Then there were those who said that it was the reform of the Soviet system itself which had precipitated the trouble. They held Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, responsible for a situation that a less reckless leader would have avoided. And there were some who attributed the collapse simply to ill-fortune (or act of God), to a remarkable series of unforeseeable, uncontrollable and damaging events. Each of these explanations contains some truth. None has so far gained universal acceptance among the ranks of the informed. To gain a fuller understanding of the processes involved we should retrace our steps to the mid-1970s, the high point of Soviet fortunes. As late as the 1970s and even in the 1980s there was no obvious indication of impending disaster. Indeed, the auguries read well. The Soviet Union was as mighty in weaponry as its only rival; surprising as it may seem, its population was as contented as that of the United States; and there was hardly a ripple of dissidence or nationalism anywhere in the Empire. Its policy on nationalities since the 1920s had provided institutional recognition of ethnic nationalism, and since the Second World War a credible ‘Soviet nationalism’ had emerged. The sense of solidarity had been reinforced by millions of marriages between partners of different nationality. Furthermore, since Brezhnev had given non-Russian nationalities primacy in the constituent republics, 1 it could no longer be argued that one had to be Russian to have a good career.
A survey carried out in 1976 found that most Russians rated their material life at as high as four points on a scale of one to five. There was, after all, no hunger, unemployment or homelessness. Standards of medical care and public order were high, and of education very high. There were shortages, and goods were often shoddy — but that had always been the case. There was a virtual absence of luxury as it was known in the West, but there was welfare at public expense for the young, the old, the sick and the disabled. Rather more Russians than Americans were satisfied with the amount of free time their work allowed them, and more Russians than Americans enjoyed both their work and their leisure. Russians might hate their local bureaucrats, but, as a leading opinion researcher (who was no friend of the regime) has concluded, most people ‘accepted the political, economic and social order, including official values such as patriotism, collectivism, respect for the Army, the Soviet empire, national solidarity and the Communist Party. Russians steadfastly supported Soviet foreign policy, including the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.’ 2Dissidents existed, but they were few, and their voices were muted by media control, warnings, imprisonment or, as in the case of the novelist Solzhenitsyn, exile in the West. Nationalists hardly stirred, and there was no sign of serious discontent.
Nor was there much restiveness in the countries of the Soviet Bloc. In 1976 a dissident playwright called Vaclav Havel was among a number of Czech intellectuals who issued ‘Charter 77’ in January that year. This petition invoked the new International Covenant of Rights to protest against the prosecution of a pop group called Plastic People of the Universe, which had infringed the government’s canons of decency In retrospect this might seem a significant blow for freedom, but it was no threat to the regime. Nor were some violent strikes by miners in Romania. Even the election of the Cardinal Archbishop of Cracow, a long-standing thorn in the side of the Polish government, to the papal throne in October 1978 caused hardly a ruffle in the Kremlin dovecotes. Rome would be less of a restraining influence on the Polish Church, reported the Soviet ambassador to Warsaw somewhat blandly, but the election would deprive ‘the reactionary part of the episcopate … of its leader’. 3
Two years later the Solidarity movement emerged in Poland. It began as an unofficial strike in support of a dismissed woman crane operator in a Gdansk shipyard. Pope John Paul II had never feared confrontation with the government when he had been a mere archbishop, and he now lent Solidarity, whose followers were overwhelmingly Catholic, his moral support. This gave the movement an aura of religious and patriotic legitimacy in many Polish eyes. Of more practical importance, however, was the fact that militant trade unionists, primarily concerned about standards of living, and intellectuals, concerned about rights and freedoms, were united for the first time. An association known as KOR, made up of lawyers and other professionals who helped and advised the strikers, had been important in promoting this unity. So powerful was the combination that a weak government agreed to negotiate with it — live, on television. The result was a public triumph for the opposition and a series of agreements, some of them unaffordable and impractical. Even so, the complaisant government managed to hold on for many months amid rising fears of a Soviet invasion.
At last in December 1981 a new premier, General Jaruszelski, imposed martial law. Jaruszelski, however, was regarded as a patriot, and the army was Poland’s most popular secular institution. Calm was restored, and thereafter Poland remained quiet. Moreover the excitements there proved not to be contagious: there was no significant reaction elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc. The Pope’s pastoral visit to neighbouring Slovakia in 1986 did generate some excitement, notably among the young, but the effect was transient. The papacy as a factor in the collapse of the Soviet Empire has been exaggerated.
The war in Afghanistan, where the insurgents were sustained by covert US aid, had continued to soak up resources. However, since the Soviet economy was buoyant, the expense was affordable. In 1983 industrial output was 5 per cent higher than in 1982, agricultural output 7 per cent higher. Two Party secretaries, the able lurii Andropov and the despised and ailing Konstantin Chernenko, died in quick succession, but in 1985 — the year Soviet intelligence recruited a senior CIA officer, Aldrich Ames — the Soviet Empire gained a new leader.
