What does Mikhail Gorbachev represent for Russia and Russian history? Will he be seen as a tragic hero, a missed opportunity, or simply a failure? What, if anything, links him to the anarchic excesses of the Yeltsin era and the repressive centralization of power under Putin? How responsible is Gorbachev for not having thought more about the consequences of the changes he unleashed, not just in the former Soviet Union but in Eastern Europe as well? Discussing Gorbachev and his legacy leads to a sprawling set of historical questions and counterfactuals: what if this had happened, what if that had not? Hence the strange, uneven allure exerted by Gorbachev’s most recent work, Conversations with Gorbachev, the transcript of a set of 1993 conversations with Zdenek Mlynár (1930-1997), Gorbachev’s longtime friend, one of the founding fathers of the Prague Spring and of the short-lived quixotic movement known as “socialism with a human face,” and later a signatory of Charter 77, forced into political exile in Vienna. The book, basically an edited transcript of various conversations just after the fall of the Soviet Union, successfully spurs the reader to reconsider these men, the reforms they tried to institute, and East European Communism’s eventful twentieth century. Neither Gorbachev nor Mlynár have abandoned their faith that socialism could possess a human face, or that a reformed and responsive socialism might transform the world. This book attests to their continued faith – or, rather, to Gorbachev’s steady idealism and Mlynár’s skeptical hope.
Mlynár and Gorbachev met as students at the law faculty of Moscow University from 1950 to 1955, pivotal years marking the height of Stalin’s domestic cult, as well as Stalin’s death in 1953 and the beginning of the post-Stalin thaw. They roomed together for three years, until Gorbachev met and married Raisa Titarenko, and remained close friends thereafter, so much so that in a 1994 interview with a Russian journalist, Gorbachev noted that of all his friends, “[Mlynár is] probably the person I’m closest to. He always has been.” Mlynár, for his part, characterized Gorbachev in the 1970s as “open-minded, intelligent, and anti-Stalinist,” someone interested in the principles underlying Marxist theory rather than memorizing its tenets as dogma (Pp. xiv-xv).
Conversations with Gorbachev is divided into three discussions, beginning with each man’s personal history and continuing to more wide-ranging reflections on international relations, and the philosophical and political future of moderate socialism after the Cold War. Gorbachev notes in the preface that the conversations were intended partly as cooperative reflection: for each to make clear to the other his motivations and rationale, his goals, his accomplishments, his failures and missed opportunities. This is the most intriguing aspect of the book. Decades of intimacy mark the Conversations; Gorbachev and Mlynár quiz one another openly, play devil’s advocate, and puzzle together through ideas they have clearly been discussing for years. Conversations with Gorbachev captures real conversation: challenges, parries, messy or incomplete thoughts. Both Gorbachev and Mlynár take turns almost standing in for the reader, asking questions, criticizing one another, pointing out logical inconsistencies or refusals to recognize reality.
Perhaps the most important issue, one that comes up repeatedly in different permutations, is the question of whether attempts to reform Communism, both in the 1980s in the Soviet Union and in the 1960s in Czechoslovakia, contained the seeds of their own undoing (P. 103). Should Gorbachev, in the 1980s, have worked as hard to change the structure of the system as he did to enlighten individuals within that system? Mlynár asks Gorbachev whether he relied too heavily on the idea of “replacing cadres… the old belief shows itself that new personnel who would replace the existing bureaucracy could decide everything” (P. 68). Or, alternatively, was Gorbachev depending on the newly liberated Soviet people to oppose the entrenched interests of the nomenklatura, given that the nomenklatura turned out to be one of glasnost’s most dedicated enemies? What did Gorbachev envision the people choosing, once free to choose? Gorbachev insists that he had no real choice save to start by expanding individual freedom and encouraging grassroots change from the ground up (Pp. 69, 75). Mlynár’s question, he notes, is uncomfortably similar to the old saw about Russians not being “ready” for democracy, a possibility Gorbachev dismisses. “My view on this was unambiguous,” he tells Mlynár. “People would make a choice in favor of democracy and in the framework of a democratic process. …They would decide what kind of society corresponded to their interests” (P. 77).
