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Untitled [Tom Nichols on Gorbachev's Revolution] Anthony D'Agostino. Gorbachev's Revolution. New York: New York University Press, 1998. ix + 379 pp. $50.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8147-1898-8. Reviewed by Tom Nichols Published on H-Diplo (October, 1999) The ongoing Western adulation of Mikhail This is an observation that was made in recent Gorbachev rests on a simple assumption that for years by Dmitrii Volkogonov, among others, but most of his time in office, he knew more or less Westerners have been deeply reluctant to accept what he was doing. In the usual telling, the wise what is plain to most Russians. Even now, as and patient Gorbachev outfoxes his neanderthalic D'Agostino points out, Gorbachev gives two differ‐ opponents both in Washington and Moscow, and ent stories about the end of the USSR: he takes not only brings relief to the repressed Soviet credit for it in front of Western audiences, but de‐ masses but peace as well to a world grown weary nies he ever meant it to happen in front of a Rus‐ of the incessant, dangerous bickering of the Cold sian courtroom. "Well," D'Agostino asks, "which War. This is nonsense, of course. Many Russians way was it?...Both of Gorbachev's lines of argu‐ revile Gorbachev as an incompetent and impossi‐ ment cannot be correct." (6) bly smug politician--in the 1996 presidential elec‐ D'Agostino provides a better answer (and one tion, he got an embarrassing 386,000 votes out of that draws conceptually on his work on earlier some 74 million cast--but in the West it remains periods in Soviet leadership politics). What drove tenacious nonsense. With Anthony D'Agostino's Gorbachev was what drove all Soviet leaders: new book, it is a myth that we might just begin to power and the need to keep it. Gorbachev's poli‐ lay to rest. cies of reform were weapons in a political strug‐ Gorbachev's Revolution begins with an obser‐ gle with his own comrades in the Communist Par‐ vation that would otherwise be painfully obvious, ty leadership. The idea that Gorbachev was driven but in the Western context is actually bold revi‐ more by expediency than by principle is not only sionism: Gorbachev, D'Agostino tells us, was never sensible, it also helps to explain how a "reformer" consistent in, or committed to, his own programs, like Gorbachev survived as long as he did in the nor did he ever fully comprehend the effects or Party: he was not, at heart, a reformer. As consequences of events he himself set in motion. D'Agostino puts it: "A revisionist account, assum‐ H-Net Reviews ing the power struggle itself to be the engine of bachev, would defect. Thus, the struggle between his reform projects, is at least better than trying to the Brezhnevite establishment and the new con‐ prove that Gorbachev intended the liquidation of tenders for power was structurally almost prede‐ the state that he was chosen to rule. It is probably termined to be a struggle between reform and re‐ also better than supposing that Gorbachev at action: the only way the challengers could gain some point turned against the Communist idea, any traction against the old guard was to break which he was in fact still defending the day before with them, point at the sorry state of the nation, he resigned his position as head of the party on 24 and then turn and blame them for it, all in hopes August 1991."(7) that the rest of the Party would decide to throw It also helps to explain something Gorbachev their lot in with the new team. himself cannot (or at least not convincingly): why Gorbachev's road to ruin, however, really be‐ a man supposedly committed to reform would gan after the January 1987 plenum of the Central surround himself with some of the most conserva‐ Committee, and D'Agostino shows great insight in tivefgures the Soviet system had to offer, such as understanding the importance of this overlooked minister of defense Dmitrii Yazov, or even out‐ event. It was here that Gorbachev fully realized right thugs such as interior minister Boris Pugo. If the possible size of the Brezhnevite opposition, Gorbachev meant to win in the ongoing struggle and he certainly understood that almost nothing to maintain his position, he had to work with such had come of his calls for change in the previous men rather than against them, and their personal year of his rule. In order to outflank his political convictions were less important than their institu‐ competitors and recover some of the stature in tional power and political loyalties. foreign affairs he had lost at the Reykjavik sum‐ To be sure, the book does not claim that Gor‐ mit (in many Soviet eyes a "ludicrous charade," bachev was completely rudderless, and he ap‐ according to D'Agostino) he committed himself pears in this account to comprehend what many publicly to positions