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Khrushchev and Gorbachev as Reformers: A Comparison
Article in British Journal of Political Science · January 1993

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Khrushchev and Gorbachev as Reformers: A Comparison
Author(s): W. J. Tompson
Source: British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 77-105
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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B.J.Pol.S. 23, 77-105 Copyright? 1993 CambridgeUniversityPress
Printed in Great Britain
Khrushchev and Gorbachev as Reformers:

A Comparison
W. J. TOMPSON*
Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev both pursued reformist policies during their respect-
ive periods as head of the CPSU. Although their policies were very different in substance,
the political problems they faced in prosecuting reform were quite similar. The discussion
here focuses on the obstacles facing reform-minded Soviet leaders and the options available
for overcoming them. Both Khrushchev and Gorbachev were dependent for their position
and for the implementation of their policies on a party-state apparat whose interests lay in
opposing radical reform and in limiting the leader's power. As a result both men were in
a particularly weak position from which to pursue reformist policies.
We were scared - really scared. We were afraid the thaw might unleash a flood, which
we wouldn't be able to control and which could drown us.
-N. S. Khrushchev,
Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament'
At first glance, it might appear that Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev
have too little in common to permit a useful comparison of their careers as
reformers. The radicalization of Soviet politics after 1988 pushed the reform
process far beyond anything contemplated in Khrushchev's time. Nevertheless,
Soviet and Western observers have seen the Khrushchev period both as an
inspiration and as a cautionary tale for later reformers.2 During the early
phases of perestroika, Soviet discussions of economic reform often looked to
the experiences of the 1950s and 1960s.3 Not only external observers, but
the Soviet leaders of the 1980s themselves drew lessons from Khrushchev's
career. A comparison of these two reform attempts should help us to understand
better the sources of and obstacles to change in the Soviet system.
The discussion here is divided into three parts. First, a simple theoretical
schema for analysing reform processes in general is presented. Secondly, the
reform efforts of Khrushchev and Gorbachev are examined in terms of the
categories laid out in this schema. Finally, more general conclusions are drawn
on the basis of this examination, concentrating particularly on the reasons
why Khrushchev was ousted before he could do lasting damage to the Soviet
* Corpus Christi
College, Oxford. The author is indebted to Archie Brown, Mary McAuley
and an anonymous referee of this Journal for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this
article.
Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1974, pp. 78-9.
2 Thomas
Sherlock, 'Khrushchev Observed', Report on the USSR, 8 June 1990, p. 17.
3 See, for example, E. Ya. Zubkova, 'Uroki nezavershennykh povorotov 1956 i 1965 godov',
Voprosy istorii KPSS, 4 (April 1988); L. A. Openkin, 'Byli li povoroty v razvitii sovetskogo obsh-
chestva v 50-kh i 60-kh godakh?', Voprosy istorii KPSS, 8 (August 1988); and Gavriil Popov,,
'Dva tsveta vremeni, ili uroki Khrushcheva', Ogonek, 42 (October 1989), p. 14.
78 TOMPSON
system, while Gorbachev succeeded in radically transforming it before any

attempt was made to remove him. The discussion stresses the importance of
the structural 'limits to reform' and the role of the 'recalcitrantapparat'.
WHAT IS REFORM?
The logical point of departure for any attempt to compare Khrushchev and
Gorbachev as reformers is to define precisely the term 'reform'. Reform repre-
sents a significant change in the political regime but falls short of transforming
it into something else. For the purposes of this article, it will be defined as
a policy deliberately undertaken to bring about a significant alteration in the
authoritative allocation of values within the political system, which broadens
access to the sources and instruments of power and authority (including control
over material resources, the employment of physical force and communica-
tions), but which nevertheless preserves the continuity and identity of the
regime.4A 'regime' is here understood as a group of political leaders pursuing
certain goals, by means of a strategy, implemented through certain institutions
and aimed at a particular constituency.5 Reform may involve changes in the
goals or strategies of the leaders, or in the institutions through which they
operate.6
Several implications follow from this definition of reform. The first is that
most leaders undertake reform policies at some time during their tenure in
office. Where Khrushchev and Gorbachev stand out among Soviet leaders is
in the wide range of issue areas over which they introduced clearly reformist
measures. Secondly, not all changes in access to the sources of power and
authority constitute reforms. Even largely inertial, conservative regimes are
not static in this respect: the immobilism and drift at the top during the late
4 This definition, as well as much of the discussion which follows, draws

heavily on Gustafson.
See Thane Gustafson, Reform in Soviet Politics: Lessons of Recent Policies on Land and Water
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. ix-x. The phrase 'authoritative allocation
of values' is David Easton's; for an examination of its meaning and implications, see David Easton,
The Political System. An Inquiry into the State of Political Science (New York: Knopf, 1953),
pp. 129-34.
5
Stephen Whitefield, 'Soviet Industrial Ministries as Political Institutions' (doctoral thesis,
Oxford University, 1991), p. 25.
6 The use of the term 'regime' in this discussion is quite deliberate. My analysis will proceed
in terms of the Soviet regime rather than (as is the case with many similar discussions) the Soviet
political system. Although the two phrases are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not the
same thing. Unlike political systems, regimes are 'wilful human agglomerations that actively
implement policies' and are capable of pursuing aims and of identifying and reacting to threats
to their survival (Alexander Motyl, Will the Non-Russians Rebel? State, Ethnicity and Stability
in the USSR (New York: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. x). Focusing on the regime (on
the actions and interests of individuals, groups and real institutions) rather than on the political
system as a unit of analysis is intended to reduce the tendency towards over-abstraction.
Khrushchevand Gorbachevas Reformers 79
Brezhnev years led to a considerable de facto devolution of power to lower

officials.7 Reform involves a deliberate attempt by its proponents to introduce
such changes. Thirdly, changing established priorities, structures, functions
and procedures can create serious political threats either to the reformer's own
power or to the regime as a whole. For this reason, political actors usually
take up reform only in response to a serious threat or threats either to their
survival in power or to high priority goals. Reformist policies involve an attempt
to rescue essential values (in terms of regime survival or goals) by sacrificing
inessential ones.8 Because reformist measures are intended to protect and
preserve the regime, they must also have limits; otherwise the reforms themselves
might come to pose an even graver threat to regime continuity than the problems
that precipitated them. Reform policies thus provide considerable insight into
the minds of political leaders. Knowing what prompts reform tells us what
politicians see as threatening, while the limits they impose - or try to impose
- on the reform process tell us what they view as the essential pillars of the
regime. There is no guarantee that the study of reform will reveal the actual
threats and supports of a regime. It can reveal only what leaders believe to
be the major threats to and sources of their power. They may be (and often
are) quite wrong in their assessments.
Power Problems Facing the Reformer

To the extent that reform involves a redistribution of power resources within
the system, it is bound to create losers as well as winners - not only among
the reformer's opponents, but also among his supporters.9In order to counter
the potential political threat created by this state of affairs, the reformer must
either assemble a sufficiently powerful coalition of potential winners to support
his reforms or find some way in which to compensate the losers for their losses.
Losses suffered in one currency (say, power) can sometimes be compensated
in another (such as physical security). This in some cases allows for the relatively
painless execution of a limited reform. The pro-reform coalition may also
include potential losers, provided they believe that they would lose even more
in the absence of reform. Nevertheless, most would-be reformers face a power
problem. The more radical the necessary reforms, the more acute the problem.
How can a leader undertake a fundamental redistribution of power resources
in the political system without alienating .his own supporters and undermining
his political base? Alfred Stepan has analysed this power-reform dilemma in
7
Pravda, 13 January 1988; Gregory Gleason, Federalism and Nationalism: The Struggle for
RepublicanRights in the USSR (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990), pp. 5-6, 108, 130.
8
Gustafson, Reform in Soviet Politics, p. x.
9 Masculine pronouns are used throughout this article when referringto a hypothetical reforming
leader; this is done solely for the sake of economy of expression.
80 TOMPSON
terms of a regime's 'defensive' and 'offensive' projects.'? The leader's ability

to pursue an 'offensive' project (basic reform of the regime) that threatens
important political interests depends to a great extent on his ability to convince
other actors of the importance and urgency of his 'defensive' project (preserva-
tion of the regime in the face of serious threats) and to link the two projects
as closely together as possible.
This power problem was especially acute in the Soviet case for two reasons.
First, the number of actors involved in leadership selection was always quite
restricted. The small size of this leadership 'selectorate' limited the space avail-
able to politicians for mobilizing political resources." Given that the pursuit
of significant reform is likely to result in conflict with entrenched interests,
the would-be reformer's best hope is often to draw new players into the game,
actors and interests who stand to gain from his policies. Yet the narrowness
of the political space in the Soviet case made it all the more difficult to do
so. Efforts to expand the selectorate were bound to generate resistance on
the part of those already 'enfranchised'. Both Khrushchev and Gorbachev met
with such opposition as they attempted to break down or circumvent resistance
to their policies in this way.
Secondly, the most important interests represented within this limited selec-
torate were the party and state apparats. The probable victims of serious reform
thus were not only the very same actors on whom the leader depended for
political support, they were also the administrators and officials on whom he
relied for implementation of his policies. Attempts to escape from this trap
occupied a great deal of the time and energy of both Khrushchev and Gorba-
chev.'2 The overlap between the leader's political base and the administrative
network through which he had to implement his policies made it essential
for Soviet reformers to win over potential losers to the cause of reform either
by convincing them that they had even more to lose if reform did not take
place (or if they did not support it) or by compensating them for their losses.13
To speak in this way of 'the apparat' as an entity may create the impression
that it is seen as an undifferentiated monolith which did not change after 1953.
Clearly this was not the case. Different individuals and institutions within the
apparat had different views and interests, and it did indeed change over time.
Some representatives of the apparat were ardent exponents of reform. To speak
of the apparat's opposition to reform in both the Khrushchev and the Gorba-
chev periods is clearly a simplification of its position, but it is not an unjustified
oversimplification. In both instances, basic reform represented a threat to its
interests: the introduction of market forces threatened both the ministries and
'0 Alfred Stepan, 'State Power in the Southern Cone of Latin America', in Peter B. Evans
et al., eds, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 319-20ff.
" Whitefield, Soviet IndustrialMinistries, p. 17.
12
Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', pp. 16-17.
13
This is a simplification of William Riker's scheme of side payments; see The Theoryof Political
Coalitions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962), pp. 109-13.
the territorial party apparatus, and the opening up of politics threatened the
party-state elite's monopoly of political power.14
Stages of the Reform Process

