Perestroika and Its American Critics

Perestroika and Its American Critics
Author(s): Alexander Yanov

Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter, 1988), pp. 716-725
Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
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REVIEW ARTICLES
ALEXANDER YANOV
Perestroika and Its American Critics
Whatever our interpretation of the first, domestic, section of Mikhail Gorbachev's Peres-
troika, its second, foreign policy, section presents us with something of a paradox. For
in it a leader of a modern superpower commits himself, publicly and dramatically, to a
vision of the world that most of his authoritative contemporaries in the other super-
power consider a dream (or a myth or an utopian delusion).
Ask, say, Richard Nixon, who aspires to the role of the dean of American politi-
cians, whether Gorbachev's "world free of war, without arms race, nuclear weapons
and violence" is ever possible and he would respond without the slightest hesitation
that such a world is a myth.' Ask Henry Kissinger the same question and he would call
it utopia. Ask Zbigniew Brzezinski whether there is even a grain of political realism in
Gorbachev's dictum "Security is indivisible. It is either equal security for all or none at
all," and he would dismiss it as a dream.2 Even George Kennan, the most sympathetic
of retired United States statesmen, would not consider Gorbachev's dream realistic or
rational. He would only add that "It is always possible . . . that the irrational can pro-
vide hope where rationality perceives little reason for it."'
Yet, what is easy for a retired statesman must be, logically speaking, impossible
for an acting superpower chief. The latter is not supposed to stake his political life on
something for which "rationality perceives little reason." Still Gorbachev does pre-
cisely that-from the point of view of his American critics. Although he repeatedly
says that "we are eager to know the opinion (and even criticism) of all the different
types of people in our world today" and that his Perestroika is no more than "an invita-
tion to dialogue,"4 it is clear that as long as the mentors of United States foreign policy
see his message as a dream, only a dialogue of the deaf may occur.
In the past, the impossibility of dialogue was attributed to the Soviet leaders' being
the prisoners of antiquated ideological dogmas of their Leninist party-church. The
western leaders, on the contrary, appeared to be open-minded in the contest of ideas,
free thinkers capable of any leap of imagination within the bounds of political reality.
Perestroika compels us to look closer at this conventional picture. Actually the ques-
tion I am setting out to clarify in this essay seems to be perfectly clear: Either Gor-
bachev's message is indeed irrelevant to the global agenda of the closing years of the
twentieth century or intellectual leaders of the United States reject it because they may
be prisoners of antiquated ideological dogmas of their own respective "churches."
1. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and for the World (New York:
Harper and Row, 1987), p. 11; Richard M. Nixon, 1999: Victory without War (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1988).
2. Perestroika, p. 142; Zbigniew Brzezinski, "America's New Geostrategy," Foreign Affairs 66
(Spring 1988):680-699.
3. George F. Kennan, "The Gorbachev Prospect," New York Review of Books, 21 January 1988.
4. Perestroika, pp. 154, 9.
Perestroika and Its American Critics 717
Gorbachev gives a number of reasons why his message is heretical in relation to

