Social Democracy at home: normal Great Power abroad, 1985-91
Gorbachev understood the Soviet Union as a failing, yet perfectible, socialist project. If only it were to become more democratic, it could fulfil the Marxist- Leninist promise of being a model of Social Democracy for the world. This understanding had immediate foreign-policy implications. First, by admitting that the Soviet model itself was fraught with problems, the idea of the NSM as infallible was rejected. This rejection entailed the rejection of the Soviet Union as the model for the world revolutionary movement, as the vanguard or centre of Eastern European and Chinese socialism, and NLMs around the world. Difference with the Soviet model was no longer just grudgingly tolerated, but demanded, as Soviet experience had shown it was grossly inadequate even at home, let alone when emulated abroad in less hospitable contexts.163 Under Gorbachev, European Social Democracy and Eurocommunism became significant Others to imitate, not oppose.164 The common roots of Soviet communism and European Social Democracy in progressive thought were hailed as promising the integration of the Soviet Union as a normal, civilised, socialist Great Power in a family of Great Powers all committed to common human values of prosperity at home and peaceful resolution of conflict abroad. It was a liberal vision of both the Soviet Union and the world. As Gorbachev himself put it, 'We are merging into the common stream of world civilization.'165
160 Quoted in Mlechin, MID,p. 420.
161 'The Soviet Union and Afghanistan', pp. 160-3. 162 Ibid., pp. 166-73.
163 Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, trans. and ed. Robert English and Elizabeth Tucker (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 61.
164 English, Russia and the Idea of the West, pp. 72-91,140-1,183-228; Prizel, National Identity and Foreign Policy, pp. 191-205; Chernyaev, My Six Years, p. 297; and Primakov, Gody v bol'shoi politike, p. 33.
165 Quoted in English, Russia and the Idea of the West, p. 193.
This new Soviet identity implied a far higher level of security for the Soviet Union. The zone of peace had been discursively expanded beyond Eastern Europe, NLMs and the world proletariat, to include virtually all humankind. What insecurity Soviets experienced was addressable through perestroika, glas- nost', and democratisation at home, making the country more prosperous and democratic, and new thinking abroad, reassuring the world that the Soviet Union had become a new country with which all could live in liberal harmony.[315] As early as March 1986, Gorbachev told a meeting of foreign ministry officials that domestic Soviet identity was a foreign policy issue, namely, the development of democracy and respect for human rights at home would inspire trust for the Soviet Union abroad.[316]
De-institutionalisation of the NSM began with glasnost', or Gorbachev's demand that the media begin to report about problems confronting the Soviet economy. At first limited to economic issues, ecology and corruption, it was soon extended to political matters and history, and finally to foreign policy and security. The discrediting of the previous Soviet model cleared the way for Gorbachev to begin economic and political reforms. Reformist periodicals, such as Ogonek and Argumenty i fakty found that revealing shortcomings in the NSM paid: circulation for Ogonek went from 260,000 to 4 million, for Aif from 10,000 to 32.5 million.[317] In the last years of his rule, Gorbachev was constrained by the discursive changes he authored. Irritated by reporting in Aif, he demanded the editor be fired; instead, journalists formed an ad hoc defence committee, and forced Gorbachev to back down from his old thinking.[318]
Gorbachev used the institutions he inherited, empowered ones that were emergent and created new ones. Gorbachev benefited from the inherited institution of General Secretary. Beyond the power it gave him to make all the other institutional and personnel changes noted above, it permitted the consolidation of his vision of Soviet identity as the predominant discourse in the Soviet Union. Within days of becoming General Secretary, he put Pono- marev, with whom he shared virtually no common intellectual ground, in charge of an array of foreign policy issues, in order to undermine Gromyko's MFA monopoly, and create an institutionalised challenge to those positions.170 But within a year Ponomarev was replaced as CCID secretary by Dobrynin.
With this one appointment, the single foreign policy institution most responsible for the maintenance of the Soviet Union's vanguard identity, and for advocating support for NLMs around the world, was cut off at the discursive knees. Moreover, the MFA became the single most important foreign-policy institution, no longer competing with the CCID.[319]
In July 1985 Gorbachev replaced Gromyko with Eduard Shevardnadze, who replaced personnel, created a new division on arms control and disarmament, a department of humanitarian and cultural contacts and established a formalised conduit to alternative discourses with the creation of an academic consultative council within the ministry. This council institutionalised the participation of experts, such as Primakov and Arbatov, whose reformist views had been largely ignored until then. Within a year, the MFA had experienced more turnover in personnel than any other Soviet bureaucracy. They brought new thinking and reinforced the MFA's focus on West European and American affairs, at the expense of the developing world and Eastern Europe. Shevardnadze demanded 'unembellished pictures of events', just as Gorbachev was demanding from obkom secretaries and the media at home, and developed an alternative intelligence network of foreign ministry officials and researchers at IMEMO, ISKAN, the new Institute of Europe and the Moscow State Institute of International Affairs (MGIMO).
Shevardnadze's 'very non-professionalism helped him take bolder decisions . . . He would often put his aides off-balance. He would give them a paper, and then ask: "why have we taken this position?" All would shrug their shoulders with surprise, and say: "Well, we have always taken it." Shevardnadze would shake his head, and reply: "That's not an answer. Explain to me the sense of this position."'[320] The new foreign minister compelled his colleagues to think in ways that were literally unimaginable to them before.
The military was one of the MFA's primary targets in the struggle over information. Having created a department of arms control within the MFA, the latter developed expertise and data, independent of the Defence Ministry and General Staff, that undermined arguments about Soviet military inferiority. The military was increasingly on the defensive, faced by a growing group of experts with privileged access to both the General Secretary and sensitive information that, until then, had been its monopoly.[321]
Aleksandr Yakovlev's CC Ideology Department created a new section on human rights.[322] Gorbachev used the traditional instruments of the General Secretary to purge the apparatus of old cadres. By 1986, there were eight new Politburo members and at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February 1987, 38 per cent of the CC was replaced. Editorial boards of key journals and newspapers were stocked with new thinkers.[323] Gorbachev created 'presidential commissions', ad hoc bodies designed to provide him with advice, while circumventing inherited institutions such as the CC departments.[324]
315
Chernyaev,
317
Sarah E. Mendelson,
319
Ekedahl and Goodman,
321
Ekedahl and Goodman,