the West in order to facilitate his pursuit of more important goals, agreements on trade and arms control. He wants to use Glasnost to weed out his political opponents. He wants to create a new spirit among intellectualsand particularly young people in the Soviet Union. Glasnost is a small price to pay.
Democratization. Gorbachevâs speeches overflow with paeans to democracy. But what he means by democracy is very different from what we mean by it. He wants to open up the system; he wants to encourage people to step forth with new ideas; but he has no intention of relinquishing any of the power and prerogatives of the Communist Party. His democratization stays strictly within the party. There is no real democratization outside the party. He wants to shake up the system to get it moving again. But it will not lead to anything remotely resembling a Western democracy.
Perestroika. This slogan for economic reform literally means restructuring. Gorbachev has spoken in sweeping terms about this program. He has called for the dismantling of much of the central planning apparatus. He has endorsed the idea of joint ventures with private Western firms. He has proposed giving greater decision-making power to factory managers. He has pushed for allowing some opportunities for very small enterprises to make private profit. But he has so far achieved little. Few of Gorbachevâs proposals have been enacted, and they in no way compare to the revolutionary initiatives that Deng Xiaoping has undertaken in China. The day-to-day workings in the Soviet Union still run by the dictates of the old regime.
That Gorbachev seeks to take a new approach to Soviet problems does not mean that he rejects the basic premises of his system. He believes that the system is fundamentally sound but needs to be made more effective. We must always remind ourselves that the reforms themselves tell us nothing about Gorbachevâs intentions. Their purpose is not to move the Soviet Union toward more freedom at home or a less aggressive policy abroad, but rather to make the communist system work better. He wants the system to be more efficient, not less communist.
Gorbachevâs success is far from guaranteed. He faces monumental political and cultural obstacles. Some people have even argued that he has only a fifty-fifty chance of lasting five years in power. They point out that in every speech he makes he refers to the opposition against his reforms. They recall that when the last great Soviet reformer, Nikita Khrushchev, tried to revitalize thesystem his colleagues in the Politburo promptly gave him the boot. They conclude that the same could happen to Gorbachev.
Those who hold this view rightly point out that there is opposition to Gorbachevâs reforms but underestimate his ability to handle it. A shake-up of the Soviet system will always be opposed by those who have been shaking it down through perks and corruption. He is trying to impose new changes on those who benefit from the old ways. They do not want to lose their dachas, their limousines, their ballet tickets, their Black Sea vacations, and their rights to expert medical care and preferential education for their children. But the analogy to Khrushchev does not fit. Like Khrushchev, Gorbachev is bold and unpredictable; but unlike Khrushchev, he will not be rash.
Gorbachev has also shown great skill in consolidating his power. Unlike Stalin, he does not have his rivals killed. Unlike Khrushchev, he does not leave them in positions where they can threaten his power. (Brezhnev, for example, was standing next to Khrushchev during our Kitchen Debate in 1959.) Instead, Gorbachev ferrets them out of their key positions and replaces them with supporters. In just two years, he has replaced all but one of the members of the party Secretariat, the key body which runs the party apparatus. Of the thirteen members of the all-powerful Politburo, the body which runs the countryâs day-to-day affairs,