In order to give focus to the comparison between Khrushchev and Gorbachev,
the reform processes of the 1950s and the 1980s will be considered in terms
of a common framework, a series of steps through which any reform process
is likely to evolve. The delineation of these steps should not, however, be taken
to imply that they actually occur in an orderly sequence or that they will take
place at the same time across issue areas. Indeed, most of them are continuous
processes operating in parallel with one another.
The first step in the process, implicit in the definition of reform, is threat
identification. To say that the reformer is responding to a particular threat
is not, however, to say that fear is the only motivation for reform. The threat
may not be to the leader's position or survival, but rather to high priority
goals. A leader's private motives may also stem partially or even primarily
from 'an ideological bad conscience'l5 - this seems to have been the case with
Khrushchev and Gorbachev.'6 But in order to generate support for reform
measures among other actors, the leader must point to a threat to specific,
shared, high priority values. The second stage involves the determination of
a general reform strategy. The threat having been identified, an attempt must
be made to delineate the means and ends of reform. This strategy is likely
to include not only measures directly concerned with achieving the reformers'
goals, but also steps designed to generate support for the reform effort. This
is an ongoing process, and the ends and means of policy may change consider-
ably over time.
This aspect of reform strategy touches upon the third step, coalition building.
On whom can the reformer rely in his assault on vested interests? In whose
interests is the reform? What measures can be taken to compensate and thus
to bring on board potential losers? It is often to the reformers' advantage
to assemble the broadest coalition possible. Riker and others have observed
that a sense of threat on the part of political actors may cause them to construct
coalitions far larger than the 'minimum winning coalition' which they would
be likely to form in normal circumstances.'7 Coalition building is an ongoing
operation, especially if the reform programme is very broad. Coalitions will
14
S. Frederick Starr, 'The Road to Reform', in Abraham Brumberg, ed., Chronicleof a Revolu-
tion: A Western-Soviet Inquiryinto Perestroika (New York: Pantheon, 1990), p. 22.
15 Jeremy Azrael, 'Varieties of de-Stalinization', in Chalmers Johnson, ed.,
Change in Communist
Systems (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1970), pp. 135-51, at p. 142.
16
Khrushchev, for example, privately acknowledged guilt for his role in the crimes of the Stalin
era; see 'Problemy istorii i sovremennosti', Voprosyistorii KPSS, 2 (February 1989), p. 53. Gorba-
chev would appear to have felt genuine revulsion at the stagnation, corruption and injustice of
the system of which he was a part; see Pravda, 20 May 1987, p. 1.
17 Richard G. Niemi, 'Coalitions', in J. Kuper, ed., Political Science and Political Theory(London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 25-7, at p. 26.

82 TOMPSON
shift as the issues at the top of the political agenda change and as the results
of past reforms and likely outcomes of future ones become clear.18
As the reform strategy is pursued, the reformeris likely to face thefragmenta-
tion of the reform coalition and growing resistance to the reform programme.
Divisions arise between those who wish to carry reform further and those
who wish to impose narrower limits on it. Cleavages may also develop among
those sharing a commitment to further reform about the direction it should
take.'9 Ultimately, the limits to reform are discovered, either in terms of what
the reformers are able to achieve or in terms of what they are willing to attempt.
The limits of reform are to be found at the point where the gravity of the
threat posed by further reform is felt (by the leader or by other powerful actors)
to exceed that of the threat which prompted it.20 The limits of reform are
also influenced by outcomes, since the success or failure of the reformers in
'delivering the goods' in the past will affect their power and authority, and
hence their ability (not to say willingness) to go further along the path of
reform.
KHRUSHCHEV AND GORBACHEV AS REFORMERS
The analysis of the reform efforts of Khrushchev and Gorbachev in this section
follows as closely as possible the stages of the reform process outlined above.
There is, however, some overlap between stages, and the decision to address
a particular issue in connection with one stage and not another is in some
cases a matter of judgement. This is unavoidable, given that the stages in the
schema do not follow one another in a precise order but rather unfold concur-
rently. Thus it is impossible, for example, to discuss reform strategies without
some reference to coalition building.
ThreatIdentification
Nikita Khrushchev came to power at a time when there was a broad consensus
among the country's elite on the need for change. A limited amount of de-
Stalinization was quietly initiated immediately after the death of the vozhd'
in 1953.21Stalin's successors were unsure of their position and faced pressure
18 This is one of the reasons for rejecting accounts of Khrushchev's leadership like Carl Linden's,
which treat Khrushchev as an embattled reformerfighting a losing struggle against the neo-Stalinists
who surround him; matters were far more complicated than Linden's account implies. See Carl
A. Linden, Khrushchevand the Soviet Leadership, 1957-1964 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1966). For a critique of Linden's views, see W. J. Tompson, 'Nikita Khrushchev and the
Territorial Apparatus, 1953-1964' (doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1991), pp. 284-90.
'9 Richard Sakwa, Gorbachevand His Reforms, 1985-1990 (Deddington, Oxon: Philip Allan,
1990), p. 40.
20
Gustafson, Reform in Soviet Politics, p. x.
21
See, for example, L. A. Openkin, 'Na istoricheskom pereput'e', Voprosyistorii KPSS, 1 (Janu-
ary 1990) and E. Ya. Zubkova, 'Khrushchev, Malenkov i "ottepel"", Kommunist, 9 (September
1990).
for change from at least three sources. First, there was the pressure to raise
the standard of living of the population and, in particular, to improve the
situation concerning agriculture and food supply. Secondly, there were pres-
sures from within the elite for greater physical security and a greater degree
of regularity in the management of the party and state.22Finally, the regime
faced a legitimacy problem. In the course of the Stalin years, the legitimacy
of the Soviet regime had been pulled loose from its original ideological moorings
and tied ever more closely to the person of Stalin.23 Following his death,
the Soviet Union's leaders had to cast about for another legitimating principle.
Gorbachev came to power in 1985 faced with a threat which was narrower
but more acute. While the Soviet system was by this time facing a wide array
of political and social problems, the impulse for reform arose from one source
above all others: economic stagnation. Not only did deteriorating economic
performance hinder attempts to address these other issues, it also created a
legitimacy problem for the regime. By 1985 the legitimacy of the ruling CPSU
rested not upon a charismatic or personalistic basis as it had in 1953, but
on successful economic performance.24Whatever its formal claims, the defacto
linchpin of the party's legitimacy was its success as an economic manager.
As long as economic performance was reasonably good, this claim enjoyed
some credibility. By 1985, falling rates of growth and the accumulating evidence
of economic (and, consequently, social) stagnation had left it in tatters; this
economic stagnation also undermined the Soviet Union's ability to support
its foreign and defence policies.
Despite the problems faced by Soviet leaders in 1953 and 1985, it would
be a mistake to see immediate reform attempts as having been inevitable. In
neither case is there any evidence to suggest that the leadership was faced
with an imminent catastrophe if drastic action had not immediately been taken.25
Stopgap measures or increased repression were also, in the short term at least,
plausible options. Gorbachev himself has said that, in the absence of reform,
26
he could have expected to carry on in power for at least five or ten years.2
As long-term solutions, however, such half-measures were viable neither in
1953 nor in 1985. Ultimately Stalin's heirs could resist the pressures for greater
institutionalization and a de-personalization of regime legitimacy only by re-
placing Stalin, that is by re-creating a single directing centre in the person
22
Jerry F. Hough and Merle R. Fainsod, How the Soviet Union Is Governed(Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 192-3.
23 Graeme
Gill, 'Khrushchev and Systemic Development', in Martin McCauley, ed., Khrushchev
and Khrushchevism(London: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 30-45, at p. 33.
24
Ronald Hill, 'The CPSU in the 1990s' (lecture given at St Antony's College, Oxford, 29
October 1990).
25 It would
appear, however, that the 1953 leaders harboured such fears, at least in the immediate
aftermath of Stalin's death. See Openkin, 'Na istoricheskom pereput'e', p. 109, which hints at
this. The tone of the leadership's pronouncements at the time of Stalin's death also suggested
such a fear (see Pravda, 5-7 March 1953) as did their reactions to Beria's activities. See 'Delo
Beriia', Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1 & 2 (January and February 1991).
26
Pravda, 1 December 1990, p. 4.
84 TOMPSON
of one of their number. Committed for both personal and political reasons
to preventing such an outcome, they had little choice but to follow a new
course. In 1985, the problem was simpler:the economic mechanism was dysfunc-
tional and the prospects for achieving satisfactory growth over the long term
without reform were not good.
Reform Strategies
Khrushchev and his colleagues were in general agreement on the need to take
a number of steps in the immediate aftermath of Stalin's death. First, the security
organs were subordinated to party authority.27Henceforth, secret police terror
was not to be used as a weapon against members of the ruling elite. Secondly,
the leadership opted for a greater degree of institutional regularity in the sys-
tem's operations while administrative officials were at the same time subjected
to less pressure and interference from above.28 Even so simple a measure
as setting regular hours for the work of state administrators seems to have
had a major impact.29These measures limited the power of the central political
leadership, making interference in the work of administrative bodies 'from
on high' both less frequent and more costly. The upshot of these first two
changes was to establish the institutional hegemony of the apparat in the early
stages of de-Stalinization, one of the most important changes of the period.30
The sacrifice involved in curtailing arbitrary interference and the use of terror
against the elite was (initially, at any rate) minimal, since the indeterminate
succession ensured that no one could have exercised those prerogatives anyway
and members of the Presidium had an interest in seeing to it that none of
their colleagues gained such power. Subsequently, Khrushchev attempted to
limit the apparat's hegemony and to refashion it into an instrument of central
rule. His efforts in this direction angered the apparat without breaking its
power and contributed to his downfall in 1964.31
A third step taken after Stalin's death was the new leaders' emphasis on
greater collegiality of leadership at all levels. Among the top elites, the stress
on collective leadership was largely a product of the inconclusive struggle to
27 Anecdotal evidence
suggests that this enhanced the authority of local as well as central party
leaders over the KGB (A. Karaulov, Vokrug Kremlya.-kniga politicheskikh dialogov (Moscow:
Novosti, 1990), p. 32).
28
George Breslauer, Khrushchevand Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), p. 40. See also Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', pp. 15,
17.
29 Stalin's nocturnal habits meant that state and party administrators often had to work extraordi-
narily long, late and irregular hours; failure to be in one's office when needed could be dangerous.
As a result, the decree on working hours both improved administrators' quality of life and eased
the pressure on them (R. Medvedev, N. S. Khrushchev:politicheskaya biografiia (Moscow: Kniga,
1990), pp. 74-5; Aleksei Adzhubei, 'Krushenie nadezhd: Khrushchev, kakim ya ego pomniu'
(unpublished manuscript, 1991), pp. 139-40.
30 Azrael, 'Varieties of de-Stalinization', p. 146;Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', pp. 14-17, especially
p. 14.
31
Tompson, 'Khrushchev and the Territorial Apparatus', pp. 257-60.
succeed Stalin. Most of the Presidium members wished to prevent another