But Mlynár is as skeptical as have been many other observers of Gorbachev’s political actions: given the nature of the Brezhnevite system in place when Gorbachev rose to power, what outcomes were possible without radically changing that system (Pp. 69, 75)? Gorbachev disdains the notion that he should have established a governmental/legislative structure that would guarantee accountability and transparency as well as set up elections. His reforms perished, he notes, for the same reason moderate reforms are always chancy: the right is vindictive, the left excessively radical, and the moderate path disappears (P. 70).
This is only one of many instances in which Gorbachev portrays himself as being bound or constrained by the system he led. For example, Mlynár repeatedly asks Gorbachev why he said nothing to encourage Czechoslovak dissidents during his 1987 visit to Prague. Instead, Mlynár accuses, he told the country it should be proud of what it had achieved over the last 20 years after the “chaos” of the Prague Spring. “Your words sounded like you were placing your blessing on the past,” Mlynár charged (P. 87). Gorbachev does not fully answer this question: he hints that he and the reformers were still finding their way, that the Politburo would have been watching, “we could not just issue orders” (P. 89). Of course, Gorbachev’s own political fortunes stem directly from his adherence to the Party and to proper form. In the spring of 1991, Gorbachev began thinking about founding a new social-democratic party, a split off from the CPSU, whose program he promulgated at the Central Committee plenum of July 1991. But, he notes, a new congress of the CPSU would have been necessary for such a split to occur (P. 121). His hesitation probably cost him his job, at the very least; had he been willing to circumvent the party niceties and simply, boldly, act, who knows how different Russian history might look?
No hint of self-criticism or regret mars Gorbachev’s contributions to the Conversations, in which his refusal to acknowledge fault is coupled with a profound, stubborn idealism. In fact, “we did what had to be done,” Gorbachev insists. “We gave freedom, glasnost, and political pluralism; we gave democracy. We broke apart, dismantled, and destroyed the totalitarian regime and freed the individual. Another service we performed was that we did not construct models or try to force society to fit into such models” (P. 91). In addition to crediting himself with ending totalitarianism in the USSR, Gorbachev also would like to be viewed as the man who ended the Cold War, as opposed to the specious Western belief that Ronald Reagan brought that about. “…The initiative for finding a way out of the dead end [of the arms race] was taken” by himself, he notes, not by Reagan (P. 141). Gorbachev’s dualism is clear throughout the text: he is both a visionary and a man of his place and time, both a statesman and a product of the blinkered Soviet system.
Another central idea of the book is each man’s philosophical evolution from dogmatic Soviet-style socialist to pragmatic European Social Democrat – with reservations. Both Gorbachev and Mlynár came to believe, especially once they were no longer in power, that socialism was intellectually and morally correct, but not Soviet-style deterministic socialism. They describe their current ideas as a “value-based conception of socialism…a process in which people seek to realize certain values, and in this process all progressive and democratic ideas and practical experiences are integrated” (P. xix). In this sense, socialism and “bourgeois democracy” were both attempts to solve social problems: one ideology did not threaten the other. Both began as honest attempts to craft a humane, moral global civilization, in the tradition of liberal reformers since the 18th century; both, since, have gone awry, and need critique from intellectuals within and outside the systems in order to adhere to their original values. This is the only way, they conclude, to respond to the dire threats the post-Cold-War world faces. Mlynár argues that for socialism to retain relevance, it needs to provide what Vaclav Havel and East German idealists like Christa Wolf thought it might in 1989. That is, it needs to provide a cogent reaction to capitalism and its tendencies to subordinate human beings “to the laws of the market and the interests of profit” (P. 157). While Mlynár and Gorbachev acknowledge closeness to West European Social Democrats in their thinking, Mlynár objects to those parties’ relative solipsism. “It seems to me that it’s impossible for us, as people who overcame our own concept of a universal Communist recipe for historical development, to believe in the universal effectiveness of the ideas, methods, or experience of Western Social Democracy” (P. 169).