the traditional dogmas of his church. He honestly admits that "Marxist philosophy was
dominated . . . by a class-motivated approach" and that "humanitarian notions were
viewed as a function and the end result of the struggle of the working class."5 "But
now," he adds, "with the emergence of weapons of . . . universal destruction, there
appeared an objective limit for class confrontation in the international arena. . . . For
the first time ever there emerged a real, not speculative and remote, common human
interest-to save humanity from disaster." That is why "The arms race, just like nu-
clear war, is unwinnable" and any attempt at victory in the superpower contest could
only lead to a "world situation [becoming] such that it would no longer depend on
politicians but would become captive to chance."6
Not only the postulates of Marxist philosophy have grown obsolete in the nuclear
age, Gorbachev continues, the principal postulates of international politics, considered
universal and even classical in previous ages, have also "lost all reasonable grounds."
He refers specifically to Carl von Clausewitz's maxim that war is the continuation of
policy as "hopelessly out of date."7 He might have referred equally to Hans Mor-
genthau's dictum that "the aspirations for power being the distinguishing element of
international politics, as of all politics, international politics is of necessity power poli-
tics."8 All this ancient stuff "now belongs to the libraries."9 For "we are all pas-
sengers aboard one ship, the Earth, and we must not allow it to get wrecked" by power
politics. For "there will be no second Noah's Ark." 10 In practical terms "adversaries
should become partners." "
Thus, in his iconoclastic fervor, Gorbachev appears to be sinning not only against
the sacred dogmas of his own Leninist church but against the dogmas of our churches
as well. He attacks not just the vulgar demonological Church of the Evil Empire but the
sophisticated highbrow Church of Realpolitik-the whole tandem that alternately
dominates the intellectual landscape of the United States. His heretical message is ad-
dressed to both sides of the Great Divide; he fights on two fronts-against his own and
the ideological clergy of the United States. On both fronts the resistance seems over-
whelming, though. Why?
In a sense, Gorbachev's message can be reduced to a triviality: The world around

us has changed and the theoretical paradigms that explained it to us and guided our
behavior in it should change accordingly-be they Marxist or anti-Marxist, whether
they are based on a Leninist dictum that peace will prevail "only when we have van-
quished and completely destroyed the bourgeoisie around the world" or on "power
politics." If the old paradigms put the highest premium in international politics on the
victory of one side over the other, the new one puts it on mutual survival. The message
is that simple. While it may sound convincing in its simplicity for the man on the
street, the priests keep their doubts.
The formulation of a new paradigm is a tremendously complex theoretical busi-
ness. One has to be a Karl Marx or, at least, a Hans Morgenthau to succeed in it.
5. Ibid., p. 146.
6. Ibid., pp. 146- 147, 138.
7. Ibid., p. 141.
8. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1985), p. 37.
9. Perestroika, p. 141.
10. Ibid., p. 12.
l1. Ibid., p. 142.
718 Slavic Review
Gorbachev is admittedly neither. He is just a charismatic politician who, for his own
reasons, is ready for a paradigm change and who has no doubt in his mind that such a
change is extremely urgent. The momentum of the ongoing military-technological
revolution is such, in his view, that, if we do not act to block it today, "it may be too
late tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow may never come." Therefore "time . . .
must not be wasted. We have to act." 12
Is he after all so much different from another charismatic politician who, also in
the absence of a new paradigm, proclaimed a quarter century before Gorbachev that
"We must abolish the weapons of war before they abolish us"? Didn't he, this other
politician, say-referring to the "truce" of 1963-"if this pause in the Cold War
merely leads to its renewal and not its end-then the indictment of posterity will
rightly point its finger at us all"? Didn't he declare in a speech at the American Univer-
sity that "if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for
diversity"? Is this indeed so different from Gorbachev's "no one can close down the
world of socialism . . . or the world of developed capitalism"? 13
Of whatever sins John F. Kennedy has been accused after his tragic death, to the
best of my knowledge, being a champion of delusion has not been one of them. He said
in the early 1960s what Gorbachev is saying in the late 1980s. Like Gorbachev he did
not wait for a new Morgenthau to formulate a new paradigm. Yet no one, except per-
haps the National Review, accused him of propagating a myth. Unlike Nixon, Kennedy
did not think that disarmament was a dream; unlike Brzezinski, he was worried about
the destructive momentum of the military-technological revolution. And he said so,
"our commitment to national safety is not a commitment to expand our military estab-
lishment indefinitely. We do not dismiss disarmament as an idle dream. For we believe
in the end that it is the only way of insuring the security of all without impairing the
interests of any." In this quotation-and not only in this one-Kennedy undeniably
sounds like a forerunner of Gorbachev. When he appeals to common interests of hu-
manity ("let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct our attention to
common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved") Peres-
troika positively begins to sound like an echo of Kennedy's speeches. It is quite pos-
sible that a collection of Kennedy's foreign policy presentations organized and pub-
lished in the manner of Perestroika would have made clear that the principal message
of both iconoclastic politicians is practically one and the same.
Something must have happened in the United States after Kennedy similar to what
has happened in post-Krushchev Russia that hardened the positions of the priests of all
colors to the point of petrification. The Russians encouraged by Gorbachev do not
make a secret anymore of the intellectual stagnation of the post-Khrushchev years.
Some even call it intellectual decay. So far Americans refrain from such deep "national
self-criticism." Can the reason for this difference be that, while the Russians already
have their new Khrushchev, the Americans still only dream of their new Kennedy?
Gorbachev obviously goes too far from the point of view of the Leninist priests.
The fundamental tenets of the church are placed in question. Is not the church dedi-
cated after all to the destruction of capitalism? All right, they may agree that in the
nuclear age "war is by no means an indispensable prerequisite for social revolutions."
They may deem it "no longer possible to retain [in the CPSU program] the definition
12. Ibid., pp. 140, 13.

