Michael Dobbs - Down with Big Brother

Over the next two years oil production did increase slightly. But the frenetic drilling of new wells had the effect of making matters even more chaotic, exacerbating the problem of waterlogged fields. By 1988 Soviet production was in steep and irreversible decline. Even more alarming, at least in the short term, was a decision by Saudi Arabia in the summer of 1985 to increase its oil production dramatically. Shortly after Gorbachev’s visit to Siberia, world oil prices crashed. By the first quarter of 1986 the Soviet Union would be able to fetch no more than ten to twelve dollars a barrel for its oil, compared with a peak of nearly forty dollars in 1980. During Gorbachev’s first two years in office the country’s hard currency export earnings fell by almost a third.

Perestroika was doomed before it had even begun.

GORBACHEV’S TRIP TO Western Siberia turned out to be important for another reason: It marked the high point of his ill-conceived antialcohol campaign, which did more to alienate the Russian people than any other single action. With hindsight, it was probably the most spectacular blunder committed by the new leadership during the early stage of perestroika.

Drink had been the scourge of Russian life for many centuries. “The greatest pleasure of the people is drunkenness, in other words forgetfulness,” noted the marquis de Custine during his visit to Russia in 1839. 67The Brezhnev regime tacitly encouraged vodka sales, which provided a valuable source of tax revenue and helped ensure the political acquiescence of the population. Consumption of hard liquor had almost quadrupled during the Brezhnev period. By the time Gorbachev came to power, alcoholism had reached epidemic proportions. Official studies showed that 70 percent of all crimes were related to alcohol. Drink was blamed for widespread absenteeism at work, a sharp increase in the divorce rate, and a dramatic drop in male life expectancy.

The driving forces behind the antialcohol campaign were two Politburo members who had played an important role in helping Gorbachev become general secretary, Yegor Ligachev and Mikhail Solomentsev. Ligachev was a puritan, disgusted with the moral decay that he saw all around him. He had already tried to enforce a ban on alcohol in his hometown of Tomsk. Solomentsev was a reformed alcoholic who waged war on drink with the enthusiasm of the convert. Together they persuaded the Politburo to adopt draconian restrictions on the production and sale of alcohol. Tens of thousands of liquor stores across the country were closed down; centuries-old vineyards in the Caucasus were plowed up; alcoholic beverages were banned from official receptions. The sale of alcohol was prohibited altogether before 2:00 p.m. The few liquor stores that were permitted to remain open were constantly besieged by long lines of frustrated customers.

The effect of this campaign was to drive one of Russia’s largest and most profitable businesses underground. Sugar became a “deficit item” overnight, as the production of illegally brewed moonshine shot up. Unable to buy vodka from government stores, people switched to any available substitute. Thousands of desperate alcoholics died from imbibing noxious substances, such as eau de cologne, glue, window-cleaning liquid, and shoe polish. The government surrendered its jealously guarded monopoly over alcohol sales to criminal gangs. The loss of tax revenue from alcohol sales left a hole in the state budget that was never repaired. From 1985 onward there was a growing imbalance between the money income of the population and the supply of goods and services. Since the government continued to fix prices by administrative fiat, the result was widespread shortages. By the time the antialcohol campaign was quietly abandoned in 1988, the authorities had lost control over the monetary system.

Although Gorbachev was not the principal instigator of the antialcohol drive, he supported it wholeheartedly. In the public mind it was viewed as his campaign. Jokes soon circulated at the new leader’s expense. Russians started referring to him as mineralny sekretar (mineral water secretary), instead of generalny sekretar (general secretary). He was undaunted by the criticism. At Politburo meetings he made clear that he regarded the struggle against alcohol as part of the struggle for communism. What was at stake, he told his colleagues, was the “genetic future” of the nation. When the deputy head of the state planning agency, Gosplan, objected that the move toward prohibition would deprive the state of up to 12 percent of its revenues, Gorbachev cut him short. “Vodka is not going to bring us to communism,” he snarled. 68

Gorbachev’s determination to impose sobriety on his countrymen, even against their will, revealed an authoritarian streak in his personality that contrasted with his talk of democracy and openness. “Bear in mind, this is not for a day or two, or even for a year. It is forever,” Gorbachev told the oil workers of Nizhnevartovsk, wagging his index finger at them, like an angry patriarch. 69The workers applauded sullenly, without any intention of changing their ways.

THE DAY AFTER HIS APPOINTMENT as general secretary, Gorbachev had written a private memorandum to himself, outlining his political priorities. Improving relations with the United States, the leading imperialist country, was at the top of the list. 70The time had come to put the memorandum into effect. He would have a face-to-face meeting with Ronald Reagan, a man Kremlin propagandists had compared with Hitler in his obsessive quest for world domination.

Close to one hundred photographers from all over the world were on hand to record the first handshake between a Soviet general secretary and an American president in more than five years. The practice of regular summit meetings had been suspended as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the political turmoil in Moscow. Reagan, who was already in the second term of his presidency, had geared himself up for a summit with first Andropov and then Chernenko. But, as he later complained, the Soviet leaders “kept dying on me.” 71Now, in Gorbachev, he had finally found a young and vigorous leader with whom he could talk.

Reagan had a visceral dislike of Communists that went back to his days as a trade union activist in Hollywood after the Second World War and his suspicion that the Reds were attempting to take over the American movie industry. At his first presidential news conference he had spoken of Soviet leaders as if they were soulless automatons, willing to “commit any crime, to lie, and to cheat” in order to promote the goal of worldwide revolution. 72Yet as he pumped Gorbachev’s hand in the courtyard of the Villa Fleur d’Eau on Lake Geneva, he found “something likable” about him. “There was warmth in his face and his style, not the coldness bordering on hatred I’d seen in most senior Soviet officials I’d met until then,” he recalled later. 73

A small army of White House advance men had spent weeks discussing how Reagan could break the ice with Gorbachev. They had crawled over the grounds of the nineteenth-century château, with measuring tapes and telephoto lenses, looking for the best camera angles. It was important to establish the right atmosphere, an amalgam of intimacy, parity, informality, and security. Finally they settled on a cozy boathouse down by the lake, a hundred yards from the main house, with a picturesque fireplace. It was an image maker’s dream. After strolling down to the lake, the two most powerful men in the world would sit down opposite each other in overstuffed chairs, by a blazing fire, and address the great issues of war and peace. This would be the “Fireside Summit.” If that evoked memories of the reassuring fireside chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—one of Reagan’s great heroes—so much the better. 74