Mastering Modern World History

by Norman Lowe

  The one section of the economy which was successful was the production of military hardware. By the early 1970s the USSR had caught up with the USA in numbers of intercontinental missiles, and had developed a new weapon, the anti-ballistic missile (ABM). Unfortunately, the arms race did not stop there – the Americans continued to produce even more deadly missiles, and at each step, the USSR strained to draw level again. This was the basic problem of the Soviet economy – defence spending was so vast that the civilian areas of the economy were deprived of the necessary investment to keep them up to date.

  2 The Eastern bloc

  The Eastern bloc states were expected to obey Moscow’s wishes and to maintain their existing structure. When liberal trends developed in Czechoslovakia (especially the abolition of press censorship), a massive invasion took place by Russian and other Warsaw Pact troops. The reforming government of Dubček was replaced by a strongly centralized, pro-Moscow regime (1968) (see Section 10.5(e)). Soon afterwards Brezhnev declared the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine: according to this, intervention in the internal affairs of any communist country was justified if socialism in that country was considered to be threatened. This caused some friction with Romania, which had always tried to maintain some independence, refusing to send troops into Czechoslovakia and keeping on good terms with China. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan (1979) was the most blatant application of the doctrine, while more subtle pressures were brought to bear on Poland (1981) to control the independent trade union movement, Solidarity (see Section 10.5(f)).

  3 Social policy and human rights

  Brezhnev genuinely wanted the workers to be better-off and more comfortable, and there is no doubt that life improved for most people during these years. Unemployment was almost eliminated and there was a full programme of social security. The increasing amount of accommodation enabled millions of people to move from communal apartments to single-family flats.

  However, personal freedom became more limited. For instance, by 1970 it was impossible to get any writings published which were critical of Stalin. Historians such as Roy Medvedev and Viktor Danilov had their latest books banned, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, after the success of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, found that his next two novels, The First Circle and Cancer Ward, were rejected. He was expelled from the writers’ union, which meant that it was impossible for him to publish in the USSR.

  The KGB (secret police) were now using a new technique to deal with ‘troublemakers’ – they were confined in psychiatric hospitals or mental asylums, where some were kept for many years. In May 1970 the biologist and writer Zhores Medvedev, Roy’s twin brother, was locked up in a mental hospital and diagnosed as suffering from ‘creeping schizophrenia’; the real reason was that his writings were considered to be anti-Soviet. This sort of treatment made reform-minded intellectuals more determined to persevere. A Human Rights Committee was formed by the physicists Andrei Sakharov and Valeri Chalidze, to protest about conditions in labour camps and prisons, and to demand free speech and all the other rights promised in the constitution. Writers began to circulate works in typescript around their little groups, a practice known as samizdat – self-publishing.

  The Human Rights Committee gained a new weapon in 1975 when the USSR, along with the USA and other nations, signed the Helsinki Final Treaty. Among other things, this provided for economic and scientific cooperation between East and West, as well as full human rights. Brezhnev claimed to be in favour of the treaty, and appeared to make important concessions about human rights in the USSR, but in fact little progress was made. Groups were set up to check whether the terms of the agreement were being kept, but the authorities put them under intense pressure. Their members were arrested, imprisoned, exiled or deported, and finally the groups were dissolved altogether. Only Sakharov was spared, because he was so internationally renowned that there would have been a worldwide outcry had he been arrested. He was sent into internal exile in Gorky and later in Siberia.

  4 Foreign policy

  ‘Peaceful coexistence’ was the only Khrushchev initiative which was continued during the Brezhnev period. The Russians were anxious for détente, especially as relations with China deteriorated almost to the point of open warfare in 1969. But after 1979 relations with the West deteriorated sharply as a result of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Brezhnev continued to advocate disarmament but presided over a rapid increase in Soviet armed forces, particularly the navy and the new SS-20 missiles (see Section 7.4(c)). He stepped up Soviet aid to Cuba and offered aid to Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.

  (b) Andropov and Chernenko

  After Brezhnev’s death in 1982, Russia was ruled for a short period by two elderly and ailing politicians – Yuri Andropov (November 1982–February 1984) and then Konstantin Chernenko (February 1984–March 1985). Head of the KGB until May 1982, Andropov immediately launched a vigorous campaign to modernize and streamline the Soviet system. He began an anti-corruption drive and introduced a programme of economic reform, hoping to increase production by encouraging decentralization. Some of the older party officials were replaced with younger, more go-ahead men. Unfortunately Andropov was dogged by ill health and died after little more than a year in office.

  The 72-year-old Chernenko was a more conventional type of Soviet politician; he owed his rise to the fact that for many years he had been Brezhnev’s personal assistant, and he was already terminally ill when he was chosen as next leader by the Politburo. Clearly the majority wanted somebody who would abandon the anti-corruption campaign and leave them in peace. There was no relaxation in the treatment of human rights activists. Sakharov was still kept in exile in Siberia (where he had been since 1980), in spite of appeals by western leaders for his release. Members of an unofficial trade union, supporters of a group ‘for the establishment of trust between the USSR and the USA’ and members of unofficial religious groups were all arrested. This was how Dmitri Volkogonov (in The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire) summed up Chernenko’s 13 months in power: ‘Chernenko was not capable of leading the country or the party into the future. His rise to power symbolized the deepening of the crisis in society, the total lack of positive ideas in the party, and the inevitability of the convulsions to come.’

