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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.

Hi Psyop,

Long time no see (or read in this case). Hope you are fine and alright.

Great post by the way. Also are any of the papers you wrote on the web?

Also where do you see Russia 20 years from now (I would also appreciate your opinions on that one Struwwelpeter)?

That was a good post.

"After the military coup that made him decide to leave the Motherland, he starts up an environmental activist organization (I forget the name)..."

Any know if Green Cross International has any connections to A.N.S.W.E.R.