from prison and from exile, respectively, in 1986.
But he also rejected capitalism. ‘Capitalism’, he
declared in a speech in February 1986, ‘regarded
the birth of socialism as an error of history which
had to be corrected at any cost by any means.’
Perestroika, he wrote, did not signify a ‘disen-
chantment with socialism’, and was not motivated
by a ‘crisis for its ideals and ultimate goals.
Nothing could be further from the truth than
such interpretations’.
In the Soviet Union’s internal and external
policies much needed to be changed and im-
proved. But Gorbachev was not about to lead the
Soviet Union on the path that Czechoslovakia or
Poland were following. The Czechs and Poles saw
as their model the Western parliamentary multi-
party system, together with a market economy
dominated by private ownership of land and
industry. Gorbachev rejected ‘bourgeois capital-
ism’. The Soviet Union’s socialist ideals were not
to be called into question, nor was the essential
cohesion of the USSR. For all his radicalism,
Gorbachev intended to place limits on ‘new polit-
ical thinking’.
But was the Soviet economy reformable if it
clung to what Gorbachev regarded as unchal-
lengeable – socialism? Zbigniew Brzezinski, once
President Carter’s national security adviser, wrote
a remarkable book just before the revolutionary
upheavals in central and Eastern Europe entitled
The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of
Communism in the Twentieth Centuryin which he
forecast the end of communism. Gorbachev
agreed with Brzezinski on the wasted years, on
the lack of productivity of Soviet labour and on
the inefficient use of resources, but for Gorbachev
these spelt not the death of communism but the
need for renewal, for perestroikaand glasnostas
the engines of change. Communism had simply
not reached its full potential. This faith prevented
Gorbachev from seeking to reform the Soviet
economy and its politics as fundamentally as he
transformed the Soviet Union’s external relation-
ships. Internally, his policies revealed hesitations
and ambiguities as the economy shuddered from
bad to worse.
In the towns, queues for essential foodstuffs
and goods lengthened, the black market and ‘free
market’ flourished, and it became difficult to dis-
tinguish between the two. The reform of the
party and its corrupt bosses had the side-effect of
loosening discipline; glasnost had gone beyond
healthy criticism to challenge the fundamentals of
the Soviet state. Each of the republics became
determined to do what was best for itself, and
ethnic strife undermined the cohesion of the
Union. Better economic conditions and a clearer
policy that delivered results might have held the
Soviet people together in the absence of repres-
sive force. But worsening conditions fuelled strife,
and nationalism is such a primitive and powerful
force that its repression for decades had left it
ready to explode.
In 1985 as Gorbachev began his enormous
task of radically changing the Soviet Union he
was supported by a reformist minority in the
party, but he also faced a majority in key positions
who, though persuaded of the need for some
change, were not ready for a revolution entailing
the loss of their powers and privileges. Gorbachev
therefore had to work against the prevailing sen-
timent of the majority. He improvised with dex-
terity until the juggling came to grief. He
outmanoeuvred his opponents and displayed daz-
zling political skills as he altered party and state
structures, changed their names and their func-
tions, introduced new electoral procedures and
created new bodies. All in all, it was a virtuoso
performance. It left the Soviet people breathless
but in the end disillusioned as standards of living
dropped precipitously after 1987. To underline
the extent of his accomplishment, it may be
helpful briefly to examine the structures of state
and party inherited by Gorbachev.
Though the different party bodies were sup-
posed to be chosen democratically from the grass
roots upwards, the reverse was true; they were
appointed from the top down, except for the
leading position of the general secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who was
chosen from among the Politburo members,
though formally the Politburo recommended and
the Central Committee approved. Gorbachev was
‘approved’ on 11 March 1985. The Politburo
consisted of ten full and six candidate members
who in theory were ‘elected’ by the Central