Gorbachev: A Premature Postmortem

...Once he fell behind the curve, however, he began to slip...

...Whatever the historical accuracy of this thesis, it would be well to send its proponents back to the drawing board...

...The far Right has maintained that the evils of totalitarianism placed Communism in a unique box, set apart from the rest of the spectrum of political orientations, and therefore it had to come crashing down before anything new could go up in its place...

...Preserving the union" was one of their slogans...

...They in effect gave Gorbachev an ultimatum last November, and he went a long way to propitiate them...

...Gorbachev allied himself with diehards like Yegor K. Ligachev and Viktor M. Chebrikov to get rid of the old Brezhnevites, even though that meant ousting and humiliating Boris Yeltsin— only to later drop Ligachev and Chebrikov...

...Intransigent enemies of democratization and marketization have largely been removed...

...But recent events have confirmed the caveat that the center is hollow and that Gorbachev's political skills are considerably limited...

...A number of spokespersons for the Soviet radical Right had been spelling out their feelings quite candidly for the better part of a year...

...Later, he found them an essential tool...

...We earlier learned that compared with such transformations in Spain or Brazil, Soviet-type systems pose a formidable challenge—if only because no model exists for decentralizing a command economy...

...He began by urging an "acceleration" of production, as if that would suffice to overcome the "stagnation" of Leonid I. Brezhnev's years...

...The far Left has held that the entrenched forces of reaction, bureaucracy, ideological zealotry, and imperial instincts could not be dislodged by some well-meaning decrees from the "center...

...One facet of Mikhail Gorbachev that has not received sufficient attention is the enormous amount of learning he has done since coming to power in March 1985...

...Ironically, the failed coup has served to end the stalemate and clear the pipes...

...His devoted fans are currently busy tearing down Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin as a proto-fascist...

...Even leaving aside the "new thinking" in foreign policy, implementing glasnost and opening up the system—to diverse ideas and values, to the outside world, to competing parties, to the search for historical truth—will remain tremendous accomplishments identified with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, especially against the backdrop of the previous decades of Stalinist norms and controls...

...He did not doubt the soundness and legitimacy of the Communist Party...

...GORBACHEV: A PREMATURE POSTMORTEM BY ALEXANDER DALLIN S? thoroughly monochrome was our image of Soviet Communism that few people could conceive of someone inside the system launching a package of reforms that would lead to the repudiation of the state religion and the Party that claimed to represent it...

...Now, humiliated by the coup and outdone by Boris Yeltsin, the Soviet President is a lonely man trying hard to keep up with the pace of daily developments...

...That Gorbachev had been naive or blind to trust them, and that his hesitation unwittingly encouraged them, is a different matter altogether...

...A more sophisticated and sounder view has had Gorbachev solidly heading a sizable political center, and using his remarkable talents as a leader to make tactical deals and compromises with his opponents...

...The irony—and perhaps his tragedy—has been the fact that here he succeeded: The masses turned against him...

...What about the impact of the coup and its aftermath on the Soviet Union's transition from dictatorship to democracy...

...That Gorbachev did not see this—or had run out of steam —is one indication of his limitations...

...Gorbachev's "zigzag reformism" has involved coalitions with different factions...

...law and order" was another...

...Then there is the familiar refrain that Russia "never knew democracy," that the mass of its people were silent and obedient, and that Russian political culture made them accept—or even prefer—tsar and commissar alike...

...To retain some power, he has yielded to the inevitable and begun scrambling to reconsolidate a greatly weakened central Soviet regime., Despite the brilliance of his (or, more accurately, former Foreign Minister Shevardnadze's) foreign policy, Gorbachev's waffling on domestic policies, and particularly the decline in living standards, cost him his widespread popular support...

...Gorbachev is not prepared for his weakened role in a disintegrating empire that faces a devolution of power and authority, famine and economic chaos, a collapse of institutions, and the possibility of new coups...

...At first, he would have no competitive elections...

