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Return to Russia Since The Fall
of the Soviet Union (USSR), Free College Course and Resources
return to Welcome to Dick's Guides
Russian Politics, Book Report
The Struggle For A New Order
Joseph L. Nogee and R. Judson Mitchell
Preface
There is not yet stability in Russia sufficient to determine the direction
"a clear pattern in Russian politics ... it appears Russia is headed for
years of transition from the Soviet System to what ultimately will succeed
it ... (Russia) has yet to develop a party system, and society has experienced
considerable social disorder — particulary crime and economic hardship
— in a large part as a result of its newer freedoms." The intent of
this book is to address the transformation of Russia in three political areas,
the economic structure, the type of constitutional order to prevail and what
kind of relationship to develop with the west. "It was clear the Soviet"
positions of "a command economy, the dictatorship of the Communist Party,
and cold war — were neither desirable or possible." Yeltsin committed
the country to economic reforms. Mikhail Gorbachev had ended the cold war.
There is no answer as to whether the government will be presidential or
parliamentary, what types of western relationships will follow the cold war,
or if the economy will become a genuine market economy.
"The Soviet System is dead" but its 75 year existence will have an impact
on Russia for years to come.
CHAPTER ONE: THE SOVIET SYSTEM
"(T)he problems confronting the post-Soviet Russian Republic and ... the
prospects for a stable democratic political system ... are firmly grounded
in the historical formation of Russian institutions and political culture."
Marxism-Leninism took over in 1917 with a plan to take a shortcut to
modernization but, by 1991, had failed to develop the country "politically,
socially and economically." A new form of government was developed that involved
an "unprecedented control" over the people, and seemed to be firmly entrenched
as late as 1985. But, the government also failed to correct for the
"contradictions" that caused structural damage to the seemingly all powerful
state. These problems are reviewed in the following subsections.
Development and Totalitarianism
"Marxian developmental theory" saw a revolution by the working industrial
class (or proletariat), but there was little proletariat (about 4%) in 1917
Russia. Marx allowed for a peasant class revolt in Russia, but Lenin wanted
to stick with a proletarian revolution concept. In fact, the industrialized
countries had industrial workers that already had political clout and little
need for a revolution. Only undeveloped nations -- the weakest links in the
capitalist chain -- were ready for "Marxist" revolution.
The Bolshevik's strained theory had associated practical considerations —
rooted in the bureaucratic past of the tsar regimes that had been characterized
by "Oriental Despotism." Thus, Russia was ready for bureaucratic rule by
the Communist Party, more than rule by a democratic Marxist government. A
small middle class were few in numbers and had little impact.
The Bolsheviks assumed power in 1918 as the Communist Party, created the
secret police (Cheka). Eliminated opposition parties, established The Gulag,
developed the bureaucratic framework for a command economy. Popularly elected
bodies "The soviets" became mere "transmission belts" for conveying party
orders and information, as did the trade unions. All elements of all political
and government administrations were controlled by the Communist Party. This
made it easy for Stalin to develop totalitarian control of the government.
Josef Stalin was elected general secretary of the communist party in 1922
and quadrupled the size of the party by 1929 by stacking it with his own
supporters. This allowed him to seize the power of the party. The party was
overrun with opportunists who saw in membership a chance for a better life.
The new proletariat, recently peasants, illiterate and anti-intellectual,
were against the Stalin's middle class intellectual opponents, like Trotsky,
Grigorii Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev.
Lenin had described "democratic centralization" "freedom of discussion, unity
of action." But, there was no discussion at Party congresses between 1925
and 1956, only centralism.
Stalin's Dictatorship and Legacy
"Stalin had eliminated all prominent Old Bolsheviks from positions of influence
by 1936 and established a personal dictatorship." He launched the drive for
collectivization of agriculture to preserve capital for industry and remove
any chance of power by the landed farmers. There were three phases on the
road to political totalitarianism:
1...From 1924 to 1929 there was a struggle for party leadership between Stalin's
new proletariat and the "old line middle class intellectuals."
2...From 1929 to 1934 there was the first 5-year plan, that created collectivized
farms and a famine in the Ukraine.
3...After the possible 1934 Stalin murder of Russia's second most powerful
leader, Sergei Kirov, formal procedures for the death penalty were removed
for political crimes, opening the way for massive purges in the 1936 to 1939
years that would kill tens of millions, including 75% of the top army officers
and 98 of the 139 members of the Central Committee in 1934.
