The Thinking Reed

In their profoundity and scale the changes can be compared only to the policy of de-Stalinization pursued by Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. Such a comparison, however, reveals both similarities and differences. When in 1956 Khrushchev came out with his exposure of Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress, most of the population suffered shock. Among the intelligentsia the turmoil soon gave way to a reformist euphoria. Left-wing intellectual tendencies were formed and became active very quickly, even though they often based themselves upon rather naive notions. Thirty years later the Twenty-Seventh Congress, under Gorbachev’s leadership, featured no sensational revelations. The changes in the country were not at first so abrupt, although they went considerably deeper. Unlike in Khrushchev’s time, it was now not a matter of ‘correcting mistakes’ in the political sphere but of an extensive ‘restructuring’ that affected economics, politics and culture.

The intelligentsia, in its turn, took some time to overcome its apathy. Just as before, everything began with a re-examination of history. Even before the Party Congress Moscow’s theatres had presented Mikhail Shatrov’s play The Dictatorship of Conscience and A. Buravsky’s Speak … The former, by an author who had been popular in the sixties, was dedicated to Lenin, and its main purpose was to revive the liberal ideas of Khrushchev’s time. The latter came from the pen of a young writer who subjected these ideas to ruthless criticism from the left. In Speak … the action takes place in the provinces in the early fifties. Stalin dies and Khrushchev comes to power. The local leaders are also replaced. The new ones sincerely want to improve the situation, to better people’s lives. But until the masses take their fate into their own hands there can be no real changes. And when rank-and-file working people begin talking openly about their rights, putting forward their own demands and electing their own leaders, the progressive officials take fright no less than the conservatives. The initiative assumed by the lower orders appears as ‘insubordination’ and ‘mutiny’.

There is no place in the eighties for the illusions of the fifties. This is a sign that society has matured, but a sober awareness of the difficulties standing in the way of change holds many people back. It is now harder to decide on serious actions and to work out a line of conduct than it was in the earlier period. Yet, after the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress, changes really did take place. Television became considerably more interesting, the powers of the censorship were sharply restricted, the influence of the Ministry of Culture on artistic creativity declined to a marked degree, and books began to be published which had previously been banned.

Reading the newspapers became a fascinating occupation. In Sovetskaya Kultura a column headed ‘Direct Speech’ allowed well-known artists and writers to talk frankly about problems that worried them — about censorship and freedom to create, about the democratization of society, and about social injustice. Similar contributions also became a feature of Literaturnaya Gazeta, even though that paper’s editor-in-chief, A. Chakovsky, was himself in no way a supporter of the changes. It emerged that Gorbachev and those around him not only read these articles but also paid them quite a lot of attention. For example, an article by the playwright Aleksandr Gel'man about conservative resistance to the reforms (the writer aptly called the opponents of the new course ‘the new dissidents’) was mentioned by the General Secretary in one of his speeches. There was also a big change in television. Whereas in Brezhnev’s time they had taken care to pre-record and transcribe every programme, so that the authorities could check for anything seditious, more and more live broadcasts began to take place in 1986. Although this has mainly applied in the less controversial areas, it is now becoming difficult to define which programme deals with political problems and which does not. Even in the variety programme Morning Post the compère now and then allows himself to crack a joke about bureaucratic control of the media.