Mikhail Gorbachev/A Lonely Visionary
Bukovsky, Vladimir
Vladimir Bukovsky/Mikhail Gorbachev A LONELY VISIONARY s orry to bother you, but haven't we met before? Aren't you . . . what's his name?" "I doubt you'd know my name," he said. "Nobody does...
...Plenty of times...
...Don't bother to recall my name, young man...
...Who were they...
...I told them what I knew...
...Except nobody would listen . . ." H e was getting drunk and maudlin...
...You may remember that it had three parts: perestroika (restructuring), uskorenie (acceleration), and glasnost (openness), and they were designed in precisely that order...
...But then came the presidential elections with their usual razzle-dazzle and our "first couple" soon became yester62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 day's news...
...I needed atleast four hours, like at the Party Congress...
...Then there was great embarrassment and even panic: what about East-West relations...
...Serious programs...
...And will remember, notlike here...
...Good evening, Jim...
...To say I felt ashamed would be a gross understatement...
...I know, it's beyond your ability anyway...
...I did find one, on prime time, one hour for all subjects...
...Both sides went on nuclear alert, but a showdown was averted just in time: the defecting couple, pale and trembling, appeared before the press, hand in hand, and confirmed that they had indeed "chosen freedom...
...Indeed, Robin...
...Why haven't you tried, then...
...Who the hell cares about those damned United Republics...
...Wait a minute," I protested, "there were some serious TV programs in those days...
...On the other hand, the military and the technocrats wanted perestroika, but nothing else, while the people were all for glasnost, and to hell with perestroika and uskorenie...
...It happened at the Gorbachev-Reagan summit meeting in Washington, D.C.: the "first Soviet couple" suddenly asked for political asylum right in the Roosevelt Room of the White House...
...Right, it was 1988, the last year of Reagan's presidency...
...Anyway, what's the difference...
...They'd shoot you if you did, you know...
...I don't have opinions, I have knowledge...
...The ending was truly touching: the two of them, young and beautiful, appear on the steps of the White House before a jubilant crowd...
...How many times have I told myself never to speak to strangers in California...
...But how on earth could I explain any of this on a talk show or news program...
...Although it might have pleased the people, it was certainly bad for the Party and the military and, therefore, very dangerous for me...
...Ridiculous...
...The bets were one in ten that the couple would stay...
...Yet the moment I started to live among them, free to talk, they stopped being interested in understanding me, or talking with me, or building bridges...
...He is the author of To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter and, most recently, To Choose Freedom (Hoover Institution Press...
...TWo wizards were leading the program: Mr...
...They never argue, but if your opinion differs from theirs, they simply ignore you...
...But the couple insisted and refused to leave, hiding away from their own retinue somewhere inside the Old Executive Office Building...
...I asked...
...Amazing, isn't it...
...No, but each had his own opinion...
...y ou see," the old man now told me, "by the time we left for Washington, my reform was in a state of chaos...
...I simply could not go back home after signing my death warrant...
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...Reagan first thought it was a joke and repeated it (off the record) to reporters—those crazy Russians with their black humor...
...The Soviets naturally offered to send their own medical team with intensive care equipment to set things aright, but the couple barricaded themselves in one ofthe OEOB offices together with Nancy, who came to negotiate a peaceful solution...
...Couldn't they have waited until the deal was signed...
...But don't say you don't remember the story...
...By morning, seeing the cat was out of the bag anyway, the Soviets claimed their leader had been abducted and they threatened to retaliate...
...Perhaps South America, or even India...
...But at least they remember me...
...Did they read Lenin...
...But even that was better than the talk shows...
...Meanwhile, the press got a whiff that something really big was going on, particularly after a security guard leaked the story to the Washington Times for $1 million...
...There he was in all his glory, Comrade Gorbachev, sitting right in front of me, drinking a vodka-tonic and in a very angry mood...
...Infuriated by the cover-up, reporters demanded explanations and practically besieged the White House...
...All you people know here is television and Time magazine...
...Nobody does these days...
...I looked around...
...Indeed, there had been something on television the day before about a new era of "absolute frankness and honesty" in the United Soviet Republics of Europe, but I hadn't paid much attention...
...He was obviously annoyed...
...812 332 7251 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 63...
...Have I seen you on television...
...Raisa would chat with them about fashions and diets, and I'd just smile and nod...
...But I wanted to explain...
...Yeah, sure...
...I did write three volumes, explaining everything, but I still don't have a publisher...
...So I gave up...
...A couple of elderly joggers passed by, wheezing and coughing—the last survivors of a twentieth-century craze...
...Neither, Jim and Robin...
...Neither do I, Robin...
...Now, can you imagine what that meant...
...On the whole, he was quite an ordinary looking old man, around 75 I would guess, with a flabby face and a bald head...
...the Soviet Union ever to defect to the West...
...And why, you may ask, did we fail...
...Somehow, they never did explain properly why they defected...
...Do you regret what you did...
...It was even worse with the so-called experts...
...Those damn Russkis...
...Very polite, very democratic: you have your opinion, I have mine...