By 1939 the party had been displaced as the rulers of the USSR by the police
state. No Party Congresses were called between 1939 and 1952, and only one
meeting of the Central Committee occurred. The secret police was manipulated
by Stalin, who also had two police chiefs killed.
Totalitarianism had occurred because of the lack of any strong social or
political infrastructure. It was aided by technology in remaining in control
of the USSR, especially in the controlling of national minorities. Lenin
had seen all of the nationalities merging as economic development occurred,
but in the short term he saw the need to develop national minority socialist
parties. Stalin sent Russians to the various states of the USSR to become
leaders, and receive privileges of party membership that allowed them a higher
stand ard of living. Khrushchev followed this example in the 1950's. This
Russification has impacts right now, as member nations of the CIS react against
the formerly privileged Russians in their midst. But, the new regime did
bring the people of the USSR social-services, illiteracy was eliminated and
general living stand ards rose from 1917 to 1953. But the command economy,
and the emphasis on heavy industry (to build military might) always kept
a cap on the types of goods available in the USSR.
Stalin's totalitarian government did bring military strength to the USSR,
but at the expense of recreating serfdom, massive control of the proletariat,
and stamping out individualism. This was not Democratic Centralism or
Lenin-Marxism.
The Rise and Fall of Khrushchev had already begun when he became Party
Secretariat March 1953. He and other party leaders had Lavrenti Beria arrested
in the summer of 1953 and then executed -- with help from Marshall George
Zhukov. Beria joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 as a soldier in the Caucasus
and served in the security police as a high official in the Communist party
of the Caucasian region. In 1938 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a fellow Georgian,
called Beria to Moscow and appointed him head of the Soviet secret police
organization. As such he was also responsible for the Soviet labor camps.
Beria was notorious for his ruthless ability to carry out Stalin's orders:
torturing and killing people and falsifying evidence. After Stalin died,
in March 1953, Beria emerged as first deputy premier under Stalin's successor,
Georgy M. Malenkov. in the ensuing power struggle Beria was outmaneuvered.
Vyacheslav Molotov, George Malenkov, had survived, with Khrushchev, Stalin's
"cult of personality", but they disliked Krushchevs' liberal policies that
led to Hungarian Revolution of Oct-Nov, 1956, and they sponsored a narrowly
successful Politburo vote in the summer 1957 to remove Krushchevs. An emergency
session of The Central Committee, flown in by Zhukov's army, overruled the
Politburo. Nikolai Bulganin was Premier and he was ousted in early 1958,
allowing Khrushchev to be Premier and Party Secretariat. The Twentieth Congress,
in February 1956 was where Khrushchev made his "secret speech" denouncing
Stalin. The Twenty-second Congress developed a second "de-Stalinization"
drive, promising a "withering way of the State", and economic powers that
would surpass the USA in 1980. Sputnik was a success in October 1957, and
this created alarm in the United States. Sovnarkhozy economic decentralization
in 1958 was considered a failure by 1960. The power of Mobilization Tractor
Stations was diminished. Sovkhozy was preferred by Khrushchev to kolkhozy,
but he favored agrogorod. He made inroads into developing relationships with
India, Cuba's Fidel Castro in 1959. He championed a "peace zone" of Third
World countries and members of the "socialist camp" and national liberation
forces that would take over the "imperialist camp. He saw a victory in the
economic competition of socialism against capitalism, propounded peaceful
coexistence. He often used the bluff, as during the Suez Crisis of 1956 when
he threatened to bomb the Acropolis, discussing the fantasy of a "two way"
South Pole missile, promising a separate peace treaty with East Germany.
