The hypothesis that Gorbachev turned to the right because the other Party leaders opposed any economic reform is also false. It was far from the case that Party leaders resisted efforts to improve the economy. Ellman and Kontorovich, who based their study of economic reform on interviews with Soviet insiders, said that their interviews “provide no evidence of resistance to reforms.”283 The very reverse was true. The economist Aslund, who lived in Moscow in the 1980s and was himself a partisan of market reforms, nonetheless acknowledged that “all the new Soviet leaders want change.” Even the Brezhnevites on the Politburo—Gaidar Aliev, Viktor Grishin, Dimukhamed Kunaev, Vladimir Shcherbitski and Nikolai Tikhonov—supported economic changes to move the Soviet economy toward the model of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Moreover, Aslund identified three other economic reform currents among Soviet leaders that were more far-reaching than the Brezhnevites but still short of the marketization and privatization later advocated by Gorbachev’s group. One group led by Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov saw the solution to economic problems as residing in greater efficiency and the intensification of production. This group advocated such measures as the better utilization of scientific results, a new investment policy concentrated on machine building and experimentation with self-financing at enterprises. Another group led by Lev Zaikov, who became Central Committee Secretary for the military-industrial complex in July 1985, supported changes in investment policy to encourage machine building and scientific and technological progress, as well such measures as quality inspection, wage differentials, and the promotion of shift work. This group, however, was less enthusiastic than Ryzhkov’s about self-financing or anything that smacked of markets and competition.284
A third group led by the Party’s second in command, Ligachev, put its major emphasis on improving discipline. Ligachev favored the anti-alcohol campaign, and moves against consumerism, the second economy and corruption. Ligachev favored wage differentials, and he favored strengthening and streamlining centralized planning and increasing the efficiency and responsibility of individual enterprises. He supported, for example, experiments in self-financing, better enterprise accounting, and collective contracts but adamantly opposed any moves toward private property and a market economy. Ligachev endorsed changes in the economy outlined at the scientific and technical conference in June 1985 but added that the changes would occur “within the framework of scientific socialism, without any aberrations whatsoever in the direction of ‘market economy’ and private enterprise.”285
The receptiveness of Party leaders to economic reform was reflected in the widespread economic experimentation at the regional and local level that began under Andropov and continued under Chernenko and Gorbachev. For example, in 1983, the Central Committee and Council of Ministers began what was called the “large-scale economic experiment,” which involved reducing plan indicators and using bonus systems in five ministries. The experiment was no panacea, but it did lead to improvement in the delivery of goods and to greater labor efficiency. Eventually, the experiment expanded to embrace twenty-one ministries by 1985 and half of industrial production by 1986. In 1985 two experiments in self-financing began at the VAZ plant in Togliatti on the Volga, a car manufacturer, and in the Frunze plant in Sumy in the Ukraine, a manufacturer of natural gas equipment. This experiment involved simplifying the payment transactions between the firms and the state to a simple “tax” based on profits and correlating wage increases with productivity increases. Both experiments produced impressive results in terms of profits and productivity. Other experiments were under way in the service industry and in agriculture.286
The point to be made is that in the period 1984 to 1986 a great receptivity to economic reform existed and a great deal of economic experimentation was occurring. Such debate and experimentation was occurring within the boundaries of socialism and had hardly reached a dead-end when Gorbachev began introducing more extreme ideas. The economist Aslund explained this paradox this way: “[For the reform economists around Gorbachev] the actual economic results [of these experiments] were of little interest, while their political impact was everything. Many experiments were designed to perfect the system, while leading Soviet economists and the Gorbachev camp wanted to replace it with a more market-oriented system.”287 In other words, certain economists and advisors in the Gorbachev camp were already committed to market reforms and privatization, and they used the experiments within the existing framework mainly to provide arguments for going further. In 1987, the main opposition to the first economic reforms came not from Party leaders, but from the economists around Gorbachev who were eager to push onward to expanded markets and private property.
The third underpinning of the hypothesis that Gorbachev turned to the right because of the failure of the initial reform and Party opposition is as lacking as the first two. Gorbachev’s first moves to the right did not arise in the economic arena. Rather, they occurred in politics, ideology, and foreign policy. In these areas as well, Gorbachev’s policies bore the most problematic results.
The Twenty-seventh Congress of the CPSU meeting in February 1986 provided an early sign that Gorbachev was taking the reform process in a new, untried direction. This first occurred less as a new policy than as a new ideology of reform itself. Instead of continuity with the past, Gorbachev started stressing a break with the past and referring to the Brezhnev years as a period of stagnation. He said in both domestic and foreign affairs, developments were at a “turning point” and that “truly revolutionary change” was necessary. He replaced Andropov’s term, “acceleration of scientific and technological change” with the vaguer, broader, and potentially more troublesome term, “acceleration of economic and social development.” In case anyone missed the shift in meaning, Gorbachev stressed that he was not confining change to the economic field, but envisaging changes in methods of work and political and ideological institutions. At this time, Gorbachev began replacing, uskornie (acceleration), with the words, perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness),288 while infusing these old terms with new meanings. In April, Gorbachev said perestroika meant total change. In June, he said it meant the change of all of society. In July, he said it meant revolution. This broadening gave the concept of perestroika dramatic appeal, but it also contained real danger. Namely, these changes in terminology robbed reform of the clear goals it had had under Andropov. Perestroika’s meaning became redundant, restructuring for the sake of restructuring; the goal of reform became circular, change for the sake of change.289 These changes undermined the unity and purpose of the Party that was supposed to lead the change. Inside and outside the Party, the door was thrown open to a variety of interpretations of the ultimate reform goal. For some, the goal remained the perfection of socialism, but for others the goal was national separatism, social democracy, market socialism, capitalism or simply personal enrichment.
Gorbachev also subtly changed and expanded the meaning of glasnost in ways that undercut the traditional role of the Party and the function of criticism and self-criticism. During his first year in office, Gorbachev used glasnost as Andropov had, to mean greater openness and publicity on the part of the Party, government, state, and other public organizations and more exposure of corruption and inefficiency. In April 1985, for example, Gorbachev called for the release of more administrative information to the public. Soon, Gorbachev transformed glasnost’s meaning from openness by the Party and other bodies, to open criticism of the Party and its history. In June, the General Secretary met with media officials and urged them to support the reform effort by making “open, specific, and constructive” criticisms of shortcomings. Soon after, the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya criticized the Moscow Party head, Viktor Grishin. Gorbachev then replaced him with Boris Yeltsin, a presumed ally.290