To the Editor:
It is easy to agree with Richard Pipes in “Gorbachev’s Russia: Breakdown or Crackdown?” [March] that the collapse of the Soviet empire is due to force of circumstance rather than a sudden conversion of Gorbachev to democratic liberalism, a miracle only to be rivaled in history by Constantine’s embrace of Christianity. Beyond that, unfortunately, Mr. Pipes appears as guilty of unintentionally allowing ideology to distort facts as the “dovish” intellectuals he so rightly excoriates.
Given his exclusion of the Gorbachev “miracle” thesis, the gravamen of Mr. Pipes’s argument turns on explaining what unique circumstances arose during the 1980’s that led to the implosion of Soviet power in 1989, rather than happening at some earlier date or never happening at all. The factors he puts forth do not answer the question. Moral bankruptcy? The crimes of Stalin and the party he embodied were already denounced by Khrushchev in 1963. Restiveness in Eastern Europe? This part of the Soviet empire never ceased being in open or passive rebellion since Soviet occupation during World War II. Economic backwardness? The Soviet economy in the 1980’s was certainly no worse, if not markedly better, than under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev.
The unique and obvious factor, of course, was the Soviet military debacle in Afghanistan. For the first time since World War II, the Soviets committed their own forces outside the immediate Communist orbit. To everyone’s surprise, both East and West, the leaderless, primitively armed, and outmanned Afghan mujaheddin began decimating the vaunted Red Army at an alarming rate. After seven years of strenuous effort, including unprecedented atrocities against civilians, the Soviets ran out of bombs and booby-trapped children’s toys. They were forced to turn tail. The fact that the Kremlin emperor no longer wore bulletproof clothes was not lost on his captive subjects. The rest, as they say, is history.
It thus seems utterly amazing, in the course of a long article which expatiates on such matters as British Labor party politics in the 1920’s, that Mr. Pipes finds no room at all to mention the Soviet military defeat in Afghanistan. . . . Why would he commit so glaring a lapse? We must assume the reason to be a psychological inhibition; the facts surrounding Afghanistan fit so poorly with the ideological thesis he is most anxious to prove. This thesis is stated forthrightly and up front: i.e., some time around 1980, according to Mr. Pipes, the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher ushered in a new spirit of genuine liberalism, characterized by impatience with “the burden of supporting the less productive elements in society.” This, in turn, helped spark the seminal revolt in Poland, where . . . “Solidarity espoused the very ideals that the left-wing intellectuals in the West labeled neoconservative: its heroes were Thatcher and Reagan.”
So much for the ideology: now to the facts. It turns out that in the alleged watershed year of 1980, Margaret Thatcher and her French and German friends had other things on their minds than inspiring Solidarity. They were at that time busy undermining and profiting from the agricultural and industrial sanctions invoked by President Carter in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Furthermore, anyone active in government during this period—including Mr. Pipes—was well aware that a sword of Damocles hung over the new-fledged Solidarity movement. Just as soon as the West signaled its acquiescence by agreeing to the huge Siberian gas-pipeline deal, paid for in advance and guaranteeing the Soviets billions in hard-currency earnings, Solidarity would be promptly squashed. And so it happened, on the Sunday following the signing ceremony presided over by Leonid Brezhnev and Helmut Schmidt.
To make matters worse, it was Mrs. Thatcher who personally nailed Solidarity’s coffin shut by being the first to break the embargo on the reexport of gas compressors, which the Reagan administration belatedly threw up in an attempt to stop the gas, and Polish blood, from flowing. Being fully aware of all this, for Mr. Pipes now to state that someone like Lech Walesa would consider Mrs. Thatcher a hero—when she so clearly valued his life and cause far less than the profits to be gotten from the sale of gas machinery—verges close to the obscene.
As for Mr. Pipes’s other hero of the age, Ronald Reagan, perhaps the best that could be said is that he was too “preoccupied” to know which of the warring factions of his administration to support during the pipeline imbroglio. But . . . he, too, eventually joined the rest in shoring up the teetering Soviet empire by selling it wheat at subsidized prices. . . .
