The river of time in its flow Carries away all the works of human beings…
At present the peoples of the Soviet Union, and to some extent even peoples outside its borders, are in the midst of the Gorbachev-initiated maelstrom, which makes an objective judgment of the situation exceptionally difficult. To be sure, the Soviet leader was not in control of his country and its citizens, and, indeed, he had been repeatedly obtaining results opposite to those intended - after all, Nicholas II also made important contributions to the revolutions of 1917. And as many of our best specialists tell us, it is dangerous to personalize major historical issues, and another Gorbachev or still other lines of development would have produced similar results. But as long as history is an account of what happened and is happening rather than of the logical alternatives, the period of glasnost and perestroika will remain linked to its extraordinary protagonist, whose main assets appear to have been optimism, glibness, and marvelous political agility and adroitness, which enabled him to dance on top of and around historical developments, if not to preside over their course - an obvious transitory figure who long refused to transit.
Gorbachev's Early Years
There is no doubt that Gorbachev started the ball rolling. Exactly what he and his original associates, such as Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev, had in mind when they began reforming the Soviet Union may never become clear, even to them. Suppositions and explanations of their intent abound, but the overwhelming factors in what transpired appear to be the absence of correspondence between plans and reality and the dizzying power of contradictory forces unchained by even slight reform. Recent events in the U.S.S.R. and eastern Europe stunned everyone, especially those who had any regard for the communist system, and that includes by definition the entire Soviet leadership. There may well be, however, one quite major exception to this almost total disjunction between purpose and accomplishment. Gorbachev, Shevardnadze especially, and other prominent Soviet figures insisted that one of the pillars of their new thinking was the absolute realization of the inadmissibility of nuclear war in human
affairs and, therefore, of the necessity for at least a minimum of international cooperation, in particular between the Soviet Union and the United States. With all qualifications, it can be argued that Soviet foreign policy came to reflect that realization. If so, the gain to the world was incalculable, although the realization itself is elementary and its roots even in the Soviet Union largely preceded Gorbachev. Otherwise, it hardly needs reminding that in his book Perestroika - published in English as well as in Russian in October 1987 and a good way to become acquainted with its author - and even later Gorbachev emphasized the supreme importance of Lenin and the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, rejected privatization and political pluralism in communist states, and praised Soviet solutions to social and nationality problems. And it should be remembered that the Warsaw Pact was renewed and extended for twenty years on April 26, 1985; it was abolished following the complete collapse of communism in eastern Europe on February 25, 1991. The river of time does carry away the works of human beings.
At the foundation of Gorbachev's reforming lay the need to escape the economic cul-de-sac, which had become increasingly and unmistakably apparent by the end of the Brezhnev regime. Although some specialists claim that the Soviet state and society had already lost their forward motion with the fall of Khrushchev or shortly after, the long years of Brezhnev's rule became incontro-vertibly a time of stagnation and corruption. Economic indicators generally pointed downward, although thus far only the rate of increase of productivity and product rather than productivity and product themselves declined. In spite of great expenditures and extensive efforts, the condition of Soviet agriculture remained dismal. In industry, as before, quality lagged behind quantity. Even more important, the entire industrial establishment, a direct inheritance from the initial five-year plans, failed to respond competitively to the new age of computers and electronics. Indeed, falling behind in science and technology became one of the main Soviet worries. Military needs continued to devour huge chunks of the gross national product - percentagewise more than twice that devoured in the United States. Stagnation and economic crisis found their natural counterpoints in pessimism and low morale, which pervaded the country.
The first two or three years of the Gorbachev regime, inaugurated on March 11, 1985, displayed a fairly "traditional" cast. The new Party secretary had to concentrate on strengthening his position, and, indeed, over a period of time he effected a major turnover of ruling and high administrative personnel. Thus on July 1, 1985, Shevardnadze became a member of the Politburo, and on the following day he was appointed foreign minister, replacing Andrei Gromyko, who was moved to a more ceremonial high office. Other new men entered the Politburo, while Victor Grishin, Gorbachev's original rival for the position of Party secretary, retired.
Perestroika, Gorbachev's proposed rebuilding of the Soviet country and system, was loud in promise but, everything considered, initially quite similar to the
proposals and exhortations of earlier Soviet reformers. The draft plan, as presented by Gorbachev in October 1985, called for doubling the national income in fifteen years, with special emphasis on the modernization of equipment and an increase in labor productivity. It was all-important to overcome stagnation, to get the Soviet Union moving. But although the leader spoke of a "radical transformation of all spheres of life" and although such concepts as profits and profitability, decentralization, initiative, and even market economy and private enterprise increasingly entered national discourse, in practice the effort was limited mainly to an attempt at a speed-up, in particular by eliminating such evils as absenteeism and drunkenness - witness the major anti-alcohol campaign mounted in May 1985 and in subsequent months and years.
Gorbachev showed more originality in gradually promoting the concept of glasnost, or free discussion in speech and print. In its full, or at least rich, development a stunning novelty for Soviet society, it largely won for Gorbachev the initial support of the intellectuals and, even more broadly, of the educated public at home and great acclaim abroad. Foreign praise was powerfully augmented, of course, by the increasingly accommodating and peaceful foreign policy of the Soviet Union. Yet it is worth noting that whereas at the time the deficiencies of the Brezhnev regime were endlessly excoriated and whereas Gorbachev himself resumed de-Stalinization in July 1987 by condemning Stalinist terror, Lenin remained the lodestar of the new course. As of that time perestroika and glasnost, too, were expected to fit neatly into a gloriously reformed, somewhat humanized, and professedly Leninist Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, almost nothing worked during the first years of the Gorbachev regime. The economy would not respond to mere exhortations. Indeed, the government's own economic, especially financial, policies led to budget deficits and inflation and thus made matters worse. Even the anti-alcohol campaign proved to be a disaster, its only incontrovertible result a great increase in the illegal production of spirits, to the extent that sugar disappeared from stores in parts of the U.S.S.R. Before long under the new administration and its vacillating and confusing direction, the economy began to lose what cohesion it had had under Brezhnev without gaining anything to replace it. The war in Afghanistan, exceedingly painful to the population of the Soviet Union, continued to take its toll. On April 28, 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded in Chernobyl; the resulting medical and environmental catastrophe threw a glaring light on multiple Soviet deficiencies, from those in engineering to those in the news media. Indeed, that tragic episode, treated at first in the firm tradition of Stalinist secrecy, eventually became both an opening into glasnost and a strong argument in its favor. But then glasnost itself, a valuable and undeniable achievement of the Gorbachev years, was becoming increasingly dangerous to the Soviet regime and all its plans. Gorbachev's worst miscalculation might well have been his belief that glasnost would strengthen rather than destroy communism. Freedom of speech meant freedom to ask questions, and there were so many questions the Soviet