...Anyway, Raisa wrote a book for both of us, My Life in the Kremlin, and it was a best-seller...
...And even on the cover of Time magazine...
...Good evening, Robin...
...I was quite moved the first time I saw it...
...There was total confusion, complete chaos...
...Don't misunderstand me: I'm not complaining...
...Now, I am 'undemocratic,"dogmatic,' and 'unpleasant.' " "Why didn't you write another book...
...Yeah, I know...
...We're quite rich, we have a nice swimming pool...
...Well, they say behind your back, he has a chip on his shoulder...
...For a while, they were all over the place, on every talk show and news hour...
...Would you go back...
...Yet, without any such explanation they simply couldn't understand that uskorenie of glasnost is just a perestroika of nadstroika, or should I say, a restructuring of the superstructure, while real progress is impossible without a perestroika of the basis...
...Yeah, sure, television...
...Did they know about basis and superstructure...
...But they don't want me back precisely because they have a good memory...
...On the waterfront, a group of naked girls were noisily protesting against equal rights for women, as they do every day...
...Gorbachev was played by a magnificent young blond with blue eyes and a California suntan, though his role was secondary to that of his wife Raisa, played by Jane Fonda, who was clearly the main figure in the Kremlin and the mastermind of their escape—done, as she convinced the slightly dull but honest Gorby, to save humanity from nuclear holocaust...
...On top of that, there was this damned arms control agreement with Reagan after which there was no hope for perestroika, while we stuck with uskorenie of glasnost...
...Defection...
...Do you agree, Jim...
...You either write for a wide audience, and then it's trash, or you write seriously, and then nobody reads it except those who 'disagree' with you...
...When I was General Secretary, these very same people were all for 'talking' with me, for `understanding' me, for 'building bridges' with me...
...They were doing all the talking...
...We were sitting in a bar on Fisherman's Wharf, the most crowded spot in San Francisco, where you can run across anybody from this or the next world...
...It's like pedaling a bicycle without wheels, faster and faster, in the middle of a jeering crowd...
...They are about to sign another arms control agreement with the Americans...
...When I was General Secretary, they called me 'liberal,' they found me `charismatic' and 'well-educated,' they praised my every word...
...How could I not recognize him...
...California, as you know, has the reputation of a weird planet: if there are ghosts, this is their homeland...
...A huge crowd gathered outside, blocking all traffic, and grew into the thousands by sundown...
...Was it fifteen years ago, or seventeen...
...Above all, who the hell was going to sign the arms control agreement that was the whole point of the summit...
...He smiled sardonically...
...In reality, we did achieve dramatic uskorenie, but we did not quite manage to pull off the perestroika—and all this, mind you, in an atmosphere of complete glasnost...
...That mark on his forehead...
...Finished, forgotten, condemned to oblivion...
...There was a pop-song, "Gorby's Gonna Stay," by._Huey Lewis...
...Who needs uskorenie without perestroika, when glasnost allows every fool in the country to see it...
...There was a trace of bitterness in his voice, just enough to prod my curiosity...
...All he had to do was knock off a few of his colleagues from the Politburo, which he did in style...
...They were incredibly popular...
...Usually, I would barely have enough time to introduce the Marxist idea of basis and nadstroika (superstructure), and the show would be over...
...He is a defector, isn't he...
...Because, on the one hand, the Party wanted only uskorenie and did not want to hear anything about either perestroika or glasnost...
...How can a defector be objective...
...Was this fellow one of Hollywood's old faces, a character from a great but unjustly forgotten movie...
...There is no way of knowing who you might see across the table...
...He looked a bit like Edward G. Robinson, or someone from "The Untouchables...
...So, it is easy to see that, given this correlation of forces in the country, we finally got uskorenie of glasnost, instead of uskorenie of perestroika...
...Under pressure from Congress, Reagan's cabinet split over whether to accept the defection, and for a while the official version had it that the guests had fallen ill...
...Idiots...
...No, it had to be more...
...I am the one and only General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vladimir Bukovsky, a contributor since 1980, left the Soviet Union in 1976 after twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camp% and psychiatric "hospitals...
...He looked at me and smiled: "Don't you read the papers...
...Indeed and Mr...
...THE STORY...
...And if by some chance your face doesn't appear on television for two weeks, you're as good as dead...
...What an idiot I am...
...I could swear I'd seen him before...
...This is how the world saw them on the news that night...
...I was devastated...
...Nobody could get in or out without being closely examined by the reporters...
...All around us, a festively dressed crowd was eating fresh crab and shrimp...
...there were T-shirts, badges, even a fantastic docudrama called Escape from the Kremlin...
...But there, right on the top of his forehead, was the painfully familiar huge purple mark resembling the outlines of some exotic land on the globe...
...Surely not because of the swimming pools Reagan had shown them during a helicopter ride over suburban Washington...
...I'm already buried alive...
...Does this ring a bell...
...f course I remembered every detail of that spectacular affair, as if it took place yesterday...
...What's the point...
...Am I different just because I am here...
...Indeed, Jim...
...I have...
Vol. 20 • December 1987 • No. 12
