of Automation and Control Processes of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Trapeznikov not only rejected the official reasons for the decline in the national income, such as poor climatic conditions, exhaustion of several sources of raw materials, and the high cost of opening up new territories; he gave more plausible, though still insufficient, ex­planations—the unsuitability of the rigid system of centralized planning, the lack of material incentives and suppression of initiative on the part of workers and staff, and the fact that managers themselves were not affected by the consequences of their management.²⁸⁹

A document written by some Soviet economists was being passed around in scholarly and academic circles in Moscow in early 1983, not long after Brezhnev's death. It sharply criticized social relations in the Soviet Union and emphasized that "the centralized-administrative form of management" of the economy had "exhausted its possibilities."²⁹⁰ In the opinion of the document's authors, the existing system of production relations was "being transformed more and more into a brake on forward motion."²⁹¹ Reorga­nization of the economy was encountering "hidden resistance"; "the social mechanism for the development of the economy" was not ensuring "sat­isfactory results"; and "the mechanism" was inclined toward "the suppres­sion of the useful economic activity of the population."²⁹² The thinking of these economists, though veiled somewhat by sociological terminology, was clear enough: the existing system of economic relations was doing nothing but harm. However, under both Andropov and Chernenko the system re­mained as before.

This was understandable, however. No one leader could bring about structural changes without exposing the Soviet system itself to mortal danger and jeopardizing the provisional balance between social groups that has existed historically and is artificially maintained in order to keep all the levers of control, without exception, in the hands of the top leaders.

Therefore the leaders, both present and future, have little choice. They can either limit the power of the party oligarchy at the top (i.e., their own) and of the party machinery at the lower level and take irreversible measures to improve the health of the state and its economic system (in the Soviet state, as we have shown, all problems are political), or they can do nothing, make some noise about the need for change, threaten someone with a "big stick," make a few minor repairs in the facade, and stick to essentially the same course as before, trusting in the long-suffering spirit of the population, which has been demonstrated over the decades, trust to luck and the chance of finding new sources of raw materials, and of course trust in help from the West, which is interested in long-term investments and in preserving the equilibrum of the Soviet system (the very thought of the possible collapse of the Soviet empire arouses horror in the West).

In the near future the center of gravity for locating and exploring new sources of raw materials and energy will shift to Siberia, but this will require enormous investments of capital and time. It was natural, then, that Brezhnev's successors should look to both West and East in the hope of attracting West German and Japanese capital. Negotiations with West Germany on constructing factories for converting deposits of lignite in Achinsk-Kansk (southern Siberia) into synthetic oil began as early as the late 1970s. In 1981 a Soviet—German commission was organized for co­operation in the development of energy sources. The project, in which the Deutsche Bank and the giant Mannesman A. G. steel corporation partic­ipated, was expected to last almost to the end of the century. The value of the contracts was estimated at $16.5 billion.²⁹³ This is the second major project in which Western Europe has provided assistance to the Soviet economy. The first was the agreement on the participation of Western European capital in the construction of a gas pipeline from the USSR to Western Europe, bringing a yearly profit of 5—8 billion to the Soviet Union.²⁹⁴

CHAPTER

AFTER BREZHNEV,

1982-1985

ANDROPOV: FROM KGB CHAIRMAN TO GENERAL SECRETARY

Brezhnev died in early November 1982. The mechanism for the transfer of power from the dead general secretary to the new one was well oiled and apparently ran smoothly, without any significant hitches.

For the first time in the history of the CPSU and the Soviet government a principle of orderly succession operated. There was no disagreement over major policy alternatives, as after Lenin's death, nor any dramatic struggle within the ruling clique, with arrests, executions, and the use of armed force, as there was shortly after Stalin's death, nor any conspiracy to remove the Leader while he was still alive, as happened with Khrushchev in the "bloodless coup" of October 1964. The backstage battle for the top post ended in victory for Yuri Andropov, who was elected general secretary of the Central Committee on the very next day after Brezhnev's death. His candidacy was put forward by his closest rival, Konstantin Chernenko.

Born in 1914, Andropov like other Soviet leaders of the middle gen­eration, began his political career in the late 1930s, when Komsomol activists on the district (raion) and provincial (<oblast') level were being promoted hastily to replace the party veterans destroyed in the purges.

These young activists enthusiastically helped to find and unmask "enemies of the people." Andropov, who was secretary of the Yaroslavl oblast com­mittee of the Komsomol in the late 1930s and leader of the Komsomol in the Karelo-Finnish SSR after the Soviet—Finnish war of 1939—40, took part in the organization of the partisan movement during the German— Soviet war and became second secretary of the Central Committee of the Karelo-Finnish SSR in the late 1940s. He advanced quickly in Stalin's last years, when a constant demonstration of devotion to Stalin, not simply loyalty to the regime, was the sole guarantee of safety and, with good luck, a successful career. Andropov was lucky: during the postwar purge the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Karelo-Finnish SSR was arrested, but Andropov, the second secretary, was spared.¹ In fact, he was chosen for work in the apparatus of the Central Committee in 1951.

