by Norman Stone
One challenge to this might occur: criticism by educated people behind the scenes. It was here that the kitchen table played its part, and of course the KGB knew very well what was happening, whether because of bugged conversations or because their own families joined in. Andropov was well aware, for instance, that young people were performing the theatre of the absurd — Beckett, Ionesco or Pinter, for instance — at home, and reported as much to (of all things) the Politburo. The immediate answer was to attempt diversions, bogus controversies in journals and the like. There was also a ‘Talmud’ of 400 forbidden subjects such as the statistics of infant mortality (the census was stopped) or grain output. The relative freedom of Khrushchev’s time went. A challenging historian, Alexandr Nekrich, was exiled for telling the truth about the terrible disasters of 1941. P. N. Volobuyev, head of the Academy’s Institute of History, had impressed his Western hosts in the sixties, and was dismissed. There had been a clever historian of the central question of Tsarist Russia, the agrarian one — A. A. Tarnovsky. He had contributed to a multivolume series on Russia’s history that was not bad at all. He was packed off to Siberia as a schoolteacher, and the orthodoxy was maintained by one S. P. Trapeznikov, who recycled Lenin on radiant-tomorrow lines. Tarnovsky is said to have died of drink. Curiously enough the Central Asian historians suffered less, and rehabilitated their nations.
In 1980 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected to the Politburo, by twenty years its youngest member. There had been signs of a rethink in the system, but at the top level it carried on much as before. The Olympic Games were the last old-fashioned piece of triumphalism and by now Brezhnev was only just capable of doing his job. He died in November 1982 and was succeeded by another piece of old furniture, in this case the KGB’s Andropov, who had once crushed Budapest and in the seventies had had charge of persecuting the dissidents, especially Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He was sixty-eight, and soon fell badly ill, dying in February 1984. In turn he was succeeded by old Konstantin Chernenko, the protégé of Brezhnev, himself elderly and suffering from emphysema. He died in March 1985, and Gorbachev at last emerged. His supporters were the institutchiki, men who made a proper study of ‘capitalism’ in the USA or western Europe, were fluent in the languages and knew the factual background. In the seventies, as part of the détente strategy, new institutes had been set up, for the study of the world economy or international relations in general, and they did not have illusions. Viktor Dakhichev became quite outspoken, as had Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Alexey Adzhubey before him, to the effect that West Germany could be cultivated: why wreck relations with that economic giant for the sake of useless lumber in Brandenburg and Saxony? Or Yevgeney Primakov, in the Institute of Social Sciences that trained people from the Third World, himself a fluent speaker of Arabic and Persian, who could easily see that the USSR was getting nowhere in a Middle East that found it repulsive and backward. In the Central Committee machine, the International Department, successor of the Comintern, men argued for a new course in foreign affairs. Relations with the European Left had led nowhere: NATO had survived the lengthy campaign against the placing of missiles in Germany. That department had been run for a generation by Boris Ponomarev, and no doubt its support for Gorbachev was part of a campaign to unseat that old man, which in 1985 duly happened. After that, there were new faces: Georgy Arbatov for the USA, or Aleksandr Yakovlev, sidelined in the foreign ministry, both of them fluent in English and flexible in manner; Gennady Gerasimov, Georgy Shakhnazarov and Fyodor Burlatsky had all been modernizers associated with Andropov. It was in its way ‘police liberalism’, which went back to Beria. The KGB knew how far things had gone wrong, and, with a view to shaking up the old men, saw that a degree of public criticism and respect for law would be helpful, quite apart from the good impression to be made abroad. The Party and the KGB had had a host-parasite relationship, even (terms changed) before 1914. Now, the parasite was given responsibility.
