Russia A History

by Gregory L. Freeze

  ‘High Brezhnevism’ also marked the apogee of the nomenklatura—a term denoting not merely the list of key positions, but the social and political élite who monopolized them. According to estimates for 1970, this élite included about 700,000 individuals: 250,000 people in state and party positions, 300,000 members in economic sectors, and another 150,000 in science and research. By 1982 this group had increased to some 800,000 people and, together with their families, comprised about 3 million people (1.2 per cent of the Soviet population).

  Although a golden age for the nomenklatura, the Brezhnev era also attempted to improve the lot of the general population. Despite the rising cost of living (about 1 per cent per annum), real wages increased still more sharply (50 per cent between 1967 and 1977). The state also established a five-day working week, mandated a minimum vacation of 12–15 days, raised the minimum monthly wage (first to 60 roubles, later to 70 roubles), and expanded Khrushchev’s social welfare (which increased fivefold between 1950 and 1980). The regime gave particular attention to the ‘underclass’, as in the decision of 1974 to provide an income subsidy to alleviate poverty. It also made a concerted effort to improve the lot of collective farmers, three-quarters of whom initially fell below the official ‘poverty line’ (with a quarter even below the official subsistence minimum). The goal was not just to ensure social justice but to cauterize social haemorrhaging—the flight of rural labour, especially youths and males, from the village. As a result, by the 1970s rural wages were only 10 per cent lower than those for urban workers and were supplemented by a significant income from the private plots.

  Despite petrodollars and state welfare, Soviet society revealed signs of acute stress. One was hyper-alcoholism: surplus income, amid widespread goods deficits, led to a massive increase in alcohol sales (77 per cent in the 1970s alone). Another disturbing indicator was infant mortality, which jumped from 22.9 (per 1,000 live births) in 1971 to 31.6 in 1976. Another cause of concern was the decrease in the average number of children per family (from 2.9 in 1970 to 2.4 in 1978). The demography carried ominous political and ethnic overtones: whereas the average family in the RSFSR in 1970 was 1.97, family size among the Muslim peoples of Central Asia was nearly three times higher—for example, 5.64 in Uzbekistan and 5.95 in Turkmenistan.

  Détente

  To counteract the international furore over the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Brezhnev government embarked on a policy of calculated détente. Whatever the motive, it led to an impressive array of agreements on trade, arms, human rights, and even the German question. This environment also favoured a marked improvement in Soviet–American relations. The end to the Vietnam War, long a festering issue, doubtless helped. But both sides found an array of common interests, especially in trade and military security, which could foster collaboration in spite of significant spheres of difference. The first important sign was SALT-I, a ‘strategic arms limitation treaty’ in 1972 that set limits on offensive missiles and anti-ballistic missiles for five years. This agreement was followed by others—on nuclear accidents, joint space operations, and a further arms agreement finally signed in June 1979 as ‘SALT-II’.

  Nevertheless, the 1970s were years of instability and conflict. Apart from Western concern about domestic Soviet policy (especially with respect to human rights issues, including Jewish emigration and suppression of dissidents), Moscow continued efforts to increase its presence and influence around the globe, especially in underdeveloped countries. After failing to achieve a significant improvement in relations with China or to increase its authority in Asia, Moscow showed a growing interest in Africa and especially South Yemen (which became a Marxist republic in 1978). Moscow relied not only on subversion but subvention (to be sure, promises outpaced deliveries: of 13 billion dollars promised in 1954–77, only 7.2 billion actually materialized). And aid came increasingly in the form of military assistance and arms, as Soviet arms shipments increased exponentially.

  The coup de grâce for détente was the decision to intervene in Afghanistan in December 1979. Ever since a Marxist faction seized power in April 1978, Moscow had given strong support to the regime in Kabul and its social and cultural transformation. Although willing to provide assistance (including Soviet ‘advisers’ to guide the ‘socialist transformation’), Moscow abjured a direct military role as likely to ‘expose’ the weakness of the Afghan government and to ‘inflict serious harm on the international authority of the USSR and significantly reverse the process of détente’. In December 1979, however, a rump meeting of the Politburo elected to intervene militarily because of the region’s strategic importance, popular opposition to the Afghan government, and rumours that Kabul was making overtures to the American government. Whatever the rationale, the result was catastrophic: the Soviet Union found itself snared in a military quagmire that consumed vast resources, cost enormous casualties, and had a devastating effect on the Soviet Union’s international position.