From 1954 to 1957 Andropov was ambassador to Hungary. At the height of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 he skillfully misled the government of Imre Nagy about Soviet intentions.² His successful handling of this mission—suppression of the revolution—was rewarded by his appointment as head of the CPSU Central Committee's department on the socialist countries. In 1962 he became a secretary of the Central Committee, thus mounting the necessary step on the ladder leading to the highest power. In 1967 Andropov accepted the traditionally dangerous post of chairman of the state security apparatus (KGB), thereby becoming the thirteenth leader of the Soviet secret police. Five of his predecessors had been shot as "enemies of the people," and three others had fallen into disgrace. Probably as a reward for agreeing to become the "party's sword" in the struggle against "internal and external enemies," Andropov was made a candidate member of the Politburo in 1967. He was elected a full member of the Politburo in 1973 in recognition of his service in crushing the dissident movement.

The importance of the KGB increased under Andropov. Andropov's fif­teen years as its chairman were marked by success in demoralizing and suppressing the dissident movement inside the country and by a substantial strengthening of Soviet espionage abroad. The post, which in earlier times had seemed a moral impediment to reaching positions of the highest power, served Andropov as a springboard for the decisive leap. There was a historical precedent, however. Joseph Fouch6, the all-powerful minister of the police during the French revolution and the Napoleonic era, became chief of the Directory immediately after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. Fouche ruled France for a total of five days. Andropov's days were also numbered—he had fifteen months.

Andropov's advent to power was facilitated not only by his personal qualities and his painstaking effort to instill in top party circles a sense of immunity from domestic turmoil as long as he, Andropov, was on the job, but also by the fact that in the preceding years the KGB had absorbed the most enterprising cadres of Komsomol and young party activists, which become an important part of the establishment.

The rehabilitation of the organs of state security, which began even under Khrushchev (with the appointment of Shelepin, first secretary of the Kom­somol Central Committee, to head the KGB), was completed under Bre­zhnev, when the State Security Committee (KGB) under the Council of Ministers of the USSR was reorganized as the KGB of the USSR. The committee head was first made a candidate member of the Politburo, then a Politburo member. Andropov, and Chernenko after him, reaffirmed the status of the KGB as one of the cornerstones of the Soviet system. When Geidar Aliev, former chairman of the Azerbaijan KGB, was elected to the Politburo, Andropov also made Viktor Chebrikov, the new leader of the KGB, a candidate member. Chernenko subsequently promoted Chebrikov to four-star general and awarded him a marshal's star.

It is natural, then, that a sense of confidence and special destiny grew strong among the KGB's operatives. They felt they were rightly represented on the party's highest body.

In his book The Trial, Viktor Krasin presents a conversation with Colonel Volodin, head of the investigative branch of the KGB. The subject of the conversation was investigator Aleksandrov, who conducted the Krasin and Yakir case. "Pavel Ivanovich," said Volodin, "he has the mind of the statesman. He is even cramped here in the center (of the KGB). His place is in the Central Committee (of the party)."³

Under Andropov, the KGB did not remain merely an instrument of the party but, to a certain extent, became an interpreter of the party's will. When Andropov became general secretary, he became the embodiment of the Leninist principle that a good Communist is simultaneously a good Chekist. Andropov succeeded where Beria and Shelepin had not. The old- fashioned prejudice that the head of the secret police should not be general secretary of the Communist party was abandoned. When Andropov died, the KGB published a moving obituary that noted, "Under his direct lead­ership, an action program—scientifically based and adjusted in practice— was elaborated and successfully effected in conditions of developed so­cialism."⁴

While Brezhnev had been seen as a moderate by Western observers at the start of his career as general secretary, Andropov was portrayed as a statesman of the new school long before he became top leader. Andropov's staff—which included consultants in the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, in Soviet academic circles, and in the KGB apparatus—worked for many years creating an image for the future general secretary. There were even some dissidents who contributed to this effort by spreading stories about Andropov's alleged liberalism. In the end there emerged the image of a serious and energetic statesman who, although fairly tough-minded, was capable of ruling without falling into warlike rhetoric or conservative extremism, who had a good grasp of the intricacies of international politics and the world Communist movement, who was an expert on the psychology of the West, and who even had a taste for Western culture.

The Western media and acknowledged experts on Soviet affairs tried to present the man who crushed the dissident movement and sent KGB torture teams to Afghanistan as a kind host who spent hours talking with dissidents in his own home and then had them driven home in his car. Thus wrote the Washington Post, for example.⁵ The New York Times did likewise, spreading fables about a highly educated grandee with a splendid command of the English language who spent his leisure time drinking French cognac, reading American novels, and listening to the Voice of America.⁶

Usually reliable American Sovietologists predicted that Andropov would withdraw troops from Afghanistan, recall Sakharov from exile, and do good in general. Professor Jerry Hough, blessing the selection of Andropov as secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU in May 1982, called this "one of the most propitious events to take place in the USSR in recent years."⁷ True, not everyone agreed that Andropov was a liberal. For ex­ample, the London Economist declared him to be an "enlightened conser­vative. "

When the euphoria abated a little, it became clear that the real edu­cational background of this "enlightened grandee" consisted of a diploma from the Rybinsk Technical College of Water Transport and two years at Petrozavodsk University. On the other hand, he also had to his credit a full course of study at the Central Committee's Higher Party School. He did not speak English, however, nor did he listen to Glen Miller records as the Western press had reported. The intervention in Afghanistan inten­sified. Sakharov not only was not recalled from exile; his isolation from the outside world was increased.

