The Penguin History of Modern Russia

policy of elevating personnel of the major local nationality to high office was maintained. Ukrainians administered Ukraine, Uzbeks Uzbekistan and Latvians Latvia. Certainly very severe controls remained: the Politburo continued to position ethnic Russians — or sometimes especially trusted Ukrainians or Belo-russians — as deputy leaders in virtually every republican party, government and the KGB. Yet local ‘national’ functionaries were also prominent; and the policy of ‘stability of cadres’, which had been started in 1964, was prolonged through the 1970s.

The result, as time went on, was that the majority nationalities in each republic were able to augment their dominance over other local national and ethnic groups. Stern campaigns against administrative and financial malpractice were maintained by Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia and Geidar Aliev in Azerbaijan; but neither Shevardnadze nor Aliev did much to protect the position of minorities: in Georgia the Abkhazians and the Adzharians suffered considerable discrimination; in Azerbaijan, the Armenian-inhabited enclave of Nagorny Karabakh was starved of funds. Nor were such tensions absent from the RSFSR. A glaring example was the attempt by Bashkirian communist leaders to ‘Bashkirize’ the education and culture of the Tatar population in their vicinity.¹⁶

Ostensibly these disintegrative trends in other republics were prevented from manifesting themselves in the same fashion in the RSFSR’s Russian provinces. The RSFSR shared a capital with the USSR and was altogether too vast to be permitted to follow a line of action disapproved by the central political authorities. The RSFSR had a formally separate government, but real power was denied it; and the ban on the establishment of a separate communist party remained in force. But there had long been ambivalences in the policies of the Politburo. In particular, Russian intellectuals were accorded greater latitude for cultural self-assertion than were their non- Russian counterparts. Russia’s pride of place among the nations of the USSR continued to be officially affirmed. And whereas Russians had important posts in the local political administrations of the other Soviet republics, ethnic Russians had a monopoly in the administrative apparatus of the RSFSR’s provinces.

The policy of stability of cadres, moreover, encouraged officials in the localities to ignore uncongenial central demands. The province-level party committee (obkom) secretary retained crucial local power and the fact that functionaries from the non-central party apparatus occupied a third of the places at the Twenty-Fifth Party Congress in 1976 was an index of their influence.¹⁷

Thus the local ‘nests’ were also reinforced. For a manager running a factory of national significance could always threaten to appeal to his minister; and a KGB chief in a border area or a commander of a military district might easily cause trouble if the obkom secretary interfered excessively in security affairs. But few local ‘nests’ of officials were very disputatious; for a common local interest existed in keeping the ‘centre’ from prying into the locality. Ordinary Soviet citizens who wrote to the Politburo and the Secretariat exposing an abuse of power in their town or village were sometimes rewarded with a Pravda campaign on their behalf; but such campaigns were ineffectual in transforming general practice — and sometimes such citizens found themselves victimized by the local officials whom they had exposed. At any rate the central authorities remained loyal to the policy of only sacking functionaries in cases of extreme disobedience to the Kremlin’s demands.

The old paradox endured. On the one hand, there was a frantic profusion of official demands for observance of legality, and under Brezhnev — according to one estimate — the number of ‘normative acts’ of legislation in force across the USSR had risen to 600,000;¹⁸ on the other hand, infringements of legality were pervasive. The key common goal of political leaders in the Kremlin was to minimize shifts of policy and avoid damaging internal controversy. Transfers of personnel, if they were on a large scale, would destabilize the relations among central and local public groups in the various institutions. The Soviet compound was entering a stage of degradation.

