Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin

by Andrei A. Kovalev

  The then minister of foreign affairs and Politburo member Andrei Gromyko once asked Father about his attitude toward Solzhenitsyn. His immediate answer could not have pleased the minister: “I consider Solzhenitsyn a great Russian writer.” That ended the conversation. KGB chairman Andropov also discussed the question of Solzhenitsyn with Father. “If, inevitably, something must be done about Solzhenitsyn,” Father said to the all-powerful chief of the KGB, “my opinion is as follows: Do not bring him to trial and do not lay hands on him.” But many wanted to do precisely that—that is, lay hands on him.

  There was a follow-up to these conversations. Politburo member and chairman of the Soviet trade unions Alexander Shelepin, known as “Iron Shurik,” flew into Geneva.6 According to him, the Politburo had decided to put Solzhenitsyn on trial. In the evening, before flying out of Geneva, Shelepin invited Father to take a stroll around the delegation grounds and asked him if the head of the Soviet delegation to the negotiations could tell him he had no objection to putting Solzhenitsyn on trial. Father replied with a thunderous “No!” He spelled out his position in a coded message to Moscow so there would be no possibility of his words being distorted. Did it play a role in the subsequent fate of the great writer? Given that Solzhenitsyn was “only” exiled, one may conclude that the answer to this question is yes.

  I also soon learned of another hardly insignificant episode that occurred during the second stage of the CSCE.

  Father knew how to take risks and not only in calculating moves in chess. He was willing to wager everything when it came to his convictions and ideals. This is how he acted in bargaining for the principle of the inviolability of borders, so dear to Brezhnev’s heart, in exchange for supporting the “third basket,” which is dedicated to human rights, in the Final Act of the CSCE. The day before, he consulted with his wife—my mother—warning her of the risk that serious official troubles resulting from his support of the third basket might also affect the family. Not a single one of the delegation members failed to support his proposals. Moscow also gave its assent. The result was that the Final Act, which has long served as a foundational document of European politics, was signed and sealed, but Father and his convictions then fell out of favor, and he barely avoided being forced into retirement. He was unwilling to sacrifice his ideals. Mikhail Gorbachev, via the intercession of Alexander Yakovlev, restrained him from retiring. After Gorbachev came to power, Father became one of the chief architects of the new Soviet foreign policy, exerting invaluable influence on the democratic reformation of the country and propagating the idea of human rights and democratic standards. Of course, it was not by chance that Gorbachev later entrusted Father with representing him in Stockholm when the president of the USSR was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

  It would hardly do to call the atmosphere in which we lived normal. We knew that we were always being followed and that not only was our telephone tapped but our whole apartment was bugged as well.

  The following occurred . . .

  Father, tense and literally ashen, came home and informed Mother and me that we should be extremely cautious and say nothing unnecessary. (As if he were unaware that we didn’t know this!) Strange, fantastic words were spoken: “I am under arrest. This is very serious. Act accordingly.” The conversation was over. Confused, we went off to our own rooms. Obviously, Father was in a terrible mood.

  Later, I learned the following, which I quote from Father’s memoirs.

  In early April 1973, I got a call from Brezhnev’s office saying that he was inviting me and several other colleagues to his dacha outside of Moscow. . . . Something unusual was afoot. It turned out that Brezhnev had invited several persons: [Andrei] Alexandrov, [Anatoly] Blatov, [Georgy] Arbatov, [Anatoly] Chernyaev, me, and, I think also Nikolai Shishlin.

  In Brezhnev’s small, second-floor office he started the conversation in a roundabout way, in a sort of confessional tone. The leitmotif of the conversation was the feeling of deepening solitude which, in the words of Leonid Ilyich, was increasingly evident around him. As persons experienced in these matters and accustomed to the general secretary’s mode of expression, we had no particular difficulty in deciphering that what he was getting at were changes he was contemplating in the leadership, in the Politburo. But he did not speak directly about this or of anything concrete. He ended the conversation in a peculiar way; he picked up the telephone and spoke to Andropov.7

  “Yurii,” Brezhnev said, “I have with me the following persons.” He ticked off our names. “From now on consider them under arrest and don’t lose sight of them.” Addressing us, Brezhnev asked, “Did you hear what I said? Well, let’s go to tea. Viktoriia Petrovna is inviting us.”

