By Jacques Lévesque

T

The following three documents, which have never before been published, are highly interesting and instructive for the considerable light they shed on both the Soviet's approach and their expectations concerning the situation in Eastern Europe, and for the prospects for change in the region at the beginning of 1989, virtually on the eve of the serial collapse of the communist regimes. The documents help us to understand Soviet permissiveness in the face of these momentous events, a permissiveness which was the most remarkable and surprising phenomenon of 1989. To be sure, as the documents show, the serial collapse was as unexpected in Moscow as it was in the West and in Eastern Europe itself. This unexpected Soviet permissiveness contributed a great deal to the rapidity with which the collapse occurred.

The documents help dispel simplistic views about Soviet behavior which were voiced in the West in the aftermath of 1989, claiming for instance that the Soviet leaders had very poor information on the situation in Eastern Europe, or that they had decided to write off the region as too costly a burden. As the reader will note, Soviet analysts saw the situation as potentially explosive. Considerable change was expected, but based on the assumption that events might well take a turn favorable to Soviet interests, such change was considered risky, yet desirable. The available information was abundant and accurate, and the analysis was sophisticated (at least in two of the documents). However, this analysis was predominantly premised on some of the basic ideological tenets of perestroika, namely that a reformed and democratized socialism was both possible and viable and that a reformed Soviet Union would wield new forms of influence.

Up to the beginning of 1989, and even in the months that followed, Eastern Europe was notably neglected in Gorbachev's foreign policy. First priority was given to the East-West rapprochement and reconciliation, which was to be achieved primarily through arms control and disarmament, areas in which the USSR had much to offer in bringing about a new convergent and "more integrated" world. Since some degree of change and democratization in Eastern Europe was considered a necessary ingredient for the realization of the "common European home," a more proactive Soviet policy was in order there.

The ambivalence of Gorbachev's politics

But if Soviet policy in Eastern Europe was subordinated to the needs of its policy towards the West, as the documents clearly show, it suffered from Gorbachev's waverings as well as from contradictions in

his approach. While on the one hand, he preached change and the virtues of reformed socialism, on the other hand, in the name of "freedom of choice," he refused to pressure the conservative leaders of Eastern Europe to engage in reforms. Against the advice of his reformist supporters, in the name of "non-interference," he declined to give explicit and direct support to the reformist challengers of the conservative leaderships. Only indirect signals were sent. This was not only a matter of principle. Gorbachev was convinced that reform could work in Eastern Europe, but he believed that the initiative had to come from the top leadership of these countries. He thought that change imposed from outside could cause destabilization there, which would have had very negative effects on perestroika on the home front. In fact, Gorbachev wanted the best of both worlds in Eastern Europe: change and relative stability.' The result was increasing polarization in the region at the beginning of 1989. With Gorbachev's encouragement the reformist leaderships of Poland and Hungary pressed ahead, while in a majority of the countries. of the area, the conservative leaderships practiced immobilism, defensively, but with Soviet tolerance.

Because Gorbachev's policy toward Eastern Europe was a low priority it was subjected to dual imperatives, pulling in divergent directions. The needs of perestroika also had negative consequences of a different type for the countries of Eastern Europe. To improve Soviet economic performance, Moscow was much more demanding and stingy in its economic relations with its allies than it had been in the past. It refused all demands for special economic assistance, and even unilaterally reduced its subsidized oil exports. This of course, created not only economic but also political difficulties for both the reformist and conservative regimes of the Warsaw Pact, while Gorbachev was preaching reform as a panacea for all problems. Therefore it is not surprising that East European leaders complained privately to their Soviet counterparts about Soviet neglect.

In a memorandum sent to Gorbachev on 10 October 1988, his chief advisor for Eastern European affairs, Georgii Shakhnazarov, wondered to what degree the Soviet Union had to encourage the East European countries to develop closer economic relations and seek greater assistance from the West. He recommended that the Soviet leadership pay more attention to their various problems. He suggested that a thorough examination of all these problems be put on the agenda of the new International Commission of the Party, which had been created the month before, chaired by Aleksander Yakovlev.2 Apparently, it took three months before the process even started.

and détente and reducing the economic burden of these countries on the USSR. All of these developments, in turn, would accelerate the rise of the "common European home." Moreover, the author argued that such a policy would create a very favorable image of the USSR in the world, and most importantly in Eastern Europe, where the ground for anti-Soviet and nationalist force would shrink, while "the prestige of the Soviet Union and its ideological-political influence on the broad strata of the population will grow." In other words, a non-antagonistic Warsaw Pact (which together with NATO was to become one of the two pillars of a new pan-European security structure contemplated by novoe myshlenie) would be reinforced. To better capture the expected results of the advocated policy, the author used a formulation which wonderfully translates the essence of what perestroika wanted to be: "it will be a revolution from above [...] which will prevent a revolution from below."