Gorbachev himself was not really as revolutionary a figure as these men sometimes claimed. He had climbed the Party ladder from the provinces — Stavropol in the south — as head of personnel in 1963, then, in 1966, as deputy secretary. He did not have foreign languages, but he did have a wife who, as the crack ran, weighed less than himself, and she was educated. His protector, Fyodor Kulakov, regularly met Soviet leaders, such as Suslov and Kosygin, as they came to the Black Sea or the Caucasus on holiday, and that put Gorbachev on their map. In 1978 he went to Moscow as a secretary of department in the Central Committee, with responsibilities of an agricultural nature, but was still quite lucky, in that Kulakov had to take the main responsibility for what went wrong in that domain, and lost his place in 1980 to Gorbachev, who became a full member of the Politburo. It was a meteoric rise. Suslov and later Andropov, for the KGB, bestowed their blessing, and Chernenko even let Gorbachev chair the Politburo in his wheezing absences. Other old men died off — Dmitry Ustinov late in 1984, having run defence for years — or finally just retired, as with the long-term prime minister Nikolay Tikhonov. At any rate, Andropov’s men did emerge in the Politburo by rapid advance, but they, or perhaps their wives, could not compete with Gorbachev. He was sent on a dramatic mission in 1984 to see Margaret Thatcher. The Western Right had recovered, and was prospering; if there was a symbol, it was the re-emergence of England in the first few years of the Thatcher period. She was back on the map again, and was the most obvious place to start if there were a new strategy, of appealing to Washington. That visit was a success. As Margaret Thatcher said, it was not what Gorbachev said: that was wooden language of the old style. It was his eyes. Upon the death of Chernenko, Gorbachev was put forward as general secretary by Gromyko, by now himself aged, who made a remark about his ‘iron teeth’. There was nothing startling about his early pronouncements: ‘we have no need to change our policy. It is correct and truly Leninist. We have to pick up speed and move forward to… our radiant future.’ In his first year he applied himself in the usual way to installing his own men, and in March 1986, when the 27th Party Congress elected the secretariat and the Politburo, half of the members were Gorbachev appointments. Other purgings caused the change of fifty-seven senior functionaries and 40 per cent of the Central Committee members — the second-highest turnover since the death of Stalin. The average age fell to sixty, and by June 1987 two thirds of the government had been replaced. By 1988 25,000 militia-men had been sacked, 1,500 with a conviction, and in Uzbekistan there was an almost complete turnover of the Central Committee.
Someone had said in 1956 that Communism would go on until there was an explosion at the head, in Moscow. By 1980 the empire indeed had its problems, and this time round the United States would not co-operate in keeping it going. The curious thing about this period is Reagan’s perception in 1981 that as regards the USSR the ‘last pages are even now being written’. People ostensibly far better educated took a quite different view — for instance, James Schlesinger and Paul Samuelson, quite apart from the vast majority of sovietologists, who still viewed things through the Vietnam prism. NSD(ecision) D(irective) of March 1982 (repeated in 1983) meant to ‘neutralize’ Soviet control of eastern Europe and there was a deliberate attack on the Soviet economy; in January 1983 the ambition was even to change the USSR fundamentally. This was also a return of the CIA, which had become demoralized in the Carter years, its budget and staff (14,000) run down. Now, with William Casey (who had greatly helped Reagan when, in 1980, the money was running short) and Caspar Weinberger (an old friend of Reagan’s who understood technical advances), there was a change: the cautious East Coast men were sidelined; proper studies of Soviet hard-currency flows and the like were made; and the National Security Council contained allies such as William Clark and Richard Pipes and Admiral John Poindexter (who continued until driven out in 1987 by the Iran-Contra affair). This new team was secretive — Casey flew around in a black plane with living quarters — and only two or three people around Reagan were in the picture: even George Shultz, the Secretary of State,
learned of the Strategic Defense Initiative only a few hours before its announcement. Reagan himself hardly bothered with the arms-limitation business that takes such a large place in the works of Don Oberdorfer or Strobe Talbott, and dealt directly with Casey, an old hand from 1941-5, his memories going back to Allen Dulles’s time. Reagan was by now somewhat deaf, and complained that Casey’s voice sounded like a scrambler telephone.
Weinberger’s intention had been to find ways to render Soviet technologies obsolete. There was an especially vulnerable point, the Siberian pipeline. Here was the great legacy of Ostpolitik and détente, a huge project, financed by a foreign and mainly German consortium, that guaranteed the energy supply of central and western Europe; it would give Moscow a vast income and of course leverage in West German affairs. Moscow naturally knew that work on the pipeline could be interrupted through technical or legal obstruction. The Soviets had tried to offset the foreseeable pressure by pinning down work on the Siberian gas pipeline by contract, even to intermediate levels, but had neglected one aspect — the rotor shafts and blades driving the gas turbines for the forty-one compressor stations along the 3,600-mile Urengoy pipeline. General Electric made these, and was now prohibited from providing them. A Soviet team based in Cologne found that a French machinery maker, Alsthom-Atlantique, could make them, even then under a General Electric licence. The government allowed it to act in Moscow.
Meanwhile evidence built up that the Soviets were indeed in economic trouble — the trade surplus of $200m in 1980 had turned into a deficit of $3bn in 1981, and the USSR was having to pick up Polish bills, which weakened its capacity for credits in the West. Gold sales rose from 90 tonnes in 1980 to 240 in 1981, at that with falling prices: a clear sign of trouble. Early in 1982 American agents were sent to Poland through the Israelis, with the Church turning a blind eye: the idea was to co-operate with Solidarność people in hiding. An Israeli contact, manager of a shipyard in Gdańsk, took delivery of equipment for Solidarność, to maintain the pressure from underground, which was smuggled in from Sweden, apparently as tractor parts. Jacek Kuroń sent Reagan a letter from prison to the effect that a mass insurrection could come about: a letter that Reagan kept in his desk. The Warsaw embassy now had a four-man electronics team that could pick up most Polish traffic, and there was, by April, an underground co-ordinating committee which could communicate; there were flurries of activity. There were forays with American diplomats, but it was not the embassy that really mattered: the decoy work was useful.
