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

by Andrei A. Kovalev

  Under Shevardnadze the Foreign Ministry’s activity in the field of human rights may provisionally be divided into three basic components. First was freeing political and religious prisoners from their places of confinement including psychiatric hospitals. Second was resolving the problem of the so-called refuseniks—that is, persons who were refused permission to emigrate. The third was “bringing Soviet legislation and the implementation of Soviet laws into accord with the international obligations of the USSR.” (This was my basic brief.) Translating the bureaucratic jargon into ordinary language, it turned out that during my government service in the Foreign Ministry, my assignment was to promote the democratization of the country. Thus, I had to deal with activities that according to existing legislation were illegal and punishable by imprisonment.

  In transforming the Soviet Union into a law-based state, the international human rights standards that had been formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948, and other such documents served as a kind of “absolute weapon.” The declaration was a reliable guidepost that had been tested by others and was protected from ideological crusaders. An emphasis on international standards provided a legal foundation for our dialogue on human rights with Western countries, with the United States in the first instance. Soviet diplomats stopped avoiding discussions with Western colleagues regarding human rights violations in the USSR. We ourselves often added names from our own information to the lists Western diplomats gave us of prisoners of conscience, psychiatric prisoners, and refuseniks before we sent the lists on to the relevant ministries and departments to confirm the grievances presented to us. Fortunately, no one thought to compare these enhanced lists with the original lists; otherwise, there would have been an incredible scandal.

  When we were accused of allowing foreign interference in our domestic affairs, we always had this naive response at hand: “We are simply cooperating in the implementation of universal human rights standards!” It may sound paradoxical, but without the critical input and pressure from our foreign partners, it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to resolve many problems of democratization in the USSR. Richard Schifter, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, played a special role in this regard. Western representatives often acted as intermediaries between the Soviet authorities and Soviet dissidents. At the time there was no simpler path for dialogue.

  The Foreign Ministry had another powerful means of exerting pressure on opponents of liberal reform—the Vienna conference of states represented in the CSCE (1986–89). The USSR had succeeded in persuading the Vienna meeting to hold a human rights conference in Moscow. By this means the Foreign Ministry provoked our Western colleagues to push more actively for the Soviet Union to respect human rights. We needed them to do this. The West introduced the proposals that we needed, the Soviet delegation in Vienna requested Moscow’s approval, and the Foreign Ministry secured the agreement of the “relevant ministries and departments,” which mistakenly supposed they would not have to fulfill their promises. The delegation in Vienna received the go-ahead from Moscow, and these same ministries and departments had no alternative but to fulfill their own promises.

  The Foreign Ministry also took advantage of other opportunities to resolve human rights problems. Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech at the UN on December 7, 1988, would provide what we thought was a unique opportunity to deal a crushing blow to the obstructionists. I was in the office of my boss Alexei Glukhov when Anatoly Kovalev, the first deputy minister, called on his secure line and instructed him to prepare a specific section of the speech.1 (Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were not in Moscow at the time; Kovalev was acting on his own initiative and later reported on this issue to a session of the Politburo.) I was assigned the task of preparing a first draft that both Glukhov and Kovalev Sr. subsequently revised. Standing at the rostrum of the UN and barely containing his sincere jubilation, Gorbachev would shortly make his sensational announcement, “There are no persons in prison [in the USSR] for their political and religious beliefs.” The previously unrevealed background to these words was rather dramatic.

  A text that openly contradicted the status quo in the USSR had been prepared in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. Its purpose was to transform that status quo. A memorandum containing specific instructions to the ministries and departments was immediately drafted in the Central Committee of the CPSU regarding measures that needed to be taken to ensure that the imminent declaration would accord with the actual situation. It was approved in record time. Just a few days remained until the speech. I heard that during this time no one in the Procuracy and the KGB slept at all. By December 7 all the dissidents known to the Foreign Ministry had completed their passage through the purgatory of the Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps (GULAG) and the psychiatric prisons. Gorbachev could now make his speech at the UN with a clear conscience.

  We took advantage of Gorbachev’s talks with “appropriate” Western interlocutors to release as many political and religious prisoners as possible and to grant refuseniks permission to emigrate. I don’t know whether Gorbachev himself ever discussed any of these lists; most likely such questions were resolved at a lower level. But his talks provided an excellent opportunity to resolve existing problems.

  Naturally, dialogue also took place in other arenas. One such example was connected to Pope John Paul II’s desire to visit the USSR on the thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Rus’, or when Grand Prince Vladimir had accepted Orthodox Christianity in Kiev in 988 CE. Although Shevardnadze tried his best to facilitate the proposed visit, he failed. The Central Committee of the CPSU, the KGB, and the Russian Orthodox Church—all opposed the visit. Unfortunately, they prevailed. The great pontiff was unable to realize his dream of visiting Russia. Neither the USSR during perestroika nor its successor, the Russian Federation, passed the test of real democracy and real freedom of conscience.