  Dissent

  The 1970s also marked the emergence of two broad-based dissident movements—one in defence of human rights, the other representing national minorities, both sharing a common cause against an authoritarian regime. They steadily gained in strength, notwithstanding domestic repression and foreign ambivalence bred by détente. A KGB report of December 1976 (on thousands of cases) gives some idea of the main currents of dissent: ‘revisionism and reformism’ (35 per cent), ‘nationalism’ (33.7 per cent), ‘Zionism’ (17.5 per cent), ‘religion’ (8.2 per cent), ‘fascism and neo-fascism’ (5.6 per cent), and other miscellaneous matters. Although samizdat included many different works, the main voice for the movement was a samizdat journal Chronicle of Current Events, which appeared first in 1968 and managed to publish bi-monthly issues almost uninterruptedly (except for an eighteen-month gap in 1972–4).

  Compared to the preceding decade, this dissident movement of the 1970s was different in several respects. First, although belles-lettres remained important, the movement itself became much more political. A KGB report in 1970 noted that the earlier samizdat had been primarily literary, but of late consisted chiefly of ‘political programmatic’ materials, influenced mainly by Yugoslav and Czechoslovak literature. Second, dissent was more widespread, spilling beyond secret circles and tiny demonstrations to envelop larger segments of society, with nearly 300,000 adherents (mostly supporters and sympathizers, including some 20,000 political prisoners and people under surveillance or investigation). That was a far cry from the ‘35 to 40’ dissidents that the KGB reported a few years earlier. The growth of dissent was also apparent in the mushrooming of samizdat, which included some 4,000 volumes in 1979. The KGB warned that dissent was especially strong among the young—in its view, because they were denied access to professional organizations (for example, only 48 of the 75,490 members of the Union of Writers being under the age of 30). Third, dissent was better organized, especially after Andrei Sakharov (a full member of the prestigious Academy of Sciences and leading figure in Soviet nuclear development) and others founded the ‘Human Rights Committee’ in November 1970.

  Predictably, the dissident movement aroused growing concern, especially in the KGB. Dismayed by the Politburo’s reluctance to deal with Sakharov, in September 1973 the KGB chief, Andropov, warned that the failure to act not only enraged honest Soviet citizens but also encouraged ‘certain circles of the intelligentsia and youth’ to flout authority. Their motto, he claimed, was ‘Act boldly, publicly, involve Western correspondents, rely on the support of the bourgeois press, and no one will dare touch you’. Emphasizing the need to interdict the ‘hostile activities of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov’, he proposed to put Solzhenitsyn on trial (afterwards offering him foreign exile) and to quarantine Sakharov in Novosibirsk. After Solzhenitsyn’s forced extradition and deprivation of citizenship in 1974, the regime focused increasingly on Sakharov, whom the KGB accused in 1975 of ‘evolution in the direction of open anti-Sovietism and direct support for the forces of international reaction’. Althoug
h the KGB urgently demanded vigorous action against Sakharov, the Politburo demurred—in large part for fear of the negative repercussions on détente. But patience wore thin, even for the timorous Brezhnev, who made this comment at a Politburo meeting of 8 June 1978: ‘The reasons for our extraordinary tolerance of Sakharov are known to all. But there is a limit to everything. To leave his attacks without a response is impossible.’ Western furore over Afghanistan removed the final inhibition; with nothing to lose, the regime approved a KGB proposal to exile Sakharov to the closed city of Gorky, thereby cutting off his access to Westerners.