13. Ibid., p. 136.
of peaceful coexistence . . . as a specific form of class struggle." They may have

drowned the conclusion "about the disappearance of the cause-and-effect relationship
between war and revolution." Finally they may admit that "it is up to history to judge
the merits of each particular system." 14
Yet to go as far as to proclaim that "the nations of the world resemble today a pack
of mountaineers tied together by a climbing rope. They can either climb on together to
the mountain peak or fall together into an abyss" 15 seems absolutely inadmissable for a
true Leninist. Such a statement clearly implies that Leninists should care about the
well-being and perpetuation of capitalism no less than they care for the perpetuation of
socialism. Should, God forbid, a disaster strike the United States, "imperialist" as it
is, we would fall into the same abyss along with her. In this way Leninism is being
turned upside down.
Knowing his priests only too well, Gorbachev piously evokes the sacred authority
in defense of his own position: "Lenin could see further, he could go beyond the class-
imposed limits. More than once he spoke about the priority of interests common to all
humanity over class interests. It is only now that we have come to comprehend the
entire depth and significance of these ideas. It is they that are feeding our philosophy of
international relations, and the new way of thinking." 16
This defense is feeble. In the first place, Lenin died decades ago, long before the
advent of the nuclear age that is the apparent rationale for the paradigm change Gor-
bachev wants. Second, the priests have at their disposal volumes upon volumes of
Lenin's writings that. could have fed-and have been feeding-the old Soviet thinking
for decades. In a "war of quotations," if it ever breaks out again in reformist Moscow
as it did during the NEP of the 1920s, Gorbachev is certain to be a loser.
Of course, if he were a Karl Marx, not a high priest of the Leninist church as he is,
he might have been able perhaps to resolve this fateful contradiction. Why not write a
solid theoretical treatise in the fashion of Marx's Civil War in France and establish
once and for all that, paradoxical as as it may sound to a western ear unaccustomed to
the paradoxes of Russian history, there were in effect two Lenins?
There was Lenin-the-extremist, the founder of the Bolshevik demonological church
for whom tsarism (and capitalism) were absolute evil irredeemable by reform. This
Lenin was the Lenin of War Communism, Red Terror and World Revolution, the one
whose ideas had indeed fed Stalinist policies of grand expansion as well as Brezhnevist
tinkering with guns and butter (and petty expansionism). Undoubtedly another Lenin-
the revolutionary-turned-reformer, the Lenin of NEP and "Cooperative Plan," of Cul-
tural Thaw and Peaceful Coexistence-was the Lenin whose ideas fed Nikolai Bukha-
rin's resistance to the Stalinist "military-feudal exploitation of the peasantry" as well as
Nikita Khrushchev's bold de-Stalinization. It was precisely this Lenin whose ideas are
now feeding Gorbachev's drive for the radical de-Brezhnevization of Soviet politics.
In other words, theoretically it is perhaps possible to establish the Founding Fa-
ther's double identity. For there was indeed Lenin-the-Saul, whose legitimate heir was
Stalin, and Lenin-the-Paul, whose no-less-legitimate heir is Gorbachev.
Unfortunately, quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. What may be permissible for Gor-
14. Ibid., pp. 144, 147, 148.