The myth about Andropov as a "secretly liberal apparatchik in blue jeans" quickly evaporated after the first contact with reality.⁸

Andropov assumed his duties as general secretary on November 10, 1982, and later (June 1983), relatively quickly, also became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He died on February 9, 1984, after being in power for fifteen months.

DISCIPLINE—THE MOTHER OF ORDER

Like other Soviet leaders, Andropov borrowed a great deal from his pred­ecessors. Although slightly disguised, as usual, by talk about preserving peace, the main goal remained the same as before: the ultimate spread of the socialist system throughout the world. That is, the goal of Sovietizing the world was reconfirmed.

The party's main concern was also the same—creating the "Soviet man," but with an essential change. The new Soviet man was supposed to under­stand at long last that his primary need was to work, while the satisfaction of his material needs was a secondary matter. Thus, there was a change in the party's orientation in regard to the fullest satisfaction of material and spiritual needs. The accent shifted: spiritual needs were to come first, material second. Soviet man was urged to tighten his discipline and res­olutely struggle against his consumer instincts. The basic law of developed socialist society was reaffirmed: before all else, one must meet one's ob­ligations to the government. (In the Stalin era the same principle had been called "the first commandment of the collective farmer.")

The measures adopted by Andropov for normalizing the country's econ­omy were intended to squeeze the fat out of the system without altering its foundations—to tighten discipline, strengthen the "agro-industrial com­plexes," and broaden the powers of the managers of industrial enterprises. This was accompanied by promises of greater consideration for regional economic interests and new incentives to encourage fulfillment of the "food program" adopted under Brezhnev. There was nothing new in any of this. The need for similar measures, including a struggle against theft and bribe taking, had been announced many times by Andropov's predecessors, but each time such efforts had sunk gradually into the stagnant waters of the Soviet bureaucratic system. Andropov did not carry out a single reform; he never intended to. Right at the start, on his assumption of the post of general secretary in November 1982, Andropov stated that he had no ready- made prescriptions for solving the Soviet Union's pressing problems and that he would act together with the party's Central Committee, i.e., the responsibility would be collective. He thus made clear that he was not suffering from the itch for reform.

Andropov attempted to remove those leaders whose incompetence ex­ceeded all permissible limits and who were involved in corruption. The word "corruption" (korruptsiya) is not used in reference to the Soviet system. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia states this quite definitely: "Corruption is well known in all types of exploitative states, but the especially widespread occurrence of corruption is intrinsic to an imperialistic state."⁹ Everyone knows that the Soviet state is not exploitative.

In the Soviet lexicon the word "corruption" is replaced by more ordinary terms, such as bribe taking (:vzyatochnichestvo), graft (podkup), and em­bezzlement or misappropriation of funds (raskhititeVstvo). The existence of large-scale abuses in all spheres of Soviet life are well known. Corruption is an integral part of the system. All of Soviet society, from top to bottom, is involved in it to some extent. Only the degree of involvement varies. Therefore, the struggle against corruption in the USSR has been and is conducted solely against those who "take more than befits their rank" (berut ne po chinu), who go beyond certain bounds that have been established by custom and are tacitly recognized, and who thereby disturb the equilibrium of the system, endangering everyone.

Andropov, while still the chief of the KGB, assembled an enormous amount of material on the grafters, bribe takers, and extortionists. In con­solidating his power, he aimed his first blow at the KGB's rival, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), headed by Brezhnev's relative Shche- lokov, who had protected embezzlers and speculators, apparently in return for due compensation. The pretext for Andropov's move was a case involving speculation in jewelry, an affair in which Brezhnev's daughter, Galina, was apparently implicated. Disclosure of this affair led to the suicide of S. K. Tsvigun, the first deputy chairman of the KGB and a Brezhnev prot6g6. It is rumored that he tried to prevent the investigation.¹⁰

Among other widely publicized investigations undertaken by Andropov was one involving bribery and abuse of power in the Krasnodar region. Local officials and militia were involved in corruption on a scale that makes the nineteenth-century abuses satirized by Gogol seem like a cheerful musical comedy.¹¹ The extortion had gone on under the very noses of the regional party committee, and with its full protection. At the CPSU Central Committee plenum in June 1983, the secretary of the Krasnodar regional committee, S. F. Medunov, was removed from the Central Committee, as was former Interior Minister Shchelokov.¹² Leaders were replaced in a number of provinces, cities, and ministries. A purge of MVD and police personnel was carried out, and political sections were established within the MVD and the police that were staffed with people from the party apparatus and the KGB. Fedorchuk, who had replaced Andropov as head of the KGB, became the new minister of internal affairs.