...In retrospect, his overtures amounted to a clumsy recipe for stalemate: Only by a clearcut alliance with the democratic forces on the Left could the reform agenda have been pushed further ahead...

...It is safe to say that his moments of greatness are behind him, but he has managed to re-emerge more effectively than many would have predicted in the days immediately after his return from Crimean captivity...

...Later he came around to permitting— in fact, demanding—clarity on the historical record...

...Another big step toward the transformation of the Soviet Union has become possible, but under vastly more complex conditions...

...So has much of the glue that held the Soviet Union together...

...There has been, to begin with, the view that Gorbachev is on top of it all— strong, omniscient, benign...

...Although many Party activists blamed him for eroding its base (as well as its creed), Gorbachev was committed to supporting the organization through which he had risen, and to advocating what he kept calling with studied vagueness "the Socialist choice...

...In any case, introducing pluralism and glasnost, abandoning Eastern Europe, and approving a union treaty were surely not mere cosmetic changes on the facade of Soviet power—and the coup plotters didn't think so either...

...He refused to back the so-called "Democratic Platform" within the Party that tried to fight the old establishment...

...We naively thought of Soviet controls as watertight, and we dismissed differences among Communist elites too uncritically...

...To suggest that they were faking the takeover in obedience to him is ludicrous...

...In August Gorbachev's appointee as Ryzhkov's successor, Valentin S. Pavlov, was among the plotters against the boss...

...Gorbachev was an admired—albeit embattled—leader when he was truly innovative and, in many respects, ahead of public opinion...

...This position has assumed above all that the game of Soviet politics required varying coalitions with the Left and, in the past year, with the Right...

...Eventually he had to acquiesce in a union treaty that would have given the republics considerable powers, had it been signed as scheduled on August 20...

...It will also appeal to conspiracy buffs...

...Later, he reversed himself to endorse party "pluralism...

...He had no understanding of markets, supply and demand, or convertible rubles...

...Washington is not conceptually or politically ready to respond to this new state of affairs either...

...The hypothesis is bound to be popular among the Moscow intellectuals who have turned on him with a vengeance yet were (for good reason) unalterably opposed to the coup...

...then his switch back to economic reform (so far, in words rather than in deed) meant jettisoning his Prime Minister, Nikolai I. Ryzhkov...

...The constraints generated by the political and economic situation in the country, the limitations of his own understanding, his style of operating—all contributed to his losing the initiative, the nerve, the leadership he had earlier evidenced in such an outstanding fashion...

...Decontrol and "departification" also have produced a striking loss of authority and of popular willingness to obey laws and follow orders...

...he had no appreciation of the explosive potential of the "nationalities question...

...The failed August coup may help dispel some simplistic judgments of the changes in the Soviet Union and the man who has presided over them...

...Some of the plotters, men like KGB chief Vladimir A. Kryuchkov and Soviet Defense Council Deputy Chairman Oleg D. Baklanov, had voiced their concerns more than once...

...But he shifted his stance and revised his policies as he began to understand the problems better—or as political constellations of friends and enemies changed...

...Is he the sorcerer or the sorcerer's apprentice...

...This approach fails to give weight to the evolution of Gorbachev's thinking since 1985, and to the unintended consequences of his actions...

...Exhibiting uncommon flexibility, he managed to tame and ride the tiger of the Party apparat and its many appendages while honing and promoting his reform program...

...At first, Gorbachev opposed reopening the question of Stalin and the purges...

...A few days afterward he felt compelled to resign as General Secretary, dissolve the Central Committee of the Party, and approve the suspension of its activities throughout the country...

...For some time, too, we have been hearing from both the far Left and the far Right that the Soviet system could not be transformed, that it needed to be leveled and rebuilt from scratch...

...Ignoring the advice of his liberal colleagues, Gorbachev had—up to that point—resisted any move to split or abandon the corrupt and stagnant Communist Party, with all its bureaucratic and dictatorial habits and officials...

