It speaks for the stability of the Soviet system that it continued to tick along during Mr. Andropov’s prolonged illness. It certainly responded fairly coherently to external challenges such as the deployment of cruise and Pershing-II missiles in western Europe.
But that is about all we can say. We are completely in the dark on how the Soviet leadership functioned in this rather tricky period for it. On the face of it, decisions were taken under the overall command of Mr. Andropov. But this could not have been the case in reality. In retrospect at least we know that he was too ill to be in effective command himself. Apparently some individual or individuals acted on his behalf. But who?
In such periods of political uncertainty in the past, we heard a great deal of collective leadership. As far as we know, there was not even a whisper about collective leadership this time. Which cannot but heighten the mystery.
It can be argued that while a collective leadership was in charge, this fact was not advertised in order to maintain the pretence that Mr. Andropov’s illness was not too serious. This argument, however, cannot stand scrutiny. For a collective leadership could not in the nature of things have made so many changes at the very top – in the politburo – and middle echelons of the party and the government. A collective leadership is by definition a holding operation. It must seek to maintain the status quo.
Even till a few days before Mr. Andropov’s death last Thursday, most commentators continued to interpret changes of personnel as a testimony to his hold on the party and the government machine. No one can possibly subscribe to this proposition now. But what other proposition can we put in its place even by way of speculation? Surely not that the changes were initiated at the instance of Mr. Chernenko who, it may be recalled, had been elbowed out by Mr. Andropov in the race for leadership at the time of Mr. Brezhnev’s death in the late 1982.
Reform Difficult
On that occasion, we also witnessed a public struggle for leadership. Reports were leaked out apparently by the KGB then headed by Mr. Andropov involving members of Mr. Brezhnev’s own family in cases of corruption. And then Mr. Andropov moved to the all powerful secretariat of the central committee of the Soviet communist party in preparation for taking over from Mr. Brezhnev at the appropriate time. There has been nothing like that this time. No Soviet leader has been known to push himself forward, though it must have been taken for granted in the Kremlin that it was only a matter of time that a successor to Mr Andropov would have to be found.
Clearly we are in no position to provide answers to these and other related questions. Indeed, it will be a long time before, if ever, satisfactory answers emerge. Meanwhile we have to acknowledge that we have once again been taken by surprise by the way the Soviet leadership has functioned. Most of us were similarly taken by surprise by General Jaruzelski’s handling of the situation in Poland in 1982 when he demonstrated that the communist system can survive the near total withdrawal of support by the working class and widespread disenchantment among party members.
But putting aside the unanswerable questions, it would, in my view, not be wrong to stick to the view that the very factors which ensure the stability of the system are also a guarantee that it cannot be renovated (or reformed) in any significant way.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that Mr. Andropov meant what he said when he came to occupy the office of the secretary-general of the CPSU. He certainly wanted to reduce, if not end, corruption in high places and improve the efficiency of the economy by cutting down bureaucratic red-tapism and improving productivity through a series of measures, which would have meant wider powers for managers and greater incentives for workers. But it is doubtful whether he could have gone very far in either direction.
New Ruling Class
This is not a case of wisdom by hindsight. In fact, no hindsight can be brought into play for the obvious reason that Mr Andropov did not get a chance to implement his plans. The contention is that too many vested interests, to use a popular communist phrase, have developed in the Soviet system to permit its drastic overhaul.
Djilas hit the nail on the head in the fifties when he put forward the formulation that a new ruling class had arisen in the Soviet Union and that this ruling class was comparable not to the bourgeoisie but to the feudal lords. Mao Zedong did not phrase his criticism of the Soviet Union in the sixties in similar terms. But when he accused it of having become revisionist, he had obviously some such proposition in mind. Indeed, he feared a similar “degeneration” of the revolution in his own country. Or else, he would not have launched the so-called Cultural Revolution and unleashed the red guards on the party and the government apparatus. Mao praised Stalin despite the Soviet leader’s antipathy to him personally and to the Chinese revolution because Stalin, it is hardly necessary to recall, believed, like Mao, in permanent revolution, that is in keeping the pot boiling all the time and the power wielders insecure.
But once the great dictator was dead, the new class was bound to do all in its power to ensure that it would never again be exposed to that kind of terror. Thus when Mr. Khrushchev denounced Stalin he emphasised not so much his (Stalin’s) crimes against the Soviet peoples as his crimes against the party for the understandable reason that he (Khrushchev) wanted to reassure the new class. And the new class got rid of him in 1964 because his whimsical ways threatened the stability of the system at home (his proposal to divide the CPSU into two, one to look after agriculture and the other after industry) and his adventurism could endanger the security of the country and expose it to humiliation (Cuba in 1962).
Mr. Brezhnev represented this class. He was its ideal representative and spokesman. He did not rock the boat either at home or abroad. He neither ever fathered a “hare-brained” scheme or ever indulged in any kind of adventurism. The standards of living in the Soviet Union rose steadily during his stewardship but not because of any innovation on his part. Similarly the military power of the Soviet Union increased during his reign to a point where it became for the first time the equal of the United States in this regard but only as a result of a steady build-up. And he used this power mainly as a lever to try and persuade the United States to engage in genuine negotiations so that the two superpowers could coexist peacefully and possibly even jointly preside over a world order.
It is difficult to believe that so experienced a leader as Mr. Andropov could seriously believe that he could push through far-reaching reform in the face of inevitable resistance on the part of the entrenched bureaucracy in the party and the government. When he came to office, a great deal was made of the fact that he was the Soviet ambassador in Budapest at the time of the Soviet intervention in 1956 and that he had had a great deal to do with the evolution of the Hungarian economic experiment. But the Soviet Union is not another Hungary. It is much more difficult to introduce changes in a vast empire than in a small country. And incidentally how far has liberalisation proceeded in Hungary itself? No, the communist system has a built-in conservatism which it just cannot overcome whatever the social and economic cost. The Chinese too have discovered this reality in the post-Mao period, though their American supporters continue to pretend that the Chinese are firmly launched on the path of modernisation and liberalisation.
Dissidents Are Few
This is one facet of the story of the Soviet Union having established a stable and non-innovative social, economic and political order. There is another which, though related, seldom attracts the attention it deserves. On the contrary, the facts in this regard are often distorted on account of western propaganda. This propaganda is legitimate in terms of both western interests and values with their emphasis on individual liberty. But it should not be allowed to confuse the reality. Two points may be made in this context.
First, the number of dissidents in the Soviet Union is very small not only because the KGB keeps a tight surveillance on such activities and penalises the participants, but also because the Soviet peoples by and large accept the system. Again not only because they know of no other but also because they value the security it gives them. Essentially the system operates on the basis of “consent” and not “coercion”.
Secondly the Soviets, especially the Great Russians among them who are still the dominant force in the Union, are proud of the country’s achievements under the communist rule despite the inhuman costs they have paid, particularly under Stalin. The Russians are proud nationalists and they revel in the fact that the Soviet Union is today the second most powerful country in the world and the equal of the United States in the military field.
Those of us who are not moved by such emotions may find it difficult to grasp the importance for the Russians of the military parity they have achieved with the US. But it is a matter of the greatest importance for them. They remember Stalin not so much as the cruel architect of the Gulag Archipelago but as the man who beat the Germans and made the Soviet Union into a superpower.
The Times of India, 15 February 1984