The mujaheddin and Solidarity, the precipitating agents of the Soviet collapse, lived to fight another day not because of, but rather despite, the doings of Thatcher and Reagan. On the other hand, the much despised Jimmy Carter might be seen as something of a hero or martyr; it was he alone who was willing to take real economic hits and risk popular support in reacting to Soviet aggression. And let us also not forget the Democratic-controlled Congress which year after year slogged for the thing that really mattered in the end—military aid to the mujaheddin—while Reagan hared off after outrageously expensive gadgets like Star Wars and B-2 bombers. These ultimately proved to be of no consequence, save to the pockets of American taxpayers and defense contractors. . . .
I count myself a proud member of the neoconservative movement, . . . and I do not ask Mr. Pipes to replace the images of Reagan and Thatcher with those of Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neill in the neoconservative pantheon. Perhaps the pedestals should remain vacant for the moment. What I do urge is that he stop contributing to the absurd, if modish, notion that somehow history either stopped or is now permanently on our side, and all that is left on the neoconservative agenda is to bask in the roseate, but false, glow of the Reagan presidency. . . .
Allen S. Greenberg
Bethesda, Maryland
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To the Editor:
To Richard Pipes’s question, “Breakdown or Crackdown?,” I am inclined to answer “crackdown.”
One of the more amazing constants of Soviet history is that the Soviet regime has always managed to win out over its adversaries despite hopeless odds. The Soviet regime faced collapse in 1921, 1932, and 1941-43, and yet it triumphed. Internal crises are not limited to the period before 1945, either. There were widespread revolts in the gulag in the late 40’s, and in 1968, to quote Vladimir Bukovsky, “Entire nationalities threatened to rise in revolt, challenging the very existence of the last colonial empire.”
The Soviet Union has always answered such crises with brutality. It has also used deception to hide preparations for a crackdown. . . .
What should be universally clear by now is that Gorbachev’s primary goal is amassing all the power he can possibly get. He also wants to keep Eastern Europe and the rest of the Soviet empire. His policy toward Afghanistan reveals a great deal about Gorbachev’s words and deeds, and about Western perceptions. He withdrew the troops sent there in 1979, but increased military aid greatly to a point where the Soviet Union is now spending considerably more money in Afghanistan than it did during the invasion (a fact that cuts the ground out of claims that the Soviets withdrew because they could no longer afford the cost of the war). . . .
There is no way any transition in the Soviet Union from totalitarianism will be peaceful. Eventually, Gorbachev will have to fight. Whenever this happens, it will be bad news for Europe, because internal crisis and repression in the Soviet Union have traditionally gone hand in hand with foreign imperialism. The invasion of Poland in 1920, the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, the invasion of East Germany in 1953, of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and of Afghanistan in 1979 all followed upon or occurred during periods of grave crisis and/or internal repression.
Michael Daly
Wakefield, Massachusetts
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To the Editor:
. . . It seems to me that, in comparing the U.S. and Soviet educational systems, Richard Pipes carries his denigration of the Soviet Union a bit too far. That American youngsters have twelve years of elementary and secondary schooling while Soviet youngsters have only nine matters less than what the students know at the end of their schooling. And as observers have noted in recent years, too many U.S. youngsters know appallingly little after twelve years of schooling. My parents and other relatives who had only the six years of free schooling that His Royal Majesty provided for his loyal Irish subjects at the turn of the century, for example, could write better than some students I have taught in freshman composition classes at two Midwestern universities.
Mr. Pipes’s statement that 15 percent of Soviet youth go on to institutions of higher education compared with 34 percent in the United States is similarly misleading. In Great Britain, France, and West Germany, too, the percentage of students going on to institutions of higher education is smaller than in the United States, because rigorous national examinations screen out many who in the United States would be admitted to college. Yet if colleges must conduct courses in remedial reading and remedial writing, as they must in this country, then they are not in those instances functioning as institutions of higher learning, and the students taking such courses have not gone on to higher learning. . . .
