That hideous and concealed strength
Andrei Navrozov
GORBACHEV'S STRUGGLE FOR ECONOMIC REFORM by Anders Aslund Pinter, f35, 12.95, pp. 225 CAN THE SOVIET SYSTEM SURVIVE REFORM? edited by G. R. Urban
Pinter, f29.50, pp. 383
The author of Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform is an economist. Fortu- nately I am not, and when I read that `Gorbachev had perceived the depth of the problems Soviet society was facing' I can explain the reasons for my merriment without resorting to charts and graphs. Still, in the interests of fair play, I shall begin with a statistic. In a recent year, according to the Amer- ican Iron and Steel Institute, the United States used 53 million tonnes of steel, one quarter of which was consumed by the automotive industry and another quarter by the construction industry. 'Ordnance and other military' consumed 228 thousand tonnes.
The Soviet Union produces ten times fewer automobiles than the United States and rarely uses metal in highway and housing construction. Yet in that same year the Soviet steel consumption was 177 million tonnes. The question 'Where did the steel go?' is, unfortunately, rhetorical: Russia's 'civilian' use of steel is obviously as limited as America's 'military' use.
What, then, were the 'problems' facing Gorbachev? Certainly not the ones which this book identifies. True, the mass of `Soviet society' had been eating tree bark, with occasional lapses into cannibalism, for 70 years. But, from the point of view of the Soviet hierarchs, was that a 'problem'? During those decades, their country con- quered half of Europe and is now in a position to finish the job (given a suitable opportunity); it won the space race and is at last the proud possessor of half the engineers and no less than a quarter of all the scientists in the world (among whom are the inventors of the laser and hydrogen bomb); it went from nuclear bluff to nuclear reticence in one generation and is finally ready to downplay, rather than exaggerate, its military potential (as be- comes the greatest colonial power in mod- ern history).
But to an economist, economic 'prob- lems' — and, of course, 'solutions' — must exist, or else he is out of a job. Likewise, a Kremlinologist of the St Antony's School of Obfuscation and Pedantry, Oxford, or the Kennan Institute's School of Moral Equivalence and Apologism, Washington, is useless if Ronald Reagan is right for once and what we've got here, guys, is an evil empire. Well, Mr Aslund is not just an economist, he is a Kremlinologist into the bargain! Needless to say, the 'problems' facing the Soviet leadership have never looked more insuperable.
Take the Politburo, with its besieged band of 'radical reformers': full members Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Shevarnadze, Med- vedev and candidate member Lukyanov. `A common denominator', according to the author — if my eyes do not deceive me — Is that none of them is an engineer'. I have a different common denominator: these are Andropov's men, as is Mr Aslund's 'sinister' Chebrikov, Andropov's deputy and successor with total power over the entire legal/police apparatus. Gor- bachev was Andropov's discovery. 'It is an enigma', observes Mr Aslund, 'that a provincial apparatchik should turn out to be so reform-minded'. No enigma! It was Andropov who was 'reform-minded': he had used control of the KGB to bring about his reform, that is, to seize power. The contribution of the 'reformers' is, in fact, identical to that of the 'conservatives': police (Shevarnadze, Lukyanov and Cheb- rikov) and propaganda (Yakovlev, Med- vedev and Ligachev) are the two areas in which their careers had been made.
The essence of perestroika was and remains the managerial shift from the military to the police and from industry to propaganda, which does, incidentally, ex- plain why none of the highly visible 'refor- mers' is an engineer. While the Soviet war machine needed no improvement, the empire as a whole did need restructuring in the sphere of 'international relations' com- mensurate with its military-industrial pow- er. Thus the Soviet victory in Afghanistan, presented as a defeat, was a ballon d'essai of the new public-relations strategy, in the best tradition of Stalinist misrepresenta- tion: grab Central Europe, yell that you had been treacherously attacked, lost 20 million lives, will never recover.
In short, the 'problems' of 'Soviet socie- ty', whether economic, social, or military, are the Soviet propagandist's best friend. Evil or not, the empire is strong enough to feign weakness, and the extent of that strength is not subject to glasnost. This is why the interrogative mood of George Urban's title is no less naive than the famous question on 'Soviet Communism' asked by the Webbs in 1935: A New Civilisation?
In this collection of seven colloquies, Mr Urban's interviewees grope for answers. Two of the non-Russian contributors, Max Kampelman and Giorgio Napolitano, re- present the paradise of Western wishful thinking; two Russians, Galina Vishnevs- kaya and Alexander Zinoviev, dwell in a purgatory of gratuitous introspection, less paradoxical than it is boastful; Vladimir Bukovsky, Milovan Djilas and Alain Be- sancon inhabit the volume's socio- analytical hell. The Bukovsky interview, regrettably, is not representative of the independence of mind which he has invari- ably shown in his public statements. M. Besancon, here as elsewhere, fails to grasp the overall meaning of the 'reform', limit- ing himself to the kind of 'healthy sceptic- ism' about the Soviet system which plagues the Right in the West as 'doubts about Stalin' once plagued the Left.
Only Milovan Djilas, the veteran of historical Sovietology, calls a spade a spade. His contribution is entitled 'New Utopias for Old'. Apparently, Mr Djilas has seen too much history with his own eyes to believe that it can stand on its head.
But the last word on the subject will belong not to me, or even the best of these theorists, like Bukovsky or Djilas, but to the unknown men and women inside Rus- sia who can reveal to the hopeful West, in facts and figures, the terrible secret of Andropov's perestroika. When one of them risks life and limb to tell us about Soviet strength, not Soviet weakness, we had better be in a listening mood. We may not get a second chance.
Previous page
