Towards the 1980s, the USSR had achieved a level of economic and social development superior to China’s, but its system was stuck fast in a self-destructive logic. The kind of reforms envisaged by Andropov could have given the country what it needed: a reformed, active state able to continue its developmental role, but also capable of renouncing an authoritarianism that was now obsolete, inasmuch as the social landscape had been profoundly transformed.
However, the recourse to the venerable symbolism of the derzhava, which expressed the mindset and interests of a significant component of the ruling elite, was the sign of a loss of vigour on the part of the state apparatus, the members of which, stuck in a groove, now used its power solely to further their personal interests. It also signalled the interruption of any reformist dynamic at the very moment when the country was crying out for reform. Rather than adding the computer to the hammer and sickle, the leadership took refuge in conservatism, embarking on an inglorious path. If the population lived under a system with an ancient pedigree and characteristics, they were no longer living in the eighteenth century, but the twentieth. The state had remained behind and such ‘bifurcation’ (society going in one direction, the state in another) was fatal.
The term ‘bureaucratic absolutism’, which seems apt to us to characterize the Soviet system, is borrowed from an analysis of the Prussian bureaucratic monarchy in the eighteenth century, wherein the monarch was in fact dependent on his bureaucracy despite being its head.[3] In the Soviet case, the party’s top bosses, putative masters of the state, had actually lost any power over ‘their’ bureaucrats.
Insignificant ex-ministers of the USSR, writing nostalgically in their memoirs about the glory of the superpower they have lost, do not realize that the fashion for the term derzhava precisely coincided with the period when the state had ceased to accomplish the task it had once been capable of performing – and had indeed performed. It had become a shadow of its former self, the last gasp of a power about to join the grave of a family of antiquated regimes to which it remained bound by too many ties.
THE FOREIGN FACTOR
The Soviet phenomenon was a profoundly typical chapter in Russian history – not in spite, but because, of the role of the international environment, including the use of ideologies borrowed from abroad. The autocrats who have proved most successful in Russian history also maintained such links with the external world. A country with a highly complex history, constantly engaged in friendly or hostile relations with neighbours near and far, Russia had to develop relations not only on the military, economic, commercial, diplomatic and cultural levels, but also by responding culturally and ideologically to a series of challenges. It did so either by borrowing ideas from abroad, or by counterposing indigenous notions – which explains why its rulers’ antennae were pointed in two directions, inwards and outwards. Similarly, in the history of the USSR the outside world constantly helped to determine the form the regime took, in a variety of ways. The First World War and the concurrent crisis of capitalism had a lot to do with the Leninist phenomenon and the phases Soviet Russia went through in the 1920s. The crisis of the 1930s and the Second World War likewise had a direct impact on Stalin’s Soviet Union.
The ‘distorting mirrors’ we referred to in the case of Stalinism influenced the images that populations and rulers formed of the opposing camp. Since both competing systems experienced crises and phases of development, the ‘distorting mirrors’ on both sides projected and reflected images in which reality and fiction were almost impossible to disentangle. If in the 1930s Stalinism, then at the peak of its momentum, enjoyed great prestige and benevolent attention in the West despite the misery and persecution endured by Soviet citizens, it was largely because of the negative image of capitalism projected by global economic crisis – particularly that afflicting Central and Eastern Europe. Russia reflected back the image of its industrial momentum, and the poverty of the population was relativized by the notion that this impressive progress would rapidly overcome it. A similar distorting effect can be seen in the case of Stalin and Stalinism at the moment of its triumph over Germany in 1945, when the country was once again plunged into a profound poverty for which the ravages of war were not exclusively responsible. The exchange of distorted images had significant political consequences: divining the intentions of the other side often became a guessing game.
The Cold War was an unusual contest. Seen from Moscow, it was dramatically unleashed with the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. But if Berezhkov’s memoirs are to be believed, it began earlier with the American delay in opening a second – western – front: Stalin regarded this as a deliberate ploy on the part of the USA, intent on entering the thick of battle only after the German and Soviet contestants had exhausted one another.[4] This delay, compounded by the use of atomic weapons against Japan, had been perceived as evidence of the American desire to let it be known that a new era had opened in international relations – a declaration made not to Japan, but to the USSR and the rest of the world, which the Soviet leadership had interpreted accordingly. That the USA did think in this way at the time cannot be ruled out. What effects the opening of the second front a year earlier, or abstaining from the atomic bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, might have had on postwar relations can only be speculated about. The fact remains that the war and postwar developments propelled the USSR into the role of a superpower and pushed it into an arms race that helped to perpetuate the worst, most conservative features of the system and to reduce its ability to reform itself.
Among the consequences of the Cold War, we should note the fact that the US found itself in a position to exercise considerable influence and pressure on the Soviet leadership’s way of thinking. The Old World (England, France, Germany), which had hitherto served as a model, was replaced by the New World: the US became the Soviets’ yardstick for assessing their own performance when it came to the economy, science, military capability and, needless to say, espionage. The impact of this reorientation to the US was concealed from both the Soviet population and the West (this is a vast subject awaiting exploration). We may assume that on account of the US the Soviet leadership came to realize the systemic nature of their country’s grave inferiority, though it could be that some of them refused to acknowledge the reality. After having been beaten in the (utterly useless) race to get to the Moon first, the country’s inability to embark on the new scientific and information revolution – even though a special ministry was created to supervise the task! – must have engendered a sense of powerlessness in some ruling circles, while the conservatives stuck with their immobilism and hard line.
It was this same image of the US as superpower that led so many ex-members of the nomenklatura to bid for American favours after they had taken control of the Kremlin under Yeltsin’s mantle. However, this episode belongs to the post-Soviet era and is of interest to us here only in so far as it casts some additional light on the historical record of the system – a system that is dead and buried, and yet remains present in the constant search for a national identity which will only be defined when the past, warts and all, has been seriously re-examined and mastered.