A continuing point was with the Saudis. Weinberger had Arab friends, particularly Prince Fahd, the apparent heir, whose sons had been educated in England and the USA — a flamboyant spender and gambler, who had apparently opposed the oil price increase in 1973. He saw Saddam Hussein as a help against Iran, the more so as an underground Shiite organization was now active in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Weinberger went to Saudi Arabia to work out details, especially for a rapid deployment force that Carter himself had started — with provision for 300,000 US troops. In May 1982 Casey was in Saudi Arabia. The administration had done its best to prevent Congress from revealing the extent of Saudi investment in the USA, at the expense of some bullying by the CIA in Congress. Now, the point was to co-operate against the USSR in oil production — delaying the gas pipeline would contribute — the more so as Soviet oil would displace Saudi in such markets as Belgium. In 1982 Soviet sales to western Europe did increase by about a third and Saudi markets were pressed. Casey and the Saudis did a deal — the US would make things difficult for the USSR (and of course Iran) and the Saudis would do their best to push down prices (in itself this naturally helped the then depressed American economy). Casey also encouraged the Saudis not to use Palestinians, judged unreliable and possibly pro-Soviet; and Fahd wanted to support Islamic movements in Central Asia. Something was done in that direction.
Meanwhile vulnerability assessments of the Soviet economy were prophetic, convincing Casey (and Reagan) that the economy, dependent on the West for machinery to exploit the raw materials, was indeed about to implode and besides, as the terms of trade worsened, the OPEC countries would have less money with which to buy Soviet weaponry. In the 1970s Soviet earnings had risen 272 per cent, whereas oil exports had risen only by a fifth. Herbert E. Meyer, Casey’s chief banking and energy adviser, reckoned that each dollar in the price of oil meant a thousand million for Moscow. It was clear that both a British company, John Brown Engineering, and the French firm wanted to take over the supply of turbines for the Siberian gas pipeline project, and Casey could point to the $15-20bn per annum that would accrue. There was an important Chinese dimension to all of this. The Chinese took over from the Iranians as watchers of Soviet missiles; they supplied Soviet equipment to the resistance in Afghanistan; they maintained a Radio Urumchi for Central Asia. The Americans relaxed CoCom for them, the multilateral agreement to limit the export of the most advanced technology. On 23 March 1983 Reagan made his Star Wars speech — he would exploit Soviet weakness in the new generation of electronics. CoCom was tightened up, and 1,400 illegal shipments of high-tech equipment were seized (to 1987). Another wheeze was for dummy companies to sell fake technology such as flawed blueprints for gas turbines. Meanwhile the US was doing twice as much defence procurement as in the 1970s — 10,000 tanks and 3,700 strategic missiles. In 1984 Weinberger was aggressive at NATO in Brussels, as there always was a US component in the advanced technological items: that was one basis of the American recovery. The Pentagon budget for research and development had doubled and the Soviet defence budget was supposed to have risen by 45 per cent as well, to take account of proton beams. Gromyko accused Reagan to his face of using Poland as a lever and of trying to ‘exhaust’ the USSR into ‘surrender’.
Meanwhile oil prices went down. Twenty dollars per barrel was regarded as the right price for the USA, whereas in 1983 $34 prevailed. US energy imports would drop from $183bn to $70bn, or 1 per cent of GNP, as these imports (5.5 million barrels) accounted for a quarter of all. The Saudis took only $1.50 to produce a barrel, and Fahd visited Reagan early in 1985. The basic calculation was that a drop in the price of $5 would raise the American GNP by 1.4 per cent, bring down the deficit and reduce inflation. In effect the Saudis financed the Contras in Nicaragua. They then had to double output and agreed to do so; Nigel Lawson also wanted this, and the USA, by running down her own stock (held in salt caves in Texas), could drastically cut prices at will. The British did cut prices to $30, and OPEC went below that in 1983. The Soviets responded by sending Haydar Aliev in his English suits and Italian shoes to see Hafiz Assad, who had cut the Iraq-Syria pipeline in order to help Iran; the Saudis feared Iran and wanted Stingers and AWACS. The Saudis also worried that natural gas was replacing oil (1984). There were by now 1,700 US troops in Saudi Arabia, and the AWACS arrived; it was the same deal as with the Germans in the 1970s — support for the dollar in return for defence. Casey told the Saudis in advance that there would be a 25 per cent devaluation of the dollar in 1985 (the Plaza Agreement) and they acquired non-dollar assets to offset the fall in the oil price. Through Edgar Bronfman of Seagram (cover for the CIA) Casey had another channel towards Israel, which required reassurance as to the help for the Saudis. In August 1985 the Saudis started raising their output from 2 million to 6 million barrels and then 9 million such that prices fell to $12 by June 1986, a loss to Moscow of $1.4bn. Bush — a Texas oilman — did not like all of this and there were rows with Reagan. But by 1986 it took five times as much Soviet oil for a given piece of German machinery.