For the edification of all, bribe takers from various ministries, including the Ministry of Foreign Trade, were put on trial.¹³ Several heads of main departments (glavnye upravleniya) were convicted, and even a few deputy ministers suffered.

The fifteen months of Andropov's rule attracted much attention because of his campaign against corruption. At the same time, however, arrests of dissidents, Baptists, Russian Orthodox activists, Jews, and supporters of free trade unions continued on a large scale. Those arrested were usually known only to small groups of friends and to the "organs." The symbol of this new wave of repression organized by General Secretary Andropov was the arrest of the twenty-eight-year-old poet Irina Ratushinskaya, who was sentenced in March 1983 to seven years in a strict-regime prison camp and five years' internal exile on account of several lyrical poems that had been sent abroad. In a preface to a collection of her verse, a trilingual edition in Russian, English, and French, Joseph Brodsky wrote:

The sentencing of a poet is not only a criminal offense but above all an anthropological one. It is a crime against the language, which distinguishes man from beast. As the second millennium after the birth of Christ draws to a close, the sentencing of a twenty-eight-year-old woman for writing and circulating poetry whose content the state finds displeasing gives one the impression of a savage Neanderthal cry, or more exactly, it testifies to the degree of bestialization achieved under the first socialist state in the world.¹⁴

In the brief span of Andropov's rule, all the peculiarities of the Soviet system seemed to stand out in sharp profile, reflecting everything that had happened in the country during the sixty-six years of the system's existence. Andropov tried to mitigate the negative aspects of the system, but all he could see as the key to success was the same tired old formula, "imposing order." Discipline was the general secretary's motto in all areas—labor, public life, the military. After announcing a universal campaign to tighten up discipline, Andropov immediately began to use the familiar methods of violence and coercion: patrols were sent into the streets, stores, and res­taurants to check whether Soviet citizens were skipping work or making purchases during work hours. The indomitable spirit of the people was expressed in the immediate addition of a new word to the Soviet Russian vocabulary—zaandropit, which meant the same as the old word zaarkanit (to lasso or ensnare).

The measures applied to ordinary violators of labor discipline were not new: wage and salary cuts, loss of bonuses, or applications for apartments put at the bottom of the pile. The penalty, in other words, was a worsening of the material position of the violator and his family. Permission to leave a job or change the place where one worked required a preliminary dis­cussion by the collective. This was all vividly reminiscent of the antilabor legislation of 1940, with its broad range of punishments for absenteeism and lateness. In 1983 regulations concerning suspended sentences were amended, making the suspension of a sentence dependent on the opinion of the labor collective, to whom the one at fault was entrusted for correction. On June 17, 1983, a law was passed "on labor collectives and increasing their role in the management of enterprises, offices, and organizations."¹⁵ In August of the same year there came a series of decrees aimed at strength­ening control over and increasing responsibility for breaches of discipline at enterprises.¹⁶

The draft of the law was submitted for nationwide discussion. According to the official figures, 110 million Soviet citizens discussed it; 5 million people spoke about it at 1,230,000 meetings, and 130,000 amendments were proposed. The result: seventy amendments were accepted, i.e., 129,930 amendments proposed by "ordinary Soviet citizens" were rejected. Such is Soviet socialist democracy in action.

Geidar Aliev, a Politburo member and career officer in the KGB, pre­senting the draft of the law to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, called the worker collective "the basic cell of Soviet society." But like all other "cells," the worker collective is headed by the party organization. Speaking and acting in the name of the collective is a "quartet" made up of one repre­sentative each from the management, the party bureau, the trade union committee, and the Komsomol bureau. The main aim of the law is to strengthen control over the workers.¹⁷

Formally, the law provides for worker participation in discussions on production plans and other matters. In fact, under the existing system, management decisions do not depend on them at all. The workers were given the right to voice their opinions on the matter of the assignment of apartments, an issue on which passions run particularly high. The events in Poland were taken into account—a safety valve was opened slightly so that workers could vent their discontent. The Soviet leadership regarded the disorders in Poland as the result of weakened discipline and unwar­ranted measures for raising the population's living standards. Regulating the standard of living, maintaining it at a tolerable but fairly low level, became the most important social problem. In his first and only discussion with the workers (at the Sergo Ordzhonikidze Machine Tool Plant in Moscow on January 31, 1983), Andropov made it clear that prices for essential goods could be increased.¹⁸

The people were urged to think more about production and the satisfaction of their spiritual needs, but the party did not forget to stress from time to time that owing to its efforts the standard of living was constantly rising.

At the end of 1983 prices were lowered for carpets and sheepskin coats. The chairman of the committee on prices declared that this reduction, carried out despite the underhanded plotting of American imperialism, was "convincing evidence of the USSR's economic might."¹⁹

The crusade to tighten up labor discipline began to lose steam after several months. It was regarded in some places as a routine campaign. The uneasy general secretary appealed to the leaders: "The main thing is not to let the impulse of the masses die down."²⁰ But the "impulse" was giving out nonetheless.

