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The Soviet Union: Reform of the System or Systemic Transformation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Archie Brown
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Abstract

Archie Brown emphasizes the need to make a clear distinction between the transformation of the Soviet system and the end of the Soviet state and also holds that “reform” of the system does not do justice to the extent of the change in the polity. In contradistinction to Cohen, he argues that to regard the pre-perestroika system as “communist” rather than “socialist” brings out more clearly the extent of the transformation, whereby a communist system had been abandoned by 1989–90 even though the Soviet Union did not come to an end until December 1991. Brown also draws on recent evidence showing the large element of contingency involved in the dramatic changes of 1985–1991, including the opposition to Gorbachev's acquisition of power which, had it been successful, would have led to very different policies being pursued in the second half of the 1980s.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , Fall 2004 , pp. 489 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2004

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References

1 On retrospective determinism, see Dallin, Alexander, “Causes of the Collapse of the USSR,” Post-Soviet Affairs 8, no. 4 (October-December 1992): 279–302, esp. 296-300Google Scholar; and Brown, Archie, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford, 1996), esp. 315–18Google Scholar.

2 From Cohen's title it appears that the “system” is broader than the Union and embraces it. Indeed, at one point Cohen refers to “the Union or multinational state” as “the largest and most essential component of the old Soviet system.“

3 Pinskii made this point in a conversation I had with him in Moscow in 1976. On the high-speed (if low-quality) apartment-block building boom under Khrushchev that was particularly notable in Moscow, see Colton, Timothy J., Moscow: Governing the SocialistMetropolis (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 367–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Matlock, Jack F. Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: Ending the Cold War (New York, 2004)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Jack Matlock for giving me the opportunity to read in manuscript this significant contribution by a perceptive insider to the already voluminous literature on the end of the Cold War. See also Reagan, Ronald, An American Life (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; George P. Shultz, Triumph and Turmoil: My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993); Gates, Robert M., From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Wonthe Cold War (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London, 1993); and Howe, Geoffrey, Conflict of Loyalty (London, 1994)Google Scholar.

5 An influential exponent of such a view wasjeane Kirkpatrick: “Although there is no instance of a revolutionary ‘socialist’ or Communist society being democratized, rightwing autocracies do sometimes evolve into democracies—given time, propitious economic, social, and political circumstances, talented leaders, and a strong indigenous demand for representative government.” The historical generalization became a prediction when she observed: “the history of this century provides no grounds for expecting that radical totalitarian regimes will transform themselves.” Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorship and Double Standards,” Commentary (November 1979): 37 and 44. In a later publication, Kirkpatrick notes that “It was spring 1989 before I concluded that Gorbachev did in fact desire sweeping internal reforms of the Soviet system and also that he ‘needed’ international peace to pursue them.“jeanej. Kirkpatrick, , The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State …and Other Surprises (Washington, D.C., 1990), 24 Google Scholar. Kirkpatrick was the soul of sagacity in comparison with the level of misunderstanding of perestroika achieved by two French specialists on Russia and communism, Alain Besancon and Francoise Thorn. They described Gorbachev's policy as “an all-out attack on civil society” and wrote that the Soviet Union remained—in 1987—a “uniform, atomized and voiceless society.” Besancon, and Thorn, , in their contribution to a symposium, “What's Happening in Moscow?” The National Interest, no. 8 (Summer 1987): 27 and 29Google Scholar.

6 Or “totalitarianism-cum-sultanism,” in the terminology of Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan. See Linz, and Stepan, , Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: SouthernEurope, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, 1996), 344–65Google Scholar.

7 See Linz, Juan, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, Colo., 2000)Google Scholar; and Brown, Archie, “The Study of Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism,” in Hayward, Jack, Barry, Brian, and Brown, Archie, eds., The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999), 345–94Google Scholar.

8 On the Hungarian economic reforms—which got underway in the late 1960s— see, for a useful contemporary account, Robinson, William F., The Pattern of Reform in Hungary:A Political, Economic and Cultural Analysis (New York, 1973)Google Scholar. For an insightful work completed just at the point at which a communist system in Hungary ceased to exist, see Elemer Hankiss, East European Alternatives (Oxford, 1990); and for a major study conducted in the postcommunist period, see Tokes, Rudolf L., Hungary's Negotiated Revolution:Economic Reform, Social Change, and Political Succession, 1957-1990 (Cambridge, Eng., 1996)Google Scholar.

9 See Navratil, Jaromir, ed., The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive DocumentsReader (Budapest, 1998), 502–3Google Scholar.

10 The points are elaborated in Brown, Archie, “Communism,” in Smelser, N.J. and Bakes, Paul B., eds., International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Oxford, 2001), 2323–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also Brown, Gorbachev Factor, 309-15.

