The following is a review of Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (2001). It was written in the winter of 2009 for Professor Alexander Kyrou's Russian History course at Salem State College. It is the first book review I have ever written.
(I used endnotes in the original which did not transfer to blogger; I may add the citations at a later time.)
Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (2001) is a (very) concise account of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Deriding conventional explanations for the collapse--such as exhaustion born of the arms race--Kotkin attributes the collapse to the inadvertent consequences of the efforts a new generation of soviet elites to realize the promises of the October revolution.
Capitalism Versus Socialism
Kotkin's analysis begins with the historical context in which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) found itself in the last third of the twentieth century. The 1970s oil crisis made apparent the obsolescence of the industrial infrastructure that had transformed the advanced nations. In response, these countries embarked on reforms that were destined to propel them forward in what Soviet leaders called the scientific-technological revolution.
By the 1970s the West had already outpaced the USSR economically as the USSR entered an economic malaise. This divergence was dramatically compounded by two factors. The first was the striking of oil in Siberia; the second the steep rise in oil prices following the Arab oil embargo. The very crisis which precipitated modernization in the West provided the USSR with an excuse to forego it.
At a time when the West seemed crippled, oil wealth provided the USSR with cause for confidence. Other developments also boded well for Communism. In 1957 the USSR launched Sputnik, the first satellite. The USSR was buoyed by the 1959 Cuban Revolution. And the confidence of the regime was captured vividly in Khrushchev's 1960 outburst at the UN.
By the 1980s the vast majority of Soviet citizens would possess a television and most of the urban population would no longer dwell in communal barracks but in privates apartments with their own bath and kitchen (albeit spacially inadequate for the number of occupants). The overwhelming majority of households would own a refrigerator and well over half a washing machine.
Yet, the system was in trouble. Its relative economic stagnation cut to its very legitimacy. Capitalism ("real existing capitalism" we might say) had changed dramatically. Its interwar reputation for vast unemployment and imperialism was forgotten as welfare states emerged in the West that provided substantial social safety nets, and Western economies showered the consumer-citizen with automobiles, suburban homes, televisions, radios, etc. Again, this while communism basically stagnated. In addition, Western consumer goods were being imported into the satellite states by the 1980s and incipient consumerism rooted in a more highly educated population had developed within the Union itself. Western culture seeped into the Union in the form of television and music.
The dismantling of Western empires ultimately left the West with the moral high ground in the Cold War. This is because the USSR was meanwhile engaged in the brutal imposition of its own dominion over Eastern Europe.
In the mid-1980s oil output from Siberia began declining. World oil prices fell. The USSR was forced to confront "history's largest ever assemblage of obsolete equipment." It was under Mikhail Gorbachev that it would do so.
Gorbachev and Reform
Gorbachev, who became General Secretary in 1985, represented the coming to power (finally) of a younger cohort of Soviet leaders. He sought to make socialism more humane, and to reinvigorate it to compete with the West.
He began with a campaign of glasnost, or openness. Previously banned novels and films became available. Previously taboo subjects such as high rates of abortion and Stalin's deportations of ethnic groups were discussed in the Communist Party media. Even Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago was no longer banned.
Glasnost produced disillusionment. Revelations about the crimes of the regime diluted allegiance to socialism. And it facilitated the Western inclinations of the already-disillusioned cohort of citizens under thirty.
Gorbachev also pursued perestroika, or reconstruction, which encompassed sweeping measures intended to reform the Soviet system in fundamental ways. State-owned enterprises were given a degree of independence in decision-making. Cooperatives and joint ventures were now to be permitted. Managers were to be elected by workers and the Communist Party democratized. Associations not under state control were no longer illegal. The USSR withdrew from Afghanistan, engaged in disarmament with the US, and began to withdraw troops from satellite states.
Perestroika was fraught with contradictions. Implementation of decentralization of the economy required the cooperation of ministers for whom it meant a loss of authority. And while enterprises were granted new autonomy, they could not charge market prices. The contradictions of perestroika were "compounded by miscalculations" such as major investments that were wasted.
