to this is a breakdown of national identity amongst the educated professional
e ́lite who run the international economic and political institutions. A new
stage in world history seems to be developing. We tend to forget that the
nation state is relatively new and that not long ago people felt themselves to be
members of much wider communities; similarly the only difference between
the international economy of the past, unregulated by states, was the impact of
distance. Now that communications and distribution technology have largely
made distance irrelevant, states again become unimportant as regulators, and
less obviously the focus of identity or ambition.
Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyivich Gorbachev was, among many things, the last leader of the
Soviet Union, and, more than anyone else, responsible for the abolition of that
post and that nation. He was born in the Russian Caucasus in 1931 and
followed what had become, for his generation, a standard path for Soviet
politicians. He had the obligatory experience of manual work as a machine
operator on a collective farm, and indeed was educated at Stavropol Agricul-
tural Institute, but also, more significantly, at Moscow State University where
he graduated in law. He rapidly moved into party work, and held a series of
posts in district, regional and national party organizations, rising in step with
his mentor, Yuri Andropov, Soviet leader between 1982 and 1984. When
Andropov died Gorbachev was a potential successor as leader, having joined
the Politburo at the unusually young age of 49 in 1980. He had to wait through
the brief reign of a more conservative and older leader, Konstantin Chernenko,
but finally became General Secretary of theCommunist Party of the Soviet
Union (CPSU)in 1985, giving himde factopower, and official head of state, as
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, in 1988.
Gorbachev was, without doubt, passionately convinced of the need for
widespread reform in the Soviet Union, and was driven by an acceptance of
the appalling state of the Soviet economy. In particular he realized that the
Soviet Union’s combative foreign and defence policy was far beyond the
economy’s capacity. He accepted too that existing work habits and industrial
socialization had to be changed, incentives for work introduced, and the
paralysing weight of party bureaucracy lifted. These matters he tried to change
with his policies ofglasnost,perestroikaand the fresh approach symbolized
by thenew thinkingin foreign affairs. But he was only a reformer. At no stage
did he seriously doubtcommunism, the role of the party, or the need for
powerful and direct state control. Each of his reforms, for example the
introduction of very limited democracy inside thesingle-party system,
simply increased the demand for more, without materially affecting the social
and economic conditions of the ordinary system. Gorbachev’s rule, from 1985
Gorbachev