Soviet Showdown : And the Winner Is. . . : The West Can Help by Getting Over Its Gorbymania

For at least a year and a half now, I have been increasingly disappointed by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

I was in Helsinki, when the fascist putsch struck Moscow. On Russian Republic President Boris N. 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 to the person of the Soviet leader 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 those tragic days--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 necessary to come upon his arrival 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 the imminent danger. Rather, he chose to tell an emotional story of his own 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 I. 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 A. Moiseyev or people close to the conspiracy. Later, under the pressure from the mass media and Yeltsin’s insistence, those nominations were revoked.

Last Tuesday, it seemed as if the second coup began, which continued on Wednesday. All the old president’s men crept out of the cracks, the people who either intentionally or through their cowardice and weakness of character aided and abetted the conspiracy. I do hope that they will be stopped, too.

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 Gorbymania 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. I mean his attempts--and his first steps did create such an impression--to lead at least some perpetrators of the coup away from full responsibility, to retain many of those who do not want and cannot move forward to the country’s democratic renewal, and to rescue his old political line of endless hesitations and unprincipled compromises, which is bound to lead the country to an economic collapse and a political catastrophe.

Because of all those things, 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 is 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 there, 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 time demands.

Of course, it is up to ourselves; only we can do it. Can the West help? Yes, it can--by dropping Gorbymania and paying close attention, among other things, to the issues of aid to the Soviet Union, to the opinions of those who in these days of reckoning became the true leaders of the country and of the democratic reform.

Let me name them just in case: Boris Yeltsin, of course, the main hero of these five days in August; Russian Prime Minister Ivan S. Silayev; Ruslan Khasbulatov, acting chairman of the Russian parliament; former Gorbachev adviser Alexander N. Yakovlev; former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, Russian Republic Vice President Alexander Rutskoy; Vladimir Lukin, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Russian Parliament; Gennady Burbulis, state secretary of the Russian government; and Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev.

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.