Stalin from rising within their midst. The increased conflict which collective
leadership engendered, however, resulted both in greater opportunities for inter-
vention from above, as higher authorities stepped in to resolve disputes, and
in 'authority leakage', as lower level actors took advantage of conflicts above
them to increase their autonomy.32 Fourthly, a limited amount of openness
in the press was allowed in order to encourage the airing of problems and
the discussion of new solutions. Finally, the cult of Stalin was quietly but
consistently undermined for most of the period up to the Twentieth Congress
and in its place was established the authority not of a new leader, but of an
institution: the party.33In so far as a personality cult persisted, it was devoted
to the long-deceased Lenin. The contemporary fount of wisdom and authorita-
tive interpretation of Lenin's thought was the collective wisdom of the party
he founded and led. Thus was an attempt made to establish anew the legitimacy
of the regime.
Khrushchev soon found himself impatient with what could be achieved by
remaining within the increasingly restrictive confines of the initial reform con-
sensus. He was driven to carry on the struggle for change both by the dynamics
of the power struggle going on in the Kremlin over the Stalin succession and
by the ambitious goals for economic development that he wished to pursue.
The post-Stalin reform consensus was shattered by Khrushchev's decision
to press ahead with changes in four areas. First, he determined to bring de-
Stalinization out into the open and to expose many of the crimes and abuses
of the dead leader. Secondly, the First Secretary emerged as the champion
of local elites against the central administrative authorities and of the party
apparat against the state machine. Khrushchev sought to combine devolution
of authority to the locales with a high level of party intervention in day-to-day
economic management. This was intended to increase the effectiveness of Soviet
centralism by purging it of its bureaucratic-statist component.34 For a time
at least, this line of policy allowed Khrushchev to pursue his reform agenda
with the support of the party - though not the ministerial - apparat;Gorbachev,
by contrast, never enjoyed the luxury of'pro-apparat reform'.
Khrushchev's third break with the consensus, however, ensured that his
alliance with the party apparat would be only temporary: he came increasingly
to identify accommodation to officialdom with stagnation and thus pursued
a range of policies designed to place officials in a high-pressure environment
from above and below. Criticism of officials was encouraged. The size of the
32
Tompson, 'Khrushchev and the Territorial Apparatus', pp. 44, 67-8.
33 For a discussion of the implications of this shift in the regime's legitimation strategy for
Soviet political life, see John Miller, 'The Communist Party: Trends and Problems', in Archie
Brown and Michael Kaser, eds, Soviet Policy for the 1980s (London: Macmillan, 1982). pp. 1-34,
at pp. Iff; also Zubkova, 'Khrushchev, Malenkov i "ottepel "', p. 87.
34
George Breslauer, 'Khrushchev Reconsidered', Problems of Communism,25, no. 5 (September-
October 1976), 18-33, p. 23.
86 TOMPSON
party and of both party and non-party aktivy was increased. Efforts were made
to expand the role of social organizations such as trade unions and factory
committees. Khrushchev's own rhetoric was distinctly anti-elitist.35His strategy
included not only political pressure from above but also social and political
pressures from below; the populace was encouraged to criticise officials and
to undertake certain kinds of social initiatives on their own. These policies
were a part of the First Secretary's attack on the institutional hegemony of
the apparat after 1957. Their impact on its attitude towards Khrushchev can
be gauged from the bitter criticism directed against him on this score after
his removal, when he was accused of having fostered mass discontent with
lower party organs.36Finally, Khrushchev broke with many of his colleagues
over the desirable extent of the thaw in the arts and the mass media. He did
not, however, have consistent views on this issue himself, and his rule saw
numerous zigzags and inconsistencies in cultural policy.37
Khrushchev's reformist vision was conceived as an attempt to return 'to
an unsullied Leninism by stripping the system of the accumulated layers of
distortion and bureaucracy'.38Unlike Gorbachev's reform efforts, it was char-
acterized not so much by a sense of crisis as by a buoyant optimism concerning
the future of Soviet society. The attempts to de-bureaucratize local leadership
and to remove more and more functions from the state to social organizations
were intended not to increase pluralism but to replace administrative measures
with social control as a means of achieving social discipline and attitudinal
homogeneity.39 The threat he perceived (correctly, one might argue in hind-
sight) was stagnation and immobilism, as the apparat became less and less
responsive to political direction and increasingly capable of blocking social
and economic change.
The early post-Stalin phase of (more or less) consensual reform stands in
sharp contrast to the early Gorbachev period. The earliest Gorbachev years
were characterized by a thinner and more fragile consensus, largely because
there was little opportunity to take steps that would create large numbers of
winners and few losers. There was, to be sure, a widespread feeling that some-
thing had to be done, but there was very little agreement as to what. Political
reform was barely on the agenda40and the consensus on economic reform
was limited indeed: greater emphasis on discipline, replacement of aged cadres,
35 Breslauer, 'Khrushchev Reconsidered', p. 24.
36 'Posle
plenuma. Smeshchenie Khrushcheva: versiia dlya partaktiva', Kommunist, 4 (March
1991), p. 110.
37 Michel Tatu, Power in the Kremlin:From Khrushchev'sDecline to Collective Leadership(Lon-
don: Collins, 1969), pp. 244-9, 298-311, 316-19; Medvedev, N. S. Khrushchev,pp. 144-8, 195-200,
245-62.
38 Sakwa, Gorbachevand His Reforms, p. 29.
39 Breslauer, Khrushchevand Brezhnev,p. 76.
40 Gorbachev in fact began pressing for political reform in 1985, but little headway was made
until the January 1987 CC plenum. The fact that this plenum met only after three postponements
attests to the strength of the opposition to this line of reform. See John Gooding, 'Gorbachev
and Democracy', Soviet Studies, 42 (1990), 195-231, p. 206.
a tightening of central control over the economy and the transferof an increasing
amount of the civilian economy to the jurisdiction of the defence complex.
Indeed, it is questionable whether this was much of a reform consensus at
all.
Gorbachev could hope for little success along this path. By early 1986, collaps-
ing oil prices, a weakening dollar41and an energy crisis brought on in part
by Chernobyl' were giving renewed urgency to the drive for economic reform.
Perestroika was thus prompted principally by the Soviet Union's poor economic
performance, but it was not about economic reform alone. Radical economic
reform was impossible without radical political change.42In order to generate
the political support necessary to force through economic reforms to which
the apparat was generally hostile, Gorbachev pursued a mobilizational strategy
designed to combine mass pressure on the apparat from below with the pressure
which he and his allies exerted from above. His anti-corruption campaigns
and other policies designed to restore central authority and party discipline
provided much of the pressure from above, while an increasingly radical brand
of glasnost' gave rise to pressures from below. In 1987, political reform was
at last forced on the agenda and Gorbachev succeeded in 1988-90 in revitalizing
and restructuring the soviets and other organs of state power. This facilitated
his efforts to find himself a political base independent of the apparat on which
he could rely in his efforts to subdue resistance from within it. Little progress
was made on economic reform, however, and such reform measures as were
adopted (for example, the 1987 Law on State Enterprises)were often not imple-
mented as intended. Nevertheless, Gorbachev came down increasingly on the
side of enterprise autonomy and market-oriented reforms.
Political reform was more than simply a tool for overcoming resistance to
economic reform, however; it was also an end in itself. In contrast to the utopian
Khrushchev, Gorbachev rapidly abandoned the ideal of communism, without
which the arguments for the CPSU's monopoly of legitimate power were mean-
ingless.43Glasnost', by stripping the party of its claim to a monopoly of truth,
further undermined its claim to a monopoly of power. A new basis for the legiti-
macy of the regime had therefore to be found. Finally, there is good reason to
believe that Gorbachev pursued glasnost' and democratization from conviction
41 The
Group of Seven's Plaza Accord of 1985 had a devastating effect on Soviet hard currency
trade. Most Soviet exports were denominated in dollars, while imports tended to be in Deutsch-
marks; thus the fall in the dollar and the strengthening of the Deutschmark engineered by the
G7 accord greatly weakened the Soviet Union's external accounts position. See Paul Newman,
'The USSR: A Banking and Financial Perspective' (paper given at St Antony's College, Oxford,
14 May 1990).
42 Gooding, 'Gorbachev and Democracy', p. 197.
43 John Gooding has traced the disappearance of all references to communism from Gorbachev's
discourse; see, Gooding, 'Gorbachev and Democracy', pp. 200-2. The link between the communist
ideal and the CPSU's claim to power has been set out by T. H. Rigby; see T. H. Rigby, 'Conclusion:
The Gorbachev Era Launched', in R. F. Miller, J. H. Miller and T. H. Rigby, eds, Gorbachev
at the Helm: A New Era in Soviet Politics? (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 235-46.
88 TOMPSON
as well as necessity.44His strategy in persuading his fellow oligarchs to follow

