Russia

Gorbachev soon began to look more and more like a Western politician in the run-up to an election. He promised incentives and benefits to win over any Soviet group or sector that seemed discontented. This further increased pressure on the budget. Moreover, since the range of available goods was limited and their quality variable, many people tended to save their money rather than spend it, and this stored up obligations to provide goods to satisfy consumers in the future. The conservative fiscal principles that had characterized the Kremlin’s economic policies for decades were being eroded. Then bad luck struck - not once, but serially

In 1984 Ronald Reagan was re-elected president of the United States and proceeded with the ‘Star Wars’ project he had announced the year before; a nuclear reactor in a Ukrainian power station overheated, precipitating the Chernobyl disaster of April 1986; and there was a resurgence of nationalism. Early in 1988 there were violent clashes between Azeris and Armenians over Nagorno-Karabakh, an area in Azerbaydzhan where the majority of the population were Armenians. An independence movement began to emerge in Lithuania, and there were problems between Abkhazians and the government of Soviet Georgia. These problems required massive additional expenditures which added to Gorbachev’s existing budgetary problems and created an unpropitious setting for his radical reforms. ⁵

The chief aim of the ‘Star Wars’ programme was to create an anti-missile screen which would render the United States, and those that the USA chose to include under it, impervious to nuclear attack. The project was ostensibly defensive, but its success would enable a protected power to launch a nuclear attack on another without fear of retaliation. The programme would take years to complete, and its success was by no means certain, but the Soviet leadership was not inclined to take chances, and the maintenance of nuclear parity at this new level required an appreciable increase in expenditure. ⁶

The men in the Kremlin looked for savings. By October 1985 they were beginning to contemplate troop withdrawals from Afghanistan; by February of the following year, at the time of the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, they were ready to launch a foreign-policy initiative that would change the international atmosphere and end the Cold War. Gorbachev had met Reagan in Geneva the previous November, matched him for charm, and impressed him with his liberal intentions. It had long been clear that Stalinism was dead, but now the reins holding member countries of the Bloc in line seemed to be loosening.

In foreign policy Gorbachev gave priority to rapprochement with the countries of the European Union as well as the United States. The rationale of his approach was soon to become apparent: improving East—West relations and increasing trust between the superpowers would allow large cuts in military budgets — what was to become known as ‘the peace dividend’ — a prospect that reason suggested would be as desirable in the White House as it was in the Kremlin. The first fruits were to be seen in the agreement to limit the deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles and some troop withdrawals from member countries of the Bloc. Gorbachev’s popularity abroad had soared, and cheering crowds greeted him in every capital he visited.

Meanwhile he was introducing Soviet citizens to democratic practices which chimed with Western conceptions. At the Party congress in February 1986, when the policies of glasnost and perestroika were proclaimed, Gorbachev not only undertook to promote individual legal rights but also announced that electors would in future be allowed a choice of candidates (a practice already introduced in Hungary). The idea was also mooted of creating a two-party system by splitting the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between its liberal and conservative wings and sharing the assets between them. ⁷ In private apartments, bars and hotel lobbies across the Soviet Union crowds gathered round television sets to watch the proceedings. They were not accustomed to the sight of democracy in action, after all, and they watched with quiet fascination, wondering what it boded. ⁸