Quite what TV audiences in the Soviet Union were expecting on 25 Dec 1991 when news was released of a special broadcast by Mikhail Gorbachev is hard to gauge. It is probably safe to say that most viewers did not expect him to resign or that the state of which he was head would cease to exist. Nevertheless, after a brief speech, the flag of the Soviet Union, which had flown over the Kremlin since 1922, was taken down. He didn’t have much choice, four of the 15 Republics of the USSR had already broken away, he was President of a state that didn’t even exist on paper. After his short speech he handed over the nuclear code and keys to the man who had already, in effect, replaced him, Boris Yeltsin. It was all over in ten minutes.
25 December – Christmas Day – doesn’t resonate in Russia in the same way as it does in the West. The Russian Orthodox church celebrates Christmas on 7 January. Nevertheless the news was a shock. How had this astonishing state of affairs come about? How had Gorbachev, once hailed by ‘Time’ magazine as the ‘Man of the Decade’, fallen so ignominiously from grace in such a short time. More importantly, why had the state that he once wanted to reform imploded in such a spectacular fashion? To attempt an answer to these complex questions we need to back in history.
Rewind to 1984, a cold February day in Moscow’s Red Square as a new head of state is installed. There is the usual parade of military hardware and the usual bunch of bored looking Communist Party leaders on the podium stiffly saluting the passing tanks, rocket launchers and ICBMs with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. This scene has hardly changed in over sixty years, certainly the personnel are different but their politics differ only in degrees. Where Stalin, Voroshilov, Mikoyan and Molotov and other murderers once stood, there now is only a bunch of ageing men, all of them in their seventies, men certainly guilty of many crimes but now old, doddery and apparently losing their grip on the world around them: They include: Dimitry Ustinov (Defence Secretary) 75, Nikolai Tikonhov (Chairman of the Council of Ministers) 79, Boris Ponomov (Inter-Communist Party Liaison) 79, Vasily Kuznetsov (Deputy of State) 83, Andrey Gromyko (Foreign Minister) 74 and the new General Secretary of the Party Konstantin Chernenko, 72, who was already showing clear signs of the emphysema that would soon kill him in March 1985. His predecessor, former KGB head Yuri Andropov, also seriously ill, died 9 Feb 1984 after being in office for just 15 months. This parade of a half-dead, half-senile gerontocracy was not the greatest advert for the Soviet Union.
However, this wasn’t the whole story. Standing behind the ageing Kremlin plutocrats were a phalanx of younger men (no women). In particular, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Georgian Eduard Shevernadze, spring chickens at 53 and 56 respectively. These men, having steadily worked their way up the Communist Party ladder, must have looked aghast at the spectacle of Chernenko, now the head of state, wheezing and short of breath, being helped up onto the podium and barely able to read out his speech. What united them was not political agreement but a conviction that the Soviet Union was in deep trouble. The economy and industry were struggling, there were few consumer goods in the shops, the Communist Party was utterly discredited, cultural life, which once show signs of a renewal under Khrushchev back in the late fifties and sixties was stagnant, people were trying to leave the Soviet Union, basic human rights hardly existed and the social, political and economic cohesion of the country was near to collapse. In particular, the burden of military spending was diverting huge amounts of resource and finances which could have been used to address and correct many of the shortcomings found in Soviet society
It is difficult, if not impossible, to put a date on when the Soviet Union began its decline. Under Stalin the economy lurched from one crisis to another and basic democratic rights ceased to exist. Millions died in famines cause by a series of utterly disastrous agricultural policies, thousands went to the Gulag prison camps in Siberia never to return. Many more, probably millions, the exact figure will never be known, were arrested by the secret police and after a summary trial were shot. The death of Stalin in 1953 and the rise of Nikita Khrushchev promised change and a series of reforms were introduced some of which were genuinely welcome; for example, much of the Gulag was closed down and many prisoners were released. However, the Khrushchev ‘thaw’ promised a lot but delivered relatively little and Khrushchev’s reputation as a reformer, never all that much to shout about, was seen to be increasingly thin. This was, after all, the man who presided over the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
After the Cuban Missile crisis, which some in the Soviet hierarchy thought to have been bungled by Khrushchev, he was ousted by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964. Brezhnev was aggressive on the international front and the Soviet Union, despite its obvious technological inferiority (particularly in the field of computer technology), achieved nuclear parity with the USA. However, he ignored domestic political reform and under his regime the Soviet Union stagnated, corruption grew alarmingly and the economy began to crumble. By 1975 Brezhnev’s health was poor and sometimes he spent months in hospital. He hung on till his death on 10 Nov 1982, when he was replaced by former KGB man Yuri Andropov. Andropov did not last long, neither did his successor Konstantin Chernenko; it became a joke in western diplomatic circles to talk of heading off to Moscow for another ‘working funeral’.