Gorbachev did not adopt a really proactive policy towards Eastern Europe in 1989.4 But this document does much to help us understand why he took such a benevolent attitude toward the rapid and unexpected turn of events there. He believed it was the best way to create and preserve a new image and influence for the Soviet Union and a voluntary acceptance of the Warsaw Pact. He was given explicit assurances to that effect by Walesa, Mazowiecki and Havel, and more implicitly by the United States which pledged to respect the security interests of the Soviet Union in return for its permissiveness.

From the Central Committee: a "centrist" perspective

The approach, analysis and recommendations of the memorandum of the Central Committee's International Department also belong to the realm of the perestroika ideology. They are, however, substantially different from, and certainly more conservative than those of the Bogomolov Institute. While they may be labeled as "centrist," this is not to say they were closer to Gorbachev's view, as Gorbachev often described himself as a "centrist" both during and after his tenure.

The report was less alarmist and more sanguine about the prospects for "a smooth movement toward democratization and the new form of socialism [...] if the initiative for democratic changes originates with the ruling party." Indeed, it emphasized that "we should not exaggerate the danger of one of the countries simply switching to the capitalist way of development." At the same time, as Gorbachev continued to do, it advocated patience towards the conservative leaderships of the area.

The International Department tried to make the case for a reversal of the neglect of Eastern Europe by the Soviet leadership. Admitting that the region had become strategically less important for the USSR, it insisted that

"the degree of our interdependence with the socialist countries remains higher than with the rest of the world," and somewhat prophetically indicated that the stability of the USSR and the future of socialism in the world depended very much on what was going on in the region. In order to stress the importance of Eastern Europe for the USSR, the authors dismissed the idea of the region as an economic burden, and even tried to demonstrate that existing economic ties were beneficial for the USSR.

The option that the USSR might use force in Eastern Europe under certain circumstances was not even mentioned in the Bogomolov Institute report. It had already been discarded by the leadership. It was explicitly rejected in the memorandum by the International Department. But significantly, the document made a recommendation that is entirely absent from the first one. The author wrote that we "should leave a certain vagueness as far as our concrete actions are concerned under various possible turns of events, so that we do not stimulate the anti-socialist forces to try to 'test' the fundamentals of socialism in a given country." Gorbachev did not pay heed to such advice. In the summer of 1989, he increasingly openly rejected the Brezhnev Doctrine, in order to better establish the credibility of novoe myshlenie for Western audiences.

Advocating greater interaction between new socialism. and modern capitalism, the report of the International Department calls for the clarification of the "possibilities and the limits" of that interaction. At about the time it was written, in Poland, one of Solidarity's negotiators, Andrzej Stelmachowski (later Minister of Education), talking with General Wojciech Jaruzelski on the sidelines of the Round Table negotiations, asked him: "What are the limits to the changes that the Soviets are willing to accept in Poland?" Jaruzelski responded: "I do not know myself. Let us find them together."5 No wonder Jaruzelski did not know— Gorbachev and the Soviet leaders did not know themselves! As far as the content of "renovated" or "modern" socialism was concerned, people like Yakovlev were against setting "artificial" limits to what was supposed to be an experimental process. To be fair, it must be said that there was a clearer sense of limits in the realm of foreign policy. The Soviet leaders took the continued existence of the Warsaw Pact for granted, as did the main opposition forces in Eastern Europe. While the Bogomolov Institute's memorandum suggested that Eastern European countries should be allowed to move towards economic integration with Western Europe and to serve as a bridge and "advance" for the Soviet Union, the memorandum of the International Department insisted on a coordinated and common policy between the USSR and Eastern Europe in dealing with Western economic institutions. The objective was to ensure a step-by-step integration of COMECON with the European Economic Community. Gorbachev and

