Russian history has always been an alternation of period of status,

and period of drastic reforms.

What I am planning to talk about today is the age of Gorbachev.

What I am planning to talk about is the last major effort,

to remedy within the Soviet system,

what ailed that economy,

society and political order.

What I would be saying is how were the very reforms which

became more deep and extensive ultimately led to the demise of the regime.

Well, after the 18 year reign period of Brezhnev,

there was an understanding that the changes were necessary,

and the changes were necessary because of the declining performance of the economy.

This is the crucial fact.

Because it was the performance of the economy,

the ability of the economy to improve the standard of living of the Soviet people,

which was evident from the death of Stalin to the middle of the 1970s.

And now, this was not working any longer.

That the changes had to be made.

The economy mattered not merely for the loyalty of the Soviet people,

but also in order to keep up with military expenditure which

the regime perceived need was absolutely necessary.

So, after Brezhnev's death which surprised no one,

after Stalin died, there was a crisis, "Who can follow?"

When Khrushchev was removed,

there was a period of excitement,

"What kind of regime will we have?"

When Brezhnev died, hardly anybody noticed.

After all with his last five years,

he was obviously a shadow leader who had to be helped to get to

the podium and generally an embarrassment for the Soviet people.

The person who got the job was Yuri Andropov.

Now, Andropov,

first made his career as being ambassador in Hungary in 1956 and through that connection,

he came into contact with the top Soviet leadership.

From there, he went on to be

responsible for the Soviet Union's relations with Eastern European countries.

And then, most significantly,

to head the KGB,

to head the political police which was responsible

for repression used against the dissenters.

And in that capacity,

perhaps it wired a better understanding of the various ailments of Soviet society.

He was among the more intelligent Soviet leaders.

Now, even in the Soviet Union,

one could not rise from the head of the KGB to

become number one and assume the top position of leadership.

So, during Brezhnev last year,

he was moved into the central committee,

he became responsible for ideology,

and that was already a step which foreshadowed

his future emergency's top leader and indeed he

became the first secretary of the party of politburo,

and Chernenko who was a comrade of Brezhnev assumed the second important job.

Now, Andropov had an understanding that reforms were necessary.

He did not have a sense of how deep those reforms would have to be.

He was ill and within eight and a half he died.

And it's always, to me,

is an interesting question how events would have developed had he remained in office?

Because ultimately, of course,

he was a very different character.

Then Gorbachev.

He died after eight and a half in office and his place was taken by Chernenko.

Now, Chernenko is by all account the least intelligent,

least charismatic leader of the Soviet union to ever had that power, had that job.

But clearly, he was in no position

to carry out reforms or even have an understanding of what those reforms should be.

However, the second in command became

a protege of Andropov and that was Gorbachev.

Now, Gorbachev, who he was and what his background was,

has considerable historical significance because

unlike the rather faceless Soviet bureaucrats,

the rather faceless members of the politburo at this time,

what he did and who he was, that's historically significant.

In this respect, he was a transformative leader such as Stalin,

needless to say, and Khrushchev whose character,

whose ideas were significant for understanding of what was to happen.

He differed from other Soviet leaders whose background were in the party hierarchy,

who had technical training,

who attended party schools.

Gorbachev actually studied law at Moscow university and

he was better educated in all intellectual spheres than his comrades.

Also, he was younger.

At that time when the average age of the politburo member were in the 70s,

he was in the mid 50s.

He was born in 1931 and he came into office in 1984.

Well, while he was second in command in Chernenko, after Chernenko,

he went abroad, he met Margaret Thatcher who famously memorably said,

"He is a man with whom we can do business."

And he took his wife Raisa with him to London and Raisa was a sophisticated woman,

conservatively but stylishly dressed and this was unheard of.

Soviet leaders were not supposed to show

their private life to such an extent that when Andropov died,

the American secret service didn't know that he had a wife.

Well, in the case of Gorbachev this was different.

Gorbachev was to be a different and kind of leader.

And Chernenko conveniently died

and Gorbachev assumed the top leadership.

Now, it is an interesting question why he was chosen.

I mean after all, he was chosen by very conservative people in the top leadership.

Did those leaders understand what they were doing?

Did Gorbachev at that time,

have any vision of how serious changes would have to be introduced?

How could a person who was so much less conformist than the other leaders,

ultimately emerge in the political hierarchy within the Soviet union?

Well, evidently, the creating the Sovient man was never as

thorough as Soviet ideologists assumed.

Well, had Gorbachev have a clear idea what kind of program he would introduce,

probably, he would have chosen

his fellow leaders from the people

who represented within the hierarchy, the liberal element.

In fact, Gorbachev who was in the position to replace

the elderly leaders in the Politburo Central Committee and various other command posts.

It's interesting to examine that the kind of people he chose was a very mixed group.

Some of them came to be his political enemies from the conservative side.

Some of them came to be memorable hap mates in what he was doing.

Among them, the two most significant figure, was Shevardnadze,

who had been the first secretary of the Georgian party organization,

who became foreign minister, and Yakovlev.

Yakovlev who was the most liberal member who for his political views had been

exiled to Canada to be a Soviet ambassador there.

Probably, his long tenure in

Quebec gave him some appreciation of how things could be different.

Well, there was an immediate understanding on Gorbachev's reforms were needed.

And the first three forms he believed that all we need to do is

to make people work better and he

embark on the same kind of reform which had been tried earlier.

Namely, he was aware that the Soviet economy was over centralized.

So, let us give more initiative to factory managers.

Let us break down on this central aparatus.

Make people work better, fight against alcoholism,

this came to be actually a very significant feature of the Gorbachev regime.

Perfectly understandably alcoholism was a major problem

not only in this period but before and after and

raised the price of alcohol forbid serving

alcohol in restaurants except in certain hours.

And they went so far as to remove age old vineyards in the Caucasus.

This was not as successful at that.

In fact, he was much ridiculed for it,

as much as it was necessary to fight against alcoholism,

this was not a simple task.

Because what happened then people who could not buy the vodka in

stores made them at home, Samagon.

And this had following consequences,

One, is the revenue which the sale of

alcohol produced for the budget was quite significant that was lost.

The other was that sugar disappeared from

stores because people were using it for making alcohol.

And Gorbachev was much ridiculed.

So, this period was called,

in retrospect acceleration, that comrades that was work better.

The trouble was that after all the Soviet people were told

many times before that now you have to work harder and then life will get better.

This did not go very far.

So, the understanding on the part of

Gorbachev and on part of his comrades was that we must do something more significant.

But in order to do something more significant,

we had to face the problems.

We have to evaluate the problems.

We must discuss the problems.

And for that, we have to introduce what came to be called Glasnost.

Now, Glasnost is a difficult concept,

a difficult word to translate.

It did not actually mean freedom of press, freedom of opinion.

What it meant is that people should have

the opportunity to express their opinions within the terms of the regime.

You could express constructive criticisms.

And indeed, what started after the Gorbachev in office for a couple of years,

was that the voices could be heard.

And this was a wonderful period.

More and more different voices were in fact expressed.

Authors which could not have been published in the past were not published.

The book of Vasily Grossman, Pasternak.

This was for those who lived through these years,

perhaps the happiest years in their lives in as much as there was hope.

Look, we can evaluate our past we can evaluate our present openly.

We don't have to lie.

However, where this would lead,

they did not actually foresee.

Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev

Russian History: from Lenin to Putin

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