  Although the diplomatic instruments of the Foreign Ministry were fully employed in the democratic reform of the country, they were obviously insufficient to cleanse the country from the accumulated layers of dust and filth of totalitarianism and to air out the ideological mustiness, the atmosphere of fear, and the other unpleasant odors. That demanded action at a higher political level, especially since the democratic trio of Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and Yakovlev was opposed by most of the other leaders. Had Shevardnadze only been the minister of foreign affairs, and not concurrently part of the top leadership as a member of the all-powerful Politburo, many of the democratic reforms in the USSR and Russia would have been impossible. In every possible way we took maximum advantage of the minister’s political clout. The Silver Fox not only encouraged our efforts but even pushed us toward even greater activity. As a member of the Politburo, Shevardnadze initiated legislation removing political and religious articles from the Criminal Code, introduced religious freedom, established the right to freely exit and reenter the country, put an end to punitive psychiatry in the USSR, and pursued other measures.

  Every day draft proposals piled up and were dispatched by special messenger to Politburo members for their views before the Central Committee took any decisions. Shevardnadze assigned Adamishin to deal with those concerning democracy and human rights. Adamishin, in turn, often called upon me. I must give Shevardnadze his due, for he never failed to respond when asked. And, of course, my thanks to Adamishin who initiated all of this.

  We ourselves were not slackers. Vladimir Lenin himself and other “Founding Fathers” unwittingly provided invaluable assistance. At the time almost no one knew what “Leninist norms” really meant, but they were considered virtually sacred. The citation of Lenin’s sayings, particularly if they were buttressed by quotations from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, produced a virtually surefire, literally hypnotic effect on the most hidebound dogmatists and reactionaries. We undertook veritable “excavations” of appropriate quotations of Leni
n, Marx, and Engels, as well as of legislation passed under Lenin. There was no use to which we did not put them! This included the need to abolish the death penalty, which Lenin had spoken about passionately prior to his seizure of power and his resorting to mass extermination. We cited him regarding the inadmissibility of censorship, the need to guarantee freedom of conscience, the right of exit and reentry, the option of an alternative military service, the necessity of rectifying the practice of psychiatry, and even the abolition of residence permits. We juggled quotations and used everything we could find to facilitate the establishment of democracy in our country.

  To deal with human rights we needed to master informal thinking. For example, a message arrives from the United States that a hundred rabbis want to visit a cemetery in Ukraine, but they are denied visas. Phone calls back and forth to the Council on Religious Affairs and other “relevant ministries and agencies” get us nowhere. On Glukhov’s secure government line, I phone the chairman of the executive committee of the town that the rabbis wish to visit and ask what is the problem. It turns out that the cemetery has been destroyed, there are no fences, the monuments are in ruins. I threaten him with an international scandal. The cemetery is restored, and the rabbis receive permission to pay their respects to their ancestors.

  In another episode, the KGB intercepts a letter from a desperate woman in Ukraine to the secretary-general of the UN saying that she has been living for many years in a small room in a communal apartment with her husband, two children, and relatives—I don’t remember if it was a sister or a brother—and her or his family. The local authorities will not rehouse them or give them a new apartment. A photograph attached to the letter shows how they slept side by side on the dining table and under it. Glukhov gives me permission to call on the secure line, and I scare the living daylights out of the swindling chairman of the local executive committee by raising the specter of an international scandal. In just over a week, the poor devils have resolved a housing problem that had been festering for many years.

  The democratization of society was Shevardnadze’s “special interest.” Much of what was done during perestroika was on his initiative. A real conveyor belt was in operation. Not infrequently those who had nothing to do with our ministry’s actions and actually did everything they could to obstruct them were credited with what we had achieved. The former chief of the Visas and Permissions Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR Rudolf Kuznetsov insisted that it was he who had initiated and worked on the law regarding exit and reentry. The former chief psychiatrist of the Ministry of Health Alexander Churkin claimed credit as the principal reformer of Soviet psychiatry. What can one say to this? Neither on Judgment Day nor in an earthly court do such persons have any credibility.

  Taking Stock

  Soon after the establishment of the Directorate for Humanitarian and Cultural Cooperation, Shevardnadze “authorized” his staff to inform him of human rights problems. There was a healthy dose of make-believe in this. After all, as already noted, it was the minister himself who had initiated the work of the Foreign Ministry on human rights. This is largely because from his experience in Georgia he was very familiar with the actual state of affairs in this sphere. Following his instructions, work began on drawing up an inventory of the USSR’s international obligations regarding human rights, on juxtaposing them with current legislation and practice, and on drafting proposals to align Soviet legislation with the USSR’s international obligations.

  The phrase taking stock has a dry bureaucratic connotation, conjuring up an association with bookkeeping, yet precisely this phrase best describes the task of diagnosing the worst maladies of Soviet society and looking for ways to cure them. Taking stock of the dark side contradicted the elementary instinct of self-preservation, since what we were doing, from a strictly legal point of view, was a crime against the state. According to the spirit and the letter of the existing laws, that is how what we were doing to heal the country had to be interpreted. Leaving aside the legal perspective, the picture is no less depressing, since our activities impinged upon the interests of too many powerful persons. Soviet citizens had lost years of their lives in the GULAG simply for criticizing the totalitarian system.