15. Ibid., p. 140.
16. Ibid., p. 145.
720 Slavic Review
bachev-the-theoretician is out of the question for Gorbachev-the-politician. 17 The latter

cannot deny the legitimacy of the October 1917 Revolution, the main deed of Lenin-
the-Saul, from which his own legitimacy is derived. He can only do what he is doing-
quote Lenin-the-Paul in order to transcend the tragic predicament that leaves him open
and vulnerable to attacks of both his native priests-demonologists, the heirs of Lenin-
the-Saul-and foreign demonologists who traditionally, albeit unwittingly, cooperate
with Russian reactionaries against Russian reform.
In fact, if the Soviet critics of perestroika have at the moment to mix (pending the
future de-Gorbachevization) their Leninist strictures with some praise, even through
clenched teeth,"8 the United States demonologists feel free from restrictions. Brian
Crozier in National Review quotes against Gorbachev excerpts from Lenin-the-Saul's
writings and accuses Gorbachev of hypocrisy.19 Leonard Bushkoff in The Christian
Science Monitor dismisses Perestroika altogether: "This book . . . requires a very
careful reading in the State Department, a quick skim elsewhere in Washington, and a
shrug of the shoulders from the rest of us."20
This evidence shows what a terrific uproar and confusion Gorbachev's call for a
paradigm change in the international relations of the nuclear age has created on both
sides of the Great Divide. In the absence of a new grand theory justifying such a para-
digm change, the only chance Gorbachev appears to have to survive in the jungle of
antiquated dogmas of all stripes is the emergence of a new Kennedy on the United
States side, an equally bold heretic and inconoclast, at the helm of the other super-
power. Only a synchronization of reform by both superpowers may perhaps create the
conditions for the acceptance of paradigm change without which Gorbachev seems to
be doomed. This impression becomes overwhelming when one starts examining the
responses of the "big guns," the priests of the United States churches.
By demonologists I mean the believers in an absolute evil irredeemable by reform,
be they the Bolsheviks at the dawn of the century who believed that the imperial Russia
of their day was the Evil Empire or the American conservatives who believe the same
today about Soviet Russia. One would suppose that the success of the Russian demon-
ologists in 1917 was bound to teach something to the American "Bolsheviks" three
generations later. Alas, the minds of believers in demonological truth, be they Russians
or Americans, seem incapable of learning from historical experience. The demono-
logical reaction to Russian reform, to perestroika has not changed a bit in eighty years.
Imagine that what we are discussing here is not Gorbachev's Perestroika in 1988
but some equally long essay or speech on the same subject by another Russian reformer
in, say, 1908 who, just as Gorbachev today, was desperately trying to change Russia
peacefully in order to prevent catastrophic change-with worldwide consequences. I
am talking, of course, of Petr Stolypin's perestroika whose failure led to the bitterest
tragedies of this tragic century.
How did the Bolsheviks respond to Stolypin's appeal to prevent catastrophe in Rus-
sia? Luckily we do not have to quote their "reviews" of his perestroika of 1908. It
appears to be enough to quote a response to Gorbachev's Perestroika in National Re-
17. The closest Soviet reform ideologists ever came to such a distinction is Fedor Burlatskii's "Kakoi
socializm narodu nuzhen?" Literaturnaia Gazeta, 20 April 1988.
18. See, for example,. Nina Andreeva, "Ne mogu postupitsa printsipami," Sovetskaia Rossia, 13
March 1988.
19. Brian Crozier, "Gorbachev's Dilemma," National Review, 19 February 1988.
20. "Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika: A Call for Universal Restructuring."
view published in 1988-changing only the name of the reformer along with a few
dates and terms. This is how it sounds:
The remarkably gifted [tsarist premier of Russia] comes close to spelling out his
dilemma in his refreshing [essay]. That is, he gives us all the clues, though he can't
bring himself to put them together. But the clues are there, all right. Early on, he
starts a protracted lament for the difficulties, deterioration and unresolved prob-
lems that beset Russia during the latter half [of the last century]. The country was
"losing momentum." There was stagnation. . . . His reference to stagnation, in
context, is revealing. He refers to "stagnation and other phenomena alien to
[monarchy]." And there we have it. Stagnation and declining growth are not alien
to [tsarism], but inherent in it. Being an intelligent man, [Stolypin] probably real-
izes it, but he can't say it. Or more precisely, he can't say it and hope to remain in
power. . . . Why, in the face of such evasiveness, did I in the first sentence of this
review, describe [this piece] as a refreshing [essay]? For the single reason that in
the long, dreary context of [tsarist literature], it is refreshingly readable in just the
same way that [Petr Stolpypin] is amazingly effective as his own PR man. And
that, alas, is the heart of the [Stolpypin] problem. . . . The man seems to be hon-
est, so transparent, so sincere. Can he really be the boss of an evil empire? So, if I
am allowed one final word to sum up, that word should be "Beware!" 21
Here is the heart of the demonologists' problem. Their response to Russian per-
estroika had been sarcastic, superficial, and nihilist at the dawn of the century. And so
it is eighty years later. It had been totally devoid of any sense of what might happen-
to Russia and to the world-in the event that perestroika failed to prevent the catas-
trophe in 1908. And so it is in 1988. Only the left-wing demonologists of the past
inveighing against tsarism pose now as right-wingers inveighing against communism.
The colors have changed, but not the substance.
One can hardly expect a new Kennedy from the ranks adhering to this petrified
dogma. These people have not heard Kennedy, in the early 1960s: "We are not here
distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment." Even if they heard him, they
did not understand that "no government or social system is so evil that its people must
be considered as lacking in virtue." How can they hear or understand Gorbachev?
Fortunately, they will soon be gone from the scene. Their triumph was short lived
in the early 1950s. The restoration in the early 1980s was equally short-lived as if to
confirm Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s conception of the thirty-year cycles of United States
history. The problem is in what comes to replace them. Would it again be a Kennedy-
like rebellion or would the priests of the other powerful American church, that of real-
politik, occupy the vacant scene? This choice is, in fact, on what the fate of Gorba-
chev's perestroika seems to be staked.
Judging from the early responses, his chances are pretty slim. To be sure, Zbig-
niew Brzezinski for one does refer to his perestroika as a "desperate effort." 22 He
knows very well that "a major eruption in Eastern Europe would almost certainly pre-
cipitate not only a Soviet intervention but the end of the perestroika itself." Unlike the
demonologists, he understands that such an "explosion could have tragic consequences
not only for the region itself but also for East-West relations, by prompting a lasting
revival of the most negative attributes of the Soviet system." 23
Yet, after saying all this, he goes right ahead discussing the global agenda of
21. Crozier, "Gorbachev's Dilemma," pp. 52, 54.