11 Gorbachev, at the beginning of his general secretaryship, regarded the system as “socialist,” albeit a flawed socialism in need of reform. He subsequently came to embrace a social democratic conception of socialism and, as a corollary, held that the Soviet Union had never been socialist. The change in Gorbachev's position was a gradual one. As he put it in conversation with one of his oldest friends: “But to deny the idea that the Soviet system was identical with socialism, to deny that it embodied the advantages of socialism, I reached that point only after 1983, and not all at once even then.” Gorbachev, Mikhail and Mlynaf, Zdenek, Conversations with Gorbachev: On Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroadsof Socialism (New York, 2002), 65 Google Scholar. Gorbachev also observed: “in 1985, and for some time after that, our desire was to improve, to make more socialist a system that was not truly socialist…. It is a big step forward that we are no longer trying to create ideal models and force the life of our society to fit into a preconceived mold. We have eliminated totalitarian governmental power, provided freedom of choice and democratic pluralism, and that is the main thing for the cause of socialism, which is inseparable from democracy” (200). Roberts, Cf. Andrew, “The State of Socialism: A Note on Terminology,” Slavic Review 63, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 349–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 It is worth noting that the meaning of “socialism” for the socialist parties of western Europe has also changed. Few in the leadership of any of the mainstream parties that belong to the Socialist International believe any more in the possibility of building a distinctive socioeconomic system that would bear the name of socialism. “Socialism,” in so far as they continue to use the term (and it is used less today by the leadership of the British Labour Party than by their Socialist International counterparts in continental Europe) has come to signify different values and priorities rather than an entirely distinctive system. Gorbachev reached a similar position. As he put it in conversation with his close friend, Zdenek Mlynaf: “I see that it was wrong from the start to regard socialism as a special formation that represents something historically inevitable in the development of humankind. My whole experience has convinced me that a value-based conception of socialism is more correct. It is a process in which people seek to realize certain values, and in this process all progressive and democratic ideas and practical experiences are integrated.“ Gorbachev and Mlynaf, Conversations with Gorbachev, 154–55.

13 I would normally further distinguish “communism” in the sense of “communist system” from “communism” as the imaginary future society by using a capital C in the former case. However, the house style of Slavic Review does not permit that.

14 See Brown, Archie, ed., The Demise of Marxism-Leninism in Russia (London, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and English, Robert D., Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End ofthe Cold War (New York, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Dahl, Robert A., “Why All Democratic Countries Have Mixed Economies,” in Chapman, John W. and Shapiro, Ian, eds., Democratic Community (New York, 1993), 259–82Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., 259.

17 Hill, Fiona and Gaddy, Clifford, The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left RussiaOut in the Cold (Washington, D.C., 2003)Google Scholar.

18 Dahl, “Why All Democratic Countries Have Mixed Economies.“

19 See Cohen, Stephen F., Rabinowitch, Alexander, and Sharlet, Robert, eds., The SovietUnion since Stalin (Bloomington, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in particular, Cohen's chapter, “The Friends and Foes of Change: Reformism and Conservatism in the Soviet Union,” 11–31.

20 For an excellent study of the belief systems of Russia's democratic activists, including the contradictions within them, see Alexander Lukin, The Political Culture of the Russian“Democrats” (Oxford, 2000).

21 No one voted against Gorbachev's nomination at either the preselection meeting by the Politburo or the endorsement by the Central Committee on 11 March 1985. As second secretary, Gorbachev had been in a very strong position to structure the succession process. In addition, those Politburo members who were opposed to him did not wish to jeopardize their careers by opposing a certain victor and had, moreover, no idea of the scope of Gorbachev's potential radicalism. If they had understood just how different his mindset was from theirs, they would have mobilized the conservative majority within the Politburo and Central Committee. Chernenko, on the urging of those around him, had made an earlier, but unsuccessful, attempt to halt Gorbachev's ascent to power. On the eve of Gorbachev's important speech to a conference on ideology in Moscow in December 1984 (at which, in a sense, Gorbachev first “outed” himself as a reformer), Chernenko— who had received an advance copy of the speech—telephoned Gorbachev and complained about a series of ideological errors in the text. (The detailed critique of the speech had been helpfully prepared for him by one of Gorbachev's enemies, Richard Kosolapov, the editor of Kommunisl). More remarkably, given that the event was about to take place, Chernenko told Gorbachev that the conference should be postponed. As Aleksandr Iakovlev (who was with Gorbachev when he took Chernenko's call) notes, Gorbachev flatly refused to go along with the general secretary's wishes in what, Iakovlev says, was a “neozhidannom dlia menia zhestkom tone.” Iakovlev, Aleksandr, Sumerki (Moscow, 2003), 369 Google Scholar. Gorbachev's firm resistance to Chernenko's wishes on this matter is also recorded by Vadim Medvedev, who notes, additionally, that—in an action unprecedented for an organ of the Central Committee—Kosolapov subsequently refused to publish Gorbachev's speech in Kommunist. Vadim Medvedev, V kommande Gorbacheva (Moscow, 1994), 22. For the text of the speech, see Gorbachev, M. S., “Zhivoe tvorchestvo naroda,” in Gorbachev, , Izbrannyerechi i stat'i, 7 vols. (Moscow, 1987–90), 2:75–108 Google Scholar. For discussion of the speech, see Archie Brown, “Gorbachev: New Man in the Kremlin,” Problems of Communism 34, no. 3 (May-June 1985): 1–23, esp. 19–20; and Brown, Gorbachev Factor, 78–81 and 121–22. On other efforts to frustrate Gorbachev's political ambitions in 1984—by Chernenko and Nikolai Tikhonov, see Vadim Medvedev, Prozrenie, mifilipredatel'stvo? Kvoprosu ob ideologiiperestroiki (Moscow, 1998), 84. See also Gorbachev, Mikhail, 7.hizn’ i reformy, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1995), 1: 266 Google Scholar.

