Fallacies about Gorbachev and 'Perestroika'

Confusion and euphoria about changes in the Soviet Union have given birth to many misconceptions and fallacies about Gorbachev and 'perestroika'. Even if bankrupt Western methods of analysis cannot be held responsible for all these fallacies, they still fail to provide serious correctives to them.

THE FIRST FALLACY: The origin of 'perestroika'
This is the belief that 'perestroika' was a consequence of President Regan's military pressure on the USSR and the potency of the American capitalist example. Believers in this fallacy, who insist that the West 'won the Cold War', do not suspect that 'perestroika' and its timing are the product of long-range strategy, planning and long-term preparation. [In Sun Tzu's terms, they have become arrogant].

THE SECOND FALLACY: The domestic character of perestroika
This is the belief that 'perestroika' is a purely domestic attempt to correct repressive practices, to revitalize the flagging Soviet economy and to adapt the Soviet Union to the necessities and norms of the modern world. Believer do not suspect the Soviet intent to expand 'perestroika' beyond the borders of the Communist world and to achieve the world victory of Communism through 'restructuring'.

THE THIRD FALLACY: Western-style democracy in the Soviet Union
Believers think that Gorbachev is trying to introduce Western-style democracy. They do not realize that he is extending 'Communist democracy' - that is to say, a new more mature phase of socialism in which only the appearance of Western-style democracy is created and maintained.

THE FOURTH FALLACY: The decline of ideology
Believers think ideology is dying or already dead and that Gorbachev has abandoned the class struggle and taken the 'capitalist road'. They do not realize that perestroika is an expression of ideological strategy and a practical means of reviving ideology. It is not the abandonment of class struggle but a finesse to secure the defeat of capitalist democracies by the use of capitalist weapons.

The Western elite believe they are helping the cause of democracy. In fact they are financing their own demise and digging their own graves. The tragedy is that they will probably not see it until it is too late.

THE FIFTH FALLACY: The ideological victory of capitalism
Believers think that the West has won the war of ideologies. The irony is that, through 'perestroika', the Soviets have captured the strategic and political initiative on the global stage and have begun to carry out their long-nurtured designs against the West which threaten its survival.

THE SIXTH FALLACY: That the Cold War is over
Believes think that the Soviet Union is no longer dangerous and that the Cold War is over (21). They take the deadly flirtation for the romantic marriage. The West perceives the Cold War to be over, and Communism to be dead; but from the Soviet side the Cold War will accelerate and become more deadly, especially for the political right which is being targeted as never before with the intention that it should suffer total obliteration.

THE SEVENTH FALLACY: 'Perestroika' is a blessing for the West
Believers think that perestroika serves Western interests and that Gorbachev should be helped. In the United States, even a learned man like Jeremy J. Stone, President of the Federation of American Scientists, has fallen for this fallacy. In a recent article in The New York Times entitled 'Let's Do All We Can for Gorbachev', he called on Americans to help the Soviets because 'Mr Gorbachev is, from our viewpoint, the best General Secretary we could dream of seeing'.

Believers in Western Europe go even further, advocating a new Marshall Plan to restore the economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It was one thing to restore war-ravaged economies of Western Europe, West Germany and Japan, to shield them from Stalin's armies and to nurture their democratic systems. It is quite another to provide massive economic aid to the ideological enemies and gravediggers of Western democracies at the very time when they are launching and consolidating their strategic, political offensive against the West.

THE EIGHT FALLACY: Fear of 'perestroika's' failure and the fall of Gorbachev
Those who lionize Gorbachev express exaggerated concern for his survival and the success of 'perestroika', which they see as the best hope for the West. They fear that Gorbachev's departure would lead to a crackdown on 'reformers', rebellion and possible anarchy in the Soviet Union. They would do better to focus on solving their own problems and preserving their societies from Gorbachev's 'restructuring'.

THE NINTH FALLACY: A declining need for American military-political alliances
Believers think that the Soviet Union is becoming more peaceful, the Gorbachev can be trusted and the America's political and military alliances are superfluous. They need to be awakened to the dangers of the Soviet strategy of 'perestroika' which demand as never before the maintenance and strengthening of these alliances.

