All this propelled Gorbachev’s bold initiative for disarmament. In August 1985 his government announced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests and internally began to revise its nuclear strategy, shifting the goal from ‘nuclear parity’ to ‘nuclear sufficiency’—that is, a downscaled military which would reduce costs yet guarantee deterrence. Sensitive to economic imperatives, Gorbachev warned that Moscow must avoid being ‘drawn into an arms race which is beyond our capacity’ and which Moscow was bound to ‘lose’. Gorbachev’s charm offensive won strong support from European leaders, most notably Margaret Thatcher, the arch-conservative British prime minister, who wrote to US President Ronald Reagan that Gorbachev ‘was much less constrained, more charming, open to discussion and debate, and did not stick to prepared notes’.
The United States, however, was a hard nut to crack. The conservative administration of Ronald Reagan was aggressively anticommunist; in 1983 the president himself characterized the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ and shortly afterwards announced the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI, popularly known as ‘Star Wars’)—a defensive missile system designed to negate parity and mutual deterrence. Key officials, such as CIA director Robert Gates, dismissed perestroika as a sham and Gorbachev’s overtures as a ruse. The ideological intransigence in Washington, predictably, strengthened the hand of Politburo critics who regarded an agreement with the anti-communist Reagan as impossible. Such pessimism seemed justified by the stalemate at Reykjavik (11–12 October 1986), when Reagan—largely because of SDI—spurned Gorbachev’s proposals to achieve nuclear disarmament within a decade. A conservative like the KGB head Viktor Chebrikov thereupon argued that ‘the Americans understand only power’, and the military redoubled its demand for still more resources.
But Washington was not the only obstacle to improving Soviet–American relations: a fair share of the blame rests with Moscow itself. Gorbachev himself was loath to abandon Soviet clients in the third world, despite the fact that they cost the Soviet Union immense sums—in financial and military assistance—that the Kremlin could ill afford. The Afghan conflict was particularly troublesome. Although some in Moscow (including the military) endorsed rapid disengagement, Gorbachev and others feared that a precipitous withdrawal would unleash a bloodbath and gravely compromise Russia’s vital interests. As an interim solution, Gorbachev proposed to ‘indigenize’ the conflict: that is, promote ‘Afghanization’—making pro-Moscow Afghanis responsible for combating the Islamists. But that policy too ran afoul of America’s engagement, especially its clandestine support of Islamic insurgents; the Afghan question, which had ended détente, continued to weigh heavily on Soviet–American relations.
Perestroika: From Modest Renovation to Fundamental Reconstruction
Gorbachev sought to transform domestic, not just foreign policy. His central idea, ‘perestroika’, was elastic; its meaning could range from modest renovation to systemic, fundamental transformation. Initially, Gorbachev himself thought in terms of ‘renovation’ but gradually came to embrace a far more radical vision. His rhetoric reflected the shift: in 1987 the traditional ‘democratic centralism’ (a Leninist phrase denoting single-party dictatorship) gave way to ‘pluralism’, appearing first as ‘socialist pluralism’ (implying plurality of opinion) but eventually as ‘competitive pluralism’ (denoting a multi-party political system).
Gorbachev not only talked about democratization, but began to experiment with its application. He first did so in the 1987 elections to local soviets, with multiple candidates in 5 per cent of the races. But the critical breakthrough came in elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1989, when a third of deputies were elected in open territorial elections (the rest being designated by the Communist Party and by various institutions). The popular elections were open to non-party candidates and, to the shock and dismay of party élites, many leading party candidates—including prominent first secretaries in several oblasts—went down in defeat. Flamboyant oppositionists won impressive victories; Boris Yeltsin, former party leader in Moscow who had broken with Gorbachev and emerged as the leader of anti-Kremlin forces, won 89.6 per cent of the ballots.
Democratization, however, exposed Gorbachev to popular will—a hazardous vulnerability as the economic situation rapidly deteriorated. The earlier elixir—using hard-currency earnings from the export of energy and natural resources—was fast disappearing, as production, prices, and therefore earnings plummeted. Gorbachev thus found it increasingly difficult to sustain both capital investment and the import of grain and basic consumer goods. The goods shortages (defitsity) intensified, for the government declined to raise prices (for fear of popular unrest) to absorb the ‘monetary overhang’ (the gap between the rising income in paper roubles and the available goods). The inevitable result was an acute shortage of basic goods.
Gorbachev had heralded ‘glasnost’ (openness and publicity) as the motor of change, but that too served to erode his authority. The free press, especially its shocking revelations about the travesties of earlier regimes, undermined not only the regime’s legitimacy but Gorbachev’s own stature. Gorbachev had hoped to ride the wave of democratic forces, but discovered that he could not satisfy rising expectations, either material or political, and that failure inevitably took a toll on his approval ratings.
As Gorbachev embraced radical perestroika, he still held a clear preponderance of power. He had acted promptly to replace a majority of members in the Politburo and Central Committee; in April 1989 he induced 110 full and candidate members of the Central Committee to resign ‘voluntarily’ and thereby enable the influx of people loyal to the general secretary.
Growing Opposition, Shrinking Base
Even as Gorbachev consolidated power in the party, the CPSU itself was steadily losing its authority, cohesion, and legitimacy. Five months after the Congress of People’s Deputies met in 1989, the proportion of the population expressing ‘trust’ in the Communist Party plunged from 52 to 21 per cent. Even the loyalty of rank-and-file party members was quickly fading; by 1989 only 27 per cent declared that they would rejoin the party. The number of party members, which had steadily increased in the post-Stalin era, began to decline—from 19 million members in October 1988 to 15 million in August 1991.
The party also became a source of opposition, as criticism—even among Gorbachev’s erstwhile supporters—rapidly intensified. The party élite had initially acquiesced and acceded to the general secretary’s will, but increasingly came to believe that Gorbachev’s glasnost and democratization were undermining the party’s power and privilege. Glasnost had spawned a profusion of independent newspapers and journals; their shocking revelations about the atrocities perpetrated in the Stalin era not only demonstrated Stalin’s personal culpability but also exposed the party’s failure to oppose the senseless repression and terror. Nor did party leaders welcome Gorbachev’s pluralism; the profusion of organized political movements and free elections increasingly made them feel isolated and humiliated. The party élite was also alarmed by the revolutionary forces sweeping the Soviet bloc, as countries like Poland, East Germany, and Hungary openly asserted their interests and independence. The most famous challenge by the party’s old guard came in a March 1988 newspaper article by Nina Andreeva, a Leningrad chemistry teacher, who castigated the attacks on Stalin as defamatory and who denounced perestroika as a disastrous assault on the country’s basic socialist principles.