Was the Soviet Union dismantled and abolished by its own leader – but entirely accidentally?

It would be an interesting idea to examine in a novel. Not because it could not happen in reality, but because it apparently did happen in reality.

Guy Sorman writes at City Journal:

The paradox of Mikhail Gorbachev’s major accomplishments is that none was intentional—not the destruction of the Soviet Union, not the demise of socialist ideology, not the independence of formerly enslaved peoples. No other statesman in contemporary history can match this quixotic fate. He accomplished much, but it was based entirely on misunderstanding. …

It all began with his appointment to power by the Politburo, the Soviet Union’s supreme entity, in 1985. The three previous Soviet leaders had died over a three-year period, all aged veterans. Gorbachev, in the eyes of his colleagues, had the advantage of being young and insignificant; the old guard believed that he could be manipulated. He said little, and his only recognized expertise was in agriculture. (He regarded Soviet agriculture as somewhat archaic.) Better still, he was a faithful servant of the regime, whose changes over the years he had embraced without difficulty. The truth is that Gorbachev was a sincere Soviet and a sincere socialist—a true believer, while his colleagues were cynics who clung to power at any price. When they named Gorbachev, the Politburo leaders were ignorant of this sincerity. Moreover—and this was a most unusual quality in the Soviet regime—Gorbachev detested violence and was appalled by bloodshed. He would prove to be just as sincere a pacifist as he was a socialist.

What Gorbachev failed to understand, what he would never understand, was that violence had been the foundation of Soviet socialism since 1917. This blindness explains his life’s work. If he had seen clearly, perhaps the USSR would still exist. …

How likely is that?  Socialism is not a workable economy. “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher explained. The wonder is that the USSR lasted as long as it did.

And doesn’t socialism always depend on force? Isn’t it essentially government by force?

Socialism with a human face was Gorbachev’s true religion. He preferred not to see that no such thing exists, and so he alienated both the anti-socialist liberals and the anti-reformist socialists. …

Gorbachev had no card left to play on the international stage; he would concede everything, in particular the reunification of Germany. This became inevitable as early as 1989, from the moment Gorbachev refused all assistance to the Communist government of East Germany in preserving the Berlin Wall. The wall was attacked, and then destroyed; the Red Army made no move. The Baltic States and Poland understood the situation and rose up in turn, peacefully. Once again, because Gorbachev believed in glasnost [transparency] and because he abhorred the use of force, he forbade a military response. He thus demonstrated, again unwittingly, that the USSR was based upon nothing but force : no more repression, no more USSR. It was left to the Russians themselves to claim their freedom, which they would do by confiding the presidency of a new independent Russia to Yeltsin, who, for his part, saw clearly what was happening.

It is said that Gorbachev saw in his reception of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 an anti-Soviet gesture. He was right, but the Soviet Union was already a thing of the past, and he was the last to know. He would never grasp this fact, since, in 1996, he would run for the presidency of the new Russia and gain 0.5 percent of the votes. Perestroika [restructuring] was doomed from the outset, and Gorbachev was a kind of calamitous visionary, at least from the perspective of what he wanted to protect. …

Gorbachev and Yeltsin were both liberators, in their way, who have since been replaced by a new Stalin.

Or, it might be said, a new Tsar. Russia has never been a free country. There have been a few short-lived attempts at democratic government, all ending in failure.

Communism did nothing good for the Russian peasants. Nothing. Not even electrification. Not even universal education. When I visited Russia soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, I saw for myself how poor, illiterate, ignorant, passive, the peasants still were. How lowly their living conditions. (Most of those I encountered were dressed in rags and shod in felt boots!) Even now, some thirty years later, does Chekhov’s description of their miserable lives need revision?

If they are now prosperous, educated, free, please tell me. It would be welcome news.

Jillian Becker   September 3, 2022