Coupled with Russia's successful thermonuclear bomb in 1961, a NATO buildup
began. He is said to have backed down during the Cuban Missile Crisis of
October 1957. He spoke of detente, but detente was halted after the U-2 plane
was shot down May Day 1960, slowed to a crawl by the erection of the Berlin
Wall in August 1961. Khrushchev accepted Yugoslavia back (After Stalin had
tossed Tito out) and essentially accepted "many roads to communism". His
liberalization efforts in Eastern Europe created a "scissors crisis" of 1954-56
when Eastern European nations were required to liberalize, even thought they
needed to use Stalinist type power to stay in power. This led to 1956 eruptions
in Hungary and Poland that "almost cost Khrushchev his job" and led to a
separate Polish approach to socialism, and Romania's independence on regional
integration. In 1961 Albania aligned with China rather than Russia to avoid
Yugoslavian domination. Russia clashed with China, in the late 1950's on
"The Great Leap Forward," conflicts with Taiwan and India, and in 1962-1963
China and Russia had a border war. In October 64 China became a nuclear power
and Khrushchev was removed, supposedly for his failed China Policy, as outlined
by Mikhail Suslov. But, Khruschev's real problems were domestic. He first
had concentrated on installing his supporters. General Ivan Serov was replaced
as head of the KGB by Aleksandr Shelepin, former head of the Komsomol, the
Communist youth organization. The generals were alienated by Khrushchev's
cut in personnel, initiated in 1958. He often abandoned the party for populist
support. His bifurcation of the party into agriculture and industry was approved
by The Central Committee in 1962, but it caused confusion, and undermined
the power of many elitist communists. Mikhail Suslov, Leonid Brezhnev, Nikolai
Podgorny and Andrei Kirilenko were Politburo powers largely because they
avoided becoming "half-secretaries" of their region. Suslov planned a coup
that ousted Khrushchev October 1964 and its leaders quickly reversed the
policy of bifurcation.
The Post-Stalin Political Settlement ... involved a redistribution of Stalin's
political powers and the protection of the Protection of the political elite
(the nomenklatura) from "arbitrary charges" as well as it involved a reassertion
of the Communist Party dominance that Stalin had previously reduced by
distributing power to government bureaucracies. This reassertion was evident
by the XX CPSU Congress in 1956 (Throughout the end of the 1980s, the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the dominant legal political party in
the USSR.)
Khrushchev attacked Stalinism at the XX congress.
Georgii Malenkov used his premiership to undermine Khrushchev and rally the
masses by championing consumer interest and relaxed international tensions.
Khrushchev appealed to the military-industrial complex, but once in power
he mouthed Malenkov's policies. Malenkov lost the premiership in 1955 . The
Party used its coercive powers for the prevention of combinations of dissident
power factions, which was not likely to occur with the army and the secret
police. The secret police had been a tool in the Great Purge of the army.
(Untold millions of party, industry, and military leaders disappeared during
the "Great Terror," making way for a rising generation that included such
leaders as Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Fear instilled by a political
secret police formed an essential part of the system called Stalinism.) .
General Zhukov's rise to power made some of the political elite afraid of
a new Bonapartism.
("(Napoleon" Bonaparte, no modest soul, decided to leave his army and return
to save France. In Paris, he joined a conspiracy against the government.
In the coup d'etat of November 9-10, 1799 (18-19 Brumaire), he and his colleagues
seized power and established a new regime—the Consulate. Under its
constitution, Bonaparte, as first consul, had almost dictatorial powers.
The constitution was revised in 1802 to make Bonaparte consul for life and
in 1804 to create him emperor.)
(Zhukov, Georgy Konstantinovich was born in 1896. He died at the age of 77,
in 1974. He was born near Moscow. He served in the Russian imperial army
during World War I, joined the Red Army in 1918, and fought as a cavalry
commander in the Russian Civil War. After the war, he studied armored warfare
at the Frunze (now Bishkek) Military Academy. In 1939, using tanks, he was
victorious during the Soviet- Japanese clashes on the Manchurian border;
the following year, he was made chief of staff while fighting in the
Russo-Finnish War. During World War II, Zhukov commanded the defense of Moscow;
he was involved in most other important Soviet battles and led the final
attack on Berlin. A marshal since 1943, he remained in Germany to head the
Soviet occupation forces. Shortly after his triumphant return to Moscow in
1946, he was demoted to a regional post by Premier Joseph Stalin, who resented
the marshal's prestige. Following Stalin's death in 1953, Zhukov became first
deputy minister of defense in 1955 and a member of the executive committee
of the Communist party in July 1957; three months later he was dismissed
from both offices for allegedly giving military affairs priority over party
concerns. Marshal Zhukov's Greatest Battles, an English translation of articles
by Zhukov that appeared in Soviet periodicals between 1965 and 1968, was
published in 1969; the first American edition of The Memoirs of Marshal G.
Zhukov was published in 1971.
The Party replaced the Dictatorial government as the dominant player in the
political system until 1990 and used its power to control the coercive agencies
with its Administrative Organs in the Central Committee, and its work was
overseen by the Secretariat which consisted of 11 or 12 party secretaries.
The party's power was not to be used for Podmena, day-to- day interference
with the professional experts, but this also allowed the professionals to
avoid decision making. Still, functional power did diffuse, which hampered
the interaction between the USSR's massive complex bureaucracies. Reliance
on democratic-socialism made the party the ultimate big decision maker. Cohesion
of the system was based upon individual desires to be one the nomenklatura.