...In the Soviet case, inter-ethnic relations, the size of the country, the military establishment, and the longevity of Communist rule have added greatly to the complications...

...Finally, we come to the novel notion that Gorbachev was himself behind the August plot...

...After all, societies do change...

...Inconsistent and indecisive on crucial occasions, he nonetheless achieved a remarkable success whose dimensions have been overshadowed by the blatant failures in feeding the people and keeping the country together...

...His troubles with the nationalities, the hardliners and the Party machine, the argument goes, were purposely generated by him for his own benefit...

...Moreover, all of these problems, it is now clear, were immensely exacerbated by having the central bureaucracies, and key figures in the upper reaches of the party, the Armed Forces and the secret police apparatus in place while a piecemeal changeover was attempted...

...he had no experience with arms control, a free press, thecounterculture, or the abominable state of public health and the environment...

...We should not have been shocked by the willingness of young (and old) Muscovites in the 1990s to defend their "White House" and their newly-won freedoms...

...Early on Gorbachev convinced himself that the habitually cowed and compliant masses of the Soviet population had to be galvanized, to be brought into the picture...

...Another is the limits of his skill and vision...

...Whether the transition from the Bolshevik system to whatever will take its place was gradual may be arguable (given the coup), but certainly it has been proved possible...

...On close examination, though, it defies credence...

...Adroit, to be sure, these tactics ultimately cost him the confidence of his erstwhile associates and friends among the reformers—notably, Aleksandr N. Yakovlev and Eduard A. Shevardnadze—and of his temporary allies ontheRight.His inability to take the big jump toward marketization of the Soviet economy alienated a whole parade of economic advisers, from Abel Aganbegyan to Leonid I. Abalkin to Nikolai Y. Petrakov to Stanislav S. Shatalin...

...Following the bungled coup he faced a more frenzied clamor for independence by the republics, a result of the shattering of central institutions, beliefs and authority...

...At first, and past the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was profoundly opposed to a united Germany...

...But this also suggests the price— and limits—of his political skills: If Yeltsin became his nemesis (in May 1990 Gorbachev spoke in disparaging and vitriolic terms against electing him head of the Russian Parliament), by April 1991 the Soviet President had to patch things up because he needed his rival (as again became apparent during and after the recent coup...

...Once it became clear that Mikhail S. Gorbachev's perestroika was not all smoke and mirrors, the question for observers abroad became, can he pull it off or will he bring the house down...

...We will never know if anyone else could have done better: In 1985 there was no one who could have taken Gorbachev's place...

...His appointments often reflected a singularly poor judgment of people...

...Actually, during his six years in office he has been both: He himself has been transformed and so has what used to be the USSR...

...Step by step, he moved toward accepting it...

...He never had an explicit vision of where he was headed, but the scope of the changes he sought expanded—until he became scared of what he saw...

...At first, he was intent on maintaining the Communist Party's monopoly of power...

...opposing the private profit motive that would lead to injustice, greed and corruption, was a fourth...

...Nevertheless, in the abortive August coup the bulk of the Party's upper echelons lined up against him, actively or passively...

...Yet he does still have a functional role as one of the few symbolic figures standing above the confusing Soviet scene...

...standing firm against the West and Western influence was a third...

...One would think that in the light of the latest developments this reasoning would no longer get a respectful hearing, but high Administration officials appear to have difficulty giving it up...

...Gorbachev struggled to keep the Soviet Union intact as autonomist and separatist sentiments grew stronger in the non-Russian areas (and in Russia too...

...But after he made the "nine-plus-one" deal in April and thereby aligned himself with Yeltsin, the union republics and the reformers, the extreme Rightists saw his removal as a precondition to "stability...

...Although he arrived at the Kremlin with the conviction that there was a lot of rot in the system, he had no idea how deep it went...

...Next, there is the view that Gorbachev had been pedaling fast "just" to save Communism, rather than to democratize the system (much as Franklin D. Roosevelt, according to American Communists, introduced the New Deal "just" to save capitalism...