An illusion inspired the whole Gorbachev project—to turn the socialist USSR into a western European social democracy that, in his revisionist view, incorporated the best of socialism and the best of European capitalism.474 He discovered, however, that projects founded on illusion fail. You cannot leap across a canyon in two steps. Some Marxists have said that Gorbachev was consciously pursuing outright capitalist restoration. Admittedly, the dismantling process looked much the same, but such a claim missed the ideological nature of Gorbachev’s project: his non-class view of the world insisted the mirage was not a mirage, that there was a third way between the two systems and the two classes, that his version of “socialism,” capitalism with a social safety net and class partnership policies, was socialism. Typically, this trend of political thought denigrated genuine socialism as “Communism” or “Stalinism.” The fact that Gorbachev’s project ended in capitalist restoration does not prove he was consciously seeking it. The crisis of 1989-91 steadily worsened because Gorbachev never gave up his pursuit of the third way and Party liquidation, the main causes of the crisis. In 1990 Alexander Yakovlev, the earliest, most conscious and most consistent promoter of enfeebling the Party, laid out one last plan for Gorbachev. Calling the Politburo and Central Committee “the main obstacles to perestroika,” Yakovlev urged him to go further and faster in pushing the Party aside. “Convene the Congress of People’s Deputies and establish presidential power.” He advised undoing collectivization, public ownership, and the Union state under the disingenuous slogan: “Give land to the peasants, factories to the workers, and real independence to the republics.” He counseled creation of a multiparty system with the CPSU relinquishing its monopoly of power, slashing the nomenklatura apparatus to the bone, and accepting large loans from the West. He pressed Gorbachev to “launch military reform, get rid of the generals, replace them with lieutenant colonels, start a pullout from Eastern Europe, liquidate the industrial ministries, grant freedom to entrepreneurs, get rid of [Prime Minister] Ryzhkov, and [Yuri] Maslyukov the head of Gosplan.”475 In the end, Gorbachev took most of Yakovlev’s advice.
Two main processes dominated Soviet politics in 1989. One grabbed headlines; the other did not. The first was the swift collapse of the East European socialist states, a series of counterrevolutions that coincided with the bicentennial of the French Revolution. The second process was the implementation of Gorbachev’s “radical political reform.”476 Gorbachev’s revision of Soviet foreign policy triggered the Eastern European collapse, and the Eastern European collapse strengthened revisionism in the Soviet Union. In December 1988, Gorbachev gave a speech to the UN in New York announcing a Soviet policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of socialist states and military withdrawal from Eastern Europe. That shift in policy strengthened the internal opposition in Eastern Europe and emboldened the West. The domino-like fall of state after state in 1989 undermined the prestige and strength of socialism and adversely affected the USSR economy.
The cause of the collapse of the East European socialist states is beyond the scope of this account of the Soviet collapse. Suffice it to say the East European states were weaker than the USSR. First, the Eastern European socialist states were newer and less firmly rooted than Soviet socialism. Second, in much of Eastern Europe, socialist change stemmed less from homegrown revolutionary movements than from the wartime advance of the Red Army. Soviet occupation enabled small Communist Parties decimated by Nazi repression to build postwar antifascist government coalitions that evolved into socialist regimes. Thus, in Eastern Europe, outside circumstances made revolution comparatively easy and peaceful, but also less thoroughgoing. Third, national and religious sentiment worked against many of the regimes. Where such countries as Roman Catholic Poland viewed Russia as the historic oppressor, an extra problem in winning legitimacy burdened socialism. Where Russia was a historic friend and ally, as in Eastern Orthodox Bulgaria and Serbia, socialism walked an easier path. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR) the aspiration for national reunification clashed with the task of building a separate socialist state, but in Yugoslavia, socialism merged with the will for national independence. (This helps explain why in the 1990s NATO had to work so hard to stamp out the unity and socialist character of the remnants of the Yugoslav Federation.) Fourth, some states, bordering the West, notably the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, felt the pressure of economic and ideological competition with richer capitalist neighbors that, unlike socialist states, drew wealth from the Third World and aid from the United States. Faced with such pressure, Poland and Hungary became heavily indebted to Western banks. In 1985 Hungary joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Fifth, the excessive repressions of the Stalin era created a reservoir of resentment in such countries as Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak Party suffered from strong revisionist currents that in 1968 became obvious. Finally, for decades, the West had pursued a policy of “differentiation,” to sow disunity in Eastern European socialism by bestowing rewards on such states as Romania, willing to distance itself from the USSR.
The East European collapse intertwined with the Soviet story.477 It was a humiliation, a warning, and a body blow to Communist political morale everywhere. The East European collapse emboldened separatists and proponents of capitalism in all parts of the USSR.
In 1989 the second major process, Soviet political reform, began in earnest. In June 1988, at the Nineteenth Party Conference, with a bit of last-minute parliamentary chicanery, Gorbachev rammed through “radical political reform.”478 Gorbachev and Yakovlev soon translated the conference resolution into organizational reality.
From June 1988 to March 1989, when the elections for the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies took place, measures to weaken the Party came thick and fast. In July 1988, at the first CC Plenum after Nineteenth Party Conference, Gorbachev’s forces called for the rank-and-file to break the power of the apparatus.479 In September Gorbachev called for cuts in the local apparatus by 900,000.480 Gorbachev sacked non-revisionist and anti-revisionist Politburo leaders. In the September CC Plenum decisions, he removed veteran Andrei Gromyko as a full PB member. Gromyko had slowed down Gorbachev’s reforms. Yegor Ligachev, downgraded to head of agriculture from head of ideology, would now no longer run the CC Secretariat, his base.481 Vadim Medvedev, a trusty ally of Yakovlev and Gorbachev, became a full PB member. Medvedev and Yakovlev took over Ligachev’s responsibilities in ideology and foreign affairs.
Chernyaev described the caprice with which Gorbachev and his advisers cut the CPSU central apparatus. Gorbachev proposed cutting the apparatus in half. Chernyaev proposed two-thirds. They arbitrarily settled on a figure between one-half and two-thirds. Gorbachev then proposed eliminating the economic and governmental departments altogether. ”We’ll keep the socioeconomic one as a theoretical body,” Gorbachev mused, “having stripped it of its management rights and functions.”482 This was impulsive downsizing for its own sake, without a plan, without a thought to consequences. Chernyaev frankly acknowledged the ubiquitous confusion and demoralization that resulted from what the Western media called a “mini coup d’etat.” It wildly accelerated the weakening of central authority and power nationwide that had begun after the Nineteenth Party Conference. Local and regional Party organizations at all levels floundered helplessly, deprived of their previous economic and managerial function.483