Perestroika raised people's expectations just as the mid-80s drop in oil prices squeezed living standards.
Introducing electoral politics into the Communist Party brought to the fore "heretofore unmentionable problems" such as shortages and pollution. In addition, Gorbachev revived the soviets through elections and created an elected Congress of People's Deputies to represent the entire Union.
As part of the struggle to bring about this reconstruction of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev reorganized the Secretariat of the part. Cognizant of the fate of the last reformer, Khrushchev, Gorbachev sought to undercut the unity and strength of conservative elements that might attempt to remove him from power.
Dissolution
The Soviet Union (which did not include the Eastern bloc states of Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.) was composed of fifteen separate national republics, Russia of course being the largest. The Union was ostensibly a voluntary association from which any member--Georgia, Mongolia, Latvia--could legally withdraw.
Of course none did until 1990. This is because they were held together by the Communist Party, committed to the Union and holding a monopoly on political power. Like other European totalitarian movements of the first half of the twentieth century, Communism developed institutions parallel to the those of the state, yet outside its jurisdiction. While Nazism obliterated itself, Communism had had a further half-century to nurture this phenomena. It was this supra-national state structure of the Communist Party that held together the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev had inadvertently unhinged it with his reorganization of the Secretariat, weakening the top of the hierarchy.
The bloc went first. The competition with the West "strained the Soviet bloc...to the breaking point...". And the reforms "led to regime capitulation." Solidarity was invited to form a government in Poland. The Berlin wall came down. With few chips to bargain with, Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops from East Germany without having received any guarantee of neutrality from a unified Germany.
The Union's dissolution began with Lithuania's vote to secede in March, 1990. Latvia and Estonia declared their intentions to follow suit while Gorbachev tried in earnest to preserve some semblance of a union.
It was in this context that a bumbling attempt to preserve the Union was launch by a "gang of eight." The farcical quality of the undertaking and the subsequent disbanding of the Communist Party of Russia by Boris Yeltsin left Union supporters demoralized. Many USSR officials now drifted to Yeltsin as all remaining Union republics, save Russia, withdrew from the Union. "The putsch, rather than save the Union, radically accelerated its demise."
A Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was established in December, 1991, as a new voluntary association for the former Soviet states. A far less imposing institution than the former Union, possessing "no common parliament, president, or citizenship", Kotkin refers to it as a "phantom."
Privatization
Kotkin describes the 1990s privatization of Russia's state enterprises not as reform but as continued collapse.
Soviet elites were fleecing the state prior to becoming capitalists. They were not transformed into upstanding public servants by the collapse of the Union and the transition to the market. In fact, officials "used their official duties...to enrich themselves far more than they could or would have under Communism."
This reflected in part the heritage of the Soviet system, a system "governed by men, not laws." Many Russian laws went unenforced, and many laws essential to its new circumstances were not even enacted. Assertion of control over state assets and their privatization led to a centralization of authority in the executive of each republic. This also reflected Russia's past, however. The new Russian presidency was initially modeled on the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The constitution Yeltsin won approval for in the mid-90s drew from the tsarist as well as the Soviet past and reaffirmed the right of the president to issue decrees with the force of law.
An interesting element of Soviet policy in the 1990s is the dual consequences of the Communist legacy. The transition to a market economy was inhibited by the persistence of Soviet practices. Enterprises that were unprofitable managed to continue to function and even expand by utilizing "firm-to-firm dealings" innovated during the Soviet period. However, subsidized electricity and low rent held "utter catastrophe" at bay.
Conclusion
For Kotkin, Russia' main problem is a lack of liberal institutions. The Procuracy, an institution with no analog in Western societies, continues to exercise vast power and funding of the judicial system is insufficient. On the other hand, the necessary reforms never took place because under the circumstances "it was simply not possible...".
Kotkin's book is acerbic in its ridicule of the Soviet period and the subsequent collapse. Especially memorable, in a section entitled "Jockeying Invalids," he writes, "Even after the general secretary began drooling on himself in appearances on Soviet television, the clique around him took no action, other than to nominate him for still more medals." Kotkin's book is suffuse with such moments.