that would undermine the of his less intelligent colleagues did not: that by very raison d'etre of the USSR, and bring about the mid-1980s, the USSR was in such awful shape the end of the system. Specifically, he sought to re‐ that almost any Soviet politician would have to move ideology from its central position in Soviet take up the banner of reform in order to be a foreign policy, thus defanging some of his most credible candidate to lead the Party. The economy tenacious critics in the Party and the military. was in tatters and the Soviet global position, once To renounce an arms race with the West is so commanding, had been compromised as much one thing--Soviet leaders did so rhetorically on a by ham-fisted Soviet policies as by a resurgent regular schedule--but attempting to trump Party challenge from America and her NATO allies. Re‐ ideologues by removing ideology from the East- ducing tensions with the West and repairing the West competition was quite another. If the Soviet economy (Soviet leaders at this point had no idea Union was not to be a revolutionary state commit‐ the economy was beyond repair, but that's anoth‐ ted to the support of like-minded movements er matter) would have to go hand in hand. around the world, what point was there in being a But as D'Agostino's careful and detailed narra‐ "Soviet Union" at all? Of course, Gorbachev wasn't tive points out, reforming the defense and eco‐ thinking about ideological rigor; he was thinking nomic establishments also meant clearing out the about Yegor Ligachev and the other Soviet conser‐ entire rotted political infrastructure built by vatives who would have replaced him given the Leonid Brezhnev--a kind of mafia from whose chance. But once he had committed the USSR to ranks Yuri Andropov and later, his protege Gor‐ that position, the rest of the world took him at his 2 H-Net Reviews word, and he could hardly now turn and claim perestroika process." D'Agostino remarks that this that he hadn't been serious all along. showed "how little he realized, or, giving him Gorbachev's political maneuvering is some‐ more credit, how little he was reconciled to, the thing like a priest avoiding a charge of heresy by sweeping victory of Yeltsin." claiming there is no God: it might catch one's op‐ D'Agostino's book is an achievement, and ponents off guard for a moment, but explaining it without question among the best and most de‐ to the faithful (who might enjoy abjuring the strict tailed accounts of the internal Soviet political rules of religious belief) can be something of a struggles of the Gorbachev years. (Indeed, it is chore, especially once they all flee the church. vastly better and more interesting than Gor‐ Once the Soviet retreat from the ideological bachev's own memoirs, perhaps because it is competition with the West was underway, efforts more reliable.) If anything it is too detailed; at 355 to reform the economy were even more pointless, pages of very densely rendered narrative, it is since the typical bureaucratic shuffles that accom‐ both exhaustive and exhausting. Some of it is re‐ panied "reform" were soon to be overshadowed dundant and a bit idiosyncratic--for example, by the disintegration of the Soviet global and re‐ D'Agostino's attempt to portray Gorbachev's think‐ gional alliance system, and then of the Union it‐ ing by imagining a detailed dialogue in the Soviet self. Gorbachev could, conceivably, have stopped leader's mind is unnecessary and even mildly the momentum of that decline by reversing him‐ pedantic--and there are odd lapses of editing that self and using force to prevent further erosion of are distracting. Also, the book lacks reference to Moscow's authority at home and abroad, but to do some of the newer materials on this period (in‐ so would have required admitting that he was cluding Russian memoirs), but this is perhaps un‐ wrong, reigniting the Cold War with a Western avoidable in a work of such size and sweep. coalition that was not disinclined to fght it, and Still, the value of Gorbachev's Revolution is essentially handing over a great deal of his own both in its thesis and its narrative. The deep and power to the men he had fought for dominance in rich detail in which the events of 1985-1991 are the Party. In any case, Gorbachev had already rendered will make it an enduring and useful ref‐ publicly foreclosed to himself the coercive instru‐ erence work (if something of a difficult read), ments that kept the Party barely in power, the So‐ which should be on the bookshelf of every scholar viet economy barely running, Soviet nationalities interested in the Soviet period, and part of the re‐ barely under control, and Soviet allies barely loy‐ quired reading in any serious Soviet history al, all in the name of winning the political struggle course.
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