this course was to argue that, if the party backed him, it would retain its
vanguard role and dominate the new politics; this no doubt was his own hope
as well.45
Gorbachev's motives for pursuing political reform were not entirely compat-
ible. Genuine democratization helped free him from his dependence on the
apparat, but it also generated new opposition, on both left and right, to his
policies.46Rather than curtailing democratization in the interests of economic
reform, however, Gorbachev tried to make a virtue of necessity by occupying
the centre ground of the new politics. His well-known strategy of playing both
ends against the middle would not have succeeded had he allowed the emergence
of only those forces which supported perestroika. Since the bulk of the elite
was to Gorbachev's 'right', allowing the political spectrum to expand on the
left created a force to counterbalance pressure from the right. As the threat
from the left grew, Gorbachev was able to use the threat of a backlash from
the right to bolster his position. Over time, however, Gorbachev's 'near-
obsession' with positioning himself in the middle47undermined support for
him. The right felt that things had gone too far, while the left believed that
on the most contentious issues - confederalism, multipartyism, Article 6 of
the constitution and radical economic reform - Gorbachev gave way only
slowly, grudgingly, often partially and after initial opposition, chiefly because
of his desire to bring the CPSU apparat along in his wake.48
The nature of Gorbachev's vision of a reformed USSR remains 'frustratingly
elusive'.49This is no wonder: Gorbachev was increasingly driven not by opti-
mism but by desperation. Not only the corruptions of the past were under
attack: the foundations of the system itself, both ideological and institutional,
were in question. Reform proceeded beyond de-Stalinization to de-
Leninization50as Gorbachev and his colleagues sought to devise a new model
of socialism altogether. Nevertheless, certain key commitments, most notably to
the preservation of the Union, albeit in a genuinely federal form, and to some
form of socialism, remained consistent. These will be examined further below.
Khrushchev sought to avoid, and Gorbachev to overcome, stagnation and
immobilism by reasserting strongly the authority of the political leader over
44
Gooding, 'Gorbachev and Democracy', pp. 197, 210-11; George Breslauer, 'Gorbachev:
Diverse Perspectives', in Ed Hewett and Victor Winston, eds, Milestones in Glasnost and Peres-
troyka. Politics and People (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1991), p. 490.
45 John
Gooding, 'Perestroika as Revolution from Within: An Interpretation', Russian Review,
51 (1992), p. 51.
46 Jerry Hough, 'Gorbachev's Endgame', in Alexander Dallin and Gail Lapidus, eds, The Soviet
System in Crisis. A Reader of Westernand Soviet Views (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), 224-50,
at p. 235.
47 The phrase is Hough's ('Gorbachev's Endgame', p. 244).
48
Peter Reddaway, 'The Quality of Gorbachev's Leadership', in Hewett and Winston, eds,
Milestones in Glasnostand Perestroyka, pp. 431-45, at pp. 431, 434.
49
Stephen White, Gorbachevin Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 183.
50 Sakwa, Gorbachevand His Reforms, pp. 31-3.
the apparat. Gorbachev, however, accepted (indeed at times encouraged) a

diminishing of the regime's power over society, even as he sought to increase
his own power over the regime. The result was that Gorbachev was far better
able to mobilize societal forces in the cause of reform than was Khrushchev.
This course probably reflected, at least to some extent, the lessons drawn by
Gorbachev and his colleagues from the experience of Khrushchev.5' In the
end, however, Gorbachev fell behind the very democratization processes he
had set in motion and proved unable to see them through to the end.
The impetus that reform received from both men's struggles with their rivals
suggests that splits within the leadership do not necessarily weaken reform
drives, as some observers have argued,52but may, on the contrary, give them
added momentum. Khrushchev's attempts to reduce the power of the military,
the ministries and the security organs were motivated by factional pragmatism
as well as reformist idealism. The political reforms of 1985-91 also reflected
power politics as well as Gorbachev's reformist inclinations. Indeed, Soviet
high politics appear to have generated pressures for change in connection with
the general question of leadership succession. The absence of an institutiona-
lized succession procedure, fixed terms of office or clearly defined powers
attached to particular offices made the establishment of a new leader's authority
dependent above all on his ability to devise successful policy innovations.53
These innovations were not always genuinely reformist, but they gave each
major succession the character of a rectification campaign in which the failings
of the previous leader were denounced and put to rights.
Coalition Building
Reformers may generally win the support of other actors by bringing on board
those interests that stand to gain from reform, by paying off (or threatening)
likely losers and by convincing other actors that there is more to fear from
existing threats to the status quo than from reform. In this respect, it may
have been to Khrushchev's advantage that he and his colleagues in 1953 faced
a wide array of pressures for change. So much was wrong in March 1953
that it was possible by means of limited changes to create far more winners
than losers. The greater assurance of physical security provided to the elite
when the use of terror against them ended was to be an important source
of compensation for those who stood to lose from other changes in the power
structure. To a certain extent, greater institutionalization curtailed some of
the powers of local party officials, who in the 'shapeless' bureaucratic environ-
ment of the late Stalin years had derived much of their power from the very
51 Some recent Soviet observers have

implied or argued that Khrushchev failed in part because
he was not democratic enough. See Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', pp. 16-17; Openkin, 'Na istoriches-
kom pereput'e', pp. 52-65.
53
Breslauer, Khrushchevand Brezhnev,pp. 2-8.
90 TOMPSON
lack of institutionalization which characterized this environment.54Yet these

same officials benefited from the regularization of the party's internal function-
ing, from the limited decentralization of authority to republics and localities
which took place and from the curbing of the security organs' powers. They
also benefited, after 1953, from the discontinuing of the practice of allowing
more than one candidate to stand in low-level party elections, which further
reduced what little democratic accountability remained within the party struc-
ture.55
Moreover, when he broke with the post-Stalin consensus, Khrushchev
received the support of more than one powerful constituency in a position
to benefit from reform. The military and the party apparatus, especially local
and republican party organs, both (albeit in varying degrees) backed his innova-
tive policies in 1955-57. Other groups, such as managers and ministerial
officials, opposed specific measures taken by Khrushchev but were none the
less beneficiaries of other policies. Khrushchev also managed to divide the
state and conquer it by tackling it on an issue-by-issue basis and playing on
its internal cleavages.56 Ironically, Khrushchev's coalition-building strategy
in the 1950s, particularly his strengthening of the territorial apparatus and
the Central Committee, contributed to his ultimate frustration and failure in
the 1960s.57
Breslauer has argued persuasively that Khrushchev was also able to play
on elite fears of the masses in order to advance his own power and authority.
In the climate of uncertainty which characterized the immediate post-Stalin
period, Khrushchev presented himself as the man who could ensure the regime's
survival against both internal and external threats. His rhetoric on a number
of issues consistently created a sense of crisis designed to foster elite dependence
on himself.58There was arguably some substance to this claim as well: Popov
argues that Khrushchev probably did save the system from 'a crisis of the
Hungarian type'.59 Such a crisis was not imminent in 1953, but might have
materialized over the longer term had a change of course not been taken.
However, the effectiveness of this strategy diminished as time passed and 'the
initial lack of self-confidence about the political elite's ability to govern without
54 Charles H. Fairbanks Jr, 'National Cadres in the Soviet System: The Evidence of Beria's
Career', in Jeremy Azrael, ed., Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices (New York: Praeger,
1978), p. 181; Charles H. Fairbanks Jr, 'Soviet Bureaucratic Politics: The Role of Leaders and
Lower Officials', in Thomas F. Remington, ed., Politics and the Soviet System: Essays in Honour
of Frederick C. Barghoorn(London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 109; Seweryn Bialer, Stalin's Successors:
Leadership, Stability and Change in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1980), pp. 10, 16-17.
55 Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', p. 17.
56
Tompson, 'Khrushchev and the Territorial Apparatus', chaps. 3-5.
57 N. Barsukov, 'Kak byl "nizlozhen" N. S. Khrushchev', Obshchestvennyenauki, 6 (November
1989), p. 136; Tompson, 'Khrushchev and the Territorial Apparatus', pp. 280-4.
58 Breslauer, Khrushchevand Brezhnev,pp. 35-8, 60, 78-9.
terror (and without Stalin)' wore off.60Moreover, the strategy was dangerous,
since it involved generating mass expectations, which, if unmet, could give
substance to elite fears. In the early 1960s, mounting evidence of Khrushchev's
declining popularity with the public began to suggest precisely that: far from
being the man whose policies could satisfy mass demands without compromising
the elite's position, Khrushchev was seen as the leader whose failures were
giving rise to new threats to the regime; this view was made explicit after his
removal.6'
All of the foregoing measures concern Khrushchev's efforts to deal with
powerful actors within the regime. This, however, was only a part of his political
strategy, which also involved attempts to generate support among interests
external to the regime and to draw them into the political arena as allies of
reform. Given the weakness of Soviet society vis-a-vis the state, the benefits
to be derived from such a strategy were limited indeed, at least within the
then-existing political system. Nevertheless, Khrushchev attempted to draw
support from a number of such allies. His populist appeals generated mass
pressure on officials from below. Khrushchev's ability to do this was, however,
undermined in the early 1960s as his popularity waned. Recent Soviet sources
have stressed rising popular dissatisfaction with Khrushchev's rule in his later
years and the events at Novocherkassk in 1962, where workers' protests were
violently suppressed, are seen as epitomizing the failure of his attempts to
forge an alliance with the masses against the apparat.62
It may seem strange to discuss public opinion in connection with Khrush-
chev's power, yet there is reason to believe that his standing with the public
mattered far more than Western observers have realized. Soviet discussions
of Khrushchev's removal lay a remarkable amount of stress on his declining
popularity among ordinary citizens.63This concern with popular opinion sug-
gests that at least some segments of the elite feared mass disorder if popular
expectations were not met. It is entirely consonant with John Miller's descrip-
tion of the Soviet leaders as 'convinced and thoroughgoing Hobbesians ...
persuaded of the precariousness of social cohesion and ... appalled at the
prospect of social breakdown'.64This fear was not universal, however, and
Soviet reformers had far greater trust in the populace. Both Gorbachev and
60 Breslauer, Khrushchevand Brezhnev,p. 110.

