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Perestroika: Opium for the Intellectuals
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14520 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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3 / 1988 |
3,803 Words |
| Author
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Mikhail Tsypkin
Mikhail Tsypkin is assistant professor of National Security
Affairs and coordinator of Soviet and East European Atudies at
the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. This
article does not reflect the views of the Department of the
Navy or any other agency of the U.S. government. |
PERESTROIKA
New Thinking for Our Country and the World
Mikhail Gorbachev
New York: A Cornelia & Michael Bessie Book
254 pp., $19.95
Leonid Brezhnev, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, was an avid sports fan: When he wanted to impress American public opinion, he invited Mohammed Ali to the Kremlin. Not so with General Secretary Gorbachev: Following in the steps of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of Soviet communism, he has made a point of impressing Western intellectuals. Enter his now widely celebrated new title Perestroika, (approximately translated "restructuring"), grandly subtitled "New Thinking for Our Country and the World."
If we are to take Gorbachev seriously, his "new thinking" should be consistent and honest. We should also be sure that Gorbachev the politician is willing and capable of translating his "new ideas" into genuinely new policies in his own country.
Understanding the roots of Soviet troubles
The legitimacy of the Soviet regime is based on the claim of Marxism-Leninism to be a science, guiding mankind with great precision to paradise on earth. One definite plus of Gorbachev's book is that despite all of his bows to the shadows of Marx and Lenin, he finds it difficult to carry on with the myth of "scientific" infallibility of the Communist Party. Seventy years after the communist revolution in Russia, Gorbachev describes the condition of his nation in stark terms: If "restructuring" had not begun, the Soviet Union would have entered an era of "serious social, economic and political crises," with its society "becoming increasingly unmanageable." He sees a "gradual erosion of the ideological and moral values" of the people, and "servility" in their attitudes to those in power. He confirms what the Western and domestic critics of the Soviet regime have been saying for years: The Soviet economy is run along the "residual" principle, that is, "only what is left after satisfying the needs of production is earmarked for social purposes."
While this litany of Soviet domestic ills is a testimony to Gorbachev's realism, his attempts to explain the roots of current trouble show that in some very important ways he is deeply trapped in Soviet ideology and power habits. Thirty years ago, Soviet party leader Khrushchev
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