Sad, macabre or ridiculous as this game of funereal musical chairs may appear, it does not really tell us all that much about the Soviet Union and why it was where it was. To find some answers we need to examine the nature of the Soviet bureaucracy and the economy, as indeed did Mikhail Gorbachev who replaced Chernenko on 11 March 1985. Initially Gorbachev gave no indication at all as to where his thoughts were heading. His presidential acceptance speech was straight, unalloyed Stalinism and could have been made by any of his predecessors. The major question, in the medium to long term, was whether or not the Soviet Union was reformable. Gorbachev thought it was, but he was wrong, and this led to his inevitable downfall.
Gorbachev’s position was not dissimilar to that of US President Franklin Roosevelt in the Great Depression. Roosevelt wanted to save US capitalism but realised that in order to do this he would need to take drastic measures which would be very unpopular with big business. The new Soviet premier did not want to destroy the Soviet Union; he wanted to save it, and, in doing so, save the bureaucratic caste that ran the country, of which he was a part.
Sometimes there is confusion when looking at the Soviet Union: there is an assumption that reformers are liberals (in the generally accepted western sense). This is not always so. Gorbachev’s ideas about reform had little to do with changing the Soviet Union’s basic political and economic structure and ideology but everything to do with preserving his position and those of the bureaucrats, managers and administrators who ran the ailing country. If this meant that certain heads had to roll, certain privileges curtailed, structural changes made, the voice of criticism to be heard, then so be it. Three main transformative strategies were involved:
Privatisation – seen as the way to restructure the Soviet union’s ailing industries.
Liberalisation – the political structures of the Soviet Union were ossified, stuck somewhere between the totalitarianism of Stalin and half-hearted reforms of the Khrushchev era. Change was essential.
Stabilisation – the economy would be brought into line with the west, trade relations would normalise, the Cold War would become a thing of the past, there would be industrial relations reforms, social reforms, no more agricultural crises but the Soviet Union would remain a ‘Communist’ state.
All these goals would come up against massive resistance, internally from the Party and the bureaucracy who saw their privileges increasingly threatened, and externally from the capitalist west, now well into a neo-liberal, free-market agenda. They were never going to allow the Soviet Union (or what replaced it) to develop in its own way, at its own pace. It must accept the principles of the free market, nothing more, nothing less.
Margaret Thatcher once famously remarked that Gorbachev was someone with whom ‘she could do business’. What she didn’t say was that it was business on her terms (and Reagan’s and the World Bank, the IMF etc.). Moreover, there was the perennial problem facing all reformers: once you ‘start the ball rolling’, how do you stop it? Reforms can, and often do, gather their own momentum and sweep away the reformer, as Gorbachev was soon to learn.
Gorbachev will be mostly remembered for two one-word slogans associated with his period in office: Perestroika and Glasnost. The former means restructuring and the latter, openness; it is noticeable that Gorbachev very rarely used the word ‘reform’. Successes were achieved in both areas. Soviet citizens were soon able to enjoy watching films and reading literature that either had been banned (most notably Boris Pasternack’s epic novel ‘Doctor Zhivago’) or simply wouldn’t have been produced in the past. One outstanding example was the Georgian director Tengiz Abuladze’s film ‘Repentance’, with its thinly veiled references to Stalin and Lavrenti Beria (the loathsome head of the secret police). Immediately banned in the same year as its release in 1984, it was re-released in 1987. Abuladze even accompanied Gorbachev on a visit to the United States.
In terms of restructuring Gorbachev proceeded cautiously. As Martin Walker points out in his 1986 book, ‘The Waking Giant: The Soviet Union Under Gorbachev’, the difference between a purge during Stalin’s time and a purge in the period of Gorbachev was that in the former you were shot or packed off to Siberia; in the latter there was a visit from the KGB Fraud Squad. Old bureaucrats and corrupt officials were removed and, in an interesting twist, Gorbachev’s reform of the KGB resulted in its growth and its increasing influence in domestic politics. Some years down the line a relatively unknown KGB officer, one Vladimir Putin would, partly benefitting from the KGB’s growing political weight, be able to assume the reins of power.