  18.3 GORBACHEV AND THE END OF COMMUNIST RULE

  Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in March 1985, was, at 54, the most gifted and dynamic leader Russia had seen for many years. He was determined to transform and revitalize the country after the sterile years following Khrushchev’s fall. He intended to achieve this by modernizing and streamlining the Communist Party with new policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring – of the Party, the economy and the government). The new thinking soon made an impact on foreign affairs, with initiatives on détente, relations with China, a withdrawal from Afghanistan and ultimately the ending of the Cold War in late 1990 (see Section 8.6).

  Gorbachev outlined what was wrong at home in a speech to the Party Conference in 1988: the system was too centralized, leaving no room for local individual initiative. It was a ‘command’ economy, based almost completely on state ownership and control, and weighted strongly towards defence and heavy industry, leaving consumer goods for ordinary people in short supply. Gorbachev did not want to end communism; he wanted to replace the existing system, which was still basically Stalinist, with a socialist system which was humane and democratic. He sincerely believed that this could be achieved within the framework of the Marxist–Leninist one-party state. He did not have the same success at home as abroad. His policies failed to provide results quickly enough, and led to the collapse of communism, the break-up of the USSR, and the end of his own political career.

  (a) Gorbachev’s new policies

  1 Glasnost

  Glasnost was soon seen in areas such as human rights and cultural affairs. Several well-known dissidents were released, and the Sakharovs were allowed to return to Moscow from internal exile in Gorky (December 1986). Leaders like Buk
harin, who had been disgraced and executed during Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, were declared innocent of all crimes. Pravda was allowed to print an article criticizing Brezhnev for overreacting against dissidents, and a new law was introduced to prevent dissidents from being sent to mental institutions (January 1988). Important political events like the Nineteenth Party Conference in 1988 and the first session of the new Congress of People’s Deputies (May 1989) were televised.

  In cultural matters and the media generally, there were some startling developments. In May 1986 both the Union of Soviet Film-makers and the Union of Writers were allowed to sack their reactionary heads and elect more independent-minded leaders. Long-banned anti-Stalin films and novels were shown and published, and preparations were made to publish works by the great poet Osip Mandelstam, who died in a labour camp in 1938.

  There was a new freedom in news reporting: in April 1986, for example, when a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine exploded, killing hundreds of people and releasing a massive radioactive cloud which drifted across most of Europe, the disaster was discussed with unprecedented frankness. The aims of this new approach were to use the media to publicize the inefficiency and corruption which the government was so anxious to stamp out, to educate public opinion and to mobilize support for the new policies. Glasnost was encouraged provided nobody criticized the Party itself.

  2 Economic affairs

  Important changes were soon afoot. In November 1986 Gorbachev announced that 1987 was to be ‘the year for broad applications of the new methods of economic management’. Small-scale private enterprise such as family restaurants, family businesses making clothes or handicrafts or providing services such as car and television repairs, painting and decorating and private tuition, was to be allowed, and so were workers’ co-operatives up to a maximum of 50 workers. One motive behind this reform was the desire to provide competition for the slow and inefficient services provided by the state, in the hope of stimulating a rapid improvement. Another was the need to provide alternative jobs as patterns of employment changed over the following decade: it was clear that as more automation and computerization were introduced into factories and offices, the need for manual and clerical workers would decline.

  Another important change was that responsibility for quality control throughout industry as a whole was to be taken over by independent state bodies rather than factory management. The most important part of the reforms was the Law on State Enterprises (June 1987); this removed the central planners’ total control over raw materials, production quotas and trade, and made factories work to orders from customers.

  3 Political changes

  These began in January 1987 when Gorbachev announced moves towards democracy within the Party. Instead of members of local soviets being appointed by the local Communist Party, they were to be elected by the people, and there was to be a choice of candidates (though not of parties). There were to be secret elections for top party positions, and elections in factories to choose managers.

  During 1988 dramatic changes in central government were achieved. The old parliament (Supreme Soviet) of around 1450 deputies only met for about two weeks each year. Its function was to elect two smaller bodies – the Praesidium (33 members) and the Council of Ministers (71 members). It was these two committees which took all important decisions and saw that policies were carried out. Now the Supreme Soviet was to be replaced by a Congress of People’s Deputies (2250 members), whose main function was to elect a new and much smaller Supreme Soviet (450 representatives), which would be a proper working parliament, sitting for about eight months a year. The chairman of the Supreme Soviet would be head of state.

  Elections went ahead, and the first Congress of People’s Deputies met in May 1989. Well-known figures elected included Roy Medvedev, Andrei Sakharov and Boris Yeltsin. This was a dramatic comeback for Yeltsin, who had been sacked as Moscow first secretary and forced to resign from the Politburo by the conservatives (traditionalists) in the Party in November 1987. During the second session (December 1989) it was decided that reserved seats for the Communist Party should be abolished. Gorbachev was elected president of the Soviet Union (March 1990), with two councils to advise and help him: one contained his own personal advisers, the other contained representatives from the 15 republics. These new bodies completely sidelined the old system, and it meant that the Communist Party was on the verge of losing its privileged position. At the next election, due in 1994, even Gorbachev would have to stand and put himself to the test of a popular vote.

