GORBACHEV: THE FIRST FOUR YEARS

In the wake of the Soviet elections leader on the eve of his visit to London

LAST month Mikhail Sergeyevich Gor- bachev completed four full years as. Party secretary. By now it is abundantly clear that, whatever the ultimate outcome, an entirely new era in Soviet and indeed in Russian history has begun — what Gor- bachev himself has called an era of 'revolu- tionary change'. That such a change should have come about when it did, is not surprising. With Gorbachev, power in the Soviet Union passed to a new generation, separated from its predecessors by a gap of 20 all-important years and differing from them markedly in experience and outlook.

Born 14 years after the Revolution, the new Party secretary was a child at the time of Stalin's horrendous purges. He reached maturity in a self-confident, newly victo- rious country, with an increasingly relaxed atmosphere, a gradually improving stan- dard of living and every claim to be regarded as a superpower. Ambitious, free of inhibitions, the son and grandson of respected Party members, himself en- dowed with exceptional energy and intelli- gence, he had had an excellent start in life. With Raisa, his intelligent and stylish wife, he shared the benefit of a university education, an advantage enjoyed by none of his predecessors since Lenin. All of which sharply distinguished him from his immediate predecessors, every one of whose formative years had been spent under Stalin, an experience bound to scar him for life. For that generation it was impossible to forget those nightmare years. I witnessed them from the shelter of a foreign embassy. Even so they left a deep and horrifying impression on me. It was a time when the slightest error of judgment, any deviation from a continually changing Party line, any contact with foreigners, could (and usually did) lead to immediate 'liquidation'. Years when it was wiser to avoid accepting any responsibility, taking any initiative or doing anything which could attract unwanted attention. With such 'a traumatic background to their lives, those aged survivors were not the men to give their country a new look, however badly it might need one.

That it did need one, there could be no doubt. If Stalin left his mark on indi-

viduals, he left it no less surely on the state. 'Under Stalin', said Khrushchev to a friend of mine, 'the whole machine was fast seizing up.' As a system of government, terror can be counter-productive. For a decade after Stalin's death, Khrushchev tried, with some courage, to change things. But after ten years he was cast aside and for the next two decades Brezhnev did everything he could to put the clock back. It became a period of stagnation, drift and ever-growing financial and moral corrup- tion.

For all these reasons, the legacy Gor- bachev inherited was a daunting one. Despite the Soviet Union's rich human and natural resources, despite successes achieved in a whole range of different fields, despite, some might say because of, 70 years spent Building Socialism, the fact was that the system was simply not work- ing. Of this Gorbachev had been well aware long before he came to power. The 64,000-rouble question was 'how to put things right. It was not simply a matter of new policies and new measures. What was needed nationwide was a new attitude and a new frame of mind, an end to the hang-ups and hang-overs of the past, an end to what my friend the poet Yev- tushenko has very aptly called 'taboos'.

This is the background to Gorbachev's twin policies of perestroika or restructuring and glasnost or openness, which aim at combining a measure of what he calls 'democratisation' with some of the ele- ments of a market economy and, in theory at any rate, full and free discussion at all levels.

In this daring experiment (and you have to know Russia and the Russians to realise just how daring it is) the big question for Gorbachev is bound to be: how fast and how far, a question which since this week's elections has acquired a new significance. For, as Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out a century and a half ago, there is no trickier political operation than the liberalisation of an authoritarian regime.

So far glasnost has, for better or for worse, gone a great deal further and faster than perestroika. For the first time in Russian history a Russian government has the intelligentsia, the intellectuals, on its side. And the intellectuals are taking full advantage of the opportunities offered them. It is no exaggeration to say that there is in the Soviet Union today a genuine flowering in literature and the arts. There is also, as the elections have so 'Would you mind stepping out of the light? I've got a solar-powered pacemaker.' clearly shown, surprising freedom of dis- cussion on every sort of subject, including politics, and genuine clashes between widely differing points of view.

Listening last summer to the proceedings of the special Party conference, I was amazed at the outspokenness of the dele- gates and indeed of Gorbachev himself, who from the chair never failed to give as good as he got. It was surprisingly like Prime Minister's questions in the House of Commons. More amazing still to anyone who knew Stalin's Russia are the political demonstrations taking place all over the country, including the openly nationalist demonstrations in the non-Russian repub- lics to which the election results lend new force.

Perestroika has proved a different mat- ter. Clearly, it is bound to be a long time before the sluggish Soviet system of gov- ernment and the equally sluggish Soviet economy take on the new look that Gor- bachev is demanding of them. Here he has to deal with a nation unfamiliar with market mechanisms, by nature uncompeti- tive and unambitious and very largely lacking in entrepreneurial spirit or man- agerial skills. Without any doubt Gor- bachev's biggest single problem is how to get the economy moving. On the interna- tional scene, he has made a name for himself. But at home, after four years in power, he has precious little to show for his pains. In fact, food and consumer goods are today in just as short supply as when he started. It is a vicious circle. For the workers to produce more, Gorbachev needs to offer them more goods and services to spend their pay on. But, in order to offer them more goods and services, he needs more productive work- ers. Meanwhile, the conduct of a great many Soviet workers remains as negative as ever. 'They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,' is still far too often the attitude.

