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The Sources of Soviet Perestroika by John Lenczowski

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The Sources of Soviet Perestroika by John Lenczowski The Sources of Soviet Perestroika by John Lenczowski Contents Part I: The Communist System: Collapse or Renewal? 1. Introduction 2. The Communist Ideology: Continuity or Change? Part II: The Three Crises of the System 3. The Crisis of Legitimacy 4. The Crisis in the Economy 5. The Crisis of the Communist Party Part III: The Communist Party's Response 6. Glasnost' 7. Perestroika 8. Democratization 9. Revolutions in East Europe and the Policy of "Love" 10. Conclusion 2 I. The Communist System: Collapse or Renewal? Introduction It is now commonplace to say that recent events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have irrevocably transformed the geopolitical landscape. In East Europe, we have witnessed the breaching of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of communist rule in Hungary, a shift to a coalition government in Poland, the appointment of a non-communist President in Czechoslovakia, and elections in each country in the region. In the Soviet Union, we have seen the diminution of fear, a greater freedom to speak, the revelation of historic state secrets, the defeat of unopposed candidates in elections to a new parliament, the appearance of private economic cooperatives, a meeting between the Communist Party's General Secretary and the Pope, the formal abandonment of the Communist Party's monopoly of power, serious talk of a multi- party system, and the rise of a congeries of national movements. Indeed, some of these events have been so revolutionary that thoughtful observers have variously pronounced the collapse of communism, the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, an end to the nuclear threat, and the conclusion of the Cold War. The overall impression one gains from Western reporting on these developments is that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is relinquishing its economic and political decisionmaking authority, and that it has abandoned Marxism-Leninism as the operational ideology of the Soviet empire. Many of the recent developments support such a view. The apparent turn toward free markets and a willingness to cooperate with Western businesses seems to indicate the renunciation of ideology in favor of economic pragmatism. The toleration and even encouragement of political criticism seems to mean the end of the Party's monopoly of information and its insistence on strict conformity with the Party line. The loosening of the Kremlin's grip on East Europe similarly leads one to suspect that it no longer believes in the universality of Marxist-Leninist principles. If all this is so, then what are we to make of the following remarks made by Mikhail Gorbachev as recently as the autumn of 1989? ...the Party has been, and remains, the main organizing and coordinating force capable of leading the people along the path of profound socialist renewal, playing an integrating and consolidating role in society and, let us be blunt, preventing an undesirable and dramatic development of events. Perestroika will not work without the Party and its fundamental influence on all aspects of social life... 3 ...There are attempts to create the impression that perestroika is founded upon deviation from the bases of Marxist-Leninist thought and is therefore plunging the country into chaos. This is all slander against the Party... ...Socialism is one of the most powerful ideas which ever gripped the minds of people. Paradoxically, just here, at home, you can hear voices saying that supposedly the socialist idea is some kind of fruit of intellectual fantasy, a certain anomaly not corresponding to human nature, that is deprived of substance and future. Those are not the voices which reflect the opinion of communists and workers and the profound trends of the historical process. The CPSU firmly stands on principled positions. It remains devoted to the socialist ideals, socialist principles... ...Our people made a choice in October of 1917, and despite the deformations of socialism and its Leninist concept which have taken place in the past, we will firmly go along this path. We say perestroika is the renewal of socialism, but not its dismantling. We say perestroika is revolutionary transformation, the elimination of the deformations of socialism, but not the restoration of capitalism. We say perestroika is the revival of creative Marxism, a new awareness of Leninist ideas... ...Let us recall the main principles of the Leninist concept...Do these principles maintain their significance? Undoubtedly. Moreover, perestroika is transferring them to the category of being real, since they were often merely proclaimed in the past. i In the context of Gorbachev's campaign of astonishing reforms, these remarks sound a discordant note. How can they be explained? Are they merely an atavistic ritual which Gorbachev must perform before a nominally communist audience -- in other words, an audience most of which is not really communist at heart anymore? Could Gorbachev be a different kind of political animal than his predecessors: a humane communist? Or is he a closet democrat lying to his communist comrades in an attempt to subvert the very Party to whose pinnacle he has risen? If Gorbachev is what he says he is -- "a convinced communist" -- is he attempting to achieve the original Marxist-Leninist vision through other means than those to which we have become accustomed? Could he be merely engaged in a tactical maneuver of the Leninist type -- taking "one step backward" in preparation for "two steps forward"? ii 4 Such questions cannot be answered without examining the sources of the Communist Party's campaign for perestroika -- restructuring. These include, first, the animating spirit or idea behind the "new political thinking" and then the political, economic and social circumstances which have given rise to this "new thinking." The search for these sources proceeds partly from the assumption that ideas have consequences -- especially ideas in the hands of those with the power to act upon them. Power in the Soviet Union is still in the hands of the Communist Party, and therefore it is necessary to examine its current ideas and attitudes. But since alternative centers of power have also been emerging -- in the form of autonomous movements arising out of non-communist civil society, particularly the national democratic movements -- it is also worth exploring the "correlation of forces" among these rival centers of power to see to what extent some of the consequences we have been witnessing have emerged in spite of the Party's intentions. Indeed it is essential to make the distinction between intentions and unintended consequences. As we shall see, from all indications, the Communist Party's intentions spring from a desire to preserve and renew the socialist system, and not from some sudden change of political philosophy. It is true that a number of the changes we have witnessed deviate from what has been traditionally understood to be the totalitarian model. But these cannot be properly interpreted without consideration of two factors. First, we must keep in mind that there have been numerous historical precedents of policies which have deviated from totalitarianism, but which, in the final analysis, were undertaken with an eye to preserving the communist system. Second, we must also recognize that many of the Kremlin's policies have given rise to unintended consequences. It is the thesis of this analysis that it is in this realm of consequences, and not in the hearts of the Communist Party leadership, that we find the greatest potential for genuine revolutionary change. For the first time in thirty years, civil society in the Soviet empire has raised itself from under the Party's yoke in the form of a variety of movements which the Kremlin may find impossible to control. The Communist Ideology: Continuity or Change? Perhaps the central question of all is whether the Communist Party is still communist. Amidst all the changes, are there continuities in the nature of the Party and its modus operandi which testify to its commitment to a set of core values? Have any of these core values been replaced by others as the fundamental animating spirit of Party policies? 5 If a fundamental change has occurred in Soviet ideology -- i.e., the kind that would make the USSR truly politically compatible with the West (or at least that part of the West which still subscribes to the principles which formed the basis for Western democracy) -- then at least some of the following would have to come to pass: --The Party would have renounced its gnostic claim to vanguard leadership of the inexorable forces of history -- not just in words specially crafted for Western consumption, but in deeds. It would have replaced its monopoly of power with an array of competing political forces (which would have been given a level playing field on which to compete) and a system of checks and balances. -- The Party would have renounced -- again in deeds and not simply in rhetoric targeted to Western audiences -- its concept of conditional human rights: i.e., the idea that people have rights only on the condition that they do not belong to a historically-doomed class or to one or another religious faith. And it would have adopted a theory of rights where those rights are unconditional -- i.e. not subject to the whims and passions of the flawed men who happen to be in power at any given time. -- The Party would have abandoned its claim to defining the "truth" for its subject peoples. -- It would have ceased to depend on the systematic use of lies as an instrument enforcing its continued hold on power. -- It would have discarded the sophistic concept of dialectics as an instrument of analysis and political manipulation. -- It would have rejected the Leninist "end-justifies-the-means" concept of morality. -- It would have stopped twisting the normal meanings of words to suit its political agenda.
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