It gradually became clear that the drop in production could not be attributed to absenteeism. Research conducted by the Central Statistical Agency in the metalworking and machine-building industries showed that absenteeism was responsible for less than 2 percent of lost work time.²¹ The long-established truth was confirmed once again: the Soviet economy needs serious structural changes. Matters can't be improved just by plugging up the holes.

Through tremendous exertions Andropov managed barely to budge the economy from its standstill. In 1983, according to official data, the national income increased by 3.1 percent, industrial production rose 4 percent, and "social production" in agriculture (as opposed to output from private plots) rose 6 percent.²²

However, a comparative analysis by economist Boris Rumer of the av­erage annual rates of growth in industrial production for several branches of industry in a three-year period from the Tenth Five-Year Plan (1976- 1978) and a three-year period from the Eleventh (1981—1983) testifies to the economy's continued downhill slide. Let us cite some of the figures: the annual rate of growth in the production of electrical energy (in kilowatt hours) was 5 percent in 1976—1978, but 3 percent in 1981—1983; for crude oil it was 5 percent and 0.8 percent; for steel, 2.4 percent and 1.1 percent; for automobiles, 3.1 percent and 0.0 percent; and cement, 1.4 percent and 0.8 percent respectively.²³

The "law on labor collectives" was Andropov's second law. His first had been issued on November 24, 1982, immediately after his election as general secretary; it concerned "the state borders of the USSR."²⁴ Its aim was to raise the level of discipline, vigilance, and intolerance. The in­violability of the USSR's borders was confirmed once again.

Border troops were ordered to prevent the penetration of any kind of printed matter, photographs, manuscripts, microfilm, or tape recordings whose contents might be detrimental to the Soviet Union's economic and political interests, security and social order, as well as to the spiritual health and moral status of its people (article 28). All Soviet citizens were assigned the duty of actively assisting in the protection of Soviet borders. The law also served as a reminder that foreigners are to be feared, as the Soviet Union is under constant threat from external enemies.

It is important that there always be someone and something to fear. This is one of the cornerstones of the system—the troublesome Poles, the crafty Chinese, American spies. The law fully fit in with the basic slogan of Andropov's period, "tighten up discipline," and with the Stalinist behest to keep the border "under lock and key." This is virtually straight out of Pushkin's Boris Godunov:

That not a hare run o'er to us from Poland, Nor crow fly here from Сгасош²⁵

A number of additions and corrections to already existing legislation which were adopted a month before Andropov's death (January 11, 1984) were in accord with the campaign to tighten up "discipline and self- discipline." The law "On criminal responsibility for state crimes" of De­cember 25, 1958, was changed and supplemented: imprisonment for up to ten years threatened citizens for "activities carried out by using monetary means or other material valuables received from foreign organizations."²⁶ This was a heavy blow administered by Andropov to political prisoners and their families. During the preceding decade and a half, the KGB had done its best to cut off the activities of philanthropic organizations operating from abroad, such as the Russian Social Fund to Aid the Persecuted and Their Families (whose president is Natalya Solzhenitsyn), Amnesty Inter­national, Aid to Russian Christians, various Baptist organizations, inter­national human rights organizations, and a large number of private individuals who render aid to Soviet political prisoners and their families. Those re­sponsible for such funds in the USSR have been systematically persecuted and arrested, but new volunteers have taken their places. The threat of prison was intended to intimidate political prisoners and their families and thus undermine the very existence of the funds.

An article was added to the law of 1958 which would punish with two to eight years' imprisonment anyone who transmits to "foreign organizations or their representatives" information considered to be a trade secret, or industrial secret (.sluzhebnaya taina). The term "industrial secret" has not been defined, however. The interpretation, as in other cases, is left to the authorities.

The preservation of order in cities and towns by the citizens themselves is included in the notion of social discipline. Hooliganism and drunkenness are constant companions of the Soviet way of life. The protection of the citizens is declared to be a matter for the citizens themselves. The gov­ernment is unable to guarantee citizens peace and security with the forces of many thousands of militia and internal troops. (Of course, the chief responsibility of the internal troops is to put down popular unrest, should it arise anywhere.) The so-called people's patrols (druzhiny) were organized all over the country under Khrushchev. Now their numbers have grown considerably. Pravda reports that every day the streets of Soviet cities are patrolled by "hundreds of thousands of druzhinniki."²⁷ In Moscow, in one neighborhood (mikroraion) alone, order was maintained by 2,500 druzhin­niki from the First State Bail-Bearing Factory.²⁸ From this it is easy to imagine the scope of hooliganism in the USSR. The druzhinniki have been proclaimed the bearers of social discipline. Like the forces of "order," they may be used in cases that require the suppression of popular unrest.

