#6 - JRL 8163 - JRL Home
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004
From: Sergei Roy <SergeiRoy@yandex.ru>
Subject: Sergei Roy's Reply to Archie Brown's Reply to Sergei Roy/ 8156

Reply to Archie Brown's Reply

(1) In a letter to JRL, Prof. Brown expresses his surprise at The Moscow News publishing my "conjectural and impressionistic history of the last decades of the Soviet Union." I must express my surprise at Prof. Brown's belief in a history that is not conjectural, to some extent. Apparently he regards his own version of the Gorbachev period and Gorbachev's character as entirely non-conjectural - God's truth, in fact. Alas, it is all too easy to show that it is nothing of the sort.

As far as the adjective "impressionistic" is concerned, Prof. Brown really should read the texts he criticizes more carefully. In the introductory remarks to my series of essays I took considerable pains to describe the genre of my notes as accurately as I could:

My choice of topics for discussion is inevitably subjective and colored by the bitterness of a romantic intellectual disappointed in his fondest hopes for a better future to be heralded by the "revolution" he took a modest part in. My justification for voicing these attitudes is that they are shared by millions in this country and elsewhere, which in turn may explain certain present and future developments.

With this in mind, it should be clear why the word "chronicle" in the subtitle of the book should be taken in a Pickwickian sense. It is by no means a description of factual events arranged in chronological order uncolored by the author's subjective perception of these events. On the contrary, whatever value the essays may have lies exactly in the characterization of attitudes of myself and what I loosely call "the people" or "the public" toward political and other developments at a time when history was happening at a frantic speed - precisely because those mass attitudes constituted a force that made the events happen the way they did. If this sounds a bit convoluted, that's because history itself was very much that way.

To convey this sense of immediate involvement in the events - even if this involvement was mostly emotional and negligible in terms of practical political effect - I have tried to keep my Chronicle as "colloquial" as I could, in order to avoid any impression that I was attempting a learned investigation into recent history and failing at my task.

There is more in the same vein (see sections 0.2 and 0.3 of the Chronicle, MN No. 1, 2004). With this in mind, to accuse me of "lack of familiarity with the relevant literature" is sheer irrelevancy.

My credentials for writing the Chronicle do not stem from having sat in a professorial study hoarding every scrap of paper written on the given subject. I rather thought I could write about those years because I marched in each of those mammoth demos that shook Moscow and the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s; exchanged punches, very physical ones, with hard-liners and out-and-out fascists during the election meetings in the run-up to the 1989 Congress of People's Deputies; spent 72 hours on my feet at the barricade by Entrance Six of the White House of Russia in August 1991, fully expecting to be massacred each second of those 72 hours; spent another cold, miserable night in October 1993, nursing a stinking Molotov cocktail by a pathetic barricade in Gorky Street; all that sort of thing.

In the text which Prof. Brown chose to read so selectively, I called myself a "foot soldier of democracy." As such, I thought I could add something to the history of the period by expressing the "view from below" and the "view from within," as I called my standpoint in the sections which Prof. Brown did not bother to notice. As such, I thought I might express my attitude toward the various politicos of the period, including the one who seems to have earned Prof. Brown's adulation - an attitude born of living experience rather than sources that he so haughtily accuses me of not having read.

As a matter of fact, I have read quite a few of them, and the conclusion I have come to is that I have read enough. In the introductory remarks already quoted, I expressed my attitude toward some of the literature:

It is only to be regretted … that books by presidents, ministers and prime ministers, press secretaries to the above, parliamentarians, generals, metropolitan mayors - in short, all kinds of insiders - mostly turn out to be collections of tired ideological fluff and waffle too obviously written in self-justification or self-glorification.

In varying degree, this applies to the works of Anatoly Chernyayev, Georgy Shakhnazarov and even those of Alexander Yakovlev - which Prof. Brown refers to so reverently. That is his right and privilege, of course - but I assume I am entitled to my own views of them.

(2) Now to more specific charges Prof. Brown makes regarding my text. My opponent believes that I have no right to doubt that Mikhail Gorbachev read Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks:

Sergei Roy's first mistake is to accuse Gorbachev, in effect, of lying when he said that he had read Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" in the pre-perestroika period since the book containing these writings was not published in the Soviet Union. I am astonished that Roy seems to be unaware that books that were unobtainable for him were published in very small editions and available only to people on the highest echelons of the nomenklatura. These could be ordered by Central Committee members, but not many regional party secretaries took advance of the opportunity. Gorbachev - in Stavropol in the 1970s - was one of the few who did.

Having worked for a couple of decades, 1974-1994, for the very Progress Publishers that Archie Brown himself refers to in this regard, and having translated some of the books that he believes were "unobtainable" for me, I think I have a sounder knowledge of what was obtainable to whom. But that is by the way. I am not "accusing" anyone of lying. I am expressing my doubts - to me, well-founded ones - about Mr. Gorbachev's "bold claim," as I put it. I can only envy Prof. Brown's ready acceptance of Gorbachev's word for being "one of the few who did" order those hexahedral-marked restricted editions and actually read them, or if he did read them, that he understood much in them.

