Michael Dobbs - Down with Big Brother

Had “I Cannot Betray My Principles” been the musings of a lone chemistry teacher, no one would have raised an eyebrow. By 1988 glasnost was well advanced, and opinions similar to Andreyeva’s appeared in the press every day. What attracted attention, however, was their exceptionally prominent display in a leading party newspaper. The three-column photo spread of the author, wearing a Bolshevik-style leather jacket, surrounded by adoring students, was a signal to readers that her views had official approval. For the conservatives it was a call to arms.

The attempt to turn “I Cannot Betray My Principles” into the new party line began the day after publication, on the fifth floor of the Central Committee. Ligachev had deliberately avoided inviting the editors of the two most radical periodicals, Ogonyok and Moscow News , to the meeting, which took place in the Politburo conference room, around the corner from his office. After a few remarks about propaganda support for the spring sowing campaign and the development of livestock breeding, the ideology secretary turned to the subject that was uppermost in his mind.

“Have you read the article by Nina Andreyeva?” he asked the editors.

“Yes, we’ve read it,” replied Ivan Laptev, the editor in chief of Izvestia . The official organ of the Soviet Parliament, Izvestia had become a strong supporter of glasnost, which Laptev feared could be endangered if Ligachev got his way.

“It’s an excellent article, a wonderful example of party political writing. I would ask you, comrade editors, to be guided by the ideas of this article in your work,” enthused Ligachev in his stentorian voice. He then turned to the head of the Tass news agency, regarded by thousands of provincial newspapers as the official voice of the Kremlin.

“Tass should distribute this article at once.” 191

His instructions were immediately carried out. Dozens of provincial newspapers republished the article. Party organizations across the country held special meetings to study it. Telegrams from “honest workers,” supporting Andreyeva’s views, flooded into the Central Committee. One morning the Communist Party newspaper Pravda even printed Ligachev’s name ahead of his Politburo colleagues, elevating him to almost equal status with Gorbachev. 192The liberal intelligentsia was in despair. Without a signal from the top, no one dared respond to Andreyeva and Sovietskaya Rossiya . People remembered the Brezhnev period of stagnation, when Khrushchev’s thaw had turned back into a freeze, with little warning. The fate of perestroika seemed to lie in the balance.

Ligachev had timed his counteroffensive well. When he met the editors, Gorbachev had just left Moscow on an official visit to Yugoslavia. Yakovlev had flown off to Outer Mongolia, eight time zones away. It took three weeks for them to formulate a response.

THE POLITBURO DEBATE over the Nina Andreyeva affair erupted unexpectedly. Gorbachev finally got around to reading the article on his return from Yugoslavia, on Saturday, March 19. He spent the weekend pondering its significance. The general secretary was uncertain how to react. On the one hand, he had no desire for a showdown with Ligachev, the party’s deputy leader. On the other, if this was a deliberate assault on perestroika, as his radical advisers insisted, there would have to be some kind of reply.

The Politburo was not due to meet until the following Thursday, for its regular weekly meeting. On Wednesday, however, fate intervened. Several thousand collective farmers from all over the Soviet Union had descended on the Kremlin for their first congress in more than twenty years. As was customary on such occasions, Gorbachev opened the meeting with a two-hour speech. Behind him, on the stage of the Palace of Congresses, a vast, plushly decorated auditorium built to house big propaganda events by day and performances of Swan Lake by night, were most of his Politburo colleagues. When the gensek finally got through exhorting the kolkhozniks to be more efficient and display more initiative, the Politburo members filed backstage to the Presidium Room for tea and sandwiches. Without warning the chitchat turned to Nina Andreyeva.

“Yes,” said Vitaly Vorotnikov, the prime minister of the Russian Federation, emphatically. “There was an article the other day in Sovietskaya Rossiya . A real, politically correct article. It was a model for our ideological work.” 193

Ligachev jumped into the conversation, with more lavish praise of Andreyeva. “It’s good that the press is finally showing these…” He left the end of the sentence unspoken, realizing he was in polite company. “Otherwise everything would go to pieces.”

The Politburo patriarch, Andrei Gromyko, supported Ligachev. “I think it was a good article. It will put everything back in its proper place.” His fellow septuagenarian Mikhail Solomentsev, who had helped Ligachev organize the failed antialcohol campaign, added his two kopecks’ worth in favor of Nina Andreyeva.

Gorbachev suddenly realized that he could not let the conversation continue in this fashion. Four full Politburo members, out of a total of thirteen, had just endorsed a political platform that was fundamentally different from his own. Unless he took a clear stand, he could quickly find himself in a minority, supported only by the two hard-core liberals Yakovlev and Shevardnadze. He would then be forced to embrace the views expressed in “I Cannot Betray My Principles” or resign.

“If you consider this article to be a model, then we have to clarify a few things. I have a different view.”

“Well, well,” shot back Vorotnikov, an Andropov protégé and early supporter of Gorbachev, increasingly dismayed by the radical direction that perestroika had taken.

“What do you mean ‘well, well’?”

There was an awkward silence as Gorbachev and Vorotnikov glared at each other, and the other Politburo members glanced uneasily around the room.

“This smells of a schism,” said Gorbachev fiercely, using the Russian word raskol , a Bolshevik term of abuse. “The article was directed against perestroika. I have never objected if someone expresses his personal opinion. Whatever views you want—in the press, in letters. But I’ve been told that there have been attempts to turn this article into a party directive. In some party organizations they are already adopting it as a resolution, like in the old days. The press has been forbidden to utter a word against it.”

At this point Gorbachev decided to gamble everything on the strongest card in his hand, his immense political prestige, both at home and abroad. His Politburo critics may have tapped into a groundswell of Communist Party dissatisfaction with the way perestroika was going, but they were disorganized and leaderless. Ligachev was a divisive, controversial figure. The rules of party discipline, plus ingrained habits of obedience, made it difficult for the conservatives to mount an open challenge to the general secretary. Their aim, at this stage, was not to replace the leader but to make him their spokesman. Gorbachev understood the contradiction in their position and exploited it brilliantly.

“I am not going to fight for my chair. But as long as I am here, as long as I occupy this position, I shall insist on the idea of perestroika,” he declared, hinting that he was prepared to resign. “No, this is not going to succeed. We will discuss this matter in the Politburo.”

THE POLITBURO MEETING LASTED for two days, an unprecedented length of time, even by glasnost standards. It began in the Kremlin on Thursday and continued all day Friday on the fifth floor of Old Square, in the same conference hall where Ligachev had heaped praise on the Andreyeva article, less than a fortnight previously. Much of the debate was taken up by the general secretary’s long monologues. A mixture of waffling visionary and determined politician, Gorbachev had a unique ability to envelop an audience in billowing clouds of rhetoric, exhausting and disorienting everybody with his tortuous logic. The confusion of a good argument seemed to clarify his thinking and serve as a platform for action. He liked to quote Lenin: “The most important thing in any endeavor is to get involved in the fight, and in that way learn what to do next.” 194He could talk himself out of almost any crisis.