Gorbachev and Yakovlev had a direct hand in determining the direction of glasnost. Their actions and sometimes their words implied that they thought glasnost editors and intellectuals could best aid the reform effort and put potential opponents on the defensive by attacking Stalin and criticizing the government and Party. As early as late 1985, Yakovlev had permitted the publication of Anastas Mikoyan’s memoirs with their criticism of Stalin’s wartime policies.304 In September 1986 in a speech in Krasnodar that was broadcast nationwide on television, Gorbachev went further than ever before to invite attacks on the government and the Party. He identified the enemy of reform as the bureaucracy in the ministries and conservatism in the Party. He said that the “Party is at the service of the people and its managing role does not represent a privilege. To those who have forgotten this, I am now reminding you.” For the first time, he called for “democratization.” According to Roy Medvedev, this speech caused a “sensation.”305 It opened the floodgates of criticism, particularly criticism of Stalin. Just as in the West, criticism of Stalin was often a cover for attacks on Lenin and socialism.
In 1986 previously banned works that were critical of Stalin began to appear. Tengiz Abuladze’s 1984 film Pokayaniye (Repentance) about the repression of the thirties opened to limited audiences in Moscow. According to Roy Medvedev, the showing of this film, which Gorbachev liked, marked a “political, not merely a cultural, turning point.”306 Also, in Moscow, Mikhail Shatrov’s anti-Stalinist play, Diktatura Sovesti (The Dictatorship of the Conscience) opened at the Leninisk Komsomol Theater.307 Over objections by Ligachev, Gorbachev personally approved the publication of Anatoliy Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat.308 Over the objections of the head of the Writer’s Union, Novy Mir announced that in 1987 it would begin publishing Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.309 In another signal, Gorbachev personally ended the internal exile of the dissident, Andrei Sakharov.310 While many in the West were hailing these moves, Mike Davidow, a Communist journalist stationed in Moscow, rued, “Never in history did a ruling party literally turn over the mass media to forces bent on its own destruction and the state it led, as did the leaders of the CPSU.”311
After the Twenty-seventh Congress, Gorbachev also veered from Andropov’s path with regard to Party reform. As with glasnost, Gorbachev’s turn with regard to Party reform first occurred at the level of rhetoric, the full implications of which would not become clear until 1987. According to the historian Graeme Gill, a consensus existed inside and outside the Party that the organization had some serious problems—corruption in some republics and cadre policies based on loyalty, servility, and protectionism. Following Andropov, Gorbachev had initially called for exactingness, transparency, and discipline. The Congress adopted new rules providing for more openness, criticism and self-criticism, accountability, and collectivity. Gorbachev, however, failed to implement these decisions, but instead, in September 1986 he lurched off in a new direction by calling for the Party to “restructure itself.” Whereas the Congress had called for restructuring society and strengthening the Party, Gorbachev shifted the focus to the restructure and “democratization” of the Party. The first rumblings of discontent in the Party leadership occurred at this point.312
Meanwhile, parallel to what was occurring with ideology and politics, Gorbachev began dubious moves in foreign policy. In this area, as in the others, no sharp break would occur in terms of Soviet support of national liberation struggles until 1987 or even later, but moves in this direction occurred. In this area, as in the others, the first sign of a change in direction came rhetorically. Lenin had defined the essence of right opportunism as sacrificing fundamental principles, particularly the principle of class struggle, for immediate gain and as making unnecessary compromises with the class enemy in hopes of finding a quick and easy advance toward socialism. This sounded a lot like the path Gorbachev began to follow. In April 1985, before he changed, Gorbachev had blamed “imperialism” for creating international tensions and for stepping up its subversion against socialist countries. By the fall of the year, however, the words, imperialism, capitalist countries, and national liberation, began disappearing from Gorbachev’s discourse, though not from the world.313 In his speech to the Twenty-seventh Congress, imperialism only appeared once, in reference to Afghanistan.314 Eventually, Gorbachev would argue that “new thinking” required the de-ideologization of foreign affairs, that is, the replacement of class-based ideas with ideas about the priority of eternal, human values of peace and cooperation.315 Meanwhile, this rhetorical re-orientation subtly began to manifest itself in policy.
Gorbachev had begun by making bold, new initiatives for peace and disarmament. He had unilaterally stopped Soviet nuclear tests and reduced the number of intermediate range missiles aimed at Europe. He had helped end the freeze in American-Soviet relations by meeting with Reagan in Geneva. He had forwarded such new proposals as the cutting of strategic arms by 50 percent. While these moves reduced international tensions and won Gorbachev international acclaim, they had a disturbing underside, noted by few outside of the Kremlin. Namely, Gorbachev showed a troubling tendency to make concessions to the United States while getting nothing in return. This tendency assumed a new form in early 1986. Since 1981, the Reagan administration had drastically increased military spending while putting forth a novel disarmament proposal known as the zero option. Under the zero option, the U.S. expected the Soviets to dismantle their expensive European- based missiles in return for the U.S. not deploying missiles in Europe in the future. In truth, the zero option reflected the Reagan administration’s complete lack of interest in disarmament. It was a preposterously one-sided idea that demanded real reductions on the Soviet side but no reductions of existing weapons by Americans or Europeans. It was designed to convince world opinion that the Reagan administration was interested in peace while offering nothing to the Soviets. To the astonishment of the Reagan administration, Gorbachev reversed the previous Soviet rejection.316 In an address on January 15, Gorbachev proposed the complete elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2000 and agreed to the zero option.317 If Gorbachev had limited his concessions to these, and they had opened a new stage of arms talks or led to concessions on the American side, then he would have gained something. Instead, Gorbachev’s concessions produced no reciprocal compromises on the American side. Nine months after the dramatic reversal on the zero option, Gorbachev met with Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland, in a summit in which Reagan offered nothing but empty promises and refused to budge on SDI.318