  Taking stock revealed rather strange things. First, not a single ministry or department knew what obligations the USSR had undertaken with respect to international treaties on human rights. Until the start of perestroika, the Foreign Ministry had shown no interest in this either, even though, according to the existing laws, it was supposed to monitor the USSR’s fulfillment of its treaty obligations. No one had even thought of undertaking such work, and no scholars were officially studying human rights issues.

  My investigation revealed that according to the International Bill of Human Rights alone, the USSR had more than sixty obligations. Even from a formal, legislative point of view, let alone with regard to prevailing practices, it had violated international law with regard to every one of them. The picture that emerged was appalling. In the hands of the Foreign Ministry liberals, stocktaking became a powerful weapon. We produced what looked like a thick, three-column bookkeeping ledger. On the left side were the obligations of the USSR, in the center were the relevant statutes of the existing legislation, and, finally, on the right were our proposals. They referred, for example, to the abolition of the death penalty, the abolition of residence permits, the deletion of political and religious articles from the Criminal Code, the adoption of laws guaranteeing the right to depart from and reenter the country, the freedom of conscience, the freedom of the press, the rights of persons suffering from psychiatric disorders, and so forth. There were also proposals to introduce alternative service for conscientious objectors, to revise laws relating to criminal procedures, and much else. All these proposals became major components of the work of our ministry.

  When the inventory was being drawn up, one of the points that we emphasized, even though we had to venture beyond the International Bill of Human Rights, was our failure to implement our obligations under the Final Act of the CSCE concerning the right of persons to know what their rights and obligations are and to act in accordance with them. In the pre-perestroika era the people were ignorant of their rights. This served the interests of the authorities. The Constitution of the USSR, which contained many beautiful words about human rights, was displayed in shops everywhere, but if you referred to it in court, you could be silenced or banished from the courtroom. It was also impossible to procure copies of the Labor Code, the Criminal Code, or the Criminal Procedural Code. Their print run was artificially restricted. Nor was it a simple matter to access them in a library. It became abundantly clear in the process of taking stock that one of the basic problems was the existence of all sorts of quasi-legal regulations. Each ministry and department could create its own “norms” and adopt its own secret guidelines for those who implemented them. In other words, it was not only the Constitution but also many laws that went enforced. It was practically impossible to protest the actions of an official.

  I was shocked to learn that the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Internal Affairs lacked even basic knowledge of which directives regulated residence permits, of how many there were, or even of their sequence. It turned out that some of these directives had been in force from the earliest postrevolutionary years. The authorities had simply forgotten to annul them. Surrealistic situations arose in which a passport officer was operating according to some ancient directives that everyone else had forgotten about and no one else possessed. To the question of why a residence permit had been refused, she would reply, “It can’t be done. There are directives.”

  Representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Procurator General laughed at the news that in Vienna we had undertaken the obligation to publish and make easily accessible all of these quasi-legal regulations and directives that affected human rights. Later, however, they had to rescind these unpublished directives.

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nbsp; The brilliant Soviet writer Fazil Iskander compared the relationship between the state and Soviet citizens to that between a boa constrictor and the rabbits it swallowed. The boa constrictor was chiefly concerned that the rabbit not jump out of the boa’s jaws. But on one occasion it did happen. One boa constrictor told what had occurred: “This was one of the darkest days of our history. It was not clear what the escaped rabbit would say about our internal system. How would the other rabbits respond to his words?” To ensure that nothing like this happened again, the snakes decided “to restrict the freedom of rabbits inside boa constrictors.” From then on rabbits inside the belly of a boa constrictor were allowed to move in only one direction.

  According to its authors, the introduction in 1932 of an internal passport regime and a system of residence permits was supposed to solve certain problems connected, in particular, with agricultural collectivization, one of the key economic programs of Stalinism. The internal passport regime served as an instrument for controlling population movements. Thus, certain categories of persons were simply not issued internal passports. This primarily affected peasants, who were forbidden to move from their state farms and collective farms.

  Shevardnadze supported our efforts to eliminate residence permits, and after the conclusion of the Vienna meeting of the CSCE member states, our work on this issue emerged from “underground” onto the interdepartmental level. We made little progress. There were several reasons for the disappointing results, chief among them the position of the Moscow authorities who apparently wielded a permanent veto on rescinding the institution of residence permits.

  “Movement in just one direction” and “conduct inside the boa constrictor” constituted an iron curtain that, among other things, forbade Soviet citizens from leaving and returning to the country freely. Drafting a law on departure and reentry became one of the core missions of our ministry. In the USSR, going abroad or not returning from abroad was viewed as an anti-Soviet action punishable under the Criminal Code. “Non-returnees” were even “given the honor” of a mention in Article 64 of the Criminal Code under “Betrayal of the Motherland.” Persons whom the authorities considered undesirable were subjected to illegal expulsion from the USSR and stripped of their Soviet citizenship. Contrary to the law, persons leaving the USSR on Israeli visas were likewise deprived of their citizenship.