  While dissenters like Sakharov and writers like Solzhenitsyn captured world attention, no less significant was the political dissent sweeping minority nationalities. The most visible, for Western observers, was the Jewish movement, the product of official anti-religious repression (by the 1970s only thirty synagogues existed in European Russia) and an anti-Israeli foreign policy that fanned popular anti-Semitism. But powerful nationalist movements also appeared in all the republics, especially in Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the Caucasus. The intensity of nationalist sentiment was dramatically revealed in 1978, when mass demonstrations in Tbilisi forced the government to abandon plans to eliminate Georgian as the official state language inside the republic. Tensions also mounted in the Muslim republics of Central Asia, fuelled by a steady influx of Russian immigrants and the repression of Islam.

  The government itself realized that it had failed to assimilate minorities. That failure was amply demonstrated in a secret report of 1978, which detailed the obstacles to Russification of schools, including a lack of qualified teachers: ‘Many of the teachers in minority elementary schools have only a poor knowledge of Russian. There are cases where, for this reason, Russian is not taught at all’. The failure of linguistic Russification was clearly apparent in Central Asia: the proportion claiming total ignorance of Russian language ranged from 24 per cent among Uzbeks to 28 per cent among Tajiks and Turkmen. Even graduates of specialized technical schools had a poor command of Russian. In response, the regime proposed to establish a special two- or three-month course in Russian for those due to perform military service. As Brezhnev admitted at the Twenty-Sixth Party Congress in February 1981, the government had made scant progress in its campaign to assimilate minorities and combat nationalism.

  Towards the Abyss

  When Leonid Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982, he bequeathed a country mired in profound systemic crisis. Its economic problems were daunting; amid falling prices on energy and commodities, the regime lacked the resources either to reindustrialize or to restructure agriculture. Although the KGB had seemingly decapitated the leadership of the democratic and nationalist movements, anti-regime sentiments were intense and widespread. Nor had the Brezhnev government achieved stability and security in foreign policy: the invasion of Afghanistan, débâcles elsewhere around the globe, even erosion of the Warsaw Bloc (especially in Poland) provided profound cause of concern and an endless drain on resources.

  Neither of Brezhnev’s immediate successors, the former KGB chief Andropov or the quintessential party functionary Konstantin Chernenko, survived long enough to address the ugly legacy of the ‘years of stagnation’. Andropov placed the main emphasis on law and order, even for solving the economic crisis, with the explanation that ‘good order does not require any capital investment whatever, but can produce great results’. He also waged a vigorous campaign against corruption and, lacking Brezhnev’s veneration for ‘stability of cadres’, replaced a quarter of the ministers and oblast secretaries in a desperate attempt to revitalize the system. But within fifteen months he too was dead, with power devolving on Chernenko—an elderly partocrat whose only distinction was to have been Brezhnev’s chief adviser. In the end Chernenko became the old élite’s last hurrah—an ageing and ailing leader, he ‘reigned’ but only for one year before dying from emphysema and respiratory-cardiovascular problems in March 1985.

  As the Politburo assembled to confirm the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to the post of General Secretary, the prospects for survival were bleak. Internationally, it had paid an enormous cost for the Afghanistan invasion and faced an awesome challenge from the aggressively anti-communist administration of Ronald Reagan in Washington. Domestically, its economy had ground to a halt, paralysed by profound structural problems in agriculture and industry and now deprived of lucrative revenues from the export of energy and raw materials. The new General Secretary, whatever his personal proclivities, had good cause to ponder the options for a fundamental ‘perestroika’.

  14. A Modern ‘Time of Troubles’

  FROM REFORM TO DISINTEGRATION, 1985–1999

  GREGORY L. FREEZE

  The fourteen and half years between Chernenko’s death and Putin’s presidency loomed like a redux of the ‘Time of Troubles’ in the early seventeenth century. What began as systemic reform turned into systemic collapse—dissolution of the Soviet Union, disastrous economic regression, profound social upheavals, and loss of superpower status. Mikhail Gorbachev initiated the reforms, aiming to reinvigorate and ultimately transform the Soviet system. His ‘perestroika’, however, unleashed forces and expectations even as it failed to satisfy minimal requirements. Dissolution of the Soviet Union, at the initiative of Russia under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin, marked an end of communism and heralded a new attempt to reconstruct Russia after a Western model of democracy and free markets. That transition proved far more difficult, disruptive, and destructive than any imagined; the result was systemic breakdown of the economy, polity, and social system. By the late 1990s, Russia had been degraded from a superpower to a ‘failed state’ with an ‘undeveloping’ economy.