22. Brzezinski, "America's New Geostrategy," p. 694.
23. Ibid., p. 687.
722 Slavic Review
American geopolitics as if he were talking about Iran, not Russia, as if the possibility
of "tragic consequences" should not at all affect this global agenda. Like the demon-
ologists, he does not stop a moment to consider what the United States might do to
prevent those "tragic consequences." He simply dismisses Gorbachev's message that
"we . . . are in the same boat, and we can sink or swim only together." But what it
means is that if Russia were to explode again, as she did in 1917, the consequences
might be equally tragic for the United States.
From Brzezinski's point of view, his reasoning is logical, of course. For him, "the
notion of a global U.S. - Soviet partnership for peace and development is . . . illu-
sory." Why should we pay much attention to Gorbachev's "desperate effort" if "it is
likely that in the foreseeable future the Soviet sphere will be preoccupied with a pro-
tracted systemic crisis, including major economic upheavals and perhaps even politi-
cal unrest." 24
Why should the west have paid much attention to Stolypin's "desperate effort" in
1908? Guided by Brzezinski-like logic, it did not. It went on with its global agenda,
that, as we know, led to World War I-and to Russia's historic catastrophe. For that
was essentially all that Stolypin's opposition, and the Bolsheviks in the first place,
needed to accomplish the impossible. Tsarist Russia was transformed by this systemic
crisis into Communist Russia that redefined the global agenda of the twentieth century.
For everything that followed-the emergence of anti-Communist demonology that
quickly degenerated into fascism, World War II and the Holocaust, Cold War and the
nuclear arms race that quickly degenerated into a mammoth military-technological
revolution that assumed a life of its own-all these were, strictly speaking, only deriva-
tives of the great Russian metamorphosis. To be sure, Brzezinski does not give a sec-
ond thought to the possibility of an equally grandiose-and equally frightful-Russian
metamorphosis in the future. His predecessors, the realpolitikers of the past, did not
give a damn for the communist metamorphosis in tsarist Russia either. Was their fateful
error taken into account by their successors?
Richard Nixon does not mince words as Lenin did not: "Like his predecessors,
Gorbachev seeks to expand the influence and power of the Soviet Union. Regardless of
the refinements he has introduced into Moscow public relations techniques, he has pre-
served the longterm objective of pushing for global predominance. "25 Where is the
evidence for that? Instead of evidence, Nixon gives us the old paradigm straight:
"What moves the world for good or ill, and no sovereign nation will give up any of its
power-not now and not ever. This is an immutable aspect of national character." 26
The heretical thought that this dogma might be no more immutable than Lenin's
(about vanquishing the bourgeoisie as a precondition for peace) does not seem to have
entered Nixon's head. Yet Gorbachev says: "The time is ripe for abandoning views on
foreign policy which are influenced by imperial standpoint. Neither the Soviet Union
nor the United States is able to force its will on others. . . . That is why only one
thing-relations of equality remains." 27
This statement may seem trivial-as so many things in Perestroika do. It is also a
counter to the major dogma of realpolitik. For the dogma says, right to the contrary,
24. Ibid., p. 695.

