Read Online Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 by Stephen Kotkin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Kotkin
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antiquated model of heroic mobilization, or to satisfy a growing rest-lessness, bordering on a sense of entitlement. But they drew upon pride in the Second World War victory, and expediently allowed nationalisms to mix with Communism, while retaining censorship. Overall, these post-war developments were not remarkable in themselves. They were, however, made potentially very dangerous by the economic boom, consumer revolution, mass cultural explosion, and embrace of democracy outside the USSR.
Direct access to life in the West was granted only to select members of the Soviet upper ranks. No less restricted was access to the lives of those higher strata.
Elite hospitals, resorts, supply networks, and schools were closed affairs; even the maids of the elite were usually KGB
employees who reported on their masters’ lives only for secret dossiers. Russia’s socialist revolution, having origin-ated in a radical quest for egalitarianism, produced an insulated privileged class increasingly preoccupied with the spoils of office for themselves and their children. The existence of a vast and self-indulgent elite was the greatest contradiction in the post-war Soviet Union, and the most volatile.
48
reviving the dream
Jockeying invalids
At the very top, where decisions were concentrated, the Soviet elite was growing old and infirm. Leonid Brezhnev first became ill in 1968 during the crisis over Czechoslovakia, when he took too many sleeping pills. He had worked tenaciously to obtain an about-face by the Czechoslovak leadership, but finally sent in the tanks. 15 The Soviet leader developed insomnia, though otherwise he functioned normally. Those who met him in the late 1960s and early 1970s came away impressed with his political skills.
In November 1974, however, Brezhnev suffered a major stroke. A second stroke, which left him clinically dead for a time, followed in January 1976. Later that year, in the months leading up to his seventieth birthday, he had several heart attacks. Both at the end of 1974 and in 1976
there were hints of a possible retirement. 16 Instead, after the onset of Brezhnev’s debilitating illness, supreme rule was consolidated by a tight-knit Brezhnevite clique.
Between 1977 and 1980, those whom Brezhnev considered rivals were removed. The general secretary added the title of Supreme Soviet chairman, while giving the government to a trusted apparatchik, Nikolai Tikhonov.
In two other moves, Dmitry Ustinov, the defence minister, and Konstantin Chernenko, a Brezhnev protégé over decades, became politburo members. This faction—Ustinov (defence), Chernenko (party apparat), and Tikhonov (economy), with the support of Andropov (KGB), the primordial Suslov (ideology), and the long-serving Andrei 49
reviving the dream
Gromyko (foreign minister)—exercised unlimited power in their domains by keeping the enfeebled Brezhnev in place. They were perpetually briefed on the country’s myriad problems, but remained unsympathetic to proposals for major reforms, especially after the distasteful experience of 1968 Czechoslovakia; anyway, oil money was flowing into Kremlin coffers. 17
Just as the Brezhnevite faction was taking shape, the much younger Mikhail Gorbachev, having knocked himself out to reach the inner sanctum, achieved his ambition, only to come face to face with the system’s paralysis.
Brezhnev, incoherent from arteriosclerosis and tranquil-lizer overdoses, worked no more than two hours a day, and politburo meetings often lasted just twenty minutes. Even after the general secretary began drooling on himself in appearances on Soviet television, the clique around him took no action, other than to nominate him for still more medals. While Brezhnev acquired more state awards than all previous Soviet leaders combined , and more military awards than Marshal Zhukov, who had captured Berlin, the leadership’s average age surpassed 70. In late 1979 the narrow ruling group enmeshed the Soviet Union in a
Direct access to life in the West was granted only to select members of the Soviet upper ranks. No less restricted was access to the lives of those higher strata.
Elite hospitals, resorts, supply networks, and schools were closed affairs; even the maids of the elite were usually KGB
employees who reported on their masters’ lives only for secret dossiers. Russia’s socialist revolution, having origin-ated in a radical quest for egalitarianism, produced an insulated privileged class increasingly preoccupied with the spoils of office for themselves and their children. The existence of a vast and self-indulgent elite was the greatest contradiction in the post-war Soviet Union, and the most volatile.
48
reviving the dream
Jockeying invalids
At the very top, where decisions were concentrated, the Soviet elite was growing old and infirm. Leonid Brezhnev first became ill in 1968 during the crisis over Czechoslovakia, when he took too many sleeping pills. He had worked tenaciously to obtain an about-face by the Czechoslovak leadership, but finally sent in the tanks. 15 The Soviet leader developed insomnia, though otherwise he functioned normally. Those who met him in the late 1960s and early 1970s came away impressed with his political skills.
In November 1974, however, Brezhnev suffered a major stroke. A second stroke, which left him clinically dead for a time, followed in January 1976. Later that year, in the months leading up to his seventieth birthday, he had several heart attacks. Both at the end of 1974 and in 1976
there were hints of a possible retirement. 16 Instead, after the onset of Brezhnev’s debilitating illness, supreme rule was consolidated by a tight-knit Brezhnevite clique.
Between 1977 and 1980, those whom Brezhnev considered rivals were removed. The general secretary added the title of Supreme Soviet chairman, while giving the government to a trusted apparatchik, Nikolai Tikhonov.
In two other moves, Dmitry Ustinov, the defence minister, and Konstantin Chernenko, a Brezhnev protégé over decades, became politburo members. This faction—Ustinov (defence), Chernenko (party apparat), and Tikhonov (economy), with the support of Andropov (KGB), the primordial Suslov (ideology), and the long-serving Andrei 49
reviving the dream
Gromyko (foreign minister)—exercised unlimited power in their domains by keeping the enfeebled Brezhnev in place. They were perpetually briefed on the country’s myriad problems, but remained unsympathetic to proposals for major reforms, especially after the distasteful experience of 1968 Czechoslovakia; anyway, oil money was flowing into Kremlin coffers. 17
Just as the Brezhnevite faction was taking shape, the much younger Mikhail Gorbachev, having knocked himself out to reach the inner sanctum, achieved his ambition, only to come face to face with the system’s paralysis.
Brezhnev, incoherent from arteriosclerosis and tranquil-lizer overdoses, worked no more than two hours a day, and politburo meetings often lasted just twenty minutes. Even after the general secretary began drooling on himself in appearances on Soviet television, the clique around him took no action, other than to nominate him for still more medals. While Brezhnev acquired more state awards than all previous Soviet leaders combined , and more military awards than Marshal Zhukov, who had captured Berlin, the leadership’s average age surpassed 70. In late 1979 the narrow ruling group enmeshed the Soviet Union in a
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