  The General Secretary as Reformer: Mikhail Gorbachev

  By any standard, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev had an extraordinary career. Born in 1931 in the agricultural heartland of southern Russia, he lived through the difficult 1930s and personally experienced the full weight of German occupation. After the war he not only studied but laboured, with distinction, earning the Order of the Red Banner of Labour by helping a collective farm produce a record harvest. That distinction, and raw intelligence, earned him a coveted place at Moscow State University in 1950, and set him apart from others who matriculated by dint of military service or family connections. Gorbachev majored in law and, by all accounts, demonstrated a keen mind and exceptional curiosity. Upon graduation in 1955, in accordance with the Soviet system of ‘assignment’, authorities returned him to Stavropol’, where he quickly rose in the local party hierarchy. Gorbachev also continued graduate studies, specializing in agriculture and earning a reputation for expertise in what was undeniably the Achilles heel of the Soviet economy. That expertise, plus ties to people like Iurii Andropov, helped to catapult Gorbachev to Politburo membership in 1978 and brought him from a provincial backwater to the very centre of power. With Chernenko’s death on 10 March 1985, the Politburo—with a strong recommendation by the éminence grise, Andrei Gromyko—made the youthful Gorbachev the new general secretary, the youngest general secretary since Stalin assumed that post in 1922.

  Although elevated to power by the old guard, Gorbachev was cut from a very different cloth. He was a ‘post-Stalinist’ member of the élite: he formally joined the party in 1952, but made his career under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Profoundly influenced by Khrushchev’s revelations and reforms, Gorbachev belonged more to the free-thinking shestidesiatniki (‘people of the 1960s’) than the older Stalinist cadres who dominated the party apparatus. Foreign travel in the 1970s broadened his horizons, reinforcing his intellectual curiosity and encouraging a broader, even critical perspective of the Soviet system. Gorbachev nurtured ties to intellectuals like Aleksandr Iakovlev, who would figure prominently in the attempt to transform the Soviet system. Thus the 1970s and 1980s, along with ‘stagnation’, generated a critically thinking élite, which included such figures as Abel Aganbegian and Tat’iana Zaslavskaia, who worked in research institutes and bore the
accolade institutchiki. Gorbachev’s wife Raisa had close connections to these intellectual circles and played a key role in broadening his intellectual horizons. The impact was evident even before he became general secretary; in December 1984, four months prior to becoming party head, Gorbachev candidly spoke about ‘a slowdown of economic growth at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s’ and hinted at the need for far-reaching changes. Heeding advice from prominent institutchiki, Gorbachev spoke openly about the need to consider price, cost, and efficiency and thus challenged the basic premisses of the command economy that had impeded innovation and growth.

  Power, Discipline, and Economic Growth

  Vision was not enough: Gorbachev understood that he must consolidate power and change leadership at the very top. Thus, in his very first month in office, he had five allies promoted to key positions, with three becoming members of the Politburo. Over the next two years he engineered a massive turnover in the leadership, replacing the elderly and conservative with younger cadres and institutchiki disposed to transform the existing order. All this had a profound impact on discourse and policy discussions; the Politburo itself began to discuss issues hitherto regarded as taboo.

  As the new general secretary consolidated power, he was not primarily seeking to transform the existing system but rather to make it more efficient. He initially laid a heavy emphasis on ‘discipline’. That included a campaign against corruption, much in the spirit of Andropov, but broadened to include not just venality but also the violations of work discipline and alcoholism which bore such heavy costs for the nation’s health and economy. The anti-alcoholism campaign entailed its own high costs, including the destruction of valuable vineyards, a sharp decrease in state revenues, and a boom in the production of untaxed (and unsafe)moonshine. The campaign also elicited popular discontent: in a sputtering economy rife with defitsity (deficit consumer goods), alcohol had absorbed the surplus money in circulation, but Gorbachev’s temperance campaign severely aggravated the ubiquitous problem of deficit goods.