being reported from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in February. The possibility that the USSR might implode under these pressures began to be discussed in the press. The more rhetorical of politicians warned against any actions that might lead eventually to civil war across the USSR.
This worry distracted the minds of Soviet citizens from foreign affairs. If it had not been for the preoccupations of the domestic economic, political and national environment, attention would have been paid to events of epochal importance in Eastern Europe. Since the defeat of Hitler in 1945 the Soviet Army had maintained a vast zone of political and economic dominion and military security in the countries to the east of the river Elbe. Every VE-Day after 1945 had been celebrated on the assumption that this zone was an inviolable feature of the European map. Over the years of his power Gorbachev had indicated, in language that became ever more explicit, that the peoples of the Warsaw Pact countries should be empowered to choose their political system for themselves. But even he was astonished by the rapidity with which communist governments collapsed in country after country in the second half of 1989.
The process began in Poland. After an agreement to submit themselves to contested elections, the communists had been soundly defeated in June, and in August meekly joined a coalition under the anti-communist Tadeusz Mazowiecki. In September the Hungarian communist government allowed tens of thousands of East Germans to cross its frontiers and seek asylum in Austria; in October the ageing Erich Honecker was sacked as party boss in the German Democratic Republic. Within weeks the reformed communist leadership was permitting its citizens unimpeded transit to the Federal Republic of Germany. Meanwhile Todor Zhivkov retired in Bulgaria. The Czechoslovak government, too, was replaced. In the last month of this remarkable year, President Gustav Husak resigned and the dissenting dramatist Vaclav Havel was elected by parliament to take his place (while the communist leader of the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968 Alexander Dubcek returned to head the Federal Assembly).
The dominoes were tumbling fast. The fall of any communist regime made the surviving ones more susceptible to collapse. And yet
Events in Romania took a dramatic turn in December 1989, when Nicolae Ceausescu appeared on his palace balcony to address a loyal Bucharest crowd. Ceausescu was challenged in a scene akin to a spaghetti Western movie: he was catcalled. When he failed to intimidate the assembled crowd, he leapt into a helicopter before trying to flee the country in a fast-driven limousine; but he was captured and summarily tried and executed. Gorbachev had often confidentially expressed his horror of the Romanian terror-regime; indeed he had tried, just a few days earlier in a Moscow meeting with Ceausescu, to persuade him that his regime would eventually incur the people’s wrath. But Ceausescu had spurned him, making little attempt to hide his disapproval of the USSR’s perestroika. The grotesque finale to communism in Romania was thought by Gorbachev to settle their argument in his own favour.
It was a remarkable denouement. At the beginning of 1989 most countries in Europe east of the river Elbe were ruled by communists. At the year’s end the sole remaining European communist state to the west of the USSR was Albania — and Albania had been hostile to the USSR since Khrushchev’s period of office.
Gorbachev could have sent the Soviet Army to suppress the anti-communist movements earlier in the year. He would, needless to emphasize, have paid a great price. In particular, he would have forfeited the diplomatic support he had from Western countries; certainly he would have reinstigated tensions with the USA, which would have led to yet another race to construct new forms of nuclear weaponry. And yet any one of Gorbachev’s predecessors would not have blanched at a resumption of the Cold War. That he chose to avoid such a course was among his momentous choices. It took exceptional determination to stand by policies involving the minimum of violence when this resulted in the demise not only of old-style communism but even of those communist leaders in Eastern Europe who were his political allies. He had not set out to achieve this end; rather it was the unwilled result of his activity as it developed. But great was the work of his hands.
25
Hail and Farewell
(1990–1991)
Gorbachev wanted to prevent the disappearance of self-styled communist leaderships in Eastern Europe being repeated in the USSR. His domestic achievements were already enormous. Official party policies in the USSR would have been compelled to get nastier if left intact. Economic decline, political conflict, national embitterment, social alienation and environmental degradation: all these would have increased. The communist party apparatus might well have reverted to a clumsy version of Stalinism or might even have stumbled into a clash with the USA at the risk of a Third World War.
Instead Gorbachev had been working at the renewal of the Soviet compound by means of reform. But reform implies a series of modifications which leave the basic political, economic and social order intact. In fact Gorbachev’s rule already involved change of a much greater dimension. Several of the principal features of communism in the USSR were being undermined by his activity: the one-party state, the mono-ideological controls, the militant atheism, the centralized administration, the state economic monopoly and the suspendability of law. Perestroika was no longer a project for partial alterations but for total transformation. It was scarcely surprising that many Soviet leaders, including several who owed him their promotion to the Politburo, were aghast. Gorbachev was no longer what he had claimed to be. By his actions, if not by his deliberate purpose, he was abetting the disintegration of the existing compound.
His intuitive brilliance did him little good; he remained hampered by his background from foreseeing where his path of transformation was leading. While wanting a market economy, he did not think this would involve much capitalism. While approving of national self-expression, he had set his face against any republic seceding from the USSR. While wishing to replace traditional communist functionaries with energetic newcomers, he often chose newcomers who had no commitment to serious reform. While aiming at an institutional division of powers, he induced chaos in governance. His personal confusion had practical consequences. Although he radicalized his proposals, he did this always more slowly than the pace of the deepening crisis over the economy, the republics, the administration and the personnel of the Soviet order. And this made his eventual fall all the more likely.
About Gorbachev’s dedication there was no doubt: ‘I’m doomed to go forward, and only forward. And if I retreat, I myself will perish and the cause will perish too!’1 He expected the same self-sacrifice from his associates. His group of intimates included several of his promotees to the Politburo: Alexander Yakovlev, Eduard Shevardnadze, Vadim Medvedev and Vadim Bakatin. Also important to him were aides such as Georgi Shakhnazarov and Anatoli Chernyaev; and he derived indispensable intellectual and emotional support from his wife Raisa despite her unpopularity with politicians and public alike.
But whereas he had once led from the front, by the end of the decade he was operating from the centre. Gorbachev’s technique was to calm the communist radicals, convince his loyalists and reassure the conservatives. In practical terms he aimed to dissuade as many critics as possible from leaving the party and campaigning against him. For this purpose he opted to remain in the party as its General Secretary; he argued that the alternative was to abandon the party and let his critics use it as an instrument to struggle for the rejection of his reformist measures. It was an uncongenial task. Most central and local functionaries incurred his contempt: ‘They’re careerists; all they want is their hands on power and their snouts in the feeding trough!’2 But he said no such thing in public, and hoped that his patience would be rewarded by success in making the process of reform irreversible.
Within his entourage, Yakovlev argued against his refusal to leave the party. Yeltsin agreed with Yakovlev. So, too, did the dissenter Andrei Sakharov from outside the ranks of communism. Better, they all urged, to make a clean break and form a new party. But Gorbachev spurned the advice. He increasingly thought of Yakovlev as unsound of judgement and Yeltsin as irresponsible. He had a higher estimate of Sakharov, who was widely acclaimed as Russia’s liberal conscience. Gorbachev was not averse to cutting off Sakharov’s microphone when he did not like what he heard.3 But by and large he ensured that this frail, croaky-voiced scientist should