Both agree that the Soviet system was not the socialist paradigm they had been taught it was: that it was noncapitalist, precapitalist, containing some socialist elements (P. 147ff). At the same time, neither entirely rejects the system that trained them. They note, for example, the positive achievements of Soviet socialism. The Soviet system brought Russia into the modern era, ended illiteracy, and improved most people’s standard of living (P. 150). It also infused its citizens with a belief in, and a desire for, social justice; while the gap between the nomenklatura and the average citizen was vast, most people’s basic needs were provided for, and their children were not trapped in the same economic status as their parents (P. 151). In fact, alleges Mlynár, without the “Soviet threat to the indestructible reign of capital,” the West would never have constructed the postwar welfare state system (P. 152). Their refusal to reject Soviet-style Communism entirely also appears in their conversation, which occasionally falls into Soviet-style coded, oblique analysis dependent on outmoded categories. Marxist analysis especially marks their understanding of politics; for them, “success” and “correctness” take on an almost Hegelian ring. What kind of historical development does a certain policy make possible? What kind of development does it hinder? To dismiss perestroika or reform communism as muddle-headed or doomed to failure is to neglect, for these two thinkers, this larger question: were those who attempted them on the side of the angels, historically speaking? Were they attempting to further the cause of social justice?
Of the two, Mlynár proves himself to be a more agile, incisive, pragmatic thinker, and an intriguing cultural critic to boot. He is bluntly honest: he acknowledges that the reforms he helped begin were responsible, during normalization, for ruining many lives, and wonders whether they were worth instituting (Pp. 197-199). Mlynár also deals with the question lingering over twentieth-century Czechoslovak history: why not fight? He answers that in 1968, a military response to the Soviet invasion would have legitimated the inevitable Soviet claim that the Prague Spring was a counterrevolutionary armed uprising, and that Warsaw Pact tanks were defending socialism (P. 40). Additionally, he mentions, since the Czechoslovaks chose not to resist, the possibility existed that a few years after the Prague Spring, the Czech and Soviet leadership might relax “normalization,” as Kadar had loosened the reins in neighboring Hungary. This turned out to be a futile hope, but a logical one. Finally, wryly, Mlynár observes that his very failure might have helped him: thanks to Brezhnev, he and his fellow reformers never had to carry out their ideals (P. 72). This kind of sardonic realism permeates Mlynár’s political analysis, even when applied to his hopes for the future: while acknowledging the quixotic nature of his and Gorbachev’s continued hope for socialism, Mlynár notes that “Neither political successes nor political failures were ever the proof of the historical correctness of a policy. After all, even Nazism for many years seemed to be a political success in a certain sense” (P. 102).
Meanwhile, in contrast to Mlynár, Gorbachev’s political and philosophical outlook emerges in all its stubborn and charismatic contradiction. The reader finds in these pages both the persuasive visionary of the mid-1980s and the dogged optimist of the early 1990s, unwilling to acknowledge stormclouds on the horizon. For example, Gorbachev discusses the future of socialism in sunnily abstract terms: “From an ideology that at one time was solely based on class we should create a ‘meta-ideology,’ enabling a constantly increasing number of people to find a common language. The socialist idea, thus, could become global humanism” (P. 156). Gorbachev also mentions the European Union as a potential source of enlightened global leadership – and does not sully his vision by deigning to notice the cost in blood of the EU’s dithering as Yugoslavia imploded (Pp. 186-187). Finally, and most tellingly, when Mlynár muses over the damage he might have done his country, Gorbachev not only absolves his friend of guilt, but refuses to share his regrets. Gorbachev admits to being troubled by the distance Russia has traveled since his reforms, but states “I would do it all over” (P. 199).
Gorbachev’s seemingly willful blindness makes Russia’s frustration with him more understandable. And yet he is not without insight. His comment, for example, that the old Cold War categories will probably become more important before they finally fade, certainly applies to today’s international situation, even though he applies it only to the former East (Pp. 144-145). So, too, the way he describes his own current status as a public figure: “in the political sky there are many stars of various magnitudes, …giving off different kinds of light. There is also room there for my star” (P. 212). Perhaps. But whatever Gorbachev’s political future, Conversations with Gorbachev is an intermittently fascinating opportunity for readers to be the proverbial fly on the wall, listening as two of Europe’s most important twentieth-century reformers contemplate the fate of their reforms, the inherent difficulty of political moderation, the possibility of a moral politics, and the future of social democracy.