61
'Posle plenuma', p. 110.
62
Aleksei Adzhubei, Te desyat' let (Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiia, 1989), p. 283; Popov, 'Dva
tsveta vremeni', p. 15; Komsomol'skayapravda, 2 June 1989, p. 2.
63
See, for example, N. Mikhailov, 'Vozmozhen li segodnya Oktyabr' 1964 goda?' Moskovskaya
pravda, 18 August 1989, p. 2; R. Medvedev, 'N. S. Khrushchev: 1964 god: Neozhidannoe smeshche-
nie', in Yu. V. Aksiutin, ed., N. S. Khrushchev:Materialy k biografii (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politi-
cheskoi literatury, 1988), p. 199; E. Zubkova, 'Oktyabr' 1964 goda: povorot ili perevorot?'
Kommunist, 13 (September 1989), pp. 93-4; Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchevon Khrushchev:An
Inside Account of the Man and His Era (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1990) pp. 70-2, 75-6;
Aleksei Adzhubei, 'Te desyat' let', Znamya, 7 (July 1988), p. 130.
64 Miller, 'The Communist Party: Trends and Problems', 1.
p.
92 TOMPSON
Khrushchev hoped that a loosening of political controls would be rewarded

with gratitude and support.65 Such policies demonstrated both trust in the
Soviet people and a belief in the legitimacy of the regime and in popular support
for it.
Despite a certain strain of anti-intellectualism which ran through much of
his speech and behaviour, Khrushchev was also inclined to stress the role of
experts in policy making. His speeches were full of exhortations to party officials
to take account of specialist advice.66Whenever possible, the political playing
field was expanded to allow Khrushchev to deploy his specialist allies in policy
debates.67 This generated considerable resentment among the apparatchiki,
as did Khrushchev's perceived overreliance on specialists generally. After his
fall, he was accused of trying to make the party play second fiddle in agriculture,
while the experts led the way.68At the same time, Khrushchev continued to
encourage excessive party meddling in the natural sciences, a habit which ulti-
mately cost him the support of much of the technical intelligentsia. Khrush-
chev's interference in scientific matters, however, was not inconsistent with
his attempts to upgrade the role of specialists. His goal in encouraging greater
reliance on specialists was to use specialist expertise as a means of overcoming
resistance to his policies rather than as a means of improving the determination
of policy in the first place. It was essential to Khrushchev, therefore, that the
'right sort' of specialists be advanced, namely, those who were prepared to
take his line.
In contrast to Khrushchev, Gorbachev was faced with the task of pursuing
a reform agenda which would create precious few winners from among the
regime's most powerful actors. Neither the ministries nor the party apparatus
stood to gain from genuine economic or political reform. The short-term costs
of reform for the military (especially of any reduction in defence expenditure
undertaken in connection with economic reform) were also quite high, with
any possible benefits coming only in the long term. The security organs had
less to lose than other institutions from a purely economic reform, but glasnost'
and democratization were clearly undesirable from their perspective. This is
not to say that opposition to reform was universal within the regime; on the
contrary, as he consolidated his position, Gorbachev made considerable use
of his powers of appointment to advance reform-minded individuals in the
party, the state administration and the military. However, few of these
appointees were to prove as radical as he, and Gorbachev remained unable
to appeal to the interests of any powerful institution or constituency within
the regime. Moreover, the Gorbachev team had little room for manoeuvre
65
Reddaway, 'The Quality of Gorbachev's Leadership', in Hewett and Winston, eds, Milestones
in Glasnost and Perestroyka, p. 432.
66 N. S.
Khrushchev, Stroitel'stvo kommunizmav SSSR i razvitie sel'skogo khozyaistva (Moscow:
Gospolitizdat, 1963), vol. I, pp. 178, 402; vol. II, pp. 94-5, 376-7, 416, 425.
67
Barsukov, 'Kak byl "nizlozhen"', p. 125.
68 'Posle plenuma',
pp. 110-11.
when it came to compensating potential losers; the victims of reform were

too many and the resource constraints too great for such a policy to be viable.
The Gorbachev leadership thus had to rely primarily on the threats facing
the regime in the absence of reform. The Soviet Union's deteriorating economic
performance in 1985 was increasingly seen as a threat to its external power
and to many of the regime's domestic goals, but attempts to generate a sense
of urgency about the need for radical reform by creating an atmosphere of
crisis sounded initially as though Gorbachev was crying wolf.69 Internal and
external developments, however, soon made the Soviet Union's economic prob-
lems more acute, even as glasnost' allowed the publication of materials which
made it clear that the economy was in worse shape than previously realized.
This sense of crisis helped Gorbachev to compel the apparat to accept changes
which ran counter to its institutional interests. He presented himself as the
leader who understood how to overcome the crisis facing the regime and thereby
to save the elite from catastrophe. Six years of economic decline, social strife
and external retrenchment rendered this argument less and less persuasive,
but the threat of total collapse, of anarchy and civil war, remained an important
part of Gorbachev's strategy for holding power until the August coup. Gorba-
chev's argument for his own indispensability hung increasingly on the very
crisis which he had done so much to create.
Gorbachev also sought, via glasnost' and democratization, to mobilize and
channel popular support for change. Unfortunately, his inability to meet rising
popular expectations in the economic sphere led to a decline in his popularity,
particularly after 1989, and thus increased his dependence on the apparat along
with its dependence on him. Even after the collapse of the putsch in August
1991, Gorbachev defended the party.70With the intelligentsia, the free trade
unions, the nationalist movements and the other new political forces in Soviet
society looking to other leaders, Gorbachev could not have hoped to re-establish
his position after the coup without the support of a party that still enjoyed
a privileged position in the political system.71
In addition to the public at large, Gorbachev sought in particular to mobilize
the intelligentsia in the cause of reform. Like Khrushchev, he succeeded in
this for a time only to find that the intelligentsia's desire for change was far
greater than his own.72 Gorbachev sought to appeal to the intelligentsia by
69 The reforming or transforming leader who sees a crisis before it actually occurs often faces
great difficulties in generating a sense of urgency about the need for drastic action. See Noel
M. Tichy and Mary Ann Devanna, The Transformational Leader (New York: Wiley, 1986),
pp. 29,46-7.
70 Pravda, 23 August 1991, p. 2.
71 It is also
likely that, after the coup, Gorbachev believed that resistance to reform within
the party had been broken and that he could at last reform it into a social democratic party
which would be dependent on him.
72
Jerry Hough has argued that much of Gorbachev's unwillingness to break decisively with
the bureaucrats reflected his awareness that, in the long run, the bureaucrats would be his best
friends, because there would be no satisfying the intellectuals. See Jerry Hough, Russia and the
West: Gorbachevand the Politics of Reform (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), pp. 177-9.
94 TOMPSON
means of both inducements (glasnost' and democratization) and threats. These

