Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

by Vladislav M. Zubok

The history of the Soviet collapse was never a script, known in advance. It was a drama of human ideals, fears, passions, and unanticipated developments. In these pages the reader will find many “fly-on-the-wall” episodes, when Gorbachev and others in the Kremlin debated reforms, agonized over what to do with ethnic conflicts and seceding republics, and contested responsibility and power.

The first part of the book, chapters 1–6, explains how Gorbachev and his reform-minded entourage transformed the conservative reforms from above into a revolutionary gamble and ultimately removed the critical props on which the Soviet system and state were resting. In this part I demonstrate how anti-systemic energy, accumulated by many years of Soviet one-party rule, had been magnified by Gorbachev’s unsuccessful reforms, and released into the domain of public politics. The second part of the book, chapters 7–15, covers the collapse itself. The book revisits familiar aspects of this story, but adds much new information that will be unfamiliar to the reader.

From the carnage of Budapest emerged Andropov’s political credo: deal with dissent ruthlessly, but cautiously; prepare reforms from above before it is too late; do not waver or flinch from the use of force when necessary.

In contrast, Soviet revenues and finances were precarious. The problem, contrary to customary Western claims, lay not in the “crushing” defense outlays. The Soviet military, the military-industrial complex (MIC), and R&D were remarkably cost-effective; according to the best available estimates, they never exceeded 15 percent of GDP. A leading Western expert on the Soviet economy admitted, long after the Soviet collapse, that nobody in the leadership “saw the Soviet Union being crushed under an unbearable military burden.” In economic terms, this expert acknowledged, “the Soviet Union had a revealed comparative advantage in military activities.” It was not the military burden, significant yet small for a superpower, that endangered the Soviet economy and state.19 The problem was the growing Soviet engagement with the global economy and its own finances. The Soviet balance of trade depended entirely on high oil prices. The debonair Brezhnev, in contrast to Stalin, had never bothered to accumulate a stabilization fund, to save money for the future.

Andropov’s main contribution to Soviet reforms was the team of people and academics he had brought into the Politburo and the Soviet government. It took them a further two years to launch the reforms he had initiated. The key man whom the ex-KGB reformer had groomed to continue his policies was Mikhail Gorbachev.

Despite his neo-Leninist rhetoric, Gorbachev could not decide on a strategy of reforms during his first two years in power. As an admirer of Lenin, he searched for some key leverage that could revive Soviet society and the economy. Yet he also heeded Andropov’s conservative advice: before any radical political changes, suggested by Yakovlev, Soviet people should feel tangible improvements in the economy. Soon after coming to power, therefore, Gorbachev listed the economic and social problems he wanted to address: “1) Quality; 2) Struggle against drinking; 3) People in need; 4) Land for orchards and gardens; 5) Medicine.”35 Surprisingly, the list did not include the pressing issues that Andropov had raised about Soviet macroeconomic stability: the need to reduce the import of food, restore the balance of trade, crack down on the shadow economy, and discipline the labor force. Gorbachev’s notes did not contain any diagnosis of the economic and financial problems plaguing the Soviet Union.

In early 1987, Gorbachev urged Ryzhkov and his economists to produce a radical comprehensive reform of the Soviet economy. Its essence was twofold. First, the resolution of a myriad of intractable economic problems had to be transferred from the hierarchical, conservative, ossified bureaucracy to the grassroots, to state enterprises and working collectives. Second, the Party had to be turned into a Leninist engine of revolutionary change. The Politburo discussed the proposals and consented. Even such stalwarts as Andrei Gromyko did not object. The key reform was the Law on Socialist Enterprises. This document was the consummate product of the reformist cohort of Soviet economists, who sought to combine “socialism” with a state-regulated market.

His goal, Medvedev remembers, was “to turn the Soviets into permanently governing bodies.”72 The “Soviets” were revolutionary “Councils” or assemblies of workers, peasants, and soldiers, in whose name Lenin had seized power in Russia in 1917. Gorbachev’s concept was breathtaking in its ambition: to return Russian socialism to square one, and reroute the great experiment in the direction of democracy. The starting point of political reforms would be a convocation, after national competitive elections, of a 2,250-member Congress of People’s Deputies—an institution without parallels anywhere in the world. This Congress would represent all national republics and ethnic autonomies of the Soviet Union, all groups of its population, and all its major public institutions. The Congress would have supreme power: to change the constitution, to appoint a government, and to select a permanent law-making assembly, the Supreme Soviet.

On 25 April, the Soviet leader faced the wrath of regional Party elites. The first Party Plenum after the elections began with a requiem for the Old Guard who now stepped down: this big group included managers and scientists who had begun their career under Stalin and turned the Soviet Union into a nuclear superpower. Their farewell speeches were calm and dignified. Then the storm broke. The new Party potentates from the industrial regions, promoted under Gorbachev, took the floor and lashed out against perestroika. Most vocal critics had just won competitive elections in their regions, yet they were convinced that the country was on the road to economic disaster and political turmoil.