Gorby was an unreconstructed (neperestroen) communist, his plan (actually his mentor Andropov's plan) was to try and breath some life back into a decaying Soviet Union. Despite all the CIA projections of Soviet military and industrial might, the Central Committee members knew they were circling the drain. Reagan and Thatcher embraced perestroyka only so far as it would let the Pandora of freedom out of her box.

Sort of like both Bushes' approach to China.

Boris Yeltsin was an opportunist who, like Putin, was in several right places at the right times. He was the governor/mayor of the Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) district and ordered the excavation and release of the Romanov family's remains. This got him noticed, slid him into the "President of Russia" position, a ceremonial post in the Soviet Union. Gorby fell during the hard-line commie putsch - soft-line Gorby hurt some feelings with "Glasnost" (open critique of corrupt officials) and by pulling out of Afganistan.

Yeltsin seized this opportunity, jumped on a tank with an uncommitted army unit and declared the Soviet Union dead. The other army units would not fire on their brethren, and by default only Russia remained.

Yeltsin stood for election, and through Chicago-style chicanery was elected and re-elected. I could spend megabytes of space describing the Byzantine relationships between his family members and the oligarchs, but suffice to say Moscow looked a lot like Cook County Illinois is those days. Everything in Russia that could be stolen, was. A billion US dollars left Sheremetevo for Geneva every day. When Duma deputies tried their own putsch, Yeltsin's tanks opened fire and burned the parliament.

But Yeltsin filled an important position - he gave a very sick Russia some bedrest, gave the people a chance to get used to some ideas besides Marks-Engels-Lenin, and the first taste of social and economic freedom in their entire history.

Putin is a cipher. He is aesthetic, with a taste for martial arts, Vysotskiy, and eschews alcohol. He may seems less corrupt, but his history in pre-Yakovlev Petersburg reads otherwise.

As president, Putin went after a few oligarchs and reopened the Chechnyan question that Yeltsin swept under the rug, but IMO he is not firmly intrenched. I see that he still bows now and then to Russia's traditional troyka of king-makers: the nobility (aka communist party, oligarchs, monopolists, gangsters, etc), the general staff, & the secret police. Russia acts as if she had a monolithic nation and foreign policy, but foreign policy is but a game for a politician to play to enhance his domestic standing. Whatever policy keeps the daggers in their sheaths is what a Russian leader uses. If LUKoil stands to lose tons of money in Iraq, or army egos are suffering because Russia is selling out its formerly very close friends in Iraq, Putin will toss them a bone. Probably one that American tax-payers bought.

Putin's reign will probably be as long as Yeltsin's, but the politics will be more like NYC than Chicago. FWIW.

Interesting article. Actually quite interesting albeit for the fact that after all this years it seems that the hidden threat advocated by the writer does not seem to have happened. Thanks to Reagan's policies the USSR basically collapsed on itself. Reagan was basically just what the doctor ordered for the US due to his prudent acts (which required a lot of guts since before he came along the Soviets were actually ahead in a myriad of areas yet Reagan had the b@!!$ to do what was necessary even when certain parts of congress screamed and hollered).

Hence these 'fallacies' are, in my humble opinion, not fallacies but facts. The USSR is basically dead and buried, and it had been dead for quite some time ....it just had not realized it (just like a cockroach that gets its head chopped off yet remains alive for over a week). The system espoused by the Soviets just could not work, and it was essentially a matter of time before the whole system imploded under its own weight.

And do not get me wrong ....i am not saying the Soviets were no threat. Actually according to most delvings into the matter before Reagan took office the Soviets had a substantial military edge over the US. Some even say the US troops in Germany would have been overwhelmed by a Soviet thrust before they could do anything (i guess that is why nukes can be a good thing since it can make the other side think twice or thrice).