25. Richard M. Nixon, "Dealing with Gorbachev," New York Times Magazine, 13 March 1988, p. 30.
26. Ibid., p. 79.
that "imperial standpoint" is a mandatory precondition of stable international order.

Nixon faithfully echoes this: "Whether we like it or not, the task of leadership has
devolved upon us. The sooner we face it-and the sooner the people of great nations,
especially those in the West, stop feeling guilty about being powerful-the sooner
a genuine international order . . . will be achieved." 28 The really important thing for
the achievement of that order, however, is that it is predicated on Gorbachev's de-
feat. "Those who ask whether Gorbachev is sincere in his desire for peace beg the
question. He sincerely doesn't want war. But he just as sincerely wants victory. The
Soviet Union seeks victory without war. If we seek peace without victory we are
doomed to defeat. " 29
Judging by these authoritative responses to Gorbachev's call for paradigm change,
there are no iconoclasts, no new Kennedys among them. They are just as imprisoned
by their decrepit dogmas as the Brezhnevites are imprisoned by those of Lenin-the-
Saul. Intellectual stagnation proves to be even more contagious than Gorbachev de-
scribed it in Perestroika. He seems to have not had even the slightest notion that he was
describing not only the stuffy intellectual world of Brezhnevism but also that of post-
Kennedy America when he wrote: "the braking mechanism brought about ever greater
resistance . . . to new ideas. . . creative thinking was driven out . . . and [superficial]
judgments were declared indisputable truth."30
To be sure, no land stands without a just man, as the Russians say. Even amidst the
doldrums of Brezhnevism, there was Andrei Sakharov in Russia, a dissident and an
iconoclast. It is because of his existence that people of my generation still believed,
even in the darkest of times when there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel,
that a Gorbachev might be somewhere there, among the dull priests of the Leninist
church. And there is, of course, George Kennan in the United States, the perpetual
dissident whose resilience testifies to the possibility of a New Kennedy among the dull
priests of the American ideological churches. After all was not JFK himself a standard
demonologist when he started out?
Kennan agrees with Gorbachev that the advent of the nuclear age calls for a para-
digm change (even though he does not put it in those terms), undermining the canons
of all established churches. Like Gorbachev (and Kennedy) he worries that the ever-
accelerating military-technological revolution will rapidly erode the very foundations
of our civilization. Like Sakharov, he embraces the message of Gorbachev's Per-
estroika. Yet, well aware of the extent of resistance to paradigm change in both Russia
and America, he does not believe in Gorbachev's survival, or rather he believes in it
"only-one might say-on the brighter days." He is convinced that "at some point
assuredly, the forces arrayed against Gorbachev will coalesce to unseat him." "
Partly, Kennan's pessimism can be laid at the door of our conventional sovietology
that failed to make clear that the depiction of Gorbachev as a lonely hero of a Greek
tragedy fighting the inexorable fate, is, let us say, a bit exaggerated. His "ominous
loneliness" in the face of "a task of Gargantuan dimensions," however romantic it may
sound, is a myth. As someone who has traveled the expanses of Russia from one end to
another, and who has met people there from all walks of life, in the turbulent Soviet
1960s, I can assure Kennan that the entire "reform party" of Russia backs Gorbachev
28. "Dealing with Gorbachev," p. 79.