John Maher
Michigan City, Indiana
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To the Editor:
I marveled at Richard Pipes’s discovery of assorted pearls of wisdom from John Kenneth Galbraith, Seweryn Bialer, and other prominent liberal commentators on the USSR. He might have added to his collection the reflections of one of our more telegenic liberal commentators, Princeton’s Stephen F. Cohen.
While Bialer and Galbraith’s understanding of the USSR’s economic success preceded official Soviet revelations to the contrary, Cohen’s insights came four years after Gorbachev began exposing the full extent of the Soviet catastrophe. In an interview in the May 1989 issue of Kommunist, the central theoretical organ of the Soviet Communist party, Cohen told Soviet readers that:
In America there is more democracy than “universal welfare.” We have, say, no comprehensive system of medical insurance. Medical care is extraordinarily expensive. With you it is otherwise. Perhaps your medicine is not the best quality but it is free for the entire society In other words, you have created a vast “universal welfare state,” although not the very best one. At the same time, excuse me, you have not very much democracy.
It is a comforting sign of the times that while this analysis may appeal in this country to readers of the Nation, for which Cohen also writes, today even among readers of Kommunist there are few who would subscribe to this extraordinary tribute to the Soviet welfare state.
Gabriel Schoenfeld
Russian Research Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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To the Editor:
At the conclusion of his article, Richard Pipes writes that “as power slips from the [Communist] party’s hands, politics may become polarized between the forces of reaction and those of anarchy and separatism.” That scenario is certainly possible, but I think it is less likely than one in which the Soviet Union, after a certain amount of internal strife, comes roughly to resemble a Western democracy. It will also be transformed in another way, becoming a confederation of loosely connected states—a kind of backward Eastern version of the European Community.
To be sure, anti-democratic forces obviously still exist in the Soviet Union. How strong are they? Perhaps the most pervasive antidemocratic force is Leninist inertia and resentment—the strong feeling on the part of millions of diehard party bureaucrats that Gorbachev is making life miserable for them. Yet though these people can grumble and even sabotage some of Gorbachev’s reforms, ultimately they are powerless because they are unpopular; they are usually defeated in elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies. Many Western observers, for example, have made much of the potential threat to Gorbachev by Yegor Ligachev, who is considered to be the spokesman for the Leninist apparatus, but the Soviet chess champion Gary Kasparov said recently that “it is a joke to imagine that Mr. Gorbachev is in some kind of danger from Mr. Ligachev. Whenever there is a conflict among Soviet leaders, Gorbachev wins easily.” . . .
What about those Leninists who rally behind the flag of Russian nationalism, Leninists who advocate a kind of neo-Stalinist Russian-nationalist medicine for what ails the Soviet Union? Certainly, in recent months the Russian nationalists—especially the xenophobic anti-Semitic group Pamyat—have been very active, with their words and sometimes with their fists. In Literaturnaya Rossiya, the Soviet journal that is most receptive to their views, Russian nationalists regularly utter the cry: “Who lost Eastern Europe?” They blame the disintegration of the Soviet empire on the Westernizing reforms of Gorbachev. But even though this nationalist-cum-Stalinist ideology has more potency than simple old-fashioned Leninism, it too remains politically weak. No doubt many Russians support a watered-down version of Russian nationalism—protecting the environment as well as restoring their cultural heritage—but most look to the West for their ideas about how the USSR should be governed.
Politically weak though they are, however, what if the forces of reaction were to line up with the military and KGB, urging a takeover to prevent further loss of empire and further internal disorder? Certainly this is a greater possibility than the previous scenarios because it depends on the use of force, not public opinion. Moreover, the Soviet military is unhappy with many of Gorbachev’s reforms and is becoming more vocal about its unhappiness. . . .