However when Reagan came in he basically shocked the Soviets into overspending! Whether it was through Reagan implementing such stuff as Starwars that made the Soviets shovel state funds into missile counter-measures .....or when the latest US hunter-killer submarines started coming out that were just deathly quiet (eg the LA class) and could shadow Soviet boomers (nuclear ballistic-missile subs) from the moment they left the port, and yet the Soviets were not able to reciprocate since the US subs were just too darn stealthy .....or even the lesser known but still important (when it comes to draining the coffers of Soviet money) case of the Buran! The Buran was the Soviet answer to the NASA Space Shuttle (it looks exactly like the Shuttle apart from instead of having a US flag it has the CCCP markings .....and as an aside the Soviets copied a lot of Western designs ranging from the Tu-144 which is a Concorde copy to even IR AAM designs .....one case that i found particularly interesting was when during the 60s some KGB agents managed to steal a SideWinder, in the 60s that was a big steal, and cut it into little pieces and send it to Moscow ....and the darn customs agents never wondered what the heck the cylinders sticking out were?)

Anyways back to the main point! Once Reagan came on line the USSR discovered that it could no longer match spending power with the US. After all the US was the largest capitalist nation in history, and the USSR was a floundering central economy! It was just a matter of time ....and when you add the Soviets trying to match submarine tech (i managed to retrieve a report that listed that particular area as one of the major areas that bled Soviet money as they tried to paly catch-up) and even the Buran (not as major as the Sub faux pas, but it dried up virtually all the money of the Soviet space program, just when Reagan's Star Wars was being yapped about and scarying every Communist general East of the GreenWich Meridian LOL).

Now Gorbachev implements Perestroika but by then it was just too darn late. End result: No more Soviet Union!

However today Russia has a great chance to re-invent itself, and it is doing so. In another 10 years the mention of the word 'Russia' may once again have a major clout and reverberence around the globe! Russia's economy is one of the fastest growing in the globe, and in most years since 1993 it has been the fastest. Even with the Mafiya (Russian Mafia) and the Oligarchs (like the behemoth Oneximbank) and their Semibankirschina (rule of 7 bankers where nepotism rules) the Russian economy has been booming! Even though the perception by most is that it is cash strapped it is actually growing quite fast ....and much better than the Zastoi (stagnation) of the Soviet era. And when it comes to the military there have been changes meant to make it leaner and more efficient. Most of the pictures of rotting rusting ships posted on FR are just of the obsolete ships being retired and moth-balled from the Black-Sea fleet! If you check you can notice that the Russians are actually churning otu new designs ranging from a new boomer sub to an advanced concept guided-missile hovercraft corvette (armed witht he equally new Yakhont missiles that have no analog in the world). However pics of such stuff never pop up here ....just the rusted shells of discrepit ex-Soviet ships.

However the important thing is that Russia is set to become one of the US's greates allies in the future. The whole Cold War 'I am gonna nuke ya if ya nuke me' era is dead and gone! Russia's best bet is to stick close to the US (although expect some occasional loggerheads over some stuff ....but nothing serious). And the US has a lot to gain from Russia due to things like its oil reserves and the fact that a strong Russia is a great deterrent to China if Beijing smokes too much Opium and decides to act foolishly!

And talking of China ....instead of wondering about Soviet stratagems that will never be people should be looking at China!

China will be the greatest threat to the US this century, both militarilly and economically. And while China is not yet a direct threat to the US (right now if they tried anything fishy we could still manage to nuke the heck out of them, and then have sufficient nukes left to nuke them all over again several dozen times) the main Chinese advantage is the way they have been stealing (or been given) US industry and secrets, and also their long-term patience (meaning they can wait until a Clintonesque president is elected and implements stupid policies). The Chinese basically have very protracted time-frames .....some ranging in half-centuries. With good POTUS' like GW this inherent danger is negated ....however inevitably a president like Clinton will be elected who seems more willing to help the Chinese that Americans, and hence the Chinese will get some extra 'aid' (maybe instead of nuclear warhead tech maybe this time they might get a next-generation US submarine).

Whooo ....let me stop. Basically this whole Soviet-stratagem thing is just a fallacy. The USSR is dead and gone, and Russia will be an ally not an adversary.

Now China on the other hand .....

Do you know anything about the Social Democratic Party and what kind (if any) of influence they have in Russia and the CIS?