Meanwhile the Afghan crisis mounted. The CIA shipped its weapons and tried to keep President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq clean, but the Soviets responded with bazaar bombs and drove refugees into Pakistan with a view to destabilization. William Casey expressly said that this was America’s revenge for Vietnam. Bagram airbase was attacked by the mujaheddin, and twenty aircraft were destroyed by Chinese-supplied rocket-launchers; several senior Soviet officials and military were killed in Kabul. In
January 1985 Soviet plans were known in advance (use of Spetsnaz night attacks with a van to interrupt mujaheddin communications). NSDD-166 of March 1985 was intended to end the stalemate and was to allow serious weaponry and not just the Carter harassment idea. There were 120,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan in 1985 but the mujaheddin had night-vision and precision-guided weapons as well as satellite intelligence, and even a device to identify a pilot’s voice as belonging to a particular unit. The oil pipelines were sabotaged; Kandahar airport attacked; Najibullah nearly murdered; 450 prisoners taken by Ahmad Shah Massoud (‘Lion of the Panshir’). By 1985, from Oleg Gordievsky (who defected in 1986) and other sources the encouraging news came back that the Siberian pipeline had been cut in half and was two years behind schedule in construction; the turbines were inadequate. Then the Stingers arrived, in July 1986: a ‘fire and forget’ weapon, meaning that the aimer could fire and then not remain exposed to counterfire. The missile could go up to 15,000 feet at 1,200 miles per hour. The mujaheddin first used it on 25 September 1986 and there were two strikes near Jalalabad airfield, and further ones over Tadzhikistan. In December 1986 Gorbachev told Najibullah in Moscow that there would have to be a withdrawal. His own Central Asian territories began to rumble, as in Alma Ata a rampage followed the fall of Dinmukhamed Kunayev and his replacement as boss of the Party by a Russian.
Gorbachev, in the first two years, talked. He talked and talked. Generally, what he said was long-winded and even impossible to unravel; the book that he subsequently produced launched a word, perestroyka or ‘reconstruction’, which entered the world’s vocabulary along with Sputnik and gulag as the Soviet contribution. So did another, glasnost, meaning ‘openness to criticism’. This was supposed to be revolutionary but in practice it was quite old. Ever since the early days, under Lenin, Bolsheviks had been well and truly aware that all was not well, that bureaucracy was somehow getting in the way of the original spirit, and calls for perestroyka had been made in the 1920s, sometimes by someone ambitious for the leadership. That criticism was suppressed — the intelligentsia muzzled, imprisoned or worse — made the problem worse, and glasnost was again quite an old cry. In effect all that was being done, in the first two years, was consolidation of Gorbachev’s position and the establishment of his coterie of ambitious advisers. The principal change was in foreign affairs, where a new approach was made to the Western Right, with a view to some dramatic arrangement as to arms control and a diminution of Western support for the Afghan rebels. There were other obstacles, such as CoCom, which did not stop the export, but made it expensive. And in any case the Western Left, especially the German, had proved to be of very limited utility; it was even being dropped by Moscow before Gorbachev himself emerged. At any rate there was a new era in relations, because, quite suddenly, Soviet representatives turned out to be agreeable drinking companions, quite willing to talk freely. This made, already, a huge change with the past and a great number of journalists, used to the restrictions of earlier years, allowed a natural Russophilia to emerge. It was a tribute at least to the public relations machinery in Moscow, which had been very wooden for a generation and was now learning fast. But in the first two years, and for that matter throughout Gorbachev’s six years in office, perestroyka remained a matter of words. The powers that be ranted on about the virtues of central planning, and amalgamated five huge ministries dealing with agriculture into one very huge ministry, which spewed out regulations to the collective farms even more frenetically than in Khrushchev’s time, and was not heard of within a year or so. Investment in heavy industries went up, the economist arguing for this, one Abel Aganbegyan, himself rollingly mountainous, being sent abroad to explain that there was new thinking in matters economic. Though gushed over by naïve Russian-speaking females at Oxford, he did not take in Margaret Thatcher, who knew her economics.