Undoubtedly Gorbachev has the tough- est of tough assignments. But from the start he has shown himself a remarkably shrewd operator. One of the first priorities has been to get rid of as many potential opponents as possible and replace them by trusted supporters. The spectacular come- back at the elections of Boris Yeltsin as radical Member for Moscow certainly poses a problem. But it could well prove a more serious problem for the Secretary- General's 'conservative' detractors than for Gorbachev himself and in a sense actually strengthens his hand, as he himself recognised in his post-election comment.

A bigger worry, I would say, than any political opponents is the presence in the middle and higher ranks of a grossly inflated bureaucracy, of any number of people who, whether from inertia or self- interest, like things the way they are and are determined to keep them that way. Obstruction, resistance molle is, as we all know, the classical weapon of the bureau-

crat, what one might call the 'Yes Minister' technique.

In deciding how far and above all how fast to go, Gorbachev cannot but recall the example of Khrushchev who, after ten years of pushing through badly needed reforms, was himself pulled down from inside by his closest colleagues. That is something which, he must realise, could happen to him, too. He may also recall Monsieur Sartre's witty apophthegm: C'est la deStalinisation qui deStalinisera les de- Stalinisateurs. But Gorbachev is clearly playing his difficult hand with considerable skill. As Party Secretary, he must carry the Party with him, not always an easy matter, when the Party machine is at the bottom of half his problems. Nor, of course, as Secretary of the Communist Party, can he publicly blame the failure of the system on its Communist character. For all that, there is already talk of pluralism and sooner or later the precise role of the Party itself will have to be reviewed, especially in view of the election results.

In the West, inevitably, there has been much speculation as to what is happening in the Soviet Union. Is the whole thing merely an unusually advanced display of the old Russian art of pokazuka or window-dressing? Or has the Soviet Union suddenly gone liberal? The truth is not far to seek. To a patriot and realist, which is what Gorbachev most definitely is, it could, in this day and age, no longer make sense for the Soviet Union to go on behaving like a benighted mediaeval theocracy. What he is trying to do is to rationalise Russia, to normalise it, to put an end to practices and attitudes which, since the time of the Tartars, have held it back under Tsars and Commissars alike, which, more recently, in a fast-shrinking, fast-moving world, have isolated it from other countries and from the main stream of human progress. The myth that every- thing is perfect, has always been perfect, and will soon be more perfect still, no longer holds water. It is time to face up to reality. Ot vranya vsya vyeda,' said a character in a recent play on Soviet televi- sion. 'All our troubles come from lying.' Than which no truer word was ever said.

On the other hand, it would certainly be a mistake to suppose that Gorbachev's desire for reform springs from a sudden conversion to liberalism — as dirty a word in the Soviet Union as it ever was in Tsarist Russia, or from a vague feeling of benevo- lence towards humanity as a whole. It springs, rather, from plain common sense and from an equally keen realisation of where his country's real interests lie never a bad foundation, I would say, for national policy, though it would clearly be a mistake to suppose that Soviet interests necessarily coincide with ours.

In the 17th century, the Tsar was still in the habit of cleansing himself ceremonially after any contact whatever with a foreign ambassador. The tradition of Holy Russia, set apart from other countries by her inherent sanctity and sense of mission, did not die with the Revolution. If anything, it was strengthened and intensified by it, the myth of Holy Russia, set in an unregener- ate world, being promptly superseded by that of the country of the revolution, hemmed in by a hostile capitalist encircle- ment.

Gorbachev is already doing his best to break down barriers and put his country's relations with the rest of the world on a more rational footing. Given the massive backlog of mutual suspicion and distrust, this is bound to take time. But it is none the less essential, if the Soviet Union is to play its proper part in the world.

Just what that part will turn out to be, remains to be seen. Gorbachev is naturally out to strengthen his country, not to weaken it. But a stronger, more prosper- ous, more stable Soviet Union need not represent a threat to world peace.

This, certainly, is the conclusion we were intended to draw from Gorbachev's speech to the United Nations last December. If what he said is to be taken literally (and it is admittedly a big if), he now sees Russia's role in a new light. Gone, apparently, is her old Messianic role as country of the revolution. Gone the concept of impending world revolution and of an inevitable armed clash between the communist and capitalist worlds, their place to be taken by more normal and, in a nuclear age, more rational inter-state relationships and by agreement to differ as to the relative merits and demerits of our respective systems. But of that the West will clearly need more concrete proof before in any way lowering its guard.