The first (or after 1966, "general") secretary served as head of the Secretariat,
and since there was no party in Russia, also as the direct supervisor of
the regional organizations within the Russian federation. In the other
union-republics' "second" secretaries were responsible for party organization
and were selected by the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat, and were usually
Russian, with Ukrainians often added often. While the first secretary , was
not supposed to have massive power to determine members of the nomenklatura
he often -- in practice -- did.
Highest party organization (theoretically) was the Congress (with 5,000 members
affected by subject to formal election and cooption) ) convened four years
(after 1971, every five years). It served as a propagand a rally for Five-Year
Plans and a platform for party leaders' policy pronouncements, and as the
unanimous ratification of new members of the Central Committee all selected
by the Secretariat. The Central Committee elected the Secretariat and Politburo
(which essentially decided on its own members, making sure to recognize the
effects of politics, and also acted like a Western parliament, but with more
power). There were elements of power sharing in this scheme contradictory
to true democratic-socialism. The inner Politburo power structure usually
consisted of the members who were party secretaries, the general secretary
and some members of the Defense Council. The Politburo was the aggregation
of the bureaucratic system's interests, particularly the government industries
represented on the Politburo by the chairman of the Council of Ministers
(the premier) who presided over 110 members. There was "ambiguity" between
the council and the party leadership. There was an interchange between the
elite government and party members, each ministry or state organization was
subject to general supervision by a department of the Central Committee,
and some agencies did not report to the Council of Ministers, but had direct
reporting lines to the party, like the Ministry of Defense, Committee for
State Security (KGB) and the foreign ministry. The premier was not responsible
for these agencies unless he was also the head of the party, as during 1958-1964.
Party apparat (Officials of the CPSU) served as ambassadors, chosen directly
by the Central Committee. The KGB's independence from government was highlighted
by a legal designation in 1978. The military-industrial complex was another
group often at odds with the premier (head of government) and the council's
Presidium. Gosplan, The State Planning Commission also had a degree of
independence from the government and party because of its expertise in creating
the annual and Five-Year plans. Nikolai Baibakov defied Yuri Andropov on
decentralization in 1983 but got fired by Gorbachev two years later. Legislative
and judicial structures included The Supreme Soviet a bicameral legislature
with joint sessions that rubber stamped government and party legislation,
and served as another "transmission belt," since membership was honorary
and without power it had only a little power -- at local levels -- because
where local soviet executive committees had actual local government
administrators; The trail-less courts were all politicized. Judges and prosecutor
were on the same team, both responsible to the Procuracy administration and
Department of Administrative Organs of the Central Committee. This "mature"
socialist system had massive and overlapping bureaucracies, formally strict
hierarchy but uncertain lines of authority caused by a real diffusion of
power. It was less arbitrary and much more rule oriented than in the Stalin
era. Citizens were: encouraged to expect more normal relationships with the
political authorities and progress the material conditions of life; guaranteed
employment, better social services, and a low cost of living, created by
government subsidies of food, transportation and housing, in return for this
social contract citizens acceded to the to the political supremacy of the
party and state. Consumption levels remained low, and were extolled as the
"Soviet Way of Life" that was superior to "the frenzied consumerism of the
capitalist world."
The five major features of the post Stalin era were:
ASS: Assurance of citizens and the nomenklatura to random terror;
SC: The social contract;
DPF: Recognition of a distribution of power and functional responsibilities
among the state's bureaucratic elements;
AP: Acceptance of the Party's role as the central structure and arbiter of
bureaucratic conflicts, and
MDS: Reassertion of democratic-socialism modified to enable lower level decision
making.
Two more Leonid Brezhnev (first secretary, 1964) additions -- to prevent
a reversion to autocracy "threatened" by Khrushchev -- were:
PFSno: Offices of premier and first secretary should not be held by one person.
Life: Lifetime tenure in the Nomenklatura.
These represented two more turns away from totalitarianism, not recognized
by Western scholars.