  What a charming situation. In effect it was an invitation to a family tea with the leader of a superpower while simultaneously under a peculiar form of arrest and the looming threat of punishment.

  Often a man is known by the friends he keeps. In Father’s case, a list of several of his main enemies is more revealing: Mikhail Suslov, a Politburo member and number 2 on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and, consequently, of the USSR during the Brezhnev era; Nikolai Podgorny, the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR; Viktor Grishin, a member of the Politburo and first secretary of the Moscow Municipal Committee of the CPSU; Shelepin, a member of the Politburo of the CPSU, who was joined at a certain point by his immediate superior, Minister of Foreign Affairs Gromyko; Yegor Ligachev, a member of the Politburo and number 2 in the country during the era of perestroika; and Vladimir Kriuchkov, the KGB boss during the same period. Of course, this list is far from including even all of Father’s distinguished enemies.

  During perestroika Father was able to come fully into his own. He was one of the inspirers and authors of Gorbachev’s January 1986 proposal for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, of the concept of a common European home, and of a nuclear-free and nonviolent world. He was an unconditional supporter of German reunification and played an important role in averting a military clash between the USSR and NATO at the time the Berlin Wall came down. He was a champion of the decolonization of the Eastern and Central European countries, he was responsible for the reduction of military confrontation in Europe, and he discovered evidence confirming the existence of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This is far from a complete list of his accomplishments. In sum, he was a poet and philosopher of diplomacy.

  Date and Place of Birth

  The very fact of my forthcoming appearance on earth was problematic for a long time. My grandfather Professor Nikolai Zavalishin, a two-star general of military medical services, was in disgrace toward the end of Stalin’s rule. On the day the tyrant died, on Stalin’s desk lay a blacklist headed by my grandfather’s name. Had Stalin signed it, Grandfather would have been liquidated. Afterward, in the best case, the members of the family of “the enemy of the people” would have become prisoners of the GULAG and I would not have been born in October 1953.

  Even though my place of birth, Moscow, may be where one would expect me to have been born, I was actually supposed to be born in Berlin. Father was working there at the time on the staff of the Supreme Commissar Vladimir Semenov. Sensing what would happen in 1953, he sent Mother to Moscow.8

  It was never clear why my peers befriended me, whether because they liked me or from work obligations. I confess I made more than one mistake. The worst was that of idealizing people, thinking them better than they were. However, I have one excuse: I was deceived by the worst kind of people; there were none worse than they. And from a desire for self-preservation I alienated worthy persons. Mea culpa.

  I understood early in life that in order to survive in the USSR one had to put on an act, to seem to be someone other than who you really were. Fyodor Tyutchev’s well-known maxim—“Keep quiet, keep a low profile, don’t reveal yourself”—became practically the dominant mode of life for many decades.9

  Nationality

 
; First, let me explain that in Russian the word nationality has a different meaning than in other languages, where nationality is a synonym for citizenship. In Russia and in the Russian language, it means one’s ethnicity. Therefore, speaking in Russian, I am Russian. This means a lot. But at the same time it means nothing. Why?

  Russia, and before that the USSR, consists of numerous and extremely differentiated strata of peoples who have practically no contact with each other and speak various languages, but everyone knows Russian. That said, the Russian they speak differs greatly depending on their education and social position. The Russian of the highbrow intellectuals is strikingly different from the Russian of the so-called plain folk. Many workers and peasants speak an extremely coarse and vulgar patois. In style and vocabulary one can even distinguish between schoolteachers and university lecturers.

