2 - Gorbachev and Yeltsin: Personalities and Beliefs

Summary

Most of the time they were in power, both Gorbachev and Yeltsin were less constrained by formal political structures than Khrushchev and Brezhnev had been. We must therefore understand the personalities and beliefs of Gorbachev and Yeltsin if we hope to specify the determinants of many of their policy choices.

GORBACHEV AS A POLITICAL PERSONALITY

There is nothing in Gorbachev's biography to suggest the personality of a rebel. Rather, Gorbachev comes across as an organization man, one who joined the Communist Party at a younger age than did Yeltsin and who found his greatest honors and satisfactions in life within that organization. Gorbachev came to Moscow as a young man from the provinces who was eager to “make it” in the capital and to rise within the political hierarchy. One of the first things he did after matriculation at Moscow State University was to become a Young Communist League (Komsomol) activist. He applied for candidate membership of the CPSU at the youngest age allowable. Gorbachev's career took him through the law faculty at Moscow State University, during which time he became head of his class's Komsomol, followed by a conventional career climbing the ladder of the political hierarchy – first in the Young Communist League, then in the Party apparatus. Once in the Party apparatus, he never left it. Whereas some analysts treat this career path as predicting the mentality of a “conservative” apparatchik, it is more accurate to treat it as predicting faith in the “leading role of the Party” within Soviet “socialist” society, and belief in proper organization and Party-led mobilization as the guarantor of progress toward “realizing the full potential of socialism.”