Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin by Dusko Doder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"There are two ways - one realistic, the other fantastic - for resolving the crisis of the Soviet economy. The realistic way is to have people from outer space come and straighten out the mess. The fantastic way is for the Soviet people to sort it out on their own. "

Yet another position in my ever-growing list of reads about Soviet leaders of the 20th century. This has always been a compelling topic for me as I had lived in the shadow of Soviet ideology for the first 31 years of my life. Gorbachev. Heretic in the Kremlin (1990) by Dusko Doder and Louise Branson is certainly one of the best - probably the very best - books that I have read on Soviet leaders. (An index of books that I reviewed on that topic may be found after the rating.)

The authors do not spend much time on the early life and career of Mikhail Gorbachev. The one aspect of his career that they do emphasize is the mentorship of Yuri Andropov whom Gorbachev met in 1971. It was undoubtedly Andropov who "propelled Gorbachev into a far higher political orbit than he would have been able to reach on his own." The authors also mention a curious historical tidbit: in September 1978, at a train station in the Stavropol region, four men met and talked on the station platform: Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev - these four men would rule Soviet Union in succession. Brezhnev will die in 1982, Andropov will succeed him and die after just 16 months in power. He will be succeeded by Chernenko, who will also die soon, and Gorbachev will be elected as the general Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in March 1985. It may be worthwhile to remind the young and middle-aged readers that in the 1980s Soviet Union was still one of the only two superpowers in the world.

The political biography follows Gorbachev's years in the Kremlin. Like Andropov, during his brief stint as the General Secretary, Gorbachev realized that the Soviet empire was doomed if it did not change. Over the seven decades of Soviet rule

"the system has degenerated into one that penalizes initiative, efficiency, decency, and responsibility while rewarding opportunism, laziness, sloganeering, and deviousness."

Gorbachev was acutely aware of various insanities of the Soviet centrally planned economy, nationwide corruption, cynicism, alcoholism, overall inertia, and, perhaps the worst of all, the unparalleled degree of resistance from the party bureaucracy. From the very beginning of his term Gorbachev wanted to reform the Soviet empire so that it could overcome the monstrous crisis and perhaps even thrive.

Gorbachev's first major initiative was 'perestroika' (restructuring, rebuilding), an extremely wide-ranging program of economic reform that just stopped short of a full market reform. Perestroika eventually failed, economy kept disintegrating, and society remained stagnant. Almost at the same time as perestroika, Gorbachev also embraced another major initiative, 'glasnost' (usually translated as 'openness', but the word has also a semantic component of 'loudness'):

"[...] the term has acquired more complex political connotations. It stands for greater openness and candor in government affairs and for an interplay of different and sometimes conflicting views in political debtaes, in the press, and in Soviet culture."

The authors show that Gorbachev used glasnost as a strategy to overcome the monstrously immovable, entrenched party bureaucracy, totally unable to change.

While perestroika, naturally and expectedly, failed - the magnificent joke quoted in the epigraph reflects the complete truth: the only realistic way of reforming Soviet economy was through supernatural intervention - glasnost remained. And it was glasnost that eventually led to the end of the Communist party's monopoly on power and the dissolution of the Soviet empire.

In liking this book I may be displaying a bias: I have always believed that the fall of Communism and Soviet empire was due to Gorbachev's actions much more than to anything else. I don't believe the American or any other nation's policy alone was sufficient to end Communism in the Soviet Union. This extremely well researched book seems to confirm the notion of Gorbachev as a revolutionary whose vision and charisma impacted history in an unprecedented way. What is most special is that his impact was almost entirely positive, unlike the way that mass butchers of nations, like Stalin or Hitler, influenced history by murdering tens of millions of people and taking hope away from hundreds of millions of others. In its ultimate effect, thanks to the fall of Soviet ideology, Gorbachev's vision, charisma, political talent, and energy gave hundreds of millions of people a chance. (Naturally they will squander the chance, but that's another story.)

Very good book! Highly recommended!

Four-and-a-half stars.

My previous reviews of books on Soviet leaders:

The Andropov File - by Martin Ebon

Against the Grain - An Autobiography - by Boris Yeltsin

Lenin to Gorbachev: Three generations of Soviet Communists - by Joan Frances Crowley

Brezhnev, Soviet Politician - by Paul J. Murphy

Khrushchev - by Roy Medvedev

Gorbachev and His Revolution - by Mark Galeotti

Andropov - by Zhores Medvedev

View all my reviews