Russia

Two years later the Solidarity movement emerged in Poland. It began as an unofficial strike in support of a dismissed woman crane operator in a Gdansk shipyard. Pope John Paul II had never feared confrontation with the government when he had been a mere archbishop, and he now lent Solidarity, whose followers were overwhelmingly Catholic, his moral support. This gave the movement an aura of religious and patriotic legitimacy in many Polish eyes. Of more practical importance, however, was the fact that militant trade unionists, primarily concerned about standards of living, and intellectuals, concerned about rights and freedoms, were united for the first time. An association known as KOR, made up of lawyers and other professionals who helped and advised the strikers, had been important in promoting this unity. So powerful was the combination that a weak government agreed to negotiate with it — live, on television. The result was a public triumph for the opposition and a series of agreements, some of them unaffordable and impractical. Even so, the complaisant government managed to hold on for many months amid rising fears of a Soviet invasion.

At last in December 1981 a new premier, General Jaruszelski, imposed martial law. Jaruszelski, however, was regarded as a patriot, and the army was Poland’s most popular secular institution. Calm was restored, and thereafter Poland remained quiet. Moreover the excitements there proved not to be contagious: there was no significant reaction elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc. The Pope’s pastoral visit to neighbouring Slovakia in 1986 did generate some excitement, notably among the young, but the effect was transient. The papacy as a factor in the collapse of the Soviet Empire has been exaggerated.

The war in Afghanistan, where the insurgents were sustained by covert US aid, had continued to soak up resources. However, since the Soviet economy was buoyant, the expense was affordable. In 1983 industrial output was 5 per cent higher than in 1982, agricultural output 7 per cent higher. Two Party secretaries, the able lurii Andropov and the despised and ailing Konstantin Chernenko, died in quick succession, but in 1985 — the year Soviet intelligence recruited a senior CIA officer, Aldrich Ames — the Soviet Empire gained a new leader.

Mikhail Gorbachev had been Andropov’s protege. He was youthful, engaging and reform-minded. He started his reign as General Secretary by reviving some of Andropov’s policies. He launched campaigns against corruption and excessive drinking. He also called for production to be speeded up. The Russian word for this, uskorenie, became the new regime’s first policy principle. Others were to follow. Gorbachev was a new kind of Soviet leader. As outgoing as Khrushchev, though less crude and excitable, he was ready to engage with the public and made a point of encouraging debate. Openness, or glasnost, became his second watchword. The third was perestroika, reconstruction. This signalled his intent to reform Soviet institutions, and was to prove the most radical, and fateful.

The notion that basic reforms were necessary had been canvassed as early as Brezhnev’s time, but actions had been allowed to peter out when difficulties were encountered. Andropov, however, realized that, although there was no immediate crisis, continuing success must be based on more radical economic and administrative reforms than had been attempted in the past. Among the reports Andropov commissioned was one from an academic think-tank which recommended far-reaching changes to the central planning system. ⁴

It was also recognized that Russia’s rich reserves of oil and natural gas were being wasted. Government had developed a tendency to buy off trouble simply by pumping them out at a greater rate. Energy was being exported at below world market prices to members of the Bloc, and was used wastefully in the Soviet Union itself. Nor were these the only problems. With the easing of East-West tensions, the Kremlin had allowed its European satellites a latitude they had not previously enjoyed, including the right to borrow money from Western banks. As a result, when interest rates rose, interest payments became a significant factor in the budgets of several Soviet Bloc countries. At the same time Poland in particular had been piling up arrears of interest and repayments to the Soviet Union as well as to the West. Moscow did not insist on payment, however, for fear of triggering a rash of cost-of-living riots, to which Poland had become prone, and precipitating a political crisis. The Kremlin was learning that imperial status could be costly.