After such a long indictment, Kotkin's practical advice struck me as rather glib: "Join the Euro."
(I used endnotes in the original which did not transfer to blogger; I may add the citations at a later time.)
Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (2001) is a (very) concise account of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Deriding conventional explanations for the collapse--such as exhaustion born of the arms race--Kotkin attributes the collapse to the inadvertent consequences of the efforts a new generation of soviet elites to realize the promises of the October revolution.
Capitalism Versus Socialism
Kotkin's analysis begins with the historical context in which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) found itself in the last third of the twentieth century. The 1970s oil crisis made apparent the obsolescence of the industrial infrastructure that had transformed the advanced nations. In response, these countries embarked on reforms that were destined to propel them forward in what Soviet leaders called the scientific-technological revolution.
By the 1970s the West had already outpaced the USSR economically as the USSR entered an economic malaise. This divergence was dramatically compounded by two factors. The first was the striking of oil in Siberia; the second the steep rise in oil prices following the Arab oil embargo. The very crisis which precipitated modernization in the West provided the USSR with an excuse to forego it.
At a time when the West seemed crippled, oil wealth provided the USSR with cause for confidence. Other developments also boded well for Communism. In 1957 the USSR launched Sputnik, the first satellite. The USSR was buoyed by the 1959 Cuban Revolution. And the confidence of the regime was captured vividly in Khrushchev's 1960 outburst at the UN.
By the 1980s the vast majority of Soviet citizens would possess a television and most of the urban population would no longer dwell in communal barracks but in privates apartments with their own bath and kitchen (albeit spacially inadequate for the number of occupants). The overwhelming majority of households would own a refrigerator and well over half a washing machine.
Yet, the system was in trouble. Its relative economic stagnation cut to its very legitimacy. Capitalism ("real existing capitalism" we might say) had changed dramatically. Its interwar reputation for vast unemployment and imperialism was forgotten as welfare states emerged in the West that provided substantial social safety nets, and Western economies showered the consumer-citizen with automobiles, suburban homes, televisions, radios, etc. Again, this while communism basically stagnated. In addition, Western consumer goods were being imported into the satellite states by the 1980s and incipient consumerism rooted in a more highly educated population had developed within the Union itself. Western culture seeped into the Union in the form of television and music.
The dismantling of Western empires ultimately left the West with the moral high ground in the Cold War. This is because the USSR was meanwhile engaged in the brutal imposition of its own dominion over Eastern Europe.
In the mid-1980s oil output from Siberia began declining. World oil prices fell. The USSR was forced to confront "history's largest ever assemblage of obsolete equipment." It was under Mikhail Gorbachev that it would do so.
Gorbachev and Reform
Gorbachev, who became General Secretary in 1985, represented the coming to power (finally) of a younger cohort of Soviet leaders. He sought to make socialism more humane, and to reinvigorate it to compete with the West.
He began with a campaign of glasnost, or openness. Previously banned novels and films became available. Previously taboo subjects such as high rates of abortion and Stalin's deportations of ethnic groups were discussed in the Communist Party media. Even Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago was no longer banned.
Glasnost produced disillusionment. Revelations about the crimes of the regime diluted allegiance to socialism. And it facilitated the Western inclinations of the already-disillusioned cohort of citizens under thirty.
Gorbachev also pursued perestroika, or reconstruction, which encompassed sweeping measures intended to reform the Soviet system in fundamental ways. State-owned enterprises were given a degree of independence in decision-making. Cooperatives and joint ventures were now to be permitted. Managers were to be elected by workers and the Communist Party democratized. Associations not under state control were no longer illegal. The USSR withdrew from Afghanistan, engaged in disarmament with the US, and began to withdraw troops from satellite states.
Perestroika was fraught with contradictions. Implementation of decentralization of the economy required the cooperation of ministers for whom it meant a loss of authority. And while enterprises were granted new autonomy, they could not charge market prices. The contradictions of perestroika were "compounded by miscalculations" such as major investments that were wasted.
Perestroika raised people's expectations just as the mid-80s drop in oil prices squeezed living standards.