It can be seen that Gorbachev was, therefore, no straight, down the line reformer – many of the changes he introduced had unseen repercussions. His first major crisis was to come early into his time in office.
On 25 April, 1986, the water cooling system of Reactor No. 4. at the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor, less than a hundred miles from Kiev, exploded. It was a major test of the Gorbachev’s ability to deal with the unexpected. The Soviet authorities responded in their time-honoured fashion by imposing a news ban, trying to keep the lid on all developments. It took the Soviet government three days to admit openly what had happened. It was three weeks before Gorbachev made a public announcement (for reasons which are unclear). There is no doubt, his ‘image’ was damaged.
Nevertheless, when the lumbering Soviet machine finally got into gear, people were efficiently removed from the danger zone around Chernobyl and No. 4 Reactor was eventually sealed. Gorbachev was able to turn this to his advantage pointing out that Chernobyl represented everything that was bad in the old way of doing things. It encapsulated many of the problems faced by Gorbachev: aging, badly built infrastructure, outdated technology with an ossified and unresponsive leadership at both regional and national level. He further deflected personal criticism by making a number of proposals regarding nuclear safety. He was also lucky: a strong wind blew the radiation clouds into northern Finland and the heroism of Ukrainian firefighters prevented a greater disaster (shame for the reindeers in Sápmi).
Some of the biggest problems were encountered in industry. Initially change was slow and steady. The Law on Cooperatives, passed in May 1988 permitted a degree of private ownership in such sections as catering, restaurants and entertainment and was welcomed by many, although hardliners were infuriated. As the pace of change increased ‘advisers’ from the USA and elsewhere flooded into Russia advocating what later became known as ‘shock therapy’ – basically, close an old factory down and sack all the workers, keep social benefits to a minimum, ignore hyper-inflation and increased criminal activity, and wait for the market to ‘self-regulate’ and ‘adjust’. If, in the meantime, a few pensioners drop dead through hunger and hypothermia, too bad.
It is difficult to find an industrial or agricultural sector where decline didn’t occur. In the USSR, at the time when Gorbachev took over, productivity had bombed, the shops were half empty, factories began to close, workers were laid off and it became common for managers to simply not pay their workers, sometimes for many months. Towards the end of Gorbachev’s tenure this prompted a long miners’ strike, contributing to the growing instability in the Soviet Union which finally toppled Gorbachev. Despite the promises of openness and change, life for the majority of Soviet citizens became increasingly miserable.
The other major arena of conflict was found in the Republics. There was increasing unrest as the anticipation of change grew. In the Baltic States, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and elsewhere there were demonstrations in support of more self-governance or total independence.
In January 1991, only a week after Gorbachev had received the Nobel Peace Prize, 13 pro-independence demonstrators in Latvia were shot by Soviet army units. Gorbachev claimed to know nothing about this, saying that the army had acted without his knowledge. On 6 September 1991, almost four months before Gorbachev’s resignation speech, the Soviet Union recognised the independence of all three Baltic States. The new policies promised (or threatened) to usher in a new era for the Communist Party, but they also threatened the cohesion of the Soviet Union which looked increasingly fragile.
The growing unrest at Gorbachev’s reforms found an opposition figure, around which many rallied. The mercurial figure of Boris Yeltsin pushed himself forward as the man for far-reaching change, dissatisfied with the piecemeal approach of Gorbachev. Whether or not Yeltsin was a serious advocate of change, or yet one more in a long-line of opportunists and wheeler-dealers, or a bit of both, is open to debate. His later career strongly suggests that he rarely did anything without thinking first what was in it for him.
He quickly became Gorbachev’s main public opponent, going so far as to argue for the disbandment of the Communist Party. Developments were building to a head. Gorbachev had the sense to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989 and thus end the pointless and extremely unpopular war. Nevertheless, it angered elements within the military hierarchy, some of whom were already his fiercest critics.
After the killings in Latvia, Yeltsin denounced Gorbachev as a ‘murderer’ and called for his immediate resignation. By January 1991, the Soviet Union was in free-fall and unrest was widespread. Eastern Europe had now broken away. In Ukraine the first ‘Maidan’ (Ukrainian word for ‘Square’) demonstrations took place, and independence was being openly espoused. Elsewhere, acute shortages of basics such as bread and eggs appeared in all the major urban centres.
