In other respects, Brezhnev’s approach resembled Lenin’s and Stalin’s willingness to deal sharply with reactionary nationalists, while trying to win others to socialism. For example, Brezhnev replaced leaders in the Ukraine and Georgia who were fanning nationalist and anti-Russian sentiments. He also adopted what historian Yitzhak Brudny called a “politics of inclusion” toward Russian nationalists. While some viewed this as an unMarxist pandering to Great Russian chauvinism, others viewed it as a legitimate effort to win the support of some Russian nationalist intellectuals on the basis of a shared aversion to Khrushchev’s liberalization and market reforms, and the intrusion of Western influence. This initiative resembled Stalin’s effort to broaden and deepen support for the war by appealing to Russian patriotism. Brudny concluded that Brezhnev’s policy of inclusion ultimately failed to win lasting support because it tried to give the nationalist intellectuals “a material stake in the system without satisfying their principal [ideological] concerns.”102 Thus, Brezhnev’s national policies and their results were a mixed bag. At their best, they showed a willingness to engage nationalists—either combating backward national sentiments or trying to win over the Russian nationalist intellectuals—that was lacking in Bukharin, Khrushchev, and later Gorbachev. Moreover, however flawed, Brezhnev’s policies never produced the open ethnic warfare that occurred under Gorbachev.
By the late Brezhnev era, many economic, social, political, and ideological problems had accumulated. It would be misleading, however, to see the situation as consisting of reformers who saw the problems and Brezhnev “conservatives” who did not. Though not everyone gave equal weight to the problems, a general agreement existed among Party leaders and outside experts that productivity and economic growth were matters of concern. The Brezhnev leadership addressed these issues at the end of the tenth five-year plan in 1979.103
Recognizing problems on the one hand and explaining their origin and devising their solution on the other hand were of course two entirely different matters, and matters on which Communists disagreed. In general, the analysis of the economic problems fell into the two traditional camps: the camp with ideological links to Bukharin and Khrushchev and the camp with links to Lenin and Stalin. The former saw the problems as due to over-centralization, and for it the solution was decentralization, the use of market mechanisms, and the allowance of certain forms of private enterprise. Writing in 1975, Moshe Lewin said, “It is astonishing to discover how many ideas of Bukharin’s anti-Stalinist program of 1928-29 were adopted by current reformers.”104 Soviet economists of this mind represented only a minority, but they dominated three of the four leading academic institutes.105 A leading economist in this camp was Abel Aganbegyan, who later became a key advisor to Gorbachev.
The majority of economists believed in reforming and modernizing the centralized planning system. For them the problems of growth and productivity had arisen because planning and management methods had not kept pace with the development of the productive forces. In some respects, the problems resulted not from centralization but from insufficient centralization. In construction, for example, the excessive time to complete projects and the profusion of unfinished projects occurred because central planners failed to prevail against local authorities that launched projects for which insufficient resources existed for timely completion. Insufficient coordination between engineers, industrialists, and builders also delayed the completion of projects.106
Productivity was often impaired by antiquated management methods and payment systems.107 Some mainstream economists wanted to use wage incentives to increase productivity. For them, the Soviet wisecrack, “they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,” was not a product of Stalin’s incentive system, where productive workers could earn big wages, but of the later wage leveling. In 1980, Victor and Ellen Perlo described other debates among mainstream economists over the ways to increase production and productivity. Noting that immediately after Khrushchev the Soviet Union had faced and overcome falling productivity, the Perlos said, “Again, as in the early 1960s, there are broad discussions underway in the USSR, heading up to a further modernization and improvement in the methods of economic planning and management…. Past experience gives reason to believe that the problems facing the Soviet economy will be solved.”108
The Soviet Union had excellent chances to tackle these problems after the death of Brezhnev, when Yuri Andropov became the General Secretary of the CPSU. Andropov had admirable personal qualities, a solid grounding in Marxist-Leninist theory, rich leadership experience, a broad grasp of the problems facing the Soviet Union, and clear and forceful ideas about reform. One thing that Andropov did not have was time. Three months after taking office, Andropov developed serious kidney problems, and in fifteen months he was dead. Nevertheless, the “Andropov Year” (1983) unveiled a promising reform path completely different from the ultimately disastrous one chosen by Gorbachev.
Andropov was born in 1914 in Stavropol. His father was a railroad worker. Andropov left school at sixteen and worked as a telegraph operator and boatman on the Volga. Beginning in 1936, Andropov held a series of positions in the Komsomol (Young Communists), becoming First Secretary of the Komsomol in the Karelo-Finnish Autonomous Republic (Karelia) that bordered Finland. During the war, the Germans occupied Karelia, and Andropov joined the partisan movement against them. After the war, he became Second Secretary of the CP of Karelia. In 1951, Andropov went to work for the Central Committee in Moscow. In 1953, he became Counsellor to Hungary and in 1954 Ambassador to Hungary. From 1957 to 1962, Andropov worked for the Foreign Affairs Department of the Central Committee, where he dealt with other Communist countries. In 1962, he became Secretary of the Central Committee. In 1967, Andropov became Chairman of the KGB, a post he held for fifteen years.109
The details of Andropov’s career were even more impressive than the résumé. On his way up, Andropov worked with three of the great figures of the CPSU. While in the Karelo-Finnish Republic, Andropov became the protégé of the old Bolshevik, Otto Kuusinen. Kuusinen had been a comrade in arms with Lenin since 1905, was the founder of the Finnish Communist Party and the First Secretary of the CP of Karelia, when Andropov was Second Secretary. Kuusinen, who remained an important figure in the CPSU until his death in 1964, doubtlessly helped bring Andropov’s abilities to the notice of others. As Ambassador to Hungary, Andropov worked under the Foreign Minister, the old Bolshevik, Molotov. As Ambassador to Hungary, Andropov also developed a close relationship to Mikhail Suslov, who became his second mentor after Kuusinen. Suslov’s career in the Party stretched back to 1918, when he had joined the Young Communists. Suslov was a serious student of Marxism-Leninism and a leading ideologist of the Party under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Some commentators believed that Andropov modeled himself after Suslov, since Andropov’s austerity, intellectuality, and work ethic resembled that of the older Suslov. When Suslov died in 1982, Andropov replaced him as the Party’s leading ideologist.110
Andropov’s career was studded by occasions that demanded great courage, calmness, and tough-mindedness. First was his war work as a partisan. Then came the Ambassadorship to Hungary. Andropov’s actions in Hungary remain somewhat uncertain and the testimony of others is often contradictory, yet it was clear that he navigated successfully through extremely troubled waters. The Hungarian Communist Party was trying to build socialism in a predominantly peasant, Catholic country that had just emerged from twenty-five years of a fascist dictatorship that included an alliance with Nazi Germany during World War II. At the time of Andropov’s arrival in 1954, the Hungarian Communists faced numerous problems including internal divisions and popular unrest. At the end of October 1956, the Hungarian uprising occurred, in which fascist gangs took advantage of popular discontent to assassinate, beat, and lynch Communists and their supporters. It ended only after the Soviet military intervened early in November.111