Mikhail Gorbachev had been Andropov’s protege. He was youthful, engaging and reform-minded. He started his reign as General Secretary by reviving some of Andropov’s policies. He launched campaigns against corruption and excessive drinking. He also called for production to be speeded up. The Russian word for this, uskorenie, became the new regime’s first policy principle. Others were to follow. Gorbachev was a new kind of Soviet leader. As outgoing as Khrushchev, though less crude and excitable, he was ready to engage with the public and made a point of encouraging debate. Openness, or glasnost, became his second watchword. The third was perestroika, reconstruction. This signalled his intent to reform Soviet institutions, and was to prove the most radical, and fateful.
The notion that basic reforms were necessary had been canvassed as early as Brezhnev’s time, but actions had been allowed to peter out when difficulties were encountered. Andropov, however, realized that, although there was no immediate crisis, continuing success must be based on more radical economic and administrative reforms than had been attempted in the past. Among the reports Andropov commissioned was one from an academic think-tank which recommended far-reaching changes to the central planning system. 4
It was also recognized that Russia’s rich reserves of oil and natural gas were being wasted. Government had developed a tendency to buy off trouble simply by pumping them out at a greater rate. Energy was being exported at below world market prices to members of the Bloc, and was used wastefully in the Soviet Union itself. Nor were these the only problems. With the easing of East-West tensions, the Kremlin had allowed its European satellites a latitude they had not previously enjoyed, including the right to borrow money from Western banks. As a result, when interest rates rose, interest payments became a significant factor in the budgets of several Soviet Bloc countries. At the same time Poland in particular had been piling up arrears of interest and repayments to the Soviet Union as well as to the West. Moscow did not insist on payment, however, for fear of triggering a rash of cost-of-living riots, to which Poland had become prone, and precipitating a political crisis. The Kremlin was learning that imperial status could be costly.
Gorbachev soon began to look more and more like a Western politician in the run-up to an election. He promised incentives and benefits to win over any Soviet gr
oup or sector that seemed discontented. This further increased pressure on the budget. Moreover, since the range of available goods was limited and their quality variable, many people tended to save their money rather than spend it, and this stored up obligations to provide goods to satisfy consumers in the future. The conservative fiscal principles that had characterized the Kremlin’s economic policies for decades were being eroded. Then bad luck struck - not once, but serially
In 1984 Ronald Reagan was re-elected president of the United States and proceeded with the ‘Star Wars’ project he had announced the year before; a nuclear reactor in a Ukrainian power station overheated, precipitating the Chernobyl disaster of April 1986; and there was a resurgence of nationalism. Early in 1988 there were violent clashes between Azeris and Armenians over Nagorno-Karabakh, an area in Azerbaydzhan where the majority of the population were Armenians. An independence movement began to emerge in Lithuania, and there were problems between Abkhazians and the government of Soviet Georgia. These problems required massive additional expenditures which added to Gorbachev’s existing budgetary problems and created an unpropitious setting for his radical reforms. 5
The chief aim of the ‘Star Wars’ programme was to create an anti-missile screen which would render the United States, and those that the USA chose to include under it, impervious to nuclear attack. The project was ostensibly defensive, but its success would enable a protected power to launch a nuclear attack on another without fear of retaliation. The programme would take years to complete, and its success was by no means certain, but the Soviet leadership was not inclined to take chances, and the maintenance of nuclear parity at this new level required an appreciable increase in expenditure. 6
The men in the Kremlin looked for savings. By October 1985 they were beginning to contemplate troop withdrawals from Afghanistan; by February of the following year, at the time of the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, they were ready to launch a foreign-policy initiative that would change the international atmosphere and end the Cold War. Gorbachev had met Reagan in Geneva the previous November, matched him for charm, and impressed him with his liberal intentions. It had long been clear that Stalinism was dead, but now the reins holding member countries of the Bloc in line seemed to be loosening.
In foreign policy Gorbachev gave priority to rapprochement with the countries of the European Union as well as the United States. The rationale of his approach was soon to become apparent: improving East—West relations and increasing trust between the superpowers would allow large cuts in military budgets — what was to become known as ‘the peace dividend’ — a prospect that reason suggested would be as desirable in the White House as it was in the Kremlin. The first fruits were to be seen in the agreement to limit the deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles and some troop withdrawals from member countries of the Bloc. Gorbachev’s popularity abroad had soared, and cheering crowds greeted him in every capital he visited.
