And yet it is impossible to avoid this abstract approach. One can present the enormous scale of the unfolding events only through language and concepts that are general, synthesizing — yes, abstract — all the while remaining aware that time and time again one will fall into the trap of simplifications and statements easily undermined.
THERE ARE writers who imbue the notion of “Russia” with a mystical meaning, ascribing to it the mysterious, unfathomable qualities of a holy thing. The poet Fiodor Tiutchev writes that “One cannot comprehend Russia with one’s reason … one can only have faith in Russia.” Dostoyevsky believes that Russia is for Europe something enigmatic and incomprehensible: “For Europe, Russia is one of the riddles of the Sphinx. The West will sooner discover the perpetuum mobile or the elixir of life than plumb the essence of Russianness, the soul of Russia, its character and disposition.”
The faith in Russia sometimes assumes a religious coloring. I saw a demonstration in Moscow during which a large crowd was delivering a litany to Russia with as much devotion as pilgrims to Jasna Góra recite prayers to the Mother of God.
OTHER RUSSIAN writers stress that Russia is unlike any other country, that one should treat it as something exceptional, as a distinct and unique phenomenon. “When one speaks of Russia,” writes Piotr Chaadayev, “one often regards it as a state like any other; this is not at all the case. Russia is a whole separate world.” Constantine Aksov claims the same thing. “Russia,” he writes, “is a country utterly without precedent, not even slightly similar to European states and countries.”
AT FIRST, I didn’t envisage a great journey. I wanted only to travel to the Caucasus, where I had been two decades earlier, at the end of the sixties. That small area, conquered by Russia and then forcibly incorporated into the USSR, interested me truly, for I am most fascinated by the mental and political decolonization of the world, and there, beyond the Caucasus, just such a process was unfolding. The twentieth century is not only the century of totalitarianisms and world wars, but also history’s greatest epoch of decolonization: more than a hundred new states have appeared on the map of the world, entire continents have won — at least formal — independence. The Third World was born and a great demographic explosion began — the population of poorly developed countries began to increase at a rate three times greater than that of wealthy countries. A dozen problems result from this, which will be the worry of the twenty-first century.
The same process of Third World expansion that led to the breakup of the colonial empires of England, France, and Portugal could also be felt within the last colonial empire on earth — the USSR. By the end of the eighties, the country’s non-Russian inhabitants constituted nearly half of its population, whereas the governing elite was ninety-five percent Russian or composed of the Russified representatives of the national minorities. It was only a matter of time before awareness of this fact would move these minorities toward acts of emancipation.
SO INITIALLY I planned to travel, as I had done earlier, from Moscow to Georgia, then to Armenia and Azerbaijan. But I was told that this was impossible. The border between Armenia and Azerbaijan is closed; there is a war over which no one has any influence.
This was a shock to me.
How could someone here declare that there is something happening in the USSR over which Moscow has no influence? It was this — the acknowledgment on the part of the imperial powers of some impossibility — that was for me the real revolution! I remember twenty years ago, in Azerbaijan, wanting to visit the Svierdlov kolkhoz rather than the Kirov kolkhoz, but being told that this was impossible: Moscow has given us such and such a program, we cannot change anything. The telephone calls began, the questions, the explanations. Finally, a reply: Agreed, let it be Svierdlov. And all this was over a trifle, an absurdity. But the system depended on that kind of punctiliousness, on a psychotic control of every detail, an obsessive desire to rule over everything. Yurii Boriev writes about some of the matters with which Stalin occupied himself. He issued orders of this kind: “Transfer the sewing machine belonging to tailor’s shop number 1 to factory number 7. J. Stalin.”
And here we have a major event — two republics close their borders and are conducting a war — and Moscow can do nothing about it!
I experienced a second shock a day later, upon arriving in Yerevan. I went for a walk and suddenly encountered, in the streets, groups of armed, bearded men. I saw that they were not Red Army. Passersby said that they were divisions of the independent Armenian liberation army. It was incomprehensible to me that there could be troops in the Imperium that were not part of the Red Army or of the KGB. Knowing the country and the system from earlier years, I was awaiting the moment when Russian troop divisions would move on the capital of Armenia, massacre the young men, and as punishment resettle thousands of the city’s inhabitants in Siberia. But nothing of the sort happened.
The third surprise, on the evening of that same day, was a scene I witnessed on the television screen, during a report from a session of the Supreme Council. One of the deputies was quarreling with the secretary-general of the Central Committee — with Gorbachev. I stiffened. Quarreling with the secretary-general? Once, this meant execution. Later — the irreparable destruction of one’s career. And now — the deputy left the podium to general applause.
Summing all this up, I thought: This is the end of the Soviets! For me, the Imperium fell apart then, in the fall of 1989, on the route from Moscow to Yerevan. Everything that happened later was merely the tossing of additional debris onto an already-existing pile of rubble.
I BELIEVE that only those for whom Stalinism-Brezhnevism is part of their life experience can perceive and comprehend the depth, extraordinariness, and immensity of the transformation and revolution that took place in the USSR between 1985 and 1991. I met young fellow reporters in the course of my travels. What they were seeing they deemed interesting, but part of the normal run of things. For me, everything was unprecedented and astonishing; I could not believe my own eyes.
A FEW WORDS about 1985.
The crisis of the Communist system — and concomitantly of the USSR — becomes at this time increasingly profound, clear, sharp:
• The Third World national liberation movements linked with Moscow wither away and die.
• Communist parties in Western countries collapse and lose their meaning.
• Poland’s Solidarity, despite the repressive power of martial law, creates a permanent and widening breach within an actual Socialist system.
• Moscow increasingly falls behind in the arms race with the West, lags more and more visibly with its outdated technology and low labor productivity, loses position after position in the game to control the world.