American behaviorism studies led to the convergence theory, about 1970, which
(helped by Gabriel Almond's structural-functionalism) saw a socialist market
system in Russia; development of state owned enterprises in the USA, and
a resulting converging of economic and social in both countries, because
of economic forces, by ignoring the totalitarian structure, functions not
required in democracies, conflicts between politics and economic realities,
the inefficiencies of over centralization and the Russian lack of ways to
simplify conflict resolution. The existing Soviet System still had staying
power, despite apparent gains during Khrushchev's reign, although a few scholars
and dissidents did predict a complete collapse of the Soviet system, most
scholars and sovietologists wore blinders. Sovietologists who studied the
USSR found their subject was gone, and searched for a new name. While most
Western scholars had difficulty accepting the basic contradictions of the
Soviet system, the approach during Leonid Brezhnev's reign was one of complete
denial. Gorbachev, who attacked some of the underlying problems, also denied
that the framework of socialism held these contradictions.
Stagnation Under Brezhnev
Soon to be General Secretary (rather than first) Brezhnev leadership did
lead to recognition of Russia as a USA-like super power, at least in ICBMs.
The SALT I agreement, signed in Moscow (1972) was hailed for achieving
imperialist's recognition. The Helsinki accords (1975) confirmed existing
borders, legitimizing the USSR in Eastern Europe — "Socialist
internationalism" had been incorporated into "international law." Helsinki's
Basket Three on human rights was ignored by the USSR but did create dissident
watch groups in the USSR and some satellites. These groups enabled President
Jimmy Carter's human rights campaign against the Soviet bloc. Soviet Foreign
Minister, Andrei Gromyko in 1975 saw the preponderance of "peace and progress"
forces now able to dictate the direction of international politics, while
success of soviet proxies in Third World liberation efforts offered some
tangible proof as did the deployment of SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe,
which began in 1977. But the USSR military strength was achieved at the expense
of its citizens welfare, and USSR world power could not exist without domestic
stability that required some USSR attention to minimal basic needs, and order
did prevail and the shops were full of goods, of poor quality.
Brezhnev Stagnation could be seen in four areas:
Pol: Politic's saw the overreaction to Stalinism in the "stability of cadres,"
which meant a party member could stay in place till he retired or died, and
then replaced himself with a chosen successor, if he were a regional first
secretary. Brezhnev's approach completely solidified his role as party leader,
while simultaneously limiting his party authority. "Stability of cadres,"
like America's "incumbency advantage," encouraged corruption and assured
party fragmentation. Low level party member security actually had more power,
while always professing subservience to the higher authorities. Regional
party leaders would now collaborate with local economic interests. Regional
secretaries, unable to progress unless some died or retired, maximized gains
from the current serfdom, through illicit activities, especially if the were
distant from Moscow. In the Union- republics of Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and
Georgia there was even greater corruption. "Stability of cadres" encouraged
no new policies and no new membership or upward mobility. The top political
leaders had been wise enough to avoid the purges of Stalin and nowguarded
their positions against all. At the XXIV CPSU Congress in 1971, 6 of 16 Politburo
leaders were dismissed, only to be replaced by the Troika's (Brezhnev, Suslov
and Andrei Kirilenko) proteges., several years older than the displaced members.
By 1980 septuagenarians filled most of the highest positions. In 1981 a Party
Congress reelected every Politburo member, the first time this had occurred
had been 60 years earlier.
Eco: Economically there were slow growth rates and a "glacial rise in
productivity" which should have been expected from a safe and secure group
of workers and managers. Managers were unable to coordinate deliveries, and
lagged increasingly in technology, especially computers. By the end of the
70's regime leaders knew they had to do something — at least look at
the rationing resources according to the priority of armaments, consumption
and investment. They did not want armament reductions, were afraid of going
to far in reducing citizen's consumption levels and chose to limit investment.
This, of course, lead to an even greater lag in the 1980's, as seen by the
almost gridlock nature of the USSR's railroads by 1983.
Soc: Socially it became more apparent to everyone that there was a disparity
in living styles between the workers and the party people, like the nomenklatura.
Officially there were reasons for the disparity between the peasants and
the bourgeois, oops — make that proletariat and "toiling intelligentsia."
that would eventually draw closer together (just like Marx predicted a hundred
or so years earlier). There was no truth to support this phoney claim, as
the USSR became an always more class-based society based — not strictly
upon a somewhat narrowing salary — but on privileges and rank, which
was passed on through hereditary fashion because the privileges allowed sending
the elitists' children to the right schools. Even the proletariat saw reduced
living conditions that now compared their lifestyles — not to the past,
but — to The West's and even bloc countries.
