In 1987 anti-Communist control of the mass media began to have other consequences. For example, when the Politburo was debating a highly risky proposal by the Gorbachev team to slash the state orders by 50 percent and force enterprises to sell the rest of their production on the market, Yakovlev’s appointments in the media whipped up a frenzy against the proposal’s opponents with ominous warnings of “conservatism, deceleration, and a return to stagnation.”351 Because of such pressure, the Politburo opted for Gorbachev’s ill-considered leap into the dark, and the economy went into a tailspin from which it never rebounded.
After 1987 no person outside of Gorbachev had more influence than Alexander Yakovlev on Soviet policies, particularly on those that undermined the CPSU and empowered anti-Party and pro-capitalist intellectuals. By his own admission Yakovlev was a social democrat. So were other key Gorbachev advisers. Georgi Shakhnazarov had referred to himself as a social democrat since the 1960s. Archie Brown, a British analyst, described Anatoly Chernyaev as “a longstanding liberal political thinker.” Gorbachev introduced Chernyaev as my “alter ego” to Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, a Social Democrat.352 According to D’Agostino, Chernyaev, Shakhnazarov, and Yakovlev did Gorbachev’s writing.353
Under Yakovlev’s tutelage, the political concepts of perestroika increasingly assumed a new meaning: “socialist pluralism,” became “pluralism of opinion,” and finally “political pluralism.”354 Gorbachev’s phrase, “various forms of the realization of socialist property,” soon lost “realization,” then “socialist,” to become simply “various forms of property.” A “socialist rule-of-law state” became a “state based on the rule of law.” Support for “socialist markets” evolved into “market socialism,” then a “regulated market economy.” As non-Russian republics succumbed to nationalist separatism, Yakovlev’s media allies avoided the words “nationalism” and “separatism.” Archie Brown, a Gorbachev sympathizer, discerned the pattern:
What generally happened was that Gorbachev would introduce or endorse a concept that had previously been banished from Soviet political discourse, but within his first few years as General Secretary he would attach the adjective “socialist” to it. Reform-minded intellectuals would seize on the concepts and elaborate them; by 1988 the more radical among them were dropping the “socialist” qualifier.…What was striking about Gorbachev was not only that, having launched many ideas alien to Marxism-Leninism but with a “socialist” or other qualification, he would take them up two years later in their revised form with all reservations removed.355
By 1987, Yakovlev was consciously working toward anti-socialist goals. The doctrine of peaceful coexistence, originally a form of anti-capitalist struggle by every means except military, changed into “universal human values,” a phrase that would eventually be used to justify an alliance with imperialism.356 Socialist democracy became “democratization,” interpreted as reducing the role of the Party. Socialism became “the socialist choice,” not a stage of development but a mere aspiration for social justice. Security and cooperation between socialist and capitalist Europe became our “Our Common European Home,” suggesting a far-reaching identity of interest going well beyond peace, mutually advantageous trade and other forms of cooperation.357 The words changed slowly, turning slogans and doctrines inside out.358 Ellman and Kontorovich said, “A veritable war on the official ideology was started…apparently before most of the radical policies were decided.”359 In early 1987, still outnumbered by pro-reform but non-revisionist Politburo opponents, Gorbachev and his allies boldly sought to use the glasnost media to fill the idea of perestroika with new “anti-Stalinist” content. Observing the same phenomenon, American journalist Robert Kaiser said, “Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Shevardnadze and their helpers were more resourceful and inventive than their conservative opponents. … By late 1986 and early 1987 he and his allies in the Party and in the intelligentsia were behaving a little like mischievous boys set loose in a china closet shattering taboos, while obviously relishing the sound of the breakage.”360
The sheer frequency with which David Remnick, the New York Times chief correspondent in Moscow, cited Yakovlev in Lenin’s Tomb, suggested constant contact. Having spent a decade in North America, Yakovlev understood the power of The Times to shape American perceptions. Ligachev repeatedly noted the coordination of Western and Soviet media.
Economic conditions were a big factor in shaping mass attitudes. In 1987, the burgeoning second economy began to shift all Soviet politics in the new anti-socialist direction. Anthony Jones and William Moskoff, writing of the “rebirth of entrepreneurship,” noted that trade and consumer co-ops were a lawful and justifiable part of the economy over the whole Soviet era, accounting for about one-fourth of annual Soviet trade. Their character, however, changed radically in 1987.
The co-operatives that developed following the 1987 Law on Individual Labor Activity were quite different from either of these old co-operatives.… The idea of calling these new organizations co-operatives fooled few in the Soviet Union. It was recognized that this was private enterprise dressed up as socialist enterprise. Once the way had been cleared for legal non-state forms of economic activity, what came to be known as the alternative economy expanded rapidly.361
According to economist Victor Perlo, by the end of 1988 these crime-infested362 fake co-ops employed a million hired workers. A year later they employed 5 million workers.363 This unchecked and accelerating growth of the second economy imparted momentum to the drive to marketization, emboldened the anti-Communist opposition, and eroded the CPSU’s confidence. Among other consequences, the second economy was serving, in Gregory Grossman’s words, “as a living example of an alternative to the official centralized–planned-command system.”364 In short, the second economy was the material underpinning of the political collapse.
At the crucial January 1987 CC Plenum, under the slogan “democratization,” the exclusion of the CPSU from political and economic power began. The leadership had postponed the plenum three times, a likely sign of widening differences at the top. At the January 1987 Plenum, Gorbachev broke with the assumptions of the preceding two years and “radiated immense willfulness and self-confidence.”365 At the plenum Gorbachev proposed political reforms, including multi-candidate elections for Party secretary posts from the district level to the Union Republic366 and the appointment of non-Party persons to senior government posts. Gorbachev blamed “serious shortcomings in the functioning of socialist democracy” for putting a brake on his reforms.367 Gorbachev also proposed secret ballot elections for enterprises and assemblies. Ligachev saw these changes as pivotal. After them, “the process of democratization became unmanageable,” Ligachev said. “Society began to lose its stability; the idea that everything was permitted gained the upper hand.”368 Still, Gorbachev did not get all he wanted at the January 1987 Plenum, and, since the next Party Congress was not scheduled until 1990, he proposed a special Party Conference. Though the Central Committee initially rejected the idea, at the June 1987 Plenum, the Central Committee agreed to call a special Party Conference for June 1988.