threats included the danger of a conservative backlash if Gorbachev were not
supported, as well as the prospect of Gorbachev himself turning 'the masses'
against 'his factious and free-thinking intelligentsia' if they failed to support
reform.73This latter threat paralleled closely the implied threat directed at
the apparat. Although many of the country's leading intellectuals did become
alienated from Gorbachev, their contributions to the development of peres-
troika, glasnost' and new thinking in foreign policy were facilitated precisely
by Gorbachev's own decision to bring them into the policy process. Experts
in specialist institutes as well as long-time dissidents played an important role
in generating ideas for reform and introducing them into public debate.74This
aspect ofperestroika stands in marked contrast to the reforms of the Khrushchev
era, most of which seem to have originated either in Khrushchev's own head or
in the various Central Committee departments. (These departments and their
successors, the CC commissions, also played a role in Gorbachev's reforms.)75
The contrast between the early Khrushchev and Gorbachev years is of great
importance as regards coalition building. The success of certain relatively pain-
less early measures helped Khrushchev to enhance his popularity among both
the elite and the public, thus strengthening him politically as he prepared to
embark on further reforms. Gorbachev, by contrast, enjoyed no such oppor-
tunity for enhancing his authority. Perestroika provided few immediate benefits
to Soviet society and brought Gorbachev into conflict with the apparat almost
from the very beginning of his rule. Gorbachev was thus far less able than
Khrushchev to make use of inducements as well as threats in creating his reform
coalition. There nevertheless remained an essential similarity in their strategies
towards the apparat. Both played a dangerous game in the struggle to overcome
apparat-based resistance to reform. Appealing over the heads of lower officials
directly to the masses, they raised expectations, generated considerable political
pressure from below and sought in this way to foster an elite dependence on
themselves. Gorbachev played this game in a far more radical way than Khrush-
chev. As democratization and glasnost' proceeded further, the possibility arose
not merely of pressuring the apparat, but of challenging its position altogether
by creating alternative sources of power and authority.
The apparat, for its part, remained suspicious, if not hostile, towards attempts
73 Gorbachev in
early 1989 called on the intelligentsia to stop bickering and rally around peres-
troika (Pravda, 8 January 1989, pp. 2-4). In Gorbachev's references to the intelligentsia's 'responsi-
bility to the people' and the 'distressed, bewildered, indignant' mood of public opinion, John
Gooding detects both a overt appeal and an implied threat (Gooding, 'Gorbachev and Democracy',
pp. 224-5).
74 Gorbachev also benefited from the fact that there was far more reformist thought/dialogue
prior to 1985 than there had been prior to 1953. Many of the most important ideas of theperestroika
period were developed by Soviet scholars and dissidents during the 'years of stagnation'. See
Starr, 'The Road to Reform', pp. 17-29; Archie Brown, 'New Thinking on the Political System',
in Archie Brown, ed., New Thinking in Soviet Politics (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 12-28,
at especially pp. 12-15.
to introduce new players into the game, which it rightly saw as diluting its
own authority. Gorbachev, helped in large part by the very severity of the
country's problems, was both more ambitious than Khrushchev in expanding
the political nation and more successful in breaking down resistance to this
expansion. The party remained dependent upon Gorbachev to the end, afraid
to confront either the nation's crisis or the other forces in the political system
without him.76The nature of both the offensive (basic reform) and defensive
(regime survival) projects of perestroika changed out of all recognition, but
at each stage the apparat's concern with the latter compelled it, however reluc-
tantly, to accept yet more radical reform. This contrasts sharply with the situa-
tion in 1964, when the Central Committee overwhelmingly supported
Khrushchev's removal in response to far less radical changes. The country
had not reached such a crisis that the apparat doubted its ability to govern,
and there were no other forces in the political system to threaten its position.
Khrushchev was thus easily expendable.
Coalition Fragmentation
Much of the foregoing has already touched upon the fragmentation of reform
coalitions and the rise of resistance to the execution of reformist measures.
Divisions also occurred amongst those committed to further change about its
direction. This section focuses on what emerged in both periods as the most
important point of contention within reformist circles concerning the direction
of reform:the conflict between economic reform and territorialdecentralization.
The dominant economic actors in the system bequeathed by Stalin to his
heirs were the industrial ministries.77They were also, therefore, the greatest
bastions of resistance to fundamental reform and any successful attempt to
alter the bases of the economic system must marshal sufficient political support
to overcome their opposition. Many political interests in the Soviet system
stood to gain from the destruction of ministerial power, but these did not
necessarily have much in common beyond anti-ministerialism. Opposition to
the ministries united two very different strands of anti-ministerial sentiment:
the economic and the political. Economic opposition to ministerial power was
chiefly concerned with enterprise autonomy, the use of economic levers and
a reduction in the role of administrative diktat in management. It was, in other
words, less a reaction to the concentration of economic authority in Moscow
than to the excessive reliance on political and administrative (as opposed to
economic) levers. The second current of opinion was concerned primarily with
the question of central control and was committed to the devolution of economic
authority to the various territorial entities which made up the Soviet federal
76
At the April 1991 Central Committee plenum, a number of party leaders both harshly criticized
Gorbachev and yet were remarkably frank in admitting that the party still needed him. See Pravda,
25 April 1991, pp. 1-2; 26 April 1991, p. 3; 27 April 1991, pp. 1-4; and 29 April 1991, p. 3.
77 Whitefield has
argued that they were the dominant political actors; see Whitefield, Soviet
IndustrialMinistries.
96 TOMPSON
structure. Not surprisingly, this approach was generally favoured by representa-

tives of regional and republican party and state institutions. The desire for
greater autonomy made the Union republics the principal bastions of anti-
ministerialism. Less concerned with economics than with politics, local leaders
often sought to end the diktat of the centre only in order to impose their
own.
The territorial strand of anti-ministerial sentiment was the most promising
politically, since the territorial apparatus was the most powerful ally available
in a struggle with the ministries. Khrushchev, suspicious of 'the automaticity
of economic processes'78and aware of the political benefits of decentralization,
exemplified this approach to economic de-Stalinization. For four years after
Stalin's death, decentralization of industrial management moved slowly but
steadily forward. In 1957 Khrushchev and his allies abolished the branch minis-
tries altogether in favour of the regional economic councils. Proponents of
economic reform received little support from Khrushchev, who championed
the interests of the party apparatus, not the managers. Attempts to advance
the cause of economic reform in 1955-56 and 1962 were thwarted largely because
of his opposition; indeed, the bifurcation of the party in 1962 was adopted
largely in order to pre-empt an economic reform that would have threatened
the party's managerial role.79By the end of the 1950s, however, it was apparent
that the 'localism' to which the creation of the economic councils had given
rise was having a more harmful effect on the economy than the 'departmenta-
lism' of the old ministries. The later years of his rule witnessed a series of
(mostly unsuccessful) attempts to restore central control over the economy.80
Gorbachev, while committed to economic reform in ways that Khrushchev
was not, also attempted to use republican anti-ministerialism to his advantage.
Many of Gorbachev's early steps in economic policy were of a centralizing
nature and came at the expense of republican prerogatives,81but his willingness
to let certain of the republics (particularly the Balts) 'have their heads' as
they pursued economic autonomy and reform reflected a desire to use the anti-
centre, anti-ministry sentiments of local leaders to add to the impetus for change.
78 Abraham Katz, The Politics of Economic Reform in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger,
1972), p. 62.
79
Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, pp. 284-5. There is some evidence that Khrushchev was moving
towards acceptance of a genuinely economic reform before his fall but nothing of the sort was
adopted until after his ouster (Khrushchev, Khrushchevon Khrushchev,pp. 18-19).
80 These included the strengthening of systems of state control, the creation and subsequent
strengthening of all-union State Committees, the reorganization of the economic councils them-
selves and the creation of all-union economic councils, and the strengtheining of the Soviet State
Planning Committee. See Tompson, 'Khrushchev and the Territorial Apparatus', pp. 227-57.
81 Personnel changes in Central Asia and elsewhere were geared to restoring central authority
in areas which had been allowed under Brezhnev virtually to pass beyond the control of the
centre. A number of union-republican ministries were shifted to all-union status (Bohdan Nahaylo
and Victor Swoboda, Soviet Disunion. A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR (London:
Hamish Hamilton, 1990), pp. 279-80).
Unfortunately for Gorbachev, the republics were inclined neither to use their
new opportunities in the manner he had envisioned nor to limit their demands
for autonomy to what he had put on offer. Moreover, democratization meant
that Gorbachev had to cope not only with the demands of local party leaders
- who were still ultimately dependent on him for their positions - but also
with the far more radical agendas of nationalist political movements in the
republics. The rise of the nationalists, moreover, meant that even relatively
'loyal' party leaders had to increase their own demands for autonomy in order
to maintain their political credibility at home. Gorbachev thus followed a path
not unlike Khrushchev's: having turned to local leaders for support in his
assault on the ministries and other central institutions, he discovered his new
allies were more difficult to live with than his adversaries at the centre, and
in the winter of 1990-91 he found himself working with the latter in order
to re-establish central authority over the periphery.
In the early stages of reform, the economic (devolution to enterprises) and
the territorial (devolution to republics) currents did not come into open conflict;
the system was so centralized that there was plenty of room for both sorts
of measures and they were, after all, united by a common enemy: ministerial
centralism. Ultimately, however, the two strands of reform were driven by
different logics. This was especially true of the 1950s and early 1960s, when
economic reform became an unintended victim of the struggle between the
ministries and the party apparatus. The territorial apparatus was far more
powerful an anti-ministerial lobby than the rather eclectic collection of econo-
mists, planners and managers advocating economic reform - and as a result
the triumph of the territorialapproach was almost inevitable. During the Gorba-
chev years, the conflict between these two tendencies was less obvious. Despite
bitter arguments over economic policy, a consensus emerged in favour of some
degree of decentralization and market-oriented economic reform. Yet the essen-
tial tension between the two emphases remained. The nationalism of the non-
Russian republics and the localism of many provinces have given rise to barriers
between regions which are as arbitrary, artificial and economically irrational
as the links forged by the old system. Many republican governments today
are far more concerned with political autonomy than with market reforms.
Economic reform is again emerging as an unintended casualty in the struggle
of the localities for autonomy.
The experiences of both Khrushchev and Gorbachev underscore two very
important points about the nature of the unreformed Soviet polity. The first
is the enormous conservative force exerted by the central economic ministries,
with their tremendous economic and political power - both their investment
priorities and their attitudes to reform remained overwhelmingly conservative
throughout. The second is the difficulty for a central leader in managing the
only conceivable alliance that might have allowed him to attack the ministries:
an alliance with the territorial apparatus. Local officials proved to be unruly,
unreliable and demanding partners whose determination to undermine the cen-
tral ministries often placed them at cross purposes with central reformers.
98 TOMPSON
The Limits to Reform

The limits to reform that emerge from an examination of both the Khrushchev
and Gorbachev periods reflect a combination of subjective and objective checks
on the reform process. Reform is limited, on the one hand, by the leader's
own sense of what is desirable and, on the other, by what is politically possible.
It is often difficult, if not impossible, to separate the two. For Khrushchev,
these limits were much narrower than for Gorbachev. This in part reflects
the fact that Khrushchev saw the problems and failings of the system as distor-
tions resulting from Stalin's rule rather than as symptoms of something funda-
mentally wrong with the system itself. As a result, he did not undertake a
serious examination of the ideological and structural sources of Stalinism.
Khrushchev remained strongly committed to the leading role of the party in
all spheres of Soviet life and to central determination of the direction and
rate of change. These two priorities, however, were in conflict with his desire
to increase popular initiative and feedback - a tension that he was never able
to resolve satisfactorily.82Khrushchev was determined to maintain centrally
directed 'administrative socialism' but rejected both the personalism and terror
that had driven the system up to 1953 and the increasing bureaucratization
which resulted from its abandonment.83
In clarifying Khrushchev's position with respect to the limits of change,
it may help to return to the definition of regime given above and to specify
the basic character of the Soviet regime in those terms. The political leaders
in the Soviet regime were, of course, the group of men (and, very occasionally,
women) who made up the interlocking executive at the head of the party and
state hierarchies. Among their traditional goals were rapid economic (especially
industrial) development with a strong bias in favour of heavy industry and
defence production; the maintenance of a high degree of party control over
political, social and economic life; and the expansion of the Soviet Union's
global power. Their chosen economic strategy was forced development, made
possible by central planning of resource allocation and use, while the regime's
monopoly of economic and police power and mass communications enabled
it to achieve its political goals via economic incentives and sanctions, control
over appointments and careers, coercive measures and intensive efforts at politi-
cal socialization. The institutions through which the leadership pursued these
strategies included the industrial ministries, Gosplan, the party apparat, the
security organs and so on. Khrushchev remained committed both to the funda-
mental goals and to the strategy of the regime. His policies were intended
not to overturn them (although they were modified to some degree), but to
pursue them within a new institutional and political framework. However,
Khrushchev was unable to construct institutional arrangements that would
permit him to maintain the system of administrative socialism whilst avoiding
Breslauer, Khrushchevand Brezhnev,pp. 50, 55; Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', p. 14.
82
83
Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', p. 18.
both terror and bureaucratization: his attempts to do so angered an apparat

