For at least a year and a half now, I have been increasingly disappointed by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
I was in Helsinki when the fascist "putsch" struck Moscow. At Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin's request, I had been discussing with Finnish business leaders and government officials opportunities for development of economic ties between Russia and Finland.I was doing what I could to help mobilize Western support for those in my country who were resisting the conspirators. Among other things, I was using my personal contacts with Northern Europe and the United States, trying to translate the extremely warm attitudes of Gorbachev, the person, into political support of those who were fighting the junta.
Honestly, I myself was wholeheartedly sympathetic to Gorbachev - very worried about him, anxious to see him return - and ready to forget the fact that he was the main person responsible for keeping a bunch of ruthless traitors and conspirators in key positions, an act that brought my country to the brink of abyss.
Actually, at stake was not just my country but the whole world: After all, for three days, the world's biggest nuclear potential was in the hands of criminal adventurists ready for anything. Alas, not everyone in the West realized it immediately, and on the first day I was hearing, on and on, very naive or ridiculous musings. Fortunately, that soon passed.
I would like to make a special mention of President Bush's second statement last Monday and his press conference Tuesday, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's two speeches, the statement of British Prime Minister John Major, German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher and a number of others. These speeches provided substantial support. But what was needed was something much bigger - a miracle.
And the miracle did happen. Unarmed citizens of my country, headed by a handful of brave leaders of resistance - Yeltsin and others who stood by him - defeated the world's biggest military machine and secret police.
Gorbachev returned to Moscow. I did hope that he was returning as a born-again reform leader, who learned the bitter lessons of these days - a man whose eyes had been opened and who could now see and understand both his real self and his close associates.
Gorbachev's very first steps bitterly disappointed me. I do not want to dwell on the fact that he did not deem it necessary to come (upon his return to Moscow) to the huge rally at the Russian Parliament's walls. There he should have made a deep bow to the citizens of Moscow, to Yeltsin and his comrades-in-arms, to all who put their lives on the line to save the country (and, perhaps, the whole world) from disaster, and who also freed him and his family from arrest and saved him from political and probably also physical death.
Neither do I want to note that he started his first public statement after the putsch not by repenting, nor by asking for forgiveness for his fateful shortsightedness, flippancy and irresponsibility in putting criminals and adventurers into key positions, and for the deaf ear he turned to numerous warnings of imminent danger. Rather, he chose to tell an emotional story of his and his family's ordeal during the three days under house arrest on the Crimean shore.
Worse things were in store. Gorbachev once again went into empty rhetoric about his commitment to socialism and his plans to reform the Communist Party. He even started to seek apology for political scum like Anatoly Lukyanov, who, even if not directly participating in the conspiracy (which I frankly doubt), still strained tremendous effort over the past few years to prepare it.
And, worst of all, Gorbachev, even if "temporarily," at first named to the country's key posts co-conspirators like Gen. Mikhail Moiseyev or people close to the conspiracy. Later, under the pressure from the mass media and Yeltsin's insistence, those nominations were revoked.
No, Gorbachev apparently was not born again, did not shed scales from his eyes, did not free himself from his terrible cocksureness born to a considerable extent out of Gorbamania in the West.
Therefore, the main threat to reforms may turn out to be Gorbachev himself, the man with whose name the start of those reforms is justly associated.
The Soviet president might be willing again to quarrel with his natural allies in perestroika and close ranks with its enemies. I have a growing suspicion that his endless flirtation with reactionary generals, vicious party bureaucrats and reactionaries of all stripes are not just a weakness or a mistake, but rather something he needs to counterbalance the democrats, who are resolute proponents of the reforms and who seem to scare Gorbachev the most.
And today I find myself feeling that most of all I am afraid of Gorbachev himself with all these weaknesses and shortcomings.
Well, what are we to do now? Remove Gorbachev? No, under no circumstances. There is no one yet for now who can take the post he is occupying, and we cannot afford the luxury of long and painful procedures of changing the president. Gorbachev should stay, but he must be made to shed those scales from his eyes, to draw the right lessons from the tragic events and to act the way the times demand.
Of course, it is up to ourselves; only we can do it. Can the West help? Yes, it can - by dropping Gorbamania and paying close attention to, among other things, the issues of aid to the Soviet Union.
And let the West help, rather than hamper, by its foreign policies the demilitarization of the Soviet Union. For if there were any doubts that the monster of militarism is out of control and that it is from this latter-day Frankenstein's monster that the main threat emanates, those doubts should have been blown off by the events of August.
1991 New Perspectives Quarterly
Distributed by L.A. Times Syndicate