Nevertheless this is not how it seemed to most wielders of power at either the central or local levels. Even among those of them who were minded to introduce reforms there was little acceptance that basic reform was overdue; instead they tended to believe that it would be enough to modify existing policies, to sack the most incompetent of Brezhnev’s cronies and introduce younger blood. Above all, they felt that Brezhnev himself had served in office too long. The condition of his health was in fact even worse than most of the rumours about it. The handful of officials who came into regular, direct contact with him could see for themselves that he was a dreadfully ill old man. The scribblings in his personal diary showed a lingering interest in television programmes and sport; and his punctuation and spelling would have disgraced a schoolchild.¹⁹

Brezhnev had stayed in office after bowing to pressure from some of his Politburo associates; and this had postponed the jostling among them over the question of the political succession. Essentially Gromyko, Ustinov, Suslov and Andropov were governing the country through a consensus among themselves. Brezhnev’s closest aide and confidant, Politburo member Chernenko, had also acquired an influence. Crucial Politburo decisions were being taken by them in his absence.

But Brezhnev’s health worsened drastically in the winter of 1981–2 and the Politburo pondered who eventually was to take his place as General Secretary. The choice would have been influenced by Suslov, who was a senior Central Committee Secretary. But Suslov died aged seventy-nine in January 1982. KGB chairman Andropov was given Suslov’s place in the Central Committee Secretariat in May, and quickly it became obvious that he would make a strong bid to succeed Brezhnev. Stories about corrupt practices in Brezhnev’s family and entourage started to circulate.²⁰ The stories came from Andropov’s associates in the KGB. Evidently Andropov was trying to create a mood in the Politburo that would ruin the chances of one of Brezhnev’s boon companions emerging as a serious rival to his own candidature.

By his actions Andropov showed that he no longer feared incurring Brezhnev’s hostility. Through spring, summer, autumn 1982 the General Secretary rarely appeared in public. The official pretence was maintained that he was not seriously ill; but his doctors, together with his nurse (who for years had been his mistress), despaired that he would ever recover. Brezhnev was sinking fast. On 10 November 1982, he suffered a final relapse and died.

The Politburo instructed that he should be buried outside the Kremlin Wall on Red Square. Statesmen from all over the world attended. His wife and family were accompanied to the funeral by the central party leadership — and daughter Galina outraged spectators by refraining from wearing sombre garb. Brezhnev had been dressed in his Marshal’s uniform with all his medals. But the careless way the coffin was dropped into his grave was taken as a sign that not all Politburo leaders wished to be seen to regret that at last he had left the political stage. In truth it was hard to feel very sorry for Brezhnev. When he had succeeded Khrushchev, he was still a vigorous politician who expected to make the party and government work more effectively. He had not been inactive; he had not been entirely inflexible. But his General Secretaryship had turned into a ceremonial reign that had brought communism into its deepest contempt since 1917.

22 Towards Reform (1982–1985)

Yuri Andropov had played an astute hand in the last months of Brezhnev’s life, and it was he who was chosen by the Politburo as the new General Secretary on 12 November 1982. He had waited many years to occupy the supreme party office and had no intention of governing in the fashion of Brezhnev. Andropov believed changes in policy to be vital.

As General Secretary, however, he had to take feelings in the Politburo into account. The Politburo contained a rump of Brezhnev’s promotees who could cause him trouble: Tikhonov, Shcherbytskiy, Grishin and Chernenko had an iron-plated complacency about current policies and disliked virtually any proposal for change. Yet several other influential members of the Politburo, Dmitri Ustinov and Andrei Gromyko, did not stand in Andropov’s way when he demanded a modification of official policies. Ustinov had been Defence Minister since 1976, Gromyko had led the Foreign Affairs Ministry since 1957. With their acquiescence, Andropov intensified his campaign against corruption. Political and social discipline, he argued, were the prerequisites for economic expansion — and economic expansion was needed if the Soviet standard of living was to be raised and military parity with the USA to be retained.

Andropov was the brightest party leader of his generation. Born in 1914, he was of Cossack descent.¹ He had a conventional background except inasmuch as his father had been a railway administrator and not a worker. He quickly rose up the hierarchy of the Komsomol and the party; by the end of the Second World War he was second party secretary for the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic. The post-war purges of communist functionaries in Leningrad had repercussions in that republic and many of Andropov’s colleagues were