which rightly saw his goals as contradicting its own.
Gorbachev, by contrast, ultimately demonstrated a willingness to go beyond
the role of reformer and to become a regime-transforming leader.84He was
prepared to dispense not only with many old institutional structures, but also
with the regime's entire development strategy and with many of its long-standing
goals. What both Western and Soviet observers had long seen as the defining
elements of the Soviet system (disciplined, one-party rule, state ownership of
the means of production, central planning of the economy, and party guidance
of all spheres of social, economic and political activity), Gorbachev was pre-
pared to sacrifice to a greater or lesser degree in the interests of economic
renewal and the survival of the Soviet state. Nor was this decision a purely
pragmatic one: Gorbachev's radicalism reflected conviction as well as economic
and political necessity. He was not prepared to sacrifice everything of the old
regime, to be sure, but by August 1991 a change of regime was under way
if it had not already occurred. Nevertheless, many key institutions of the old
order remained stubbornly in place until the coup, although they were increas-
ingly under challenge from new institutions and forces.
The putsch launched on 19 August 1991, demonstrates as nothing else could
have done the point at which the forces of resistance to reform concluded
that further movement must be blocked at all costs. At issue was not Eastern
Europe, the leading role of the party or even socialism itself: the central issue
was the union. To be sure, many other concerns were involved in the decision
to impose authoritarian rule on the country, but it was the break-up of the
all-union centre envisioned in the new union treaty that finally provoked the
long-awaited backlash from the right. The statements and proclamations of
the Emergency Committee made no attempt to tap any remaining vein of ideolo-
gical support in Soviet society: there were no calls to defend the values of
socialism or of the October Revolution. These could ultimately have been com-
promised, but for many in the Soviet hierarchy, the end of the union would
have meant the end of the game altogether.
Gorbachev's own perceptions of the limits to perestroika are also worthy
of attention. The clearest picture of these limits may well be that which he
himself drew in his speech to a meeting of cultural figures in November 1990.85
Gorbachev stressed his continuing commitment to socialism and opposition
to the establishment of a capitalist order in the Soviet Union. While he was
extraordinarily vague about what socialism actually was, several of his points
provide some insight into what he thought it was not. He stated flatly that he
could not accept private ownership of land. He favoured worker-ownership of
enterprises and a mixed economy that would include 'state ownership, joint
stock ownership ... co-operative ownership, ownership by the people [?]
84 Breslauer, 'Evaluating Gorbachev', pp. 407-10; Tichy and Devanna, The Transformational
Leader, chap. 1.
85
See Pravda and Izvestiia, 1 December 1990, p. 4.
100 TOMPSON
and, in some form and to some extent, private ownership as well.'86 This
position was a radical departure from traditional Soviet socialism. For political
reasons, he could not have advocated a shift to capitalism anyway, so his
only option was to transform the meaning of the word socialist and thereby
to prepare for the transformation of the system.87In spite of the ambiguity
of his language, there is no reason to believe that Gorbachev's conception
of socialism was entirely devoid of content or to doubt the genuineness of
the commitments outlined above. Among those things which Gorbachev called
"'last stands" - that must be defended to the death, as in the battles for Moscow
and Stalingrad' were the preservation of the union (in toto, he implied) and
the preservation of the culture, language, land and traditions of 'even the most
numerically small people'.88It is not necessary to doubt Gorbachev's sincerity
on this latter point to note that the centre was at that time trying to play
off Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, Autonomous Oblasts and other
minority national formations against the titular nationalities of troublesome
union republics.
After the coup, Gorbachev reinforced this sense of his own priorities,
although it is clear that he, in contrast to his erstwhile colleagues in the govern-
ment, realized that a looser union remained the only hope for preserving any
union at all. Gorbachev's ill-advised statements in defence of socialism and
the Communist party on his return to Moscow from the Crimea were more
than tactical blunders: Gorbachev remained committed to both socialism and
the party.89Although he transformed the meaning of the former and laboured
to reform the latter, he suffered politically from his identification with both.
In the climate of opinion following the coup, the party was beyond salvation,
and socialism, for many people, was too closely identified with the party and
with the old system to permit its survival.90
THE RECALCITRANT APPARAT
What the trials and tribulations of both Khrushchev and Gorbachev seem
to point to above all else are the limits of political leaders' power over the
party-state. The authoritarian strategy adopted by those who built the regime
did indeed succeed in freeing them from such external constraints as an active
opposition, a strong civil society and public opinion. For a regime intent on
transforming society rather than reflecting it, such freedom from societal con-
straints was essential. The price of this freedom was to reduce drastically the
political leader's options for exerting his authority over the institutions of the
regime itself. Dependent upon the party and state apparats both for political
86
Pravda, 1 December 1990, p. 4; italics added.
87
Gooding, 'Gorbachev and Democracy', p. 197.
88
Pravda, 1 December 1990, p. 4.
89 Indeed,
long after the coup, Gorbachev expressed his view that Lenin's revolution might
have led to true socialism and democracy had it not been for Stalin's Thermidor;see Mikhail
S. Gorbachev, The August Coup (London: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 121.
90 Gooding, 'Perestroika as Revolution from Within', p. 53.
support and for policy implementation, the leader was ill-situated to exert the
necessary pressure upon them. The battle for reform largely consisted of the
efforts of reformist leaders to assert their power over the apparat.
Popov has argued that a political system characterized by a single leader
directing and drawing his power from such an apparat will see either the arbi-
trary rule of the leader or his subordination to the apparat.91On this account
Khrushchev's failure to retain power can be seen as a product of his refusal
to accept either outcome. He sought to preserve the system of administrative
socialism while rejecting both its 'personality cult' and 'bureaucratic' variants.
Khrushchev seems not to have understood this problem during the mid-1950s.
Indeed, he himself had played a key role in establishing the institutional
hegemony of the apparat. After 1957, however, he became increasingly aware
of it. His policies towards the party during 1958-64 reflected above all else
his desire somehow to fashion the party apparat into an effective instrument
of his rule. Personnel turnover remained extraordinarily high throughout most
of this period and the political pressure on local officials exerted by Khrushchev
was often intense, especially in the agricultural sphere. In 1961, minimum
levels of turnover were enshrined in the party rules. Party-state control was
strengthened and, in 1962, the territorial party apparatus was divided into
agricultural and industrial branches in an effort to improve party guidance
of the economy and to enhance central control. This bifurcation was
Khrushchev's last major attempt to break the apparat's monopoly of power
while preserving a one-party system.92It represented his ultimate attack on
the institutional hegemony of the party machine.
Khrushchev's attempts to bring an uncooperative party apparat to heel were
by no means limited to internal reforms of the party, however. In 1958, he
took on the job of premier and set about rebuilding the central state machine
that he had himself taken the lead in dismantling. The strengthening of Gosplan,
the creation of State Committees in industry and the establishment of a host
of other organs of central management were intended to reduce Khrushchev's
reliance on the party (and, in particular, on the Secretariat) and to provide
him with additional levers for exercising his power over the apparat. In the
end, however, these efforts succeeded in alienating the republican and local
authorities who had once been the bulwark of Khrushchev's political support
without creating for him a solid alternative power base. His declining popularity
with the public and the failure of his attempted alliances with the intelligentsia
left him, in Popov's words 'one on one with the apparat'.93The apparat resisted
his attacks on its hegemony and played the key role in his removal in 1964.94
Khrushchev sought to avoid terrorizing the apparat (as Stalin had done) or
9' Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', p. 15.

92
Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', p. 16.
94 For an account of his
fall, see W. J. Tompson, 'The Fall of Nikita Khrushchev', Soviet
Studies, 43 (1991), 1101-21; for a discussion of the apparat's role specifically, see Tompson, 'Khrush-
chev and the Territorial Apparatus', pp. 257-60.
102 TOMPSON
submitting to it (as Brezhnev was to do), but was ultimately confounded in

