Ever the Survivor, Gorbachev Transforms Yet Again

Americans were surprised last week when Mikhail S. Gorbachev again turned a deaf ear to free democratic expression in the Baltic states, nullifying in advance the results of Lithuania’s referendum on independence. Still wishing to preserve the heroic figure who thrilled us with his daring reforms and humanistic declarations, we somehow don’t register Gorbachev’s sanctioning the slaughter of citizens in Riga, his muzzling of the independent press and his unleashing of army and KGB goons to patrol the streets of Soviet cities.

Yet the chilling metamorphosis of Gorbachev the reformer into Gorbachev the repressor is not without antecedent. Gorbachev is a survivor. For someone who literally changed the world, Gorbachev is a man whose disturbing personal history has been too long overlooked by the West.

Gorbachev is a man of many faces, many lives. To thrive within a totalitarian system, he has repeatedly recast his personality. Starting as a hot-tempered country Cossack, he has transformed himself into a conformist, an opportunist, a reformer, a revolutionary and, last spring, entered his fifth life as a “dictator for democracy.” That move was predictive of his stunning shift away from democratization.

However Gorbachev must change to keep control, he will. At age 14, he adopted the Communist Party as his father-mother-god in order to rise in a despotic system. But the suit of a lock-step apparatchik did not fit. He honed instead his ability as an improvisational actor and his powers of persuasion.

At Moscow State University, Gorbachev began his double life. By day, he was a hard-line propagandist who informed on fellow students for the KGB. At night in his dorm, he sat in on dangerous debates about the excesses of Stalinism. Yet even his closest classmates were never quite sure where Gorbachev stood.

After graduation, he was denied work in Moscow--presumably because the party discovered stains on his background: his grandfather’s arrest as an “enemy of the people” and the fact that his territory had been under German occupation. Sent back to the sleepy territory of Stavropole, Gorbachev needed a sponsor. So he set about cultivating older men with the power to advance him, becoming expert at knowing intuitively what they wanted to hear, adapting his body language and his ideas to mirror his patrons and ensuring they would recommend this bright young man to replace them as they moved up or died off. Gorbachev became a brilliant chameleon.

The peasant from Privolnoye had not yet turned 40 when he became one of only a hundred or so territorial party bosses. Although his region, the Caucasus, was remote, Gorbachev’s position made him, in effect, the maitre d’ of one of the Soviet Union’s most exclusive pleasure grounds. Powerful “angels” came down regularly from Moscow. One was Mikhail S. Suslov, a ruthless automaton who proved himself to Josef Stalin by inflicting a pitiless postwar occupation on Lithuania. The other was Yuri V. Andropov, chief of the KGB. Both men, bitter enemies, would look for the up-and-coming party boss who would be waiting at the train station in his Panama hat, ready to take them to their spas and supply them with whatever they desired.

Andropov was captivated by the young man’s non-standard way of thinking and further charmed by dinners with his literate wife, Raisa. The KGB chief developed a father-son relationship with Gorbachev. Suslov, by then a kingmaker in the Brezhnev clique, spoke up for Gorbachev in the Kremlin. It paid off.

At the breathtakingly young age of 47, this yokel was catapulted into the land of kings: Moscow. His task as a Politburo member was to improve the efficiency of the nation’s agriculture.

In six years he accomplished nothing, but it made no difference. Gorbachev had become initiated into the unwritten rule of party life: Advancement is never based on success, only on personal loyalty, and that requires being “flexible” about one’s principles. So he created a policy that represented a total reversal of the reforms he himself had championed. Gorbachev invented the Food Program to suit Leonid I. Brezhnev’s taste, knowing it would be a disaster for Soviet agriculture.

When Gorbachev came to power, he continued to placate the Communist old guard through his good friend Yegor K. Ligachev, the ultimate Bolshevik. At the same time he cultivated such progressives as Eduard A. Shevardnadze. He maneuvered brilliantly between these opposing political forces--as long as he didn’t have to make a final choice.

Gorbachev remained a romantic socialist. His vision as a reformer was New Deal in reverse--a socialism renovated by borrowings from capitalism. But once Soviet society polarized, in the face of perestroika’s failure, the two sides of Gorbachev’s split personality could not be held in balance. A year ago, he began having a political nervous breakdown.

Over the first half of 1990, Gorbachev had many public “emotional accidents,” as Soviets called them. He could no longer control his temper. He singled out progressives for abuse and lurched from one contradiction to another. As his inner control disintegrated, he grasped for greater, even dictatorial, external control. Events were rushing past, scattering his renowned powers of improvisation into a shower of quickly extinguished sparks.

As each jubilant spasm of liberalization gave birth to regional democratic leaders, Gorbachev’s own authority shrank. As he desperately engineered more paper powers for himself, he reverted to the institutions of repression he came from--the party apparat and the KGB.

His refusal to submit to a general election, or to step down as party boss once he’d anointed himself President, revealed “democratization” was a tool to him, not a commitment. To be a dictator for democracy is, of course, an oxymoron, and the attempt paralyzed the leadership of President Gorbachev.

Into the vacuum rushed his nemesis, Boris Yeltsin. Head in his hands, Gorbachev watched from the balcony of the Russian Parliament as Yeltsin won the presidency of Russia. Hoping to co-opt his rival, Gorbachev made a peace pact with Yeltsin. Over the summer, Gorbachev’s team of economic advisers thrashed out details of the plan for transition to a market economy. Progressives were euphoric. They thought Gorbachev had given his blessing. Suddenly, last fall, he began retreating in every direction.

Lost and confused, Gorbachev allowed himself to be dragged back by the conservative party barons. Aligned now with hard-liners, they offered Gorbachev a pact with the devil.

Nov. 17, 1990, was the night of the “black colonels.” These military hard-liners offered to draft Gorbachev even greater presidential powers--provided he get rid of his reformers, restore central control over the economy and issue decrees allowing for the use of force against civilians. The moment of moral choice was upon him. Obsessed with the thought of losing power, he threw in his lot with the conservatives.

A tragic hero of Tolstoyan proportions, a rapidly aging and tired Gorbachev claims last month’s killings of civilians in Lithuania were “a tragic experience for me.” He promises his presidential power will protect the achievements of glasnost and perestroika. But not one of his soul mates is left. Gorbachev did not defend his friends. Now hostage to his former enemies, he is alone.

Ever the survivor, Gorbachev may cling to power as long as the forces of darkness find him useful to do their dirty work. But they know he is not one of them. As they circle him, demanding more blood, he may soon run out of improvisations for the benefit of the West. It is not easy to put a human face on the return of rule by force and fear.