An Elusive Consensus

Abstract

An Elusive Consensus Vladislav M. Zubok (bio) I am thankful to Mark Beissinger, Michael David-Fox, and Serhy Yekelchyk for adding their expert voices to the discussion of the Soviet collapse prompted by my book. In his thoughtful review David-Fox calls for a synthesis. It may be a type of wishful thinking, just like Gorbachevian consensus. The demise of a giant empire with such a tragic (and crime-ridden) history will remain a contested subject within the lifetime of our generation, and perhaps the next. Scholarship will remain fractious: some will be interested in socioeconomic, others in economic-political aspects of the story; the adepts of ab imperio ethno-cultural particularisms will never agree with the students of elite politics, and so on. Finally, as the Russian poet Fedor Tiutchev famously wrote, "We cannot fathom all the echoes of our speech." The ongoing discussion on the topic may be the best to which we may aspire. I would like to respond to a few insights proposed by David-Fox. Indeed, what happened to the Soviet Union was not a revolution. At the same time, the spectacular failure of economic reforms, coupled with the progressive demoralization of the elite, created a unique situation that was revolutionary in many respects: ideational, social, economic, political, and in foreign affairs. Mikhail Gorbachev, inspired by his reading of Vladimir Lenin, convinced himself that the chaos he had unleashed would eventually lead to democratic socialism. Initially his vision found mass support in society, yet economic discontent soon rose like a flood. The Soviet leader and his entourage lost the initiative to rival actors who offered different solutions to the unfolding crisis: a national liberation struggle, a return to Europe, liberal democracy, and most fatally the rise of Russia. Those narratives, perhaps fortunately, lacked one component: a violent overthrow of the existing regime and its socioeconomic setup. David-Fox attributes the failure of perestroika to the "blinkered inculcation" (845) of Soviet ideas and belief, the intellectual and cultural [End Page 867] heritage that Gorbachev embodied and shared with millions of his fellow citizens. I would add some caveats. First, among party functionaries in the Russian provinces, Gorbachev seemed to be a rather unique person: a party intellectual stranded in the wrong kettle of fish. Provincial apparatchiks were far too cynical to suffer from blinkered inculcation, although they used the party discourse to promote their careers. The rare exceptions were mostly neo-Stalinists, militarists, and superpower adepts. Without Iurii Andropov, an outlier like Gorbachev would have never made it to the top. Second, the term "inculcation" diminishes the complexity of the origins of the "new thinking," a vague set of principles that Gorbachev proclaimed and promoted. The Marxist-Leninist faith that Gorbachev and many Soviet intellectuals of the 1980s shared was just one iteration of the longer and broader phenomenon of social daydreaming that preceded and outlasted the communist period. Prominent players of the Soviet endgame, such as Boris Yeltsin and Gennadii Burbulis, demonstrated how a newer version of a socioeconomic utopia could displace the discredited one almost overnight. Both underwent a lightning conversion from the Leninist faith to the Western neoliberal faith, with huge consequences for Russian history. I am especially grateful to Mark Beissinger for writing a review: his study of the interaction of non-Russian nationalism during the Soviet collapse was a foundation for my work. His book provides a strong thesis that I grappled with and finally disagreed with. Now he pushes back. He rejects my emphasis on Gorbachev's agency, his mode of governance and feud with Yeltsin, as well as the contingency of the failed economic and financial reforms. He claims that the Kremlin leadership could do nothing after 1989 other than "playing out the logic of the new structural situation"—namely "the disintegration of inner and outer empires" (850). He takes me to task for failing to shift the book's center of gravity to earlier times when, in his view, irreversible structural transformations took place. As if this is not sufficient, he adds judgmental attacks: in his view, I insinuate, carp, and even feel sympathy for hardliners (849). Still, I am glad that Beissinger finds the disagreements between our...