  (b) What went wrong with Gorbachev’s policies?

  1 Opposition from radicals and conservatives

  As the reforms got under way, Gorbachev ran into problems. Some party members, such as Boris Yeltsin, were more radical than Gorbachev, and felt that the reforms were not drastic enough. They wanted a change to a western-style market economy as quickly as possible, though they knew this would cause great short-term hardship for the Russian people. On the other hand, the conservatives, like Yegor Ligachev, felt that the changes were too drastic and that the Party was in danger of losing control. This caused a dangerous split in the Party and made it difficult for Gorbachev to satisfy either group. Although he had some sympathy with Yeltsin’s views, he could not afford to side with Yeltsin against Ligachev, because Ligachev controlled the party apparatus.

  The conservatives were in a large majority, and when the Congress of People’s Deputies elected the new Supreme Soviet (May 1989), it was packed with conservatives; Yeltsin and many other radicals were not elected. This led to massive protest demonstrations in Moscow, where Yeltsin was a popular figure, since he had cleaned up the corrupt Moscow Communist Party organization. Demonstrations would not have been allowed before Gorbachev’s time, but glasnost – encouraging people to voice their criticisms – was now in full flow, and was beginning to turn against the Communist Party.

  2 The economic reforms did not produce results quickly enough

  The rate of economic growth in 1988 and 1989 stayed exactly the same as it had been in previous years. In 1990 national income actually fell, and continued to fall – by about 15 per cent – in 1991. Some economists think that the USSR was going through an economic crisis as serious as the one in the USA in the early 1930s.

  A major cause of the crisis was the disastrous results of the Law on State Enterprises. The problem was that wages were now dependent on output, but since output was measured by its value in roubles, factories were tempted not to increase overall output, but to concentrate on more expensive goods and reduce output of cheaper goods. This led to higher wages, forcing the government to print more money to pay them with. Inflation soared, and so did the government’s budget deficit. Basic goods such as soap, washing-powder, razor-blades, cups and saucers, TV sets and food were in very short supply, and the queues in the towns got longer.

  Disillusion with Gorbachev and his reforms rapidly set in, and, having had their expectations raised by his promises, people became outraged at the shortages. In July 1989 some coal miners in Siberia found there was no soap to wash themselves with at the end of their shift. ‘What kind of a regime is it’, they asked, ‘if we can’t even get washed?’ After staging a sit-in, they decided to go on strike; they were quickly joined by other miners in Siberia, in Kazakhstan and in the Donbass (Ukraine), the biggest coalmining area in the USSR, until half a million miners were on strike. It was the first major strike since 1917. The miners were well disciplined and organized, holding mass meetings outside party headquarters in the main towns. They put forward detailed demands, 42 in all. These included better living and working conditions, better supplies of food, a share in the profits and more local control over the mines. Later, influenced by what was happening in Poland (where a non-communist president had just been elected – see Section 10.6(c)), they called for independent trade unions like Poland’s Solidarity, and in some areas they demanded an end to the privileged position of the Communist Party. The government soon gave wa
y and granted many of the demands, promising a complete reorganization of the industry and full local control.

  By the end of July the strike was over, but the general economic situation did not improve. Early in 1990 it was calculated that about a quarter of the population was living below the poverty line; worst affected were those with large families, the unemployed and pensioners. Gorbachev was fast losing control of the reform movement which he had started, and the success of the miners was bound to encourage the radicals to press for even more far-reaching changes.

  3 Nationalist pressures

  These also contributed towards Gorbachev’s failure and led to the break-up of the USSR. The Soviet Union was a federal state consisting of 15 separate republics, each with its own parliament. The Russian republic was just one of the 15, with its parliament in Moscow (Moscow was also the meeting place for the federal Supreme Soviet and Congress of People’s Deputies). The republics had been kept under tight control since Stalin’s time, but glasnost and perestroika encouraged them to hope for more powers for their parliaments and more independence from Moscow. Gorbachev himself seemed sympathetic, provided that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) remained in overall control. However, once started, demands got out of hand.

  Trouble began in Nagorno-Karabakh, a small Christian autonomous republic within the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, which was Muslim. The parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh asked to become part of neighbouring Christian Armenia (February 1988), but Gorbachev refused. He was afraid that if he agreed, this would upset the conservatives (who opposed internal frontier changes) and turn them against his entire reform programme. Fighting broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Moscow had clearly lost control.

  Worse was to follow in the three Baltic soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which had been taken over against their will by the Russians in 1940. Independence movements, denounced by Gorbachev as ‘national excesses’, had been growing in strength. In March 1990, encouraged by what was happening in the satellite states of eastern Europe, Lithuania took the lead by declaring itself independent. The other two soon followed, though they voted to proceed more gradually. Moscow refused to recognize their independence.