Gorbachev’s position was becoming increasingly untenable. He had been abandoned by the intelligentsia and many of the younger Party members who originally supported his reforms. The hardliners were calling for his blood as they baulked at what they perceived as the humiliation of the once mighty Soviet Union before the West. Yeltsin (ironically once a protégé of Gorbachev’s) exploited the situation and became a strong advocate of independence for the Republics and for Russia (i.e. the territory referred to as the Russian Federation) which many claimed had lost its meaning in a vague – and increasingly meaningless – ‘Soviet identity’. W B Yeats’ famous line: ‘The centre cannot hold’ has never been more appropriate.
Yeltsin proved adept at playing the populist card, being anti-Gorbachev and anti-Communist-Party at the same time, while his fondness for vodka only increased his appeal. For a Russian population itself swimming in a sea of booze, what was one more piss-head? Whereas Gorbachev had attempted and failed to mount an anti-alcohol campaign, Yeltsin revelled in his reputation as a ‘bit of lad’. His election to the post of Russian President in 12 June 1991, when thousands turned out on the streets to show their support, was a clear demonstration of his undoubted popularity.
After negotiating a rather shaky deal on a new union structure for the USSR as a loose confederation of sovereign republics, Gorbachev and his family decided to take a holiday in the presidential dacha in Crimea. In his absence the hardliners, fearful that they might soon lose everything hatched, a plot. Forming a special ‘Emergency Committee’ they sent troops to hold Gorbachev house prisoner in his dacha. All communication with the outside world was cut.
It quickly became clear that a coup was in progress. In Moscow tanks began to roll towards the Parliament Building. Huge crowds gathered to defend those inside. The plotters' new ‘president’, Gennady Yanayev (a former ally of Gorbachev’s) announced that ‘…we will not allow foreign powers to infringe the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Soviet Union’.
The coup was unsuccessful. The people outside Parliament build barricades and prepared to face the tanks. There was some violence and three demonstrators were killed, but it was to be Yeltsin’s day. He addressed the crowds from the top of a tank, the renowned poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko standing at his side.
After several days of tense stand-off, on Wednesday 21 August the tanks pulled out. The coup plotters were arrested and imprisoned. One of them committed suicide. The next day, Gorbachev returned to Moscow, but he was clearly now on the way out. The statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky (founder of the secret police) was pulled down.
At a special session of the Russian Parliament on the 24th, Yeltsin berated Gorbachev and signed a decree banning the Russian Communist Party (not the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). On Saturday Gorbachev announced from the Kremlin that he could no longer accept the post of General Secretary and recommended to the Party that it, in effect, disband itself.
The final nail in the coffin came on 1 December when the Ukraine Parliament announced its near unanimous decision to break away from the USSR. Without Ukraine, as Gorbachev and everybody else knew, the Soviet Union could not survive. Gorbachev finally accepted the inevitable on 17 December and made his famous TV broadcast a few days later. The rest, as they say, is history.
Could Gorbachev have succeeded? The evidence says no. The Soviet Union could not be reformed. For that to have happened it would have meant building a political movement based on the grassroots of Soviet society agitating and fighting for the kind of workers’ democracy originally envisaged by the Bolsheviks back in 1917. Perestroika and Glasnost were poor substitutes. They attempted an administrative and, essentially bureaucratic (i.e. ‘top down’) approach to problems which required deep-rooted political solutions.
The perennial question which commentators have wrestled with over the years – was Gorbachev a genuine reformer or a toned down hardliner out to basically preserve the system? – is actually irrelevant. Gorbachev had no strategy to deal with the entrenched bureaucratic nature of the Soviet Union and its Party elites, nor did he understand how to maintain his support when the reforms started to falter. Gorbachev might well have been the idol of the west, feted and praised, but in his own country this was never the case.
The events since 1991 demonstrate the failure of the Gorbachev ‘project’. After him came Yeltsin and then his one-time protege Vladimir Putin, the alarming growth in organised crime, the war in Chechnya, the annexation of the Crimea and the expansionist forays into Ukraine.
As Leon Trotsky remarked back in 1936, in his work The Revolution Betrayed, ‘It is not a question of replacing one ruling clique for another, but of changing the very methods of administering the economy and guiding the culture of the country. Bureaucratic autocracy must give place to Soviet democracy.’ That did not happen, and the clock has been turned back. Today we have the nationalist, demagogue Putin intent on resurrecting some kind of malignant political blancmange of Stalinism and Tsarism.