But even granting that the military worries Gorbachev—and recently he has gone out of his way to praise them—is the army likely to join with the KGB in an effort to seize power? The answer is no, because the military knows that a takeover would only exacerbate whatever problems the Soviet Union currently has. The USSR’s overwhelming array of domestic problems—from food shortages to shortages of medical supplies—cannot be resolved by military fiat. The interethnic conflict, which has led to increased desertions and a growing number of draft dodgers, does not lend itself to a military solution, for example. Nor can the military do anything about its own technological backwardness. The weakness of the Soviet military can only be solved by economic and political means.
If it is unlikely that Gorbachev will be forced from power either by disaffected party members or by a military-KGB coup, what about Gorbachev himself? What is he going to do with all the power he has amassed? Many observers have pointed out that the presidential system of government he has now created has given him extraordinary power. No one knows how he will use this power, but if he is serious about the “radicalization of economic reform”—which he said was one of his most urgent tasks as president—then he cannot afford to play the tyrant. Given the half-measures of perestroika, some Western observers are skeptical that Gorbachev will truly pursue radical economic reform, but it does seem that this time he is going to move full steam ahead. In recent weeks he has spoken of creating “market relations,” and the man he appointed as his personal adviser on economics, Nikolai Petrakov, is known as a kind of Russian Milton Friedman. According to many observers, what Gorbachev has in mind is an approach to economic reform that is similar to Poland’s.
But the radical reforms now under way in Poland would hardly have been possible if the Polish government did not have the legitimacy earned through a popular vote. Gorbachev has no such legitimacy. Yet in order to build support for painful reforms, he has no choice but to try to court popular and parliamentary opinion. Though the Congress of People’s Deputies is still a weak force, it is likely to get stronger and stronger as the deputies begin to organize. Already on March 31, Tass reported that 170 deputies had met to discuss the formation of a “Democratic Russia” political bloc, and almost all the prominent public and political figures of democratic leaning in the Russian republic have now joined this bloc. On the same day Tass also announced that the Liberal Democratic party held its founding congress in Moscow, with party leaders claiming some 3,000 members.
Gorbachev could attempt to ignore this growing civil society—or even threaten to make it impotent, since he can issue decrees with binding force throughout the USSR. But if he continually invokes his strong executive powers, he will risk undermining his radical economic program.
Some believe that even if Gorbachev encouraged the growth of civil society, his economic program might run into trouble for another reason: the so-called Russian character. Russians, it is often said, have a primitive political culture; they are used to directives from above; they find parliamentary democracy anarchic. And since they have never experienced a market economy, they will be disturbed by the resultant inequality of income, leading eventually to a backlash which will strengthen the hand of the Leninists and the nationalists.
This kind of analysis does Russians an injustice. Though they have no experience of living in a democratic society, they have now come to know that there are two kinds of income inequality—that of the West, which is based on market forces, and that of their own country, which is based on party privileges. Surely most Russians would prefer the kind of inequality that puts food on the table.
The final factor that could wreck the transition to some kind of democratic system is the nationality question. It is certainly true that nationality problems continue to be a big headache for Gorbachev, and it is also true that anti-Russian sentiment on the part of different ethnic groups is already resulting in a resurgence of Russian imperial feeling—that is, a call to strengthen the military and the party in order to put the Soviet house in order and teach those ungrateful non-Russians a thing or two.
But most Russian nationalists, I daresay, know that a reassertion of Soviet imperial power is wishful thinking, . . . and even they are coming to the conclusion that the Soviet empire has exacted a terrible price from the Russians.
Certainly, the current struggle between the Lithuanians and the Kremlin is an ominous sign that the predominantly Russian leaders of the Soviet Union are reluctant to shed their empire, but to my mind Gorbachev’s maneuvers here are essentially a defensive reaction, a way to make the breakup of the Soviet Union proceed in a seemly and orderly way—one that does not provoke a Stalinist-nationalist reaction. Vasilii Selyunin, a Soviet writer who has accurately predicted a number of recent developments in the USSR, said recently that by the turn of the century there will probably be a loose confederation consisting of Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Georgia, Armenia, and perhaps Moldavia.
There is also concrete evidence that many Russians are simply giving up on the empire—moving from the republics back to Russia, . . . and this exodus is likely to increase in the near future.