STRAIGHT FROM THE SCHOOL DESK TO AFGHANISTAN

Khrushchev placed his successors in a difficult position, having promised in 1961 that the construction of communism would be fundamentally com­plete in twenty years, that is, by 1981.²⁹ Khrushchev did not have to pay for this thoughtless remark, because he died ten years before it was sup­posed to come true. Many had belived Khrushchev, though. To Soviet citizens, communism meant distribution of material goods, chiefly public facilities and services, such as housing and transportation without charge. (In Problems of Economics, Stalin had even spoken of the distribution of bread without charge, but being a cautious man he did not specify a date.)

Khrushchev's successors had to reformulate his frivolous promise. They announced that the advent of communism was indefinitely postponed. The period of developed, or mature socialism ("real socialism") would continue for an unspecified period. The USSR, they said, was only at the beginning of this prolonged historical stage. "Full equality in the sense of equal access to material goods," Andropov confirmed, "will be possible only under communism."³⁰

But movement toward the Goal continues. (At one time, Eduard Bern­stein, who devised the brilliant formula, 'The goal is nothing; the movement everything," was branded a revisionist and an apostate from Marxism by Lenin.) Renovation of the official ideology, the adaptation of its dogmas to the requirements of the moment, was especially typical of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The concept of "the historically prolonged stage of de­veloped socialism" is included in the everyday political lexicon, but the term "communism" has almost disappeared, for it is associated with the concept of the advent of an era of abundance. An unforgettable contribution from the 1930s to the "treasure-trove of Marxism-Leninism"—the theory that the state will wither away by being strengthened and reinforced—has in fact been revived. Today the promise is made that at some unspecified future date the Soviet state system will be transformed into one of socialist self-management closer to Utopia in terminology if not in fact.

In the course of this movement toward the Coal the formation of the "new man" will proceed apace, which in fact means the establishment of a total control over man. Lest anyone harbor doubts on this point, Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov asserted: "We are moving along a broad front toward that end, using every resource of developed socialist society, the entire arsenal of means—organizational, political, educational."³¹

The militarization of schools, and of the consciousness of the younger generation have become the party's main instrument in the post-Khrushchev era. Of course, the term "militarization" is never used in reference to socialist society; the expression "military-patriotic education" is used in­stead.

Military training in the schools, introduced under Brezhnev, was strength­ened even more under Andropov and Chernenko. The newspapers and journals of the post-Brezhnev period are full of articles and speeches on the theme of military-patriotic education. It is discussed at conferences of various groups: army, party, and Komsomol officials, teachers, veterans, and CPSU Central Committee plenums. Aleksei Epishev, head of the Chief Political Directorate of the Soviet army, who in effect directed this activity, reported at the June 1983 Central Committee plenum that 4,000 servicemen were working as nonstaff Pioneer leaders in the Moscow military district.³²

The Central Committee's resolution calling for additional measures to promote Russian language learning in the union republics has a special purpose: the Russian language is essential for the mastering of military technology. The same Epishev stressed, "Increasing the level of mastery of the Russian language, which is used to direct troops and naval forces in battle as well as complex modern weapon systems, will make it possible to carry out military training more effectively."³³ He was echoed by A. A. Voss, first secretary of the Communist Party of Latvia, who in enumerating the achievements of his republic at the June 1983 plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, did not fail to note that "all Latvians called up for duty are fluent in the Russian language." He added that this was of no small importance—for increasing the fighting efficiency of the Soviet army and navy.³⁴ The militarization of the rising generation is proceeding at full force. "We are doing everything," said V. I. Golovchenko, director of the Azovsky State Farm, at a USSR Ministry of Defense meeting with veterans, "to implant the heroic spirit in our children so that the young people are well prepared for service in the army."³⁵

Defense Minister Ustinov made his own demands: 'To shape a young person's understanding of the essence of conscious battle discipline, initial military training should begin in secondary school."³⁶

The job of training good soldiers is one of the primary tasks of the schools. This was stated with the utmost clarity by Pravda, the central party organ, in June 1984:

Their job is to awaken the aspiration to become an exemplary soldier, to develop the psychological readiness to maintain the strictest discipline and order in their units and on board ship. In the general system of military- patriotic work, important emphasis is placed on orienting those leaving the secondary schools to enter military schools.³⁷

It turns out that not everything is going quite so smoothly. At the June 1983 plenum Chernenko pointed to the "belated coming to civic awareness and political па^е1ё of some young people."³⁸ V. M. Mishin, first secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee, noted anxiously: "Unfortunately, we are encountering both apathy and pacifist attitudes." Ustinov referred to the political па^е1ё (isolated instances, of course!) of "young people who have just put on a military uniform," and he noted "elements of complacency and carelessness in their behavior."³⁹

How to combat this? First of all, seal every crack through which free thought, doubt, or curiosity about the past might creep in. Epishev called for the prohibition, "even in isolated instances ... of books, films, or plays that are based on material about the war (or having to do with war) but are imprecise in thought content or are notable for narrowness of vision and an undemanding attitude in regard to our view of the world."