this effort because he failed to establish an independent political base.
Like Khrushchev, Gorbachev used the cadres weapon extensively in his
efforts to reshape the party apparat. The turnover of provincial and republican
party secretaries was high throughout his tenure as General Secretary, as was
turnover in the leading organs of the CPSU.95 He was, however, extremely
sensitive to the problem of 'dead souls' in the Central Committee. His purge
of the apparatus meant that many Central Committee members lost important
posts while retaining their seats on the Central Committee. Since new Central
Committees were elected only at party congresses, Gorbachev was faced with
a situation in which an increasing proportion of the Central Committee member-
ship consisted of men he had removed from high office. These dead souls formed
a potentially important source of support for any challenge to Gorbachev's
leadership from within the party. Khrushchev's fall provided a sobering lesson
for any leader who alienated the Central Committee.
Gorbachev's response to this threat was to try to elect a new Central Com-
mittee earlier than the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress, originally scheduled
for 1991. He intended to do this initially at the Nineteenth Party Conference
in 1988.96This ambition was frustrated, but in 1989 he was able to engineer
the mass resignation of 110 Central Committee members and candidates. He
then sought an early convening of the Twenty-Eighth Congress and succeeded
in holding it in July 1990. While the congress itself by no means gave Gorbachev
a reformist Central Committee, it provided him with the opportunity to insulate
himself from any threat posed by the Central Committee. The party rules were
changed so that the General Secretary could henceforth be elected and removed
only by a party congress. There would be no repeat of October 1964.
Perhaps learning from Khrushchev's example, Gorbachev seems to have
sensed from very early on that attempts to reform the party entirely from
within were doomed to failure. At the Nineteenth Party Conference, he began
to campaign in earnest for political reform. In March 1989 the first elections
to the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies took place. The congress, together
with a revamped Supreme Soviet began to play an important part in the political
life of the country, with Gorbachev at its head. In 1990, he took matters further
with the creation of the presidency, an office which - at least in terms of formal
authority - carried with it tremendous powers. The new legislative organs were
intended to enhance Gorbachev's democratic legitimacy and to allow him to
circumvent resistance to reform within other institutions. It was therefore
necessary that the legislature remain weak relative to the executive: hence its
two-tiered structure, its semi-democratic selection and its limited powers.
Repeated reorganizations of the executive branch, transfers of power to it and
95 Thane Gustafson and Dawn Mann, 'Gorbachev's First Year: Building Power and Authority',
Problems of Communism, 35, No. 3 (May-June 1986), 1-19, at pp. 2-6; Gustafson and Mann,
'Gorbachev's Next Gamble', Problems of Communism, 36, No. 4 (July-August 1987), 1-20, at
pp. 12-18.
96
Gustafson and Mann, 'Gorbachev's Next Gamble', p. 5.
the use of executive decrees, popular referendums and other such measures
undermined the position of the revamped all-union legislative organs. These
organs, moreover, operated in an atmosphere of legal and political uncertainty.
This is not to argue, as some have done, that Gorbachev was a sham democrat
in search of dictatorial power.97 He was, however, determined to maintain
his supremacy over the legislative branch. Gorbachev did not wish to become
dependent on the Supreme Soviet any more than on the Central Committee,
and he was aware that the former as well as the latter might block his reforms.
Khrushchev had attempted in similar fashion to free himself from reliance
on the party apparatus, but ultimately had no other institution upon which
to rely. His position as Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers did not
provide him with a secure and independent base, since his position was also
within the gift of the party. Gorbachev went much further, attempting to forge
an entirely separate link between newly created legislative and executive organs
and Soviet society. The result was a downgrading of the party in general and
of its leading organs in particular. Yet Gorbachev's relationship with these
new forces ultimately broke down. He failed to break decisively with the party,
both because he did not wish to abandon its resources to his opponents and
because it remained important for both the possession and the exercise of
power. Once reformed, it was to be 'the vehicle for Gorbachev's domination
of the politics of a democratizing Soviet Union'.98 In the winter of 1990-91,
he turned for a time to the military and security organs as well.
The ability of the leader to exercise his power in the Soviet system depended
upon his ability to exact the obedience of the apparat. Stalin was able to domi-
nate it through his control over the security organs: when Khrushchev and
his colleagues renounced this practice, they were, in effect renouncing the most
important instrument they had for bringing the apparat to heel. Khrushchev's
attempts to impose his will on the apparat by other means ultimately cost
him his job. Brezhnev had fewer problems on this score because he defined
his policy agenda largely in terms of the apparat's interests. Indeed, the Brezhnev
years witnessed an extraordinary loss of political control over the apparat.99
With the coming to power of Gorbachev, the struggle between leader and
apparat was renewed. Like Khrushchev he sought to avoid both terror and
submission. However, his unwillingness or inability to break decisively with
the more conservative tendencies within the regime, combined with the disast-
rous failure of many of his policies, cost him the support of non-regime allies.
Finding himself, like Khrushchev, one on one with the apparat, Gorbachev
attempted to reach a new accommodation with it - a compromise, but not
97
Hough described him as 'modernizing westernizing Czar' on the model of Ataturk, Lee Kuan
Yew and other Third World autocrats (Hough, 'Understanding Gorbachev', p. 477).
98
Gooding, 'Gorbachev and Democracy', pp. 212, 217.
99 Andranik Migranyan has described this 'steering crisis' which characterized post-1953 Soviet
politics in terms similar to Popov's (A. Migranyan, 'Mekhanizm tormozheniia v politicheskoi

sisteme i puti ego preodoleniia', in Yurii Afanas'ev, ed., Inogo ne dano (Moscow: Progress, 1988),
pp. 105-7.
104 TOMPSON
a capitulation - while turning increasingly to the military and the security

organs for added leverage. He was thus forced to retreat from one of the most
important of Khrushchev's achievements: during the winter of 1990-91, the
leaders of the armed forces and the security organs enjoyed greater influence
within the leadership than they had since 1953. A swing back to the left by
Gorbachev broke this alliance but failed to re-establish his leadership of
reformist forces.
The question remains as to why Gorbachev succeeded in radically transform-
ing the system before he was removed, indeed before any attempt was made
to remove him, while Khrushchev was ousted before he could do lasting damage
to the system. This difference in outcome reflects a number of key differences
between the two leaders and their environments. First, Gorbachev, unlike
Khrushchev, did not regard the system as basically sound; his analysis of its
ills extended to the system itself rather than just the deficiencies of his prede-
cessors. As a result, he aimed for deeper, more radical change than did Khrush-
chev. Moreover, Gorbachev's awareness of the need for basic reform was shared
by many others, both within the regime and in society generally. Secondly,
Gorbachev benefited from the very severity of the Soviet Union's economic
and political problems. While many blamed him for these ills, they nevertheless
enabled him to justify ever more radical measures and, especially after 1988,
they reduced the self-confidence of the ruling elite, thereby reinforcing its
dependence on the leader. Thirdly, Gorbachev greatly expanded the 'political
nation', thereby expanding his power at the expense of his fellow oligarchs.'00
By drawing into the political arena new actors even more radical than himself,
Gorbachev broadened the political spectrum, thereby creating a middle ground
for himself to occupy. While he often satisfied neither right nor left, he consis-
tently managed to play one against the other, using the threat of a backlash
from the other side to bolster his own position. Khrushchev, by contrast, did
no such thing; he led from the front rather than the middle, with the result
that his removal did not threaten the other oligarchs with a backlash from
any quarter.
The institutional hegemony of the apparat, which formed the core of the
power problem facing Khrushchev and Gorbachev in their pursuit of reform,
also helps to explain why it was not possible for Gorbachev to opt for a 'Pinochet
solution', in which economic reforms would precede and take priority over
political democratization. This course was advocated not only by Gorbachev's
conservative critics but also by some reformist intellectuals.'?' This argument
has two major strands. The first, pointing to the experience of the Taiwan,
South Korean and other successful Asian economies, maintains that a strong
- probably authoritarian - state is required to contain and manage the social,
100 Gooding, 'Perestroika as Revolution from Within', p. 49.

101The most prominent of the latter group was the historian Andranik Migranyan; see his
'Dolgii put' k evropeiskomu domu', Novyi mir, 7 (1989), 166-84; and 'Gorbachev's Leadership:
A Soviet View', Soviet Economy, 6 (1990), 155-9.
economic and political tensions generated by economic modernization in a

backward country. The second strand, emphasized by Migranyan, argues that
the economic revolution must precede political democratization in order to
allow the coalescence of 'institutionalized material interests'102that can form
the social basis of the new establishment politics. In other words, the social
conditions of capitalism are seen as a prerequisite for the establishment of
a stable democracy.
Advocates of the Pinochet solution overlook the fact that, with all economic
power concentrated in the state, the most powerful defenders of the status
quo were to be found within the regime itself. The problem was not the absence
of a strong state to manage the transition, but the existence of entirely the
wrong kind of state. The institutions of the regime could not be used as agents
of economic transformation until they themselves had been transformed, yet
this would be politically impossible so long as the leader was dependent upon
the party-state elite for his power. The reforming leader had either to form
an alliance with the military and/or security organs so as to dominate the
regime by force as Stalin had done, or to find an entirely new basis for both
holding and exercising power. The former course - effectively a military-police
coup against the rest of the elite - would have been extremely dangerous,
and, given that the military stood to lose from any truly radical economic
reform, was probably never an option anyway. The only alternative strategy,
then, was to create alternative sources of power and authority at the expense
of the elite, as Gorbachev ultimately tried to do. Gorbachev, in contrast to
some of his critics, had come to the most un-Marxist conclusion imaginable:
that only a political transformation could effect a change in the economic
system.
102
Migranyan, 'Gorbachev's Leadership', p. 155.
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Khrushchev and Gorbachev as Reformers: A Comparison

Article in British Journal of Political Science · January 1993

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Khrushchev and Gorbachev as Reformers:

system, while Gorbachev succeeded in radically transforming it before any

4 This definition, as well as much of the discussion which follows, draws

Brezhnev years led to a considerable de facto devolution of power to lower

Power Problems Facing the Reformer

terms of a regime's 'defensive' and 'offensive' projects.'? The leader's ability

Stages of the Reform Process

Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 25-7, at p. 26.

KHRUSHCHEV AND GORBACHEV AS REFORMERS

succeed Stalin. Most of the Presidium members wished to prevent another

as well as necessity.44His strategy in persuading his fellow oligarchs to follow

the apparat. Gorbachev, however, accepted (indeed at times encouraged) a

51 Some recent Soviet observers have

lack of institutionalization which characterized this environment.54Yet these

60 Breslauer, Khrushchevand Brezhnev,p. 110.

Khrushchev hoped that a loosening of political controls would be rewarded

when it came to compensating potential losers; the victims of reform were

means of both inducements (glasnost' and democratization) and threats. These

structure. Not surprisingly, this approach was generally favoured by representa-

The Limits to Reform

both terror and bureaucratization: his attempts to do so angered an apparat

THE RECALCITRANT APPARAT

9' Popov, 'Dva tsveta vremeni', p. 15.

submitting to it (as Brezhnev was to do), but was ultimately confounded in

politics in terms similar to Popov's (A. Migranyan, 'Mekhanizm tormozheniia v politicheskoi

a capitulation - while turning increasingly to the military and the security

100 Gooding, 'Perestroika as Revolution from Within', p. 49.

economic and political tensions generated by economic modernization in a

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