Shevardnadze were definitely closer to this approach.6

From the Foreign Ministry: a short and muddled report

The report submitted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Yakovlev was disconcerting in many respects. While the first two reports were sophisticated and consistent in their respective analyses, this one was not. Therefore it is revealing not so much for the course of action it advocates for Eastern Europe but in other regards. The Foreign Ministry's report suffered not only in quality but also in quantity. Only one third of the length of the Bogomolov Institute's document, it reads like a botched memorandum written by a poorly prepared and supervised official. This probably reflects the fact that Eastern Europe was indeed a very low priority for Shevarnadze's Ministry. Policy toward Eastern Europe had always been the responsibility of the Central Committee, to which Soviet ambassadors to these countries reported directly. Even if Shevardnadze was claiming responsibility for all areas of foreign policy for his Ministry in 1989, it is clear that he and his associates were almost entirely focused on the East-West relationship.

The memorandum borrowed arguments from the arsenal of the reformist discourse, but also from the conservative sources. Yet, it did not amount to a coherent centrist position. Rather it was typical of the ideological confusion experienced by many well-intentioned Soviet apparatchiks at that time. They often parroted the slogans of perestroika and novoe myshlenie without being able to turn them into operative policy recommendations, and, in effect, continued to use much of the traditional language. In 1989, both the radical reformers and the conservatives were making alarmist assessments of the situation in Eastern Europe for obviously different reasons. As we have seen, the reformers did so in order to promote reform. The conservatives, on the other hand, did so to raise concerns about the threats to socialism stemming from the changes. The alarmist tone of the Foreign Ministry's report was in line with the latter. It warned against the mobilization of "forces alien to socialism" which could take advantage of the access to parliamentary and government institutions to eject the communist parties from power, either "partially or fully." At the same time, it took up one of the pet slogans of perestroika, stressing that the "trend toward political pluralism is becoming universal" without showing its benefits to the East European communist parties. Contrary to the analysis of the two other reports, the moderation exhibited by the Western countries concerning Eastern Europe was seen as tactical, with no change in their long term goals.

These are not the only contradictory elements in this document. Showing more zeal in this respect than the document from the Central Committee, the first and "most important" of the Foreign Ministry's recommendations was "not to permit the erosion of socialism in Eastern Europe" and to keep "all the countries of this region on the socialist

path of development." Yet, not surprisingly, the memorandum rejected the use of force. It pleaded for maintaining ambiguity on this issue. At the same time, it recommended that the USSR should refuse to support the use of force by one or the other of the communist regimes, because "repressive actions" would contradict the "international norms in the sphere of human rights." This reflected the fact that showing concern for international norms and human rights was one the trademarks of Shevardnadze's Ministry in the policy of East-West rapprochement.

DOCUMENT No. 1

Memorandum to Alexander Yakovlev from the Bogomolov Commission (Marina Sylvanskaya),

February 1989

CHANGES IN EASTERN EUROPE AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE USSR

Societies in Eastern European countries are beginning to change their character. Attempts to build socialism with Stalinist and neo-Stalinist methods, the spread [tirazhirovaniye] of which occurred in the region under consideration not without the active involvement of the Soviet side, ended up in a stalemate. This situation was expressed in an aggravation of contradictions and a growth of crisis developments. The degree and scale of conflicts vary: from the more or less hidden social-political tension, fraught with sudden explosions, to chronic crisis without any visible ways out, signaling the beginning of disintegration of the social-political system not excluding cataclysms as well. Such processes are irreversible; they are the result of the long-term evolution of the regime, and in a majority of countries they accompany a transition to a new model of socialism but also can lead to a collapse of the socialist idea. In the last year or year and a half the development of events in Eastern Europe has sharply accelerated and has acquired elements of unpredictability.

General characterization of social-political processes in the countries of Eastern Europe

Crisis symptoms are visible in all spheres of public life inside the countries as well as in relations among them.

In the economy the intensity of these symptoms varies from a slowdown of economic growth, a widening social and technological gap with the West, a gradual worsening of shortages in domestic markets and the growth of external debt (GDR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria) to a real threat of economic collapse (Yugoslavia, Poland). Particularly dangerous is open and hidden inflation that has