From PRAVDA.RU:

12:49 2001-11-23

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV CONFIRMS HIS INVOLVEMENT IN UNIFICATION OF RUSSIA'S SOCIAL DEMOCRATS

The Russian United Social Democratic Party (ROSDP) will take part in the unification process of Russia's social democrats, Mikhail Gorbachev, the party's leader and first president of the USSR, said at the third party congress, on Friday. Mr. Gorbachev confirmed ROSDP's participation in the unification congress, which is scheduled to take place in Moscow this Saturday. Mr. Gorbachev stressed that the Russian Party of Social Democrats headed by the governor of the Samara Region, Konstantin Titov, Socialist Party of Russia, Union of Realists, and Spiritual Heritage Movement are also involved in the unification process.

"According to preliminary estimates, the new party will comprise 30,000 people," Mr. Gorbachev emphasized. He added that representatives of social and social-democratic parties from a number of European countries, which are members of the Socialist Internationale, had been invited to come to the upcoming unification congress.

II suggest you read some of Lenin’s works. Communists and gangsters are one and the same during his days, the days throughout the Soviet Union, and why should it be considered anything less in the post days as nothing has changed with the exceptions of a few boundaries and names the rest of the system still remains intact(military, production, Organ departments [in charge of security apparatus]? They used the drug trade to gain sources of finance during the cold war days through the use of Castro's Cuba (1982 Cuban General caught smuggling drugs into the U.S. and known from the defector Major-General Jan Senja) as well using the Czech's as to distance themselves incase their operations where exposed. And they were, but alas the West like in so many other things, ignores the brutality of dangerous regimes so we can just get along and think that we can just buy our way to peace. That is the lemming left effect. Regan helped to slow it down, but he could not stop it. If you disagree with that, just look at 8 years of the traitor Clinton and company along with his appeasement toward Moscow’s proliferation of NBC to various countries, aid to help the Chinese in tech and weapons along with covering up their aggression in the Spratly's(Phillippines), helping cover up its role in helping Pakistan nuclear capabilities(so China has a proxy to fight India since it would be devastating to take them on directly.)

Now look at the Chinese and the Russians, they have signed the Good Neighborly and Friendship Treaty on 7-16-01. The same treaty that the two signed on 5 year increments prior to the Sino-Soviet split in the early 60's. It also has a provision in it that requires Moscow to come to the aid of China in the event that America interferes with China's take over of Taiwan should it become a military conflict. The aid can include supplies, logistics, military aid in the region, or quite possibly use its 20,000 to 40,000 nuclear warheads that have never been disabled and to some extent been upgrade with foreign aid meant to dismantle them in the first place. Assuming the worst case wouldn't happen, then that would but the Administration into a bind. On one hand what do they do, tell Russia take a hike and risk all out war or do they try the diplomatic approach which will only give the communist in China a green light to take Taiwan and quite possible start other campaign in the Pacific region to insure its control of all water way activity(trade)for example the Straights of Malacca as pointed out by Yossef Bodansky(www.freeman.org/m_online/bodansky/beijing.htm)

If Russia is only a gangster, then why arm, supply, give tech, send NBC scientists, to Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, China? Why continue to prop up dictatorships and communists, which they clearly do? Why still conduct the drug trade? For money only?? No, that is not the answer since money is only the means to an end. So what is that end? Peace? Or is it war(POWER) just as it has always been since the communist have gotten a strangle hold on countries. Total control. Then there is the possibility for a country like China to turn around on Russia and destroy her. No, the Russians are all to aware of their history with China, they just have a common enemy that stands in their way. That will eventually be her undoing when China is strong enough.