  I was reproached from childhood for being a cosmopolitan. This was a terrible word in those years. Stalin’s campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans” was still fresh in people’s minds. (Moreover, Jews were the primary target, although not everyone understood this.) What provoked these reproaches? Very simply, from an early age I preferred Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, and other West European composers to Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers. I was more taken with reading Balzac than, say, Turgenev.

  Moreover, when I was fifteen years old, I read and took to heart the profound words of Charles de Montesquieu: “If I knew of something that could serve France, but would harm Europe, or if I knew something that could serve Europe, but harm humankind, I would consider this a crime . . . because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally French.”

  In sum, I offer to the reader, completely free of any other considerations, my testimony regarding my personal experiences in the USSR and Russia from 1985 to 2007. It is the testimony of an active participant in the attempt to bring about a democratic reformation of my country, the testimony of a journey from hope to despair regarding the future of my country.

  It is the testimony of an author whom the KGB, despite all its efforts, was unable to break and a story of how the post-Soviet authorities succeeded in getting me to emigrate from my own country. This occurred not only because I realized the complete impossibility of exercising any influence on what was going on in Russia but also because of the applause of my fellow countrymen and many Western politicians, political scientists, and journalists for what, from the start, was the criminal regime of Vladimir Putin.

  This book testifies to the failure of democratic and liberal values in an enormous country. Russia possesses not only suicidal tendencies but also an immense potential and, most important, a determination to suppress, and possibly even destroy, all those who disagree with its imperial will. Putin’s statement in 2015 about his readiness to employ nuclear weapons during the criminal annexation of Crimea demonstrates this point.

  I hope that my personal testimony will enable readers to sharpen their view regarding Russia’s recent past and to overcome what in my opinion is an inappropriate, starry-eyed idealism regarding what is taking place in the country of my birth.

  Acknowledgments

  First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to those who made the writing of this book possible. I am speaking of my father, Anatoly Kovalev, who taught me how to analyze what is going on realistically and skeptically and, most important, without losing one’s human feelings when it comes to politics even when this may harm one’s career. And, of course, I am speaking, too, of my wife, Olga, who has always supported me in what, according to prevailing Russian concepts, were my most “extravagant” escapades and who helped me a great deal in preparing this book for publication.

  The publication of this book would not have been possible without the active and all-around support of Peter B. Reddaway. In turn, I am obliged to Robert van Voren for renewing my acquaintance with him. Robert van Voren became interested in the manuscript at a time when it totally contradicted all the generally accepted myths and stereotypes about what was transpiring in and around Russia. I must also acknowledge my debt to Andreas Umland who decided to publish this book in Russian in his series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society.

  I would like to express my sincere thanks to Potomac Books editor Tom Swanson and to Maggie Boyles, Sabrina Stellrecht, and everyone else at the University of Nebraska Press for all they did to bring this book to publication. I owe a debt of gratitude to Vicki Chamlee who did a stellar job of copyediting. She went well beyond the call of duty to transform the translation of my manuscript into a readable and accurate text.

  The translation and preparation for publication of the English edition became a genuine and satisfying adventure. In the literal sense of the words, Steven I. Levine, who agreed to translate the manuscript into English, brought selflessness, enthusiasm, and passion to the task. In overcoming difficulties in translation, including at times Russian realia that have no equivalents in other languages, Peter B. Reddaway and Martin Dewhirst provided enormous help with their thoughtful critiques, invaluable comments, and painstaking work.

  Moreover, in accordance with the advice of my literary agent Peter W. Bernstein, who found a most suitable publisher for this work despite the abundance of Russia books in the marketplace, Steven I. Levine performed the task of somewhat abridging and restructuring the manuscript for publication.

  I am grateful to Francis Greene and Peter Reddaway for their willingness to provide generous financial support toward the translation, which, however, proved unnecessary due to Steven I. Levine’s selflessness.

