Michael Dobbs - Down with Big Brother

These were monumental errors, but they served a historical purpose. The transition from communism to capitalism was never going to be smooth. The totalitarian order established by Lenin and Stalin was so formidable and so deeply rooted in the Soviet psyche that it could not be demolished head-on. To remain in power and continue his reforms, Gorbachev had to proceed by stealth. This master of Kremlin intrigue bobbed and weaved among the rival factions, hiding his true intentions beneath a fog of Communist rhetoric. Duplicity and obfuscation were his required talents; political survival was the supreme imperative. Had he been clearer about his goals, it is likely that his Politburo colleagues would have attempted to get rid of him much earlier. By the time they finally understood what was happening, it was too late. The party had been destroyed from within.

The Soviet Communist Party was prepared to fight to remain in power as long as this was a serious option. The repressive power of the totalitarian state meant that domestic rebellions could be ruthlessly crushed. From the moment such a state possessed nuclear weapons, it became invulnerable to foreign invasion. The only way out, therefore, was death by economic exhaustion.

The irony is that the last general secretary had to fail in order to succeed in the larger historical mission of vanquishing communism. Gorbachev came to power promising to reverse several decades of Soviet economic decline and revitalize the Marxist-Leninist idea. Had he succeeded, the system would have received a new or at least a temporary lease on life. There would have been less pressure for significant political reform. The deepening economic crisis made the transition to democracy possible but also fraught with danger because it left many people yearning for the security of the authoritarian past.

In the long run the collapse of Soviet communism was inevitable, for the simple reason that it was too top-heavy a structure to bear its own weight. But there was nothing inevitable about the timing of the collapse or the manner in which it occurred. History will record that it was Gorbachev who set in motion the chain of events that led to the disintegration of the world’s first socialist state. Through a strange amalgam of genius and incompetence, idealism and egotism, naiveté and cunning, the onetime peasant boy from Privolnoye dealt a fatal blow to the most durable dictatorship humankind has ever known.

By seeking to reinvigorate the Communist system, Gorbachev succeeded in destroying it.

KOR: Workers’ Defense Committee (human rights group)

MKS: Interfactory Strike Committee

PZPR: Polish United Workers’ Party (Communist Party)

Solidarity: Solidarity trade union

stan wojenny: martial law (literally warlike state)

szlachta: petty nobility

vojvodship: province

ZOMO: riot police

Alpha Group: elite KGB antiterrorist squad

apparat: bureaucratic machine

apparatchik: bureaucrat

Central Committee: policy-making body of CPSU

chemodanchik: little suitcase (nuclear codes)

CPSU: Communist Party of the Soviet Union

dacha: country house

gensek: general secretary of CPSU

GKChP: Committee for the State of Emergency (formed during August 1991 coup attempt)

glasnost: openness

Gosplan: State Planning Agency

Gosstroi: State Construction Agency

KGB: Committee for State Security (secret police), successor to Lenin’s Cheka and Stalin’s NKVD

kolkhoz: collective farm

kolkhoznik: collective farm worker

kremlin: a fortified place

kulak: landed farmer (prior to collectivization)

Lubyanka: headquarters of KGB

muzhik: peasant

narod: people, the masses

nomenklatura: roster of officials nominated by Communist Party

osobaya papka: special file, top secret Communist Party documents

perestroika: restructuring

plenum: full Central Committee meeting

Politburo: executive leadership of CPSU Central Committee (composed of full and alternate members)

PVO: Antiaircraft defense

shestidesyatniki: men of the sixties, the generation that matured under Khrushchev

spetsnaz: KGB “special assignment” troops

stagnation: term applied to Brezhnev era

Staraya Ploshchad: old square headquarters of Communist Party

terror: term applied to Stalin’s rule

thaw: term applied to period of political liberalization under Khrushchev

vertushka: Soviet government communications system

Volga: car used by mid-level officials

Vremya: television news

White House: headquarters of Russian government

Zhiguli: popular compact car

Zil: limousine used by senior party officials

chetnik: Serbian nationalist (World War II term)

HDZ: Croatian Democratic Union (governing party in Croatia)

JNA: Yugoslav People’s Army

SDS: Serbian Social Democratic Party of Bosnia (led by Radovan Karadžić) ustashi Croatian nationalist (World War II term)

conducător: supreme leader (Romanian)

mujahedin: Islamic guerrilla fighter

Securitate: Romanian secret police

Stasi: East German secret police

Trabi: popular East German car

THE COLLAPSE of communism opened up a treasure trove of previously untapped sources. In writing this book, I have drawn on interviews with direct participants, memoirs of Soviet and East European leaders, declassified archival materials, contemporary newspapers, and my own reporting notes. Unless otherwise stated, all interviews are with me. I have tried to provide a named citation for all direct quotations. During the course of my research I gathered transcripts of numerous meetings of the Soviet Politburo, which are marked in the notes with the Russian abbreviation TsKhSD. The translations are my own. Because access to the Soviet archives is still restricted, I have deposited copies of these materials with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C.

Also helpful in reconstructing events were three documentary television programs prepared by the British Broadcasting Corporation by Brian Lapping Associates, The Second Russian Revolution , the Fall of the Berlin Wall , and Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation . I am grateful to Norma Percy and Brian Lapping for permission to quote from the original transcripts of The Second Russian Revolution , which are deposited at the library of the London School of Economics. Publishing details of all books cited in the notes are provided in the bibliography. I have used the following abbreviations in the notes:

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation transcript service

CDSP Current Digest of the Soviet Press

CNN Cable News Network

FBIS Foreign Broadcast Information Service

ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization

LAT Los Angeles Times

MN Moscow News

NSC National Security Council

NYT New York Times

RFE/RL Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

TsK KPSS Central Committee of Soviet Communist Party

TsKhSD Center for Storage of Contemporary Documentation

UN United Nations

WP Washington Post

1. Weather report, NYT , December 27, 1979, p. B8.

2. Sergo Mikoyan, son of the former Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan, provided me with the details of Brezhnev’s dacha. See also the memoirs of his doctor, Yevgeny Chazov, Zdorov’ye i Vlast’ , pp. 86–87.