Also an important aspect to Capitalism is being overlooked, it isn't an ideology like a moral belief system. It is a barter and trade system that enriches those engaged in such activity. For a society to exist, every system must have a form of it. One Capitalist system can have a moral system imbedded into it just like ours but that seems to have really failed over the last decade due to the forecast of unending good times. Collective hypnosis if you will. Then there is another system that exists in a totalitarian system. It is called the black market. If that totalitarian system is really smart or just cut throat, it will either destroy it(thus the people starve and could revolt in mass and to enough extent to over throw the totalitarian, or it can use it as a means of controlling the people, gaining extra capital since any true prosperity is limited by government mandate and efficiency. If you look further into Russian history you will find a culture of thieves during the day of the Tzars. Lenin also took note of it, used their tactics to bypass the Tzars rule of law, and eventually incorporated it into his vision of the World Revolution. After all one needs a way to finance a war on civilization, why not let the civilization that you are fighting against finance its own demise? Look at Lenin’s NEP(New Economic Program) during the 20's. He proclaimed communism is dead that it cannot work, the West being the useful idiots that they are gave them money, infrastructure, people(by which many never returned especially U.S. workers with only a few exceptions) to help them become a democracy. But as we all know communism never went away, it just gave birth to Stalinism and Stalin killed 40 million people or so. He even initiated two or three liberalization attempts to get the west to relax and give him aid. One was in the mid 30's and the second was when Hitler attacked Stalin(good old Uncle Jo). He also gave us Red China and a death of at least 100 million in that country to the present since the West wasn’t up to the fight. After Stalin's passing the Soviet Union was a wreak. The West could easily have taken it out in the late 40's to early 50's though that would have meant some pain. Instead the West just infused them with even more money and aid. It is a repeating cycle that communist have used over and over again. After all, wouldn't you if West never caught on. Then if it did, you just change our tactics and strategy. It is a war of attrition, death by a thousand cuts. It is slow and it is determined to destroy. The West is now facing the consequences of its inactions and its aiding of the enemy.

Castro(Cuba), Chavez(Venezuela), Lula(Brazil more recent and talk of renewing its nuke program), Equador, Lybia as a supporter, are now a communist force that is growing in power and in appetite and have a powerful ally in China. Currently Argentina is being worked on by this force(it is an economic basket case and only getting worse, the people want the good life and are willing to do anything to get it back which is usually how communist slip in the back door, the people elect them which is another old communist tactic). The communist group called FARC in Columbia is winning its war on the pro western government here(also supported by Chavez and Castro). Mexico has always been corrupt and that makes it vulnerable to future actions by the communists. Then we have Islamic terrorist training in these various areas where communist have control. Normally one would ask questions and say something isn’t right here, but after all this is the West which is afflicted with delusion and Liberalism.

This particular article comes down to whether or not you believe Golitsyn. Two different CIA psychiatrists diagnosed him as paranoid, but that could have been because of the seemingly far-fetched things he was saying. Any search on Golitsyn will show two very polarized groups; those that point out the damage he did with other supplied information, and those (like CIA director, James Jesus Angleton) who believed him completely. There's evidence to support either side. Here's what Golitsyn was saying back in 1963:

"...Papich learned the details of what Golitsyn called the Soviets' "long-range plan."

Greatly simplified, this plan called for massive political warfare, buttressed by secret intelligence deceptions. At the 20th Communist World Congress, in 1959, the USA had been designated the Main Enemy, but at the same time it had been decided to try a new approach. There was to be a thaw in relations, and a return to Leninist deceptions like the Trust and the New Economic Program (NEP), which had once convinced the U.S. that the Soviets were reforming. The KGB was to be reorganized to project an image of disunity and weakness in the communist world. By playing up false splits between communist nations, the Soviets would hope to divide and confuse the West, ultimately weakening it. Over the short term, the objective was economic aid to the communist world; over the long term, the objective was to end the Cold War, which would cause the U.S. to disarm."

March 1989 memorandum to the CIA published in the 'Perestroika Deception' that Golitsyn hinted to the possibility that the Soviets would try to get a sympathizers to their point of view elected in the 1992 election. Sure enough we have Klinton via the China route.

Here are some following quotes:

For this reason, strategic objectives of Soviet political warfare include:

First of all, the neutralization of anti-Communist influence, especially the conservative parties, as an important factor in the political life of the United States, West Germany, France and Britain.

