Fallacies about Gorbachev and 'Perestroika'

The Perestroika Deception | March 1989 | Anatoliy Golitsyn, Edited by Christopher Story

[TheMilkMan]

(21)Editors Note:Sun Tzu,'The Art of War', c.500 BC: 'Pretend inferiority and encourage his [the enemy's] arrogance'. This instruction, part of the ancient Chinese tradition of conscious deviousness, is found in Sun Tzu under the heading 'Preliminary Calculations', or 'Estimates (or Appreciation) of the situation, implying advance 'reckoning' or 'calculations' ahead of conflict.

[Support Free Republic]

God Bless America! God Bless This Man! Some of us VRWC volunteers think freedom is worth fighting for.
	Please join us. Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD- It is in the breaking news sidebar!

[JCG]

Sorry, I think I'll stick with the "fallacies." It was Reagan's policies that brought the Soviet Union to its knees, not Gorbachev's.

Good riddance.

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)

Who is Steve Emerson?

[stubernx98]

Total bunk. They lost control of their country to the people. Now the gangsters are in charge, and that will pass with time. Capitalismis the natural human condition.

[fourdeuce82d]

Ummm...do you believe this analysis still obtains? You are aware, of course, that this crap has to be at least a decade old, given the tenses of the sentences?

Is this a slam at the idiots who still proclaim the imminent danger of a resurgent CCCP? Or do you concur?

[WOSG]

This reads like Nazi propoganda from Goebbels in late 1944 - the whole Commie enterprise collapsed soon after this was penned. Perstroika was a stop-gap half-measure to get enough freedom for the Soviet Union to advance but not so mauch that the Govt collapsed --- ooops, plan didnt work..... Final score: Freedom & USA 1 , Communism & USSR 0.

I am with the "bunk" opinion of this.

[TheMilkMan]

THE NEED FOR AN AMERICAN COUNTER-STRATEGY

The Western response to 'perestroika' has been no less faulty than Western analysis of it. The over-hasty acceptance of and support for 'perestroika', overlooking its aggressive anti-Western design, has led the West into a crisis.

Western policymakers have failed to grasp that Soviet reformed 'socialism with a human face' is a more formidable threat than grotesque Stalinist brutality. They do not see that it is part of the drive for world Communist victory and that it will make that victory easier. Western policymakers are trying to seek short-term insignificant gains while Gorbachev has seized the political initiative and is laying the groundwork for victory over the loner term. Western support for Soviet 'perestroika' does not provide a sound basis for a better and more durable relationship with the Soviet Union: it merely provides the Soviets with wider opportunities to carry out their strategy. That is the motive behind their willingness to negotiate new agreements on nuclear, conventional and chemical weapons.

In short, the American embrace of Gorbachev and perestroika which President Regan and Prime Minister Thatcher have initiated is a grave strategic blunder, akin to the blunder of President Nixon's embrace with Communist China. The main difference between the two blunders is that time is now running out. In his predictions made in 1967, Sakharov said that 'restructuring', disarmament, socialist convergence and the creation of a World Government could be complete by the year 2000. His time table may have slipped a bit but, given Western ignorance of Soviet strategy and the West's erroneous response to Gorbachev, the worst may happen.

To ensure that it does not, the West needs new policies which do not assist Soviet aggressive and revolutionary designs but which counter them. The West learned how to deal with and counteract the repressive but politically active totalitarianism of Stalin. Now it must learn to counteract the reformed but politically active totalitarianism of Gorbachev. It is a new challenge, a form of undeclared Cold War which the West is facing. President Regan's policy of 'trust, but check' is not enough - lacking as it does any appreciation of the essence, objectives, deceptiveness, dangers, strengths and weaknesses of Soviet strategy. It is of paramount importance for the United States to remain strong, not only militarily, but economically and politically. American political, economic and military cooperation with her allies must be reinforced to meet the new form of Soviet threat.

[struwwelpeter]

Gorby's double program of "Glasnost" (openness) and "Perestroika" (reconstruction) were just desperate band-aids on the arterial hemorraging of the Soviet Union. Neither kept the empire alive, and if anything hastened its collapse.

During the Yeltsin years Gorby went into hibernation - either at his 4-room beach house south of Yalta or at his academic retreat in his western-funded "Gorbachev Institute" in Moscow. His influence is zip inside Russia, though he still has pull in Germany - enough to get his dying wife treated there. Even the word "perestroika" is frowned on - goverment and journalism preferring the russified english word "rekonstruktsiya".

During the days of Yeltsin Russia sank so low - its economy eclipsed by Denmark's - that one joke had Boris Nikolaevich stating "America... wanted to bring Russia to her knees... but they decided this was too expensive... and left her laying on her back."

Vladimir Putin may still be a bit of a cipher, but he has managed to pull Russia back from complete anarchy. A power vacuum that large with Islam to the south and China to the east would not help the US. The Soviet conspiracy you allude to, however, is not very likely. Though Russia might still pine for the center of the world stage, with its old military and scientific prowess, no one wants to go back to standing in line for cheap shoes.

[TheMilkMan]

I am not sure if this analysis is of current value. I posted it to recieve feedback/opinion from the conservatives here. Yes, I do realize it is a decade old, after all, I posted it with its published date of March 1989.

[TheMilkMan]

Are you saying that Putin is a gangster?

[cricket]

"Capitalism is the natural human condition."

. . .yes and Capitalism requires moral human beings to sustain it. . .communism destroys the moral. A successful Capitalism cannot happen overnight in a country whose moral base has been so undermined.

[JCG]

It is of paramount importance for the United States to remain strong, not only militarily, but economically and politically. American political, economic and military cooperation with her allies must be reinforced to meet the new form of Soviet threat.

Hard to disagree with that.

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)

Who is Steve Emerson?

[cricket]

"It was Reagan's policies that brought the Soviet Union to its knees, not Gorbachev's"

. . .yes, and no fallacy can replace that reality. . .

. . .'people of the lie' - they never stop. . .

[Porterville]

Wow, what a buch of cra#. What is the Ex-Soviet Union going to do??? Rage the next war against the US and an ever expanding Nato with the rusted beams of their ships??? Or beat the US and Nato by investing in all their ex-satellites??? Or a Billion Chinese??? Or the two insane dictators in Cuba and NKorea???

Reagan Whooped Sissy Socialist A$$

[Porterville]

Regan

[Porterville]

They spelt his name wrong in the story. Not to be trusted.

[TheMilkMan]

Interesting. Can you please explain the fundamental differences between Gorbachev's preposed government under Perestroika and Yeltsin's or even Putin's current government?

[TheMilkMan]

Ooops! I must confess, that was a typo on my part. Reagan is spelled correctly in the original.

[TheMilkMan]

I believe Golitsyn is suggesting that Communist control over the Soviet Union was never destroyed, it only changed form to become the Commonweath of Independant States with the Russian Federation as its head. This is according to Sun Tzu's strategy of feigning weakness to trick your enemy. He is suggesting that this would allow the Soviets to recieve money from the West, which they did, and would provide the peaceniks and Democrats here in America a reason to push for drastic military reduction, just as Clinton did from 1992 to 2000. All this, coupled with a consolidation and arming of other Communist nations, (China, North Korea and Cuba), would give the 'undercover' Communists a revitalized economy as the West's expense, an enemy with reduced military and nuclear capability, and the element of surprise. To me, it sounds like a giant Trojan Horse.