The concept of the educational role of the Soviet armed forces as a special arm of the government is deepening. Moreover, the role of the army has been enhanced, transformed from an instrument of the government to an integral part of it. The army has been entrusted with the function of educating young people during their transition from youth to maturity. "It is as though the army," wrote one of its political leaders in early 1984, "at a certain stage takes the 'baton' from the family or the labor or educational collectives, and later, after active duty as a fighting man has been com­pleted, the army returns it—now with a higher level of breeding—to the same or other collectives of the types mentioned above."⁴⁰ From collective to collective, discipline in every form, discipline above all!

Soviet military discipline is proclaimed to be "one of the facets of socialist state discipliine. ... It is discipline of the highest order."⁴¹ It is of precisely this discipline—the unconditional obedience of subordinates to their su­periors—that the party dreams. But an important obstacle has arisen on this path, one that will likely be difficult to overcome: human nature, with

its unpredictability. And this upsets the party leadership most of all.

Under Andropov, the negative factors that influence the formation of the new Soviet man were at last revealed. It turns out that the "new man" not only has the usual "birthmarks of capitalism" but also a scanty record of work and social activity and "because of this, a limited development of class and professional characteristics."⁴² School reform, a project that was drawn up in Andropov's time and became law in April 1984, was called on to correct the situation: it is planned that up to half of those graduating from secondary school will work in the productive sphere.⁴³

The army has a serious interest in the quality of education in the sec­ondary school and the state of industry and agriculture. If order cannot be established in the schools or in the populace at large, it is impossible to expect high quality performance from the army.

The government minister who, it would seem, should be trying to coun­teract the invasion of the military spirit into the schools, has stipulated greater attention to military training. "We must consider questions of pro­viding the schools with experienced military instructors," declared M. A. Prokofiev, the USSR minister of education.⁴⁴ He assured the Central Com­mittee that the Ministry of Education was working in close contact with the Ministry of Defense. The fruit of this cooperation is evident.

A New York Times correspondent visited a celebration of the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution at a Moscow kindergarten. This is how he described their festivities:

First the girls skipped in, wearing red skirts, red ribbons in their hair, and holding a red flag in each hand. Then came the boys in olive drab helmets with big red stars on the fronts, reciting and singing songs about the revo­lution, the "glorious holiday." Other children were dressed in blue and yellow, holding bunches of plastic autumn leaves, chanting: "Glory to our great motherland, let her future be stronger and redder." Then the whole group broke into song as a teacher played the piano: "Our motherland guards the peace,/Victorious Red Army,/Our motherland is strong,/She guards the peace."

"Long live Great October!" shouted a teacher. "Hoorah!" yelled the tiny voices. "Long live our great motherland!" the teacher shouted. "Hoorah!"⁴⁵

And this is the result: in Ashkhabad, in a school whose director is Sanarmet Khodzhaev, Hero of the Soviet Union, seven seniors were honored for taking part in the war against the Afghan people.⁴⁶

Changes in the country's ethnic balance alarm the military leaders. 'The armed forces are already considering a possible negative effect from the complex demographic situation beginning in the mid-1980s."⁴⁷ The first problem is filling the sergeant and junior officer rosters. In the national republics there are not many who are willing to become professional sol­diers. The Komsomol was given a goal: to overcome this negative trend. "We consider it our important task," declared Mishin, "to raise the prestige of the profession of Soviet officer, particularly among the youth of the indigenous nationalities of the republics of Central Asia, Transcaucasia, and the Baltic region."⁴⁸ These are the sore spots because these young people are not overjoyed at the prospect of becoming a career officer.

Arkady Belinkov, an extraordinary scholar on the Soviet era, wrote in his book about Yuri Olesha:

Heroes, heroism, brave exploits, military glory, progress, and remarkable successes were definitely supposed to make our hearts beat faster and more joyfully. But this is only half of it. The second half is that the heroes, heroism, brave exploits, and other amazing things should be used in strictly limited amounts so that they do not exceed the average percentage of casualties from automobile and train disasters.⁴⁹

Brezhnev was still able to make himself a Hero of the Soviet Union four times and was even awarded the Order of Victory. After all, he had fought in the war. His successor Andropov's part in the war effort was sporadic, and with the arrival of Chernenko, it might have seemed that the connection with the heroic war had been broken completely. But was that so?

During his youthful years (1930—1939) Chernenko served as a volunteer in the OGPU border guard. Here he joined the party and was elected to his first party post, secretary of the party cell at his outpost. "From that point," Chernenko says, "party work became the meaning and content of my entire life." He went on to suggest to today's young frontier guards: "The main thing was and remains to have a tremendous sense of respon­sibility, to be at top readiness, and of course, to maintain vigilance."⁵⁰

The appearance of a biographical sketch on Chernenko as a frontier guard with his photograph in the organ of the armed forces seemed to lay the groundwork for a military biography of the general secretary, something he desperately needed. The foundation for Brezhnev's glorification was laid down in the journal Novoe vremya (New Times), which published an essay entitled 'This Small Earth," by the then young journalist Andropov. The times make their own demands on the biographies of Soviet leaders. Only Lenin had no military rank—there simply weren't any in his day.