Secondly, securing the victory of the radical Left in the next presidential elections in 1992 in the United States and the victory of the Socialist and Labour parties in the national elections in West Germany, France and Britain in the 1990's. The Soviets plan to hold the International Conference on Human Rights in Moscow in 1991; and their keen interest in American participation in it is due to their desire to influence the outcome of the election in favor of the radical Left. In their assessment, the Left will be prepared to carry out and accelerate 'restructuring' in the United States.

The Soviet strategist believe that an economic depression in the United States would provide even more favorable condition for the execution of their strategy. In that event, the Soviets and their allies would shift to the doctrine of the class struggle and try to divide the Western nations along crude class lines.

The final period of 'restructuring in the United States and Western Europe would be accompanied, not only by the physical extermination of active anti-Communists, but also by the extermination of the political, military, financial and religious elites. Blood would be spilled and political re-education camps would be introduced. The Communists would not hesitate to repeat the mass repressions of their revolution in 1917, of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe in the Second World War or of the Chinese Communist victory of 1949.

This time, they would resort to mass repressions in order to prevent any possibility of revolt by the defeated, and to make their victory final

From: The Perestroika Deception: the worlds slide towards the 'Second October Revolution' by Anatoliy Golitsyn page 34.

There is also reference to China’s help in this ‘restructuring’ on pages 35-36

I actually did quite a bit research on this at the time it was happening and wrote a few papers on it. I even predicted the coup attempt against Gorbachev - but that was an easy call.

Golitsyn is about half right.

Gorbachev was an unrepentant communist and even says so in the books he wrote explaining perestroika. Gorby was a something of a "reformer" when he was a regional party boss down south. He came to the attention of Andropov who became Gorby's mentor so to speak.

When Reagan was elected, the Soviets had both conventional and nuclear arms superiority. Both quatatatively and qualitativly. Their qualitative superiority was largely due to stolen Western technology that the west itself had yet to use for its own military advantage.

The US military modernization that came under Reagan was going to take that away from them. Add to that the computer revolution that was occuring and being incorporated into next-generation U.S. weapons systems, and the Soviets were looking at losing their edge -- their industry could not reproduce this stuff even if they knew how it was made (the KGB and GRU in the 80's shifted emphasis from stealing advanced plans to stealing computers and machine equipement they could use but not make themselves).

The attempt to keep up, especialy with Star Wars, was breaking an already shakey Soviet bank. They were, as struwwel said, "circling the drain".

The only organization in the Soviet Union in a position to know just how bad it was and where the problems really were, was the KGB. Andropov was impressed by both Gorby's communist Zeal, as well as his seeming ability to think outside the Soviet box.

Once Gorbachev had the way cleared for him by Andropov, and took control of the Politburo (which was essentially clueless about the real problem), he instituted Perestroika (restructuring), in an attempt to fix it. But it stumbled badly. Party bosses at all levels refused to admit anything was wrong and continued to toe the "party" line.

In order to circumvent the party bosses, so he find out what needed to be fixed, Gorby came up with Glastnost (openness). Even so, it took a while to convince Soviet citizens that they could speak up about what was broke without ending up in the Gulag or in a basement cell off Dzerzhinsky Square.

Glastnost broke the damn. Once the soviet people got a taste of freedom the rest, as they say, was history. Gorbachev tried to stay ahead of it and direct it towards reforming Communism, but failed.

After the military coup that made him decide to leave the Motherland, he starts up an environmental activist organization (I forget the name), that now operates out of the former Presidio Army installation in San Francisco. That fact still makes me sick to my stomach.

If you examine the policies of Gorby's new organization, it's easy to see that it's all about taking property rights away from people in the name of some greater socialist good. In that respect, Golytsin is right.

As for saying that Reagan had nothing to do with it, Golitsyn is wrong. Reagan, by forcing the Sov's into a technological arms race they could not win, moved the time-table of the Soviet collapse ahead 10 to 20 years.

As for Golitsyn's assertion that Perstroika preceded Gorbachev, it may well have been Andropov's idea originally, and was certainly meant to take the Soviet Union to the next stage, but I doubt any current Russian leaders look at it with anything but passing amusement or disgust.

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