22 See Pravda, 15 July 1987, 2; and Pravda, 30 September 1987, 1. On the development of the concept of pluralism in Soviet political discourse, see Brown, ed., Demise ofMarxism-Leninism in Russia, esp. chap. 2, pp. 19–40.

23 Viktor Grishin's conservative communist views emerge clearly enough from his book, Grishin, Ot Khrushcheva do Gorbacheva: Politicheskie portrety piati gensekov i A. N. Kosygina:Memuary (Moscow, 1996). lakovlev observes not only that Grishin aspired to the post of general secretary but also that Chernenko's closest circle had “already prepared the speeches and political program” for a Grishin general secretaryship. See lakovlev, Sumerki, 459. Grishin knew the game was up when Chernenko died at 7:20 P.M. on 10 March and Gorbachev convened a first meeting of the Politburo for that very evening. Gorbachev and his allies had also been preparing the ground for a smooth succession. This included doing a deal with Andrei Gromyko. See lakovlev, Sumerki, 459–63, and Gromyko, Anatolii, Andrei Gromyko. Vlabirintakh kremlia: Vospominaniia i razmyshleniiasyna (Moscow, 1997), 94–95 Google Scholar. Anatolii Gromyko suggests that Grigorii Romanov, even more strongly than Grishin, aspired to be general secretary and that this explains his rapid removal from the Politburo by Gorbachev once the latter had succeeded Chernenko. Ibid., 96-98.

24 Nikolai Ryzhkov, Perestroika: Isloriiapredatel'stv (Moscow, 1992), 291.

25 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:395 (emphasis added).

26 See, for example, Hosking, Geoffrey A., Aves, Jonathan, and Duncan, Peter J. S., TheRoad to Post-Communism: Independent Political Movements in the Soviet Union, 1985-1991 (London, 1992)Google Scholar; M. Steven Fish, Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the Neio RussianRevolution (Princeton, 1995); and Urban, Michael, with Igrunov, Vyacheslav and Mitrokhin, Sergei, The Rebirth of Politics in Russia (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Cohen cites John Hazard's work on the unreformed Soviet system. With modifications, Hazard's formulation could be applied to postcommunist Russia. Writing in the Khrushchev era, Hazard interpreted Soviet politics as “incorporating democratic forms, counterweigh ted with totalitarian controls.” Hazard, John N., The Soviet System of Government, 2ded. (Chicago, 1960), 9.Google Scholar Rather than becoming a democracy, post-Soviet Russia has seen the evolution of a system in which democratic forms are counterweigh ted with varying degrees and types of authoritarian control.

28 See Brown, Gorbachev Factor, 202–7.

29 “Prezhdevrennymi” is Iakovlev's description in his fullest volume of memoirs of Gorbachev's reaction to the ideas contained in his December 1985 memorandum. Iakovlev, Sumerki, 383. When asked in Oxford on 29 January 1992 what Gorbachev's response had been, Iakovlev answered with a shorter word, but one fully consistent with the account in his latest book: “Rano.“

30 See VTimofeyev, Igor, “The Development of Russian Liberal Thought since 1985,“ in Brown, , ed., Demise of Marxism-Leninism in Russia, 51–117 Google Scholar.