Introducing electoral politics into the Communist Party brought to the fore "heretofore unmentionable problems" such as shortages and pollution. In addition, Gorbachev revived the soviets through elections and created an elected Congress of People's Deputies to represent the entire Union.
As part of the struggle to bring about this reconstruction of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev reorganized the Secretariat of the part. Cognizant of the fate of the last reformer, Khrushchev, Gorbachev sought to undercut the unity and strength of conservative elements that might attempt to remove him from power.
Dissolution
The Soviet Union (which did not include the Eastern bloc states of Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.) was composed of fifteen separate national republics, Russia of course being the largest. The Union was ostensibly a voluntary association from which any member--Georgia, Mongolia, Latvia--could legally withdraw.
Of course none did until 1990. This is because they were held together by the Communist Party, committed to the Union and holding a monopoly on political power. Like other European totalitarian movements of the first half of the twentieth century, Communism developed institutions parallel to the those of the state, yet outside its jurisdiction. While Nazism obliterated itself, Communism had had a further half-century to nurture this phenomena. It was this supra-national state structure of the Communist Party that held together the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev had inadvertently unhinged it with his reorganization of the Secretariat, weakening the top of the hierarchy.
The bloc went first. The competition with the West "strained the Soviet bloc...to the breaking point...". And the reforms "led to regime capitulation." Solidarity was invited to form a government in Poland. The Berlin wall came down. With few chips to bargain with, Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops from East Germany without having received any guarantee of neutrality from a unified Germany.
The Union's dissolution began with Lithuania's vote to secede in March, 1990. Latvia and Estonia declared their intentions to follow suit while Gorbachev tried in earnest to preserve some semblance of a union.
It was in this context that a bumbling attempt to preserve the Union was launch by a "gang of eight." The farcical quality of the undertaking and the subsequent disbanding of the Communist Party of Russia by Boris Yeltsin left Union supporters demoralized. Many USSR officials now drifted to Yeltsin as all remaining Union republics, save Russia, withdrew from the Union. "The putsch, rather than save the Union, radically accelerated its demise."
A Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was established in December, 1991, as a new voluntary association for the former Soviet states. A far less imposing institution than the former Union, possessing "no common parliament, president, or citizenship", Kotkin refers to it as a "phantom."
Privatization
Kotkin describes the 1990s privatization of Russia's state enterprises not as reform but as continued collapse.
Soviet elites were fleecing the state prior to becoming capitalists. They were not transformed into upstanding public servants by the collapse of the Union and the transition to the market. In fact, officials "used their official duties...to enrich themselves far more than they could or would have under Communism."
This reflected in part the heritage of the Soviet system, a system "governed by men, not laws." Many Russian laws went unenforced, and many laws essential to its new circumstances were not even enacted. Assertion of control over state assets and their privatization led to a centralization of authority in the executive of each republic. This also reflected Russia's past, however. The new Russian presidency was initially modeled on the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The constitution Yeltsin won approval for in the mid-90s drew from the tsarist as well as the Soviet past and reaffirmed the right of the president to issue decrees with the force of law.
An interesting element of Soviet policy in the 1990s is the dual consequences of the Communist legacy. The transition to a market economy was inhibited by the persistence of Soviet practices. Enterprises that were unprofitable managed to continue to function and even expand by utilizing "firm-to-firm dealings" innovated during the Soviet period. However, subsidized electricity and low rent held "utter catastrophe" at bay.
Conclusion
For Kotkin, Russia' main problem is a lack of liberal institutions. The Procuracy, an institution with no analog in Western societies, continues to exercise vast power and funding of the judicial system is insufficient. On the other hand, the necessary reforms never took place because under the circumstances "it was simply not possible...".
Kotkin's book is acerbic in its ridicule of the Soviet period and the subsequent collapse. Especially memorable, in a section entitled "Jockeying Invalids," he writes, "Even after the general secretary began drooling on himself in appearances on Soviet television, the clique around him took no action, other than to nominate him for still more medals." Kotkin's book is suffuse with such moments.
After such a long indictment, Kotkin's practical advice struck me as rather glib: "Join the Euro."
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