Ideo: Ideologically, few people had any concern for Marxism-Leninism, except
the leaders. The 1961 utopian Party Program had no relation to reality an
was quietly ignored by the duplicitous leaders who had no desire to see the
withering away of THEIR state. The new ruling classes concept of razvitie
(developed) socialism now asserted to the achievement of great social
advancement, which still failed to explain USSR elitism. Anatolii Egorov,
director of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism justified the class system
by explaining that functional specialization would actually accelerate under
communism, and state powers would remain communist. Ergo, the elites would
grow in number and power, not wither away. Marx's willingness to allow for
a temporary non communist state while substantial resources were gathered,
was now reinterpreted to mean that such a class, oops, functional specialization
system would always exist, but it would be called communism. (One more of
the contradiction of communist ideologies.)
The new concept of communism was also bolstered by the need for Soviet power
to attain a correlation of forces with successes in the Third World achieved
by peasants (disdained by Marx and Lenin) not the proletariat. Gorbachev
correctly saw this Brezhnev stagnation but did not seem to realize it was
the fault of the system. The system could not be improved as long as all
ills were blamed on individual decision makers.
The Andropov and Chernenko Interludes
Andropov as elected as "General" Secretary when Brezhnev died in November
1982. When Andropov died in February 1984, 73-year-old apparatchik Chernenko
was made General Secretary, with Gorbachev becoming the second secretary.
Andropov's election was the result of the "stability of cadres" Troika member
Kirilenko had been seen as the successor to Brezhnev but lost Brez's and
key politburo member's approval resulting in his loss of economic leadership
and — in November ‘82, his Politburo membership. Sulov died in
January ‘82. The troika were dead. Party Secretary Konstantin Chernenko
would have been Brez's choice but he was seen as a paper pusher. Another
Politburo newcomer, Gorbachev, was too young. Brezhnev had made sure he didn't
have any great lieutenants, like Khrushchev had in him. So, there was a
leadership vacuum. Yuri Andropov had been the head of the KGB since 1967
(15 years) and a full Politburo member for nine years, and while party
fragmentation and the fading of long term hierarchies were occurring people
who headed non party structures had gained influence, like Andropov's KGB,
minister of defense Dimitri Ustinov and foreign minister Gromyko . These
all helped Yuri's selection as "general" secretary in May 1982. He had a
more realistic view of the USSR's problems seeing system problems in "trial
and error" methods by a party that supposedly was all knowing, and acknowledging
the untruthfulness of Brez's claims about "great social gains." Academicians
were encouraged to study the actual conditions of soviet life, and an
anti-corruption plan was given priority, along with campaigns against alcoholism,
and absenteeism. But Andropov was a dying man he joined Brezhnev in the Marxian
heaven in February 1984, along with his plan for economic reform through
structure decentralization. Gorbachev, who was now Andropov's chief lieutenant
purged many party secretaries at the elections of December 1983-January 1984,
and infused Andropov appointees, who would later help him succeed Chernenko.
The invasion of Afghanistan alienated the Moslem world. The SS-20 missile
gambit soured relationships with the West, and President Reagan was beginning
a technological military conversion that would create unbearable strains
on the USSR economy and mark Reagan, forever, as the president who won the
cold war. The USSR shot down a Korean airliner on September 1, 1983 and the
whole world was horrified at the outcome of the Marxist-Lenin outcome. The
Nov/Dec 1983 commencement installation of Pershing-2 and Cruise missile by
NATO demonstrated the failure of the USSR's European policy. The correlation
of forces had turned, even in soviet eyes. Everything was stalled, since
the only people with a plan were Andropov's reformers and few of the fat,
content elite were to rally to a "reformist" plan. So, Andropov's place was
taken by a clearly interim 73-year-old apparatchik Chernenko who was made
General Secretary, with Gorbachev becoming the second secretary. The other
surviving member of the Secretariat on the Politburo was Grigorii Romanov
who was appointed the pro-forma party supervisor of the police and military,
the latter of which continued to be lead by the powerful Ustinov. Gromyko
was to be dictator of foreign policy, Vladimr Dolgikh was to direct industry
under Gorbachev's guidance and Brezhnev's pal, 78-year- old Nikolai Tikhonov
would be the premier in charge of other stuff. While Chernenko lingered for
13 months with emphysema, Gorbachev and Romanov were seen as the soon-to-be
contenders, with Gorbachev adding to his "organizational tail" and Romanov
lacking a deep tail. He needed the military, but Ustinov's death in December
1984, and the dismissal of chief-of-staff Nikolai Ogarkov prevented this,
while the KGB stayed behind Gorbachev and Brezhnev remainders did not back
him. The Politburo narrowly chose Gorbachev and Russia had its first young
leader with a prospect of a long term.
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