Meanwhile he was introducing Soviet citizens to democratic practices which chimed with Western conceptions. At the Party congress in February 1986, when the policies of glasnost and perestroika were proclaimed, Gorbachev not only undertook to promote individual legal rights but also announced that electors would in future be allowed a choice of candidates (a practice already introduced in Hungary). The idea was also mooted of creating a two-party system by splitting the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between its liberal and conservative wings and sharing the assets between them. 7 In private apartments, bars and hotel lobbies across the Soviet Union crowds gathered round television sets to watch the proceedings. They were not accustomed to the sight of democracy in action, after all, and they watched with quiet fascination, wondering what it boded. 8
On 26 April 1986 came news of the Chernobyl disaster. The cause has been attributed to incompetent managers, who should have shut the overheating reactor down immediately instead of trying to cool it, 9 but Gorbachev’s ‘speeding-up’ policy may also have contributed. The power industry had been set a target of a 20 per cent increase in output under the current Plan, and managers were under pressure to attain it. This may have persuaded some to take risks. The outcome was radioactive emissions on a catastrophic scale. Extensive evacuation and decontamination programmes had to be carried out, distress alleviated, and a huge wave of concern ridden out abroad as well as at home. Moreover the incident implied systemic failures in training and procedures which had to be addressed. Nor was this the only unwelcome news. Income from the state liquor monopoly had slumped since the introduction of the anti-alcohol campaign. And government expenditure on housing and health, as well as on the military and scientific establishments, was rising strongly, threatening a sizeable budgetary deficit. Most of the production targets under the Plan seemed to be within reach in the first months of 1988, but then world oil prices, which had hit a high in 1986, began to fall, reducing hard-currency earnings and opening up a balance-of-payments deficit which began to increase with disconcerting speed.
None of this was allowed to reduce the momentum of reform, however. In 1988 a law on enterprise was passed and Gorbachev introduced the concept of separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary. But the reformers were already beginning to face stiffening resistance within the Party, and Yegor Ligachev, the second-ranking man in the Party and up to this point Gorbachev’s most important ally, was near the point of breaking with him. Ligachev was of the view that the reforms had gone far enough, that any more would be destabilizing. As Moscow News reported, leaflets were being circulated which claimed that perestroika would lead to ‘economic disaster and social upheaval and then to the country’s enslavement by imperialist states’. 10
Support for the challenge came not only from conservative ‘Stalinists’ but from officialdom generally, especially in the provinces, and from others who found the prospect of further radical change unnerving. The challenge was faced down at a meeting of the Party’s Central Committee. Even though most members probably felt as Ligachev did, the conditioning of decades led them to stifle their misgivings, show solidarity, and rally behind the leader. The chance of a genuine democracy had been lost when it was decided not to split the Party, and now perhaps the last chance for stability had gone too.
The final act of the Soviet tragedy was heralded in December 1988 by an earthquake in Soviet Armenia which killed 25,000 people, made many more homeless, and required massive spending on relief. With the strain on the budget mounting higher than ever, the decision had already been taken to cut the expenses of empire. It was announced that from 1 January 1989 world market prices would be charged for Soviet oil and gas exported to members of the Bloc. No longer able to pay the piper, Moscow would no longer be entitled to call the tune. So the satellites in Eastern Europe were freed from their slavish obligation to follow the Kremlin’s directions. Nevertheless, Gorbachev hoped that they would follow his line voluntarily and accept reformed Communism, or at least coalition governments, with a gradual transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
Continuing withdrawals of Soviet troops from Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany pleased the inhabitants. So did the advent of democracy in the first two countries. At the election held in June 1989 Poles celebrated by voting overwhelmingly for opposition Solidarity candidates. But for the fact that they had been guaranteed 173 of the 460 seats in parliament, the Communists would not have been represented there at all. 11 Then in July, at a Warsaw Treaty Organization meeting in Bucharest, Gorbachev proclaimed a reversal of the Brezhnev Doctrine. The politically correct principle henceforth was to be non-interference in the affairs of the countries of the Bloc. In East Germany a committee was formed to consider changes to the constitution, while in the Soviet Union itself political reforms proceeded apace, though not without reverses.
Gorbachev was open, and apparently somewhat uncertain, as to the form the new Soviet democracy should take. ‘The existence of a particular number of polit
ical parties does not represent a solution,’ he remarked in the early spring of 1989. ‘[But] we shall open up the possibilities of our system.’ 12 Not only the Party but ‘social organizations’ were to be able to field candidates for elections, and he pledged continuing improvements to electoral practices. At the elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies held a few days later the public reacted by rejecting some candidates who had not been opposed.
As the economic position deteriorated over the summer, Gorbachev began to sound increasingly desperate about political and constitutional reform. At a plenary session of the Party Central Committee in mid-July his concern was chiefly about the Party itself and how to restructure its organization from the top. It was his most efficient instrument of government, but it was becoming increasing loath to follow him into these unfamiliar waters. ‘It is impossible to decree the Party’s authority,’ he warned. The Party was ‘lagging behind society’, and a ‘dangerous discrepancy’ would arise if it proved itself to be ‘less dynamic than the people’. 13However, it was difficult to know how interested the people really were in constitutional reform.
On 3 August Professor Vorontsov, a technocrat who was not a Party member, was appointed to membership of the Council of Ministers. Eleven days later a draft law to make suffrage ‘genuinely direct’ was tabled. 14To those who argued that democracy threatened solidarity, Gorbachev retorted that ‘a plurality of views cannot be an obstacle to unity of action.’ 15 The debates continued into late September. But the focus on ‘constitutional construction’ was distracting attention from looming economic and political problems. Striking miners in Siberia were bought off by pay hikes. Indeed money was thrown at every problem, demanding considerable increases in the money supply which fuelled inflation. Estonia reserved the right to veto Union legislation; there were signs of restiveness among other groups, and opposition was voiced not only by those who wanted to put brakes on the reform processes, but by some who urged a faster pace.
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