29. Ibid.; emphasis added.
31. Kennan, "The Gorbachev Prospect."
724 Slavic Review
and, moreover, sees him as its natural leader, as the executor of its own program. This
means at least a dozen million people, possibly more-from the elite of the working
class and the peasantry to the elite of the middle managerial class to the professionals
and even the younger bureaucracy replacing the Brezhnevist cadres. This support goes
far beyond the liberal intelligentsia, "his sole whole-hearted supporters," in Kennan's
view.
Yet there can hardly be any doubt that essentially Kennan is right: the forces ar-
rayed against Gorbachev are bound to coalesce to unseat him. As soon as we forget
about his "ominous loneliness," as soon as we understand that the coming conflict
would be one between two great coalitions, reformist and counterreformist, the future
triumph of forces arrayed against Gorbachev appears as less than a foregone conclu-
sion. Antireformist forces coalesced against Nikita Khruschev, Gorbachev's predeces-
sor, twice-in June 1957 and in October 1964. The first time they were defeated. It
was only the second coalition that unseated him seven years later.
A look at the composition of the forces arrayed against reform in Moscow may
yield even more curious results. The main heroes of the 1964 coup-the party priest-
hood and the central economic bureaucracy-are virtually incapacitated now by their
grandiose failure in the period from 1965 to 1985. Their alternative course to Khrush-
chev's perestroika proved disastrous. Brezhnevist tinkering with guns and butter brought
the country "to the verge of crisis." 32 To be sure, they are still capable of sabotaging
Gorbachev's perestroika, but unseat the general secretary by themselves they cannot.
This leaves, of course, the third component of the victorious anti-Khrushchev
coalition-the powerful Soviet military. In fact, it was the military that played the role
of power broker in the post-Stalin power game in Moscow: They helped to save
Khrushchev in June 1957 and they doomed him in October 1964. Looking from this
perspective, we would see immediately that the really fateful questions facing Gor-
bachev are these: Would he be able to survive without the support of the military?
Would he be able to survive against them?
The tragic irony of the situation is that the ultimate answers to these questions rest
with Washington, not Moscow. For if the backbone of the military-technological revo-
lution is indeed broken, the image of the west as the enemy is on its way to extinction,
and the paradigm of mutual survival replaces that of "power politics," the political
weight of the Soviet military would fall proportionately. In other words, it is only para-
digm change that can deprive them of the role of power brokers in Soviet politics.
Khrushchev understood it very well. Unfortunately, he dramatically failed to con-
vince the west of the imperative nature of such a paradigm change. Faced with the
widening missile gap and the iron determination of the United States to continue to
feed the inexorable march of the military-technological revolution, he still tried to fight
the military alone-by drastically reducing the size of Soviet conventional forces and
blocking the nuclear race unilaterally. The unilateral strategy backfired. Khrush-
chev came across as a civilian incompetent who was perilously risking national secu-
rity. He lost.33
Such is the dramatic lesson Gorbachev learned from the experience of his unfortu-
nate predecessor, and this is what he is trying to avoid now by writing his "long letter
to the world" called Perestroika. It would be tragic if this call falls again on deaf ears,

