Man, Them Russkies Were Tricky!

I once wanted to write a thriller where a detective in the 1990s uncovers that the Russians actually won the cold war, and have secretly been running all our top institutions of government, media, and business, fooling the American people that they have been licked until they can really drop the axe on us (unless they can be stopped in time!). I could never figure out how to make the conspiracy work, and it turns out I should have just turned to Lawrence Martin of the Toronto Globe and Mail:

It was Mikhail Gorbachev, who with a sweeping democratic revolution at home and one peace initiative after another abroad, backed the Gipper into a corner, leaving him little choice -- actors don't like to be upstaged -- but to concede there was a whole new world opening up over there.

As a journalist based first in Washington, then in Moscow, I was fortunate to witness the intriguing drama from both ends.

In R.R., the Soviet leader knew he was dealing with an archetype Cold Warrior. To bring him around to "new thinking" would require a rather wondrous set of works. And so the Gorbachev charm offensive began. The first offering, in 1985, was the Kremlin's unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests. "Propaganda!" the White House declared.

And that part where Gorby cleverly threw the war in Afghanistan, made all the USSR's institutions collapse, then had himself kidnapped by hard liners so that he could come creeping back and bow out to Yeltsin while the system he'd dedicated his life to disintegrated and vanished from the face of the earth… He was just playin' us all along!

Martin's article is interesting, however, for recalling Gorby's charm offensive, which really has been airbrushed out of the record. It was a surprisingly effective effort, and Gorbachev was more charming than history (so far) has admitted. Remember Gorby's slap-happy visit to the Big Apple? Gorby popping unscheduled out of his limo to press the flesh with ordinary Americans? The Saturday Night Live sketch where the Reagans and Gorbachevs do a joint appearance and the Reagans keep getting upstaged as fawning audience members ask Gorby "Couldn't you come here and become president of our country?"

It all happened. I was there when Winston put the evidence down the memory hole.

Comments

[Larry]

Are you kidding? Gorby's gotten way too much credit for his charm. The left still fawns over him. Directors put him in movies (and let me tell you, he's not half the actor Reagan was). What's gone down the memory hole is his popularity in his homeland, which polling showed to be in the single digits.

[Jeff]

If anyone in Hollywood stumbles across this comment page, they will lift the USSR-wins book idea. Except they will make it a comedy with Rob Schnider as an inept low-level Government official who stumbles across the truth and must reveal it to the american people. It's basically a chase film. His conspiracy-nut roommate is played by Jack Black, his suspicious girlfriend who always thinks he's cheating is Drew Barrymore. The TV ads feature a Vines cover of Back In The USSR.

[jon]

There's something to be said for that line of thinking. Some ambitious Politburo members got seriously rich in the years following the Soviet collapse after they had taken control of formerly state-owned (is that redundant in this case?) businesses. It might be easier to steal wealth in a semi-capitalist state than a communist one, after all.

[Pavel]

I think if anything, too much is made of the so-called collapse of Communism.

I'm speaking specifically of Russia itself which is, and been has since times immemorial, a kleptocracy. It just so happens that it no longer has the organizatized power to steal from anything but its own people.

Secretly running our institutions? They're not even openly running their own!

[JDM]

"It just so happens that it no longer has the organizatized power to steal from anything but its own people."

Yes, such a minor detail.

[The name's Plissken]

Gorbachev was a charmer??...ask the people in Vilnius and Riga who were cut down by tanks in January 1991 about how charming "Gorby" was.

[Roger Sweeny]

Like John Lindsay, Gorbachev was more charming the further away from his home base you were.

[Mo]

jon,
It's not easier to steal from a semi-capitalist state. The big difference is that there's wealth to steal from a semi-capitalist state.

And who could forget Goby's appearance on Alvin and the Chipmunks.

[jon]

If there wasn't anything to steal in Stalin's day, he'd shoot some people, have the scared people make something, shoot them, and then steal it. There was always something to steal, but it's more cost effective to steal the ownership of actual enterprises than the wages of slaves.

[SimpsonsGorby]

"I stop by to bring you present for warming of house. Instead, I find you grappling with local oaf."

