Politics, Paradigms, and Intelligence Failures: Why So Few Predicted the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Why So Few Predicted the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Ofira Seliktar

Author:Ofira Seliktar [Seliktar, Ofira]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317462446
Google: VJxzCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-05-20T12:39:41+00:00

The Revisionist Paradigm Vindicated? Gorbachev and the Reformability of the Soviet System

Gorbachev’s ascension to power galvanized Sovietology. The predictive endeavor became especially valued, prompting academics and pundits alike to speculate on Gorbachev’s “real intentions” and creating in the process a thriving “Soviet studies industry” (Rutland 1993, 109; Ulam 2000, 256). Since, as noted, predictions are shaped by scholarly paradigms, the rush to analyze the future of change in the Soviet Union refocused attention on the core assumption of the revisionist-pluralist and totalitarian schools of thought.

Mainstream Sovietologists had to make a major adjustment in order to explain the Gorbachev phenomenon. After years of underestimating the social malaise and economic decay, some leading scholars admitted that the Soviet system was in deep crisis. Describing the Brezhnev legacy as “harsh,” one of them wrote that “the weight of ineffectual and archaic political and economic institutions conspires to deny the country access to the global and third revolution” (Bialer 1986b, 57–80; Bialer and Afferica 1985, 643; Hough 1985; Lapidus 1986b). Political scientists also became less optimistic about problems of ethnicity and nationality (Lapidus 1986a). Olcott (1982; 1986, 73), who in 1982 showed little apprehension about Muslims, was now describing them as Moscow’s “troublesome minority.” Still, an expert who analyzed center–periphery relations as part of “demand articulation in the Soviet Union” found that an “asymmetrical but genuine exchange” and “licensed demandingness” existed. In the language of comparative politics still favored by pluralists, this finding implied an orderly exchange in Moscow-republic relations (Breslauer 1986, 651, 679).

Though finally admitting to Soviet distress, liberal scholars were convinced that the crisis of performance and legitimacy was far from terminal. Responding to Marshall Goldman (1983) and other samples of “crisis literature,” Hough (1986, 283–84) warned against what he described as the “comfortable feeling that the Soviet Union is in irreversible decline.” He predicted that the young Gorbachev was determined to reverse the decline and might even “usher the new century in triumph.” Another scholar argued that “the emphasis upon crisis in the communist system is premature,” adding that the “economic difficulties [the Soviets] may face may be mediated by political action” (White 1986, 470). Still another contended that “economic stress provoking political failure is conceivable,” but not “very likely.” He went on to assert that in the “final analysis stability depends on legitimacy” and that the “legitimacy of the Soviet regime in the eyes of its people and elites is much stronger than many Western analysts assume” (Bialer 1986b, 36, 335, 345).

As the promise of reforms turned into reality, the revisionists felt increasingly vindicated in their long-standing belief that the Soviet system was capable of reforming itself. Revisionists were first to assert that Gorbachev was a genuine reformer and predicted significant change in the system (Cohen 1986, 78–95; Hough 1986; Schmidt-Hauer 1986, 151). There was less certainty as to what a reformed communist system would look like, triggering a broad discussion on regime transition. With models such as “hesitant modernization” and “centralized rationality” bandied around, the formula of market socialism,

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