33. For details, see Alexander Yanov, The Drama of the Soviet 1960s: A Lost Reform (Berkeley: Insti-
tute of International Studies, 1984).
as Khrushchev's did, if no one in the United States reads the desperate cry for help
between the lines of Gorbachev's letter.
Perestroika is full of weaknesses both as a political treatise and as a work of litera-

ture. John Lewis Gaddis is right when he focuses in the Washington Post on "ambigui-
ties, evasions and contradiction" in Gorbachev's presentation.34 It is hard not to agree
with Christopher Lehman-Haupt of The New York Times that Perestroika suffers from
"an excess of slogans, cant and elliptical hints at what the author really means."35 Yet
who on earth cares now what kind of a political thinker, or writer for that matter, Petr
Stolypin was? What really mattered in the long run was his "desperate effort" to save
Russia-and, as it appeared, the world-from a historic calamity. And is it not liter-
ally the same that Gorbachev is trying to do now-in the nuclear age?
What should we do then? Restrict ourselves to the prescriptions of conventional
wisdom so comprehensively expressed by Dave McCurdy, congressman from Okla-
homa: "We should warn against resting our nation's basic security on the uncertain
future of Mikhail Gorbachev and his policies of glasnost and perestroika." 36 In prac-
tice, this reaction strengthens the hand of the Soviet military against Gorbachev and
dooms him to the fate of Khrushchev. Or should we just sit and wonder about the ambi-
guities of Perestroika as most of its sympathetic United States critics do? In reality, this
stance means the same thing as the recommendation of McCurdy who was speaking
apparently in the name of the moderate Democrats.
John F. Kennedy, however, chose another response to Khrushchev's perestroika in
1963. He did not shy away from the grand vision of nuclear disarmament. His response
was that of active engagement, of passionate dialogue, of meeting Khrushchev half
way, of countering him with a grand vision of his own that, being as comprehensive
and universal as Gorbachev's, was at the same time free from its ambiguities.
None of Gorbachev's critics in the United States has even tried to repeat Kennedy's
performance. Does it mean that we are not ready yet to return to his grand vision of a
world safe for diversity-even at the moment when we have a Soviet leader who ap-
pears to be bold enough to adopt it?
34. "Mikhail Gorbachev's Manifesto," Washington Post Book World.

35. New York Times, 23 November 1987.
36. Dave McCurdy, "Dukakis, Jackson: Too Far Left," New York Times 3 May 1988.

Perestroika and Its American Critics

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Perestroika and Its American Critics

Author(s): Alexander Yanov

Perestroika and Its American Critics

Gorbachev gives a number of reasons why his message is heretical in relation to

In a sense, Gorbachev's message can be reduced to a triviality: The world around

12. Ibid., pp. 140, 13.

of peaceful coexistence . . . as a specific form of class struggle." They may have

14. Ibid., pp. 144, 147, 148.

bachev-the-theoretician is out of the question for Gorbachev-the-politician. 17 The latter

21. Crozier, "Gorbachev's Dilemma," pp. 52, 54.

24. Ibid., p. 695.

that "imperial standpoint" is a mandatory precondition of stable international order.

28. "Dealing with Gorbachev," p. 79.

32. Perestroika, p. 24.

Perestroika is full of weaknesses both as a political treatise and as a work of litera-

34. "Mikhail Gorbachev's Manifesto," Washington Post Book World.

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