In short, the dynamics at work in the Soviet Union are in the main positive—a desire to throw out the Leninist diehards, an awareness that the average man fares better in democratic market-oriented societies, and a realization that the empire has not been good for many Russians, despite the fact that they have chiefly been its rulers.
This view may seem Pollyannaish to some, but it is based on an assessment not only of what the Soviet people think but also of what drives Gorbachev and his advisers. They may have no desire to usher in Russian democracy, but they also know that if the Soviet Union does not institute radical economic reforms—to strengthen its weakening credit rating and attract Western capital—its military power will in some respects diminish, its standard of living will get even worse, its supply of energy will become precarious, and its environmental situation will remain catastrophic. And radical economic reforms will inevitably bring democracy in their wake.
Stephen Miller
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Washington, D.C.
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Richard Pipes writes:
I know of no evidence that the defeat in Afghanistan was the critical event causing Moscow fundamentally to alter its domestic and foreign policies, as Allen S. Greenberg would have us believe. To be sure, it was an unpopular and humiliating war, but if the regime had enjoyed internal stability and economic progress, it could have gone on for many more years. At any rate, none of the Soviet sources I have read and none of the Soviet personalities I have talked to, official as well as dissident, agrees with Mr. Greenberg’s thesis that the Afghan debacle was the “unique and obvious factor” behind Gorbachev’s turnabout. Nor do I think the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan because they had run out of “bombs and booby-trapped children’s toys.” They seem to lack no weapons of destruction to supply the quisling government they have left behind.
It is clear that Mr. Greenberg is disappointed with both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and not entirely without cause. But I did not give them credit, as he erroneously claims, for “help[ing] spark” Solidarity. In my article I noted that the process of emancipation from the socialist and bureaucratic mentality ran a parallel course in the West and East: “a process similar in effect although different in origin” were the words I used.
In deriding President Reagan’s policies in 1981-82, Mr. Greenberg conveniently forgets the sanctions which Reagan and Reagan alone of the world’s statesmen imposed on Poland and the USSR as punishment for the suppression of Solidarity. Mr. Greenberg only remembers their lifting. But it was precisely Reagan’s punitive measures that made him a hero to millions of Poles. I happen to have been closely involved in the decision to enforce an embargo on pipeline compressors and I can assure Mr. Greenberg that the President was not “too ‘preoccupied’” to involve himself, but made the decision personally against considerable opposition in the cabinet.
As for the “end of history,” there is nothing in my article or in any of my other writings to suggest that I subscribe to this sophomoric notion. The purpose of my article was precisely the opposite: to warn that history is always open-ended and can only be given meaning retrospectively.
It is true, as Michael Daly argues, that the Soviet leadership has managed in the past to overcome all of its domestic crises. And it may, indeed, do so again. But the difference between now and then is that, until recently, the Communist party enjoyed unlimited and effective power. That power rapidly eroded after 1985. Since then, the Communist party has been repeatedly unable to have its way. The fact that Gorbachev has shifted his nominal power base from the party to the state is the most telling evidence of a need to find another vehicle for administering the country. Whether he will succeed in transforming the party-based dictatorship, constrained by the Politburo, into a state-based one, only mildly inhibited by semi-representative bodies, remains to be seen. Right now the Soviet Union has a curious dyarchy which reminds one more of the Provisional Government of 1917 than of the regimes of Lenin and his successors.
John Maher deduces from the fact that U.S. students are ill-informed that Soviet students, because there are proportionately fewer of them, are superior. But surely this is false logic; it leads one to argue that the fewer the young people who attend schools, the better educated they are. The Soviet source from which I quoted made no such claims. Soviet youths who emigrate to this country do not seem especially better prepared than our own. I suspect that the decline of educational standards is worldwide.
I wish that Gabriel Schoenfeld or someone like him would compile an anthology of liberal inanities about Communism and the Soviet Union. Translated and published in the USSR, it would bring many moments of joy to the inhabitants of that unfortunate country.
