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Gorbachev and the 'New Millennium'
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12630 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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6 / 1987 |
2,251 Words |
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Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr.
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In the nearly 70 years since its founding, the Soviet Union has had fewer leaders than any other major power in the twentieth century. Until the present decade only four men had reached the pinnacle of power in the Soviet Union, including its founder, Vladimir I. Lenin himself, and Nikita Khrushchev, whose tenure, important as it was, in retrospect stands as a period of transition between the long Stalinist era and the ascension of Leonid Brezhnev. Between them, Stalin and Brezhnev ruled for a total of 47 years - two-thirds of the history of the Soviet state.
The death of the enfeebled Brezhnev in 1982, followed by the gerontocracy represented successively by Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, formed the leadership setting for the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.
Among other things, Gorbachev stands apart from his two immediate predecessors in vigor and comparative age. Gorbachev reached the leadership of the Soviet Union at age 54, just several years older than Stalin at a similar point in his career, and four years younger than Brezhnev when he came to power as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Thus, from an actuarial perspective, Gorbachev has the potential to lead the Soviet Union into what he has termed the "new millennium," provided he can consolidate his position and avoid the fate that befell Khrushchev, who was ousted in October 1964.
The Soviet state that Gorbachev inherited possesses unprecedented military capabilities amassed under Brezhnev, together with the projection of Moscow's influence into regions as distant from the Soviet Union as Southeast Asia and Central America, as well as the empire that was Stalin's legacy from the Soviet victories in World War II and the consolidation of communist power in Eastern Europe in the years that followed.
Falling Short of Goals
Yet Gorbachev presides over a Soviet state that, in all sectors except the military, has failed its own ideology and stated programs. As Gorbachev well knows, the Soviet Union has long since fallen far short of the goals set by the 21st Party Congress in 1961 - that within a decade Soviet industrial and agricultural output would surpass that of the United States and "socialism will inevitably succeed capitalism everywhere" in accordance with the "objective law of social development."
For Gorbachev, the evidence is abundant that such expansive ideological rhetoric cannot mask the inefficiency of a stagnating economy, laggard growth rates, and a poorly motivated labor force. Hence, the only alternative is seen as glasnost (openness) about the nature, extent, and implications of the malaise, together with a program based on perestroika (restructuring) as the prerequisite for breathing new life into the Soviet system at all levels.
In his speech to the Central Committee Plenum on January 27, 1987, Gorbachev set the tone for this discussion:
No accomplishments, even the most impressive ones, should obscure either contradictions in societal development or our mistakes and failings....At some point the country began to lose momentum, difficulties and unresolved problems started to pile up, and there appeared elements of
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