Stalin became a marshal, then generalissimo during the war against Hitler's Germany. At that time Khrushchev and Brezhnev received their military ranks. Khrushchev was made a lieutenant general and Brezhnev a major general. Finally, Brezhnev awarded himself the rank of marshal. Andropov received the rank of four-star general for his position as head of the KGB.

But the party leadership is running into a serious problem. Memory of the war against fascist Germany is fading into the past, and with it the romance of military service. The chain forged between the younger gen­eration and its elders by memories of a common suffering has also weakened with the natural disappearance of the war's survivors. Young people have turned their attention to new and more immediate practical matters. In the process, one of the most important components of the CPSU's magic power has begun to disintegrate. It matters increasingly little whether or not general secretaries have the rank of marshal of the Soviet Union.

WAR IS PEACE

The end of the Brezhnev era was accompanied by serious complications for the Soviet Union in the world political arena. Among them were wors­ening relations with the United States, the drawn out war in Afghanistan, the aggravated situation in the Middle East, and instability in Southeast Asia, complicated by the Sino—Vietnamese conflict over Kampuchea. Within the Soviet bloc a critical situation arose in Poland, where the population of 37 million withdrew psychologically from a government that was depen­dent on and controlled by the Soviet Union.

To his successors, Brezhnev left the state of "real socialism" with an economy in continuous crisis. It was a superpower drained by the arms race, an empire whose tentacles were extended far beyond its own borders but which was incapable of solving a single problem either in its own center or at its outer reaches. At the same time, the process of Sovietizing the planet, begun in 1917, continued. By the early 1980s, regimes of the Soviet or similar type had been established in many countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Their territories occupied 41 million square kilometers, or 27.5 percent of the earth's land area. Their populations numbered 1,783 million (including China's 1,035 million), or 39.7 percent of the earth's entire population.

Andropov became the head of the Soviet state at a time when the military balance in Europe between the NATO countries and those of the Warsaw Pact had shifted in favor of the latter. Actually the Soviet Union had had military superiority in conventional (nonnuclear) forces ever since the end of World War II. In the mid-1970s it began a program to increase its nuclear strength and eventually equipped its armed forces with more than 300 SS-20 ballistic missiles, each having a range of up to 5,000 kilometers. The military balance in Europe shifted decidedly in favor of the USSR. NATO could do nothing except warn the Soviet Union that in response it would be forced to install similar intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, such as the Pershing 2 and the cruise missile. In this way the balance of nuclear forces in Europe would be restored. The European countries had no desire to station American missiles on their territory, but the USSR's bellicose policy left them no other choice.

The Soviet Union was warned in advance of the impending placement of new missiles in West Germany, Great Britain, and other countries. After refusing to settle the dispute by diplomatic means, the Soviet Union began a noisy propaganda war. The deployment of the missiles was accompanied not only by sharp debates in the NATO countries, including the United States, but also by numerous demonstrations throughout Europe, particu­larly in West Germany, organized by the opponents of such deployment and supports of a "nuclear freeze," as well as by threats and direct pressure from the Soviet Union. However, the deployment of American missiles could not be averted or even delayed. The danger of the Soviet Union's increased nuclear potential, especially with medium-range missiles di­rected at Western Europe, Asia, and Japan, was too great.

The crude pressure exerted by the Soviet Union on the eve of the general elections in West Germany (Foreign Minister Gromyko, who was in West Germany, openly declared the USSR's desire to see the Social Democratic party in power) caused a reaction the USSR did not expect: the Christian Democrats won and, together with their allies, the Free Democrats, formed a coalition government under Chancellor Kohl. All types of antiwar and pacifist movements in the West, which had been supported by the USSR and objectively played into the hands of Soviet policy, quieted down for the time being. There came a second menacing warning, this time from Andropov himself to Kohl in July 1983, on the consequences if more American missiles were deployed in West Germany.⁵¹ This too accomplished nothing. The deployment proceeded according to schedule. For effect, the Soviet delegation in Geneva walked out of the talks on limiting nuclear weapons, but this only underscored the interim setback the Soviet Union had suffered.

At the same time, however, the Soviet leadership managed to persuade West German political and business circles of the need to cultivate better relations with the Soviet Union. The prospect of developing economic ties, on the one hand, and fear of nuclear war, on the other, would bring long- term pressure to bear on West German policy.⁵²

The USSR answered the placement of American missiles in Western Europe with a declaration of its intention to install its own missiles (SS- 21s, SS-22s, and SS-23s) on the territory of its allies East Germany and Czechoslovakia.⁵³ The announcement did not mean, however, that it would really be carried out. One of the principles of long-term Soviet policy in the Warsaw Pact countries was, whenever possible, not to keep weapons of the most recent generation on satellite territory. This does not mean, of course, that plans of this type do not exist, since all the changing factors in the military-political situation are considered in military planning. How­ever, the danger of such a policy change immediately became evident. In Czechoslovakia a petition campaign against the installation of missiles began among students in the city of Brno, near which—it was rumored— the Soviet missiles would be placed. The campaign reached such propor­tions that Rude pravo, the central organ of the Czechoslovak Communist party, had to issue a reassuring explanation.⁵⁴