[Gimme Back My Dog]

Tim,

I think Jeff is on the right track. Not only does the story work better as a comedy, but if you are pitching it and someone points out the improbability of your story you have the perfect retort: It's a joke, you retard!

[Buck Smith]

The greatest Saruday Night Live sketch involving a Russian leader was when John Belushi played Leonid Brezhnev at a summit with Jimmy Carter. While a translator said " The Russian people extend their best wishes to the american people... blah blah blah..", Belshi used his hands to mime an ICBM launching, traveling through space and nuking a (presumably US) city.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

Just to make clear, I'm not making any case for Gorby, just reliving what now seems like a strange moment in history. Larry is, I think, correct that Gorby's gotten too much credit from historians. I'm just thinking back to that time when he seemed to be charming the pants off Americans. (What he was doing to the Russians at the time is another story.)

[Eric II]

I'm a little too young to remember the SNL skit, but I do remember the opening scene from the Naked Gun, in which Leslie Nielsen crashes a conference of foreign despots featuring, among others, Qaddafi, Khomeinei, Arafat, and America's favorite Communist. As they discuss a plot to bring America to its knees, one of them asks whether they should be worried if the Americans will catch on. To which Gorby chuckles and says something along the lines of "The Americans? In some of their polls, I'm even more popular than their President!"

Shortly afterwards, Nielsen goes beserk, and in the mayhem manages not only to beat the snot out of everyone there, but also to rub Gorbachev's birthmark off of his face.

[HH]

Just goes to show you, don't base gullible schlub journalists in a place where there's state-run media, because they'll soon become part of the state-run media reporting back here.

[Jason Ligon]

"and don't want to admit that he basically abandoned the foreign policy strategy that they fell in love with, or that a more engaging Soviet policy could actually pay dividends."

The policy was not to go to war with the USSR, the policy was to bring down the empire. Phase one of the policy is to define their regime as evil, and create an overwhelming military threat. Phase two of the same policy isn't to invade Moscow, but to exploit areas where they began to bend. Reagan's 'about face' on engagement was hardly that, it was a recognition that phase 1 was paying dividends.

Too much is made about the 'betrayal' of his hawks. The hawks got what they wanted in the long run, and in probably the best way they could hope for.

[joe]

Many of them were howling about betrayals and naivete at the time, Jason. Especially on the arms reduction deals. These initiatives were seen as a resurrection of the hated detente, an easing of the pressure that brought Gorbachev to power, and to the table, in the first place. Good stories about this phenomenon in today's Slate.

[John Hensley]

Tim, you can't out-nut the conspiracy nuts. The Birchites have been working on that theory for decades, and advancing it in the form you describe since 1989.

Remember that next time you hear an old-line conservative say that neoconservatives are crypto-trotskyists.

[Jim Walsh]

Then there's the Tim Robbins version where the hero discovers that the USSR is running the show, and does nothing, because he realizes that we're all better off...

[joe]

Gorby did achieve his purpose - to seize the momemtum and change the paradigm of American-Soviet relations. He forced Reagan, who had long been committed to confrontation, to respond rather than to drive the dynamic.

What Reagan doesn't get enough credit for is his response - he wheeled around (upsetting some of his more blood thirsty longtime allies), and started holding talks, saying nice things in public, and recognizing that the USSR had taken steps forward. In fact, as at the Berlin Wall, he held up the promises of glastnost and prestroika as realistic, respectable goals that the Soviets should be working towards - in the service of plinking them for failing to meet them, but still, his words recognized that the Evil Empire description was outdated. Had Reagan continued to stick by his old script, it would have been a major PR victory for the Soviets, who would have been able to claim that the mean old Americans are hammering them no matter what they do, thus undercutting legitimate American complaints about Soviet imperialism and human rights violations. Reagan not only parried this offensive, but turned its force against the Soviets. In doing so, he took back the initiative.

Of course, neither side wants to recognize this reality. Liberals like the vision of simplistic, truculent Ronald Reagan, and don't want to admit that he could be flexible or fair to the Soviets. Conservatives like the vision of a black-n-white, heroic anti-Soviet warrior, and don't want to admit that he basically abandoned the foreign policy strategy that they fell in love with, or that a more engaging Soviet policy could actually pay dividends.