  Finally, I want to express my most sincere gratitude to everyone, including those persons not specifically mentioned here, who helped me destroy the stereotypes, widely disseminated in Russia as well as in the West, regarding the supposed domination of self-interest and egoism in human affairs.

  Introduction

  The twists and turns of Russian politics are cause for wonder. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR, nurtured by the communist totalitarian system that elevated him to the summit of power in 1985, is the one who pulled it down. Another communist who also occupied high positions in the party hierarchy of the USSR and who supposedly metamorphosed into a democrat, Boris Yeltsin, became the first president of post-Soviet Russia. He, in turn, virtually bequeathed power to retired KGB officer Vladimir Putin, who throughout the post-Yeltsin period consistently and methodically uprooted the shoots of democracy. Putin viewed the democratic reforms undertaken in the twilight years of the Soviet Union as a foul legacy, and he pronounced the demise of the USSR the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.

  In 1983 President Ronald Reagan characterized Russia, then called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as an “evil empire.” This definition shocked even those Russian patriots who loathed the Soviet Union. Only later was Reagan’s truth acknowledged. It was this president who via diplomatic means made a substantial contribution to the transformation of the USSR into a democratic and lawful state. Of course, it was possible only because Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing the very same goal.

  Evil empire is an accurate description of the USSR. It really was an empire that disseminated its messianic evil throughout the occupied territories of Central and Eastern Europe and the “socialist-oriented,” Third World developing countries. Yet the basic features characteristic of the Soviet state system did not take root in these places, nor could they since they contradicted human nature itself.

  For centuries Russia was an empire founded on universal servitude. After the Bolshevik coup of 1917, it was a dictatorship of a systematic ideology, Marxism-Leninism. The ideological dictatorship not only embraced all the new territories but also strived to implant its philosophy of servitude in other countries.

  Nevertheless, the definition of evil as the complete opposite of good was not applicable to the USSR. In the post-Stalin period it was not applicable even to those in power, as witnessed by the fact that the liberalization of the country during G
orbachev’s perestroika “descended from on high”—that is, it came from a higher authority, decreed and implemented by those whom we may call dissidents within the system. This concept requires explanation. The within-system dissidents were an extremely small but very influential category of Soviet functionaries. Liberated from the normal logic of the system, they were not supportive of the status quo in the Soviet Union. They were often influential and highly placed; consequently, they prospered by Soviet standards. Outwardly their lives appeared normal: they enjoyed the use of official black automobiles, official means of communication, virtually free annual leaves in rest homes from which ordinary people were barred, and medical care accessible only to the chosen few. Without any formal arrangements or publicity, but in full knowledge of what they were doing, they did what they thought was right, using their positions and influence to change the Soviet system. They took fundamental risks in doing so. Russia is greatly indebted to them for the collapse of Soviet totalitarianism.

  There is a simple and logical explanation for the appearance of such within-system dissidents at all levels of the Soviet hierarchy. The system co-opted the most qualified and talented personnel. Naturally, these persons had been brought up to respect communist dogmas, but these dogmas were by no means monolithic. For example, the writings of the young Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were not at all like the works of their later years. Vladimir Lenin spoke and wrote so voluminously that one could find absolutely contradictory pronouncements of his on practically any topic if one wished to engage in such an exercise. I myself buttressed arguments concerning the need for a variety of democratic reforms with citations from Marx, Engels, and Lenin, our revered “Founding Fathers.” I kept mum with regard to other, diametrically opposed citations.

  Even in their inner selves, however, it was impossible for those inside the system of Soviet power to be totally free of its dogmas. One’s upbringing and education, which differed little from hypnosis; one’s lifestyle; one’s circle of acquaintances—all these inevitably had an influence. There was also the obligatory dinning into one’s head of Marxism-Leninism, the daily exaltation of socialism, which was sometimes elevated to an absolute lie—the Big Lie. We should not forget that neither the genuine dissidents nor the within-system dissidents rejected the system itself in those times.1 My own upbringing, education, and experience speak to this point.