31 Gorbachev's own reasons for not splitting the CPSU at that point were not so much that he feared a coup as that he believed it important to maintain his control over the party apparatus. That apparatus, he has argued on numerous occasions, was still a potentially powerful organization, one capable, if headed by a general secretary of conservative views, of reversing many of the changes of the perestroika years. For the same reason he held on to the post of general secretary, even after he had become president, for the levers of power of the former office were too great a gift to offer to those whom he regarded as the “enemies of perestroika.” Moreover, Gorbachev may have believed that his success in getting a social democratic platform approved by the Twenty-eighth Congress of the CPSU meant that he had won the party over. It was to become apparent that the majority of party officials who voted for principles and policies of which they disapproved did so with no intention of implementing them.

32 Grachev, Andrei, Gorbachev (Moscow, 2001), 227–29Google Scholar.

33 For the Baltic nations, the sight of east central European countries becoming fully independent and noncommunist was particularly important and emboldened diem to move from demands for greater autonomy within the Soviet Union to outright independence. Brown, Cf. Archie, “Transnational Influences in the Transition from Communism,“ Post-Soviet Affairs 16, no. 2 (April-June 2000): 177–200 Google Scholar.

34 For the relevant VTsIOM survey data, I am grateful to Iurii Levada. All too often one encounters ludicrously wrongheaded assessments of Gorbachev's popularity between 1985 and 1991 based on something as supremely irrelevant as his derisory vote in the Russian presidential election of 1996. Not only had that much later event nothing to do with Gorbachev's popularity at a time when most Russians still appreciated their new freedoms and the ending of the Cold War, but the 1996 election hardly even tested Gorbachev's (admittedly much diminished) popularity in Russia by then. The mass media framed the contest in terms of either El'tsin or a return to the worst years of communism. The survey data show clearly that Gorbachev's popularity was, indeed, in steep decline during his last eighteen months in office, but the contemporary hard evidence, as distinct from retrospective and selective memory, also shows that he was the most popular politician in Russia and the Soviet Union as a whole for the greater part of his time as Soviet leader. Or, as the leading VTsIOM researcher, Boris Dubin has noted, between 1988 and the early 1990s the two people who emerged from survey research as “heroes of the year” were die “vozhdeireformatorov— at first M. Gorbachev, later B. El'tsin.” Dubin, “Stalin i drugie: Figury vysshei vlasti v obshchestvennom mnenii sovremennoi Rossii,” Monitoring obshchestvennogomneniia, no. 1 (January-February 2003): 16. In addition to the VTsIOM surveys, serious sociological research commissioned by the Academy of Social Sciences showed that Gorbachev's standing was still high in 1989, although less spectacularly so than earlier. In late 1989, 62.6 percent of respondents evaluated him, on the whole, positively. In 1988 the percentage who gave him a positive evaluation was 70 percent and in 1986 it was more than 80 percent. Medvedev, Prozrenie, 213.

35 Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, esp. 381–85.

36 El'tsin's victory would have been far from guaranteed. To institute a popular election for the presidency would have given a new boost to Gorbachev's flagging popularity and he would surely have gained from being the first supreme leader in Russian history who, having inherited vast power, voluntarily chose to put his power at the disposal of the people. Cumulatively, Gorbachev's reforms did just that, but the point would have emerged much more clearly if direct elections for a Soviet presidency had occurred when Gorbachev (in the short term) still had a lot to lose.

37 See, for example, Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Refrained: Nationhood and Nationalismin the New Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bunce, Valerie, Subversive Institutions:The Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State (Cambridge, Eng., 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, esp. chap. 19.

38 See Wyman, Matthew, “Russians and Non-Russians on the Collapse of the USSR,“ Public Opinion in Postcommunist Russia (London, 1997), 149–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The title notwithstanding, this book deals with the late Soviet as well as the post-Soviet period.

39 In May 1990 El'tsin insisted that Union laws must not contravene those of Russia, rather than the other way round. See Aron, Leon, Boris Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (London, 2000), 377 Google Scholar. The fate of the Union, not only for El'tsin but also for his ambitious entourage, was secondary to the struggle for power.

40 On the need to “tranquillize the hardliners,” as a general problem of political transition, see O'Donnell, Guillermo and Schmitter, Philippe C., Transitions from AuthoritarianRule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, 1986), 44 Google Scholar. Or, as Andrei Grachev (Gorbachev's last presidential press spokesman) has put it: “People seldom ask how many coups d'etats Gorbachev managed to avoid in six and a half years of reform. Any of these potential coups could have occurred under much less favorable circumstances, when Gorbachev's position in the Politburo and Central Committee was such that he was virtually isolated from the Party of which he was the leader.” Grachev, Andrei S., Final Days: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Boulder, Colo., 1995), 101 Google Scholar.

41 Gorbachev, Zhizri i reformy, 1:395.