At a different stage in my personal history, I lived 19 years in the same Stavropol Territory as Gorbachev and unavoidably mixed with medium- and top-level regional Partocracy there, being related to, and friendly with, some people in it - some of whom knew Gorbachev quite intimately, especially in his Komsomol years, but also later. On the basis of that acquaintanceship, all I can say is that the picture of a Party boss whiling away the day in his office only to scuttle home at the end of it to enjoy a few pages of Gramsci is plain Lewis Carrollean. Believe you me, that nomenclatura was then very much "otherwise engaged," to steal a phrase from Jeeves. Gorbachev was what he was - an over-ambitious Party career-monger, and Gorbachev's Gramsci studies are just a figment of the imagination of a memoirist embellishing his past. He could have heard something of Gramsci while at the university - but he was not a Central Committee member then, not by a long shot, and had no access to restricted publications, while there were no unrestricted ones available. And when he had that access, I doubt - I said that, and I repeat it - that he had either the time or the inclination to study the intricacies of, say, Gramsci's Theorem of Fixed Proportions or his discourse on the philosophy of Benedetto Croce. Stavropol was a town of about 200,000, maybe less, just a sprawling village where the top social crust was wafer thin, where everyone knew what everyone else was doing - or even thought of doing. Benedetto Croce, forsooth.

(3) It all comes to Gorbachev's "intellectual caliber," as I put it - and again I insist on my right to voice my view of that caliber, mine and a few million others'. Professor Brown's refutation of my view looks to me, well, curious - putting it mildly.

From the Olympian heights of a Moscow intellectual, Roy chooses to "doubt that a man of Gorbachev's intellectual caliber could have understood much of those texts, even if he had read them". It is a pity that Sergei Roy has not read the book, "Conversations with Gorbachev: On Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism" (Columbia University Press, New York, 2002; paperback, 2003). In those recorded discussions with his close friend, the late Zdenek Mlynar, Gorbachev mentions the "white books" translated by Progress Publishers, such as those of Gramsci and Boffa.

In other words, if I pen a sentence, I must append a reference at the end of it to show that I know what I am talking about. Sorry, that's not the way things worked out for me. I did not form my view of Gorbachev's intellect on the basis of his "mentioning" certain books as reported in a Columbia University Press publication, with or without Prof. Brown's preface in it. I rather formed that verdict, along with those millions I referred to earlier, by listening to Gorbachev's countless hours-long harangues over several years, those exercises in excruciating waffle that Prof. Brown was obviously spared. I formed that view by reading, or attempting to read, that most graphic manifestation of Gorbachev's intellect, the book that he took such pride in - Perestroika and New Thinking for Our Country and the Whole World, no less. A mind capable of producing that endless string of hackneyed, Pravda-editorial type phrases without a glimmer of wit or finesse just isn't the mind of a Gramsci scholar. I further formed that view after listening to Gorbachev talk during conversations at The Moscow News offices a few years back; one would have thought that a man of intelligence, the intelligence that Archie Brown so admires, could have learned something from past experiences, that those experiences had left him a wiser man with more acute perceptions. What a hope. He spouted the same tired, insipid banalities in the same Party-boss, pompous-ass style that made one's teeth ache, and in fact made one quietly steal from the room at the first opportunity.

On a different tack, consider the various imbecilities that Gorbachev committed on the practical side - like the anti-alcohol campaign that he started at a time when one third of the country's budget came from "drunken money" while world oil prices dropped to $10 a barrel and lower. That was surely brilliant - and left the country owing more than $100 billion to the West at the end of his tenure, whereas at the beginning our debt was zero; more than that, half the Third World owed us money. We still whistle for it now, thanks to good old Gorbie. Think of the way he handled the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Germany, just taking his Western friends' word for it that NATO troops would never move closer to Soviet borders, not bothering to make them sign any sort of treaty - to James Baker's amazement. Well, maybe those friends of Gorbachev were as good as their word - why should the West bother with NATO troops in Germany when they can be moved to Poland and the Baltics? NATO planes are already flying missions 160 km from St. Petersburg - thanks to good old Gorbie and his mighty intellect.

More generally, steering perestroika on the Columbus principle - hitting America while aiming to discover a route to India - is not exactly proof of great intelligence, is it. Releasing the forces that led to the self-destruction of the country he was presiding over, bumbling about, veering left-to-right, then without a pause right-to-left, blind to the consequences of his actions that stared him in the face - no sir, Gorbachev's intelligence was well below the level required by the challenges of his office.

(4) To go on. Prof. Brown has quite a few angry words to say about my mentioning Gorbachev's southern accent:

Unfortunately, some Moscow intellectuals - Sergei Roy evidently, among them - are incapable of distinguishing accent and pronunciation, on the one hand, from intelligence and erudition, on the other. We find traces of such a Muscovite snobbery in Roy's reference to Gorbachev's "heavy South Russian accent". (There are, of course, many Moscow intellectuals whose values are less debased, but one tires of coming across all too many references to Gorbachev's accent and pronunciation of certain words, which he has carried with him from his childhood, as if that were any guide to the quality of his mind or character.)

"Muscovite snobbery… debased values…" Strong language, Professor. So strong it reminds one of the physicists' old joke about heat in an argument and light in the same. I could not imagine eliciting such a fiery attack as I wrote this simple sentence: "The timid hope stirred that … Mikhail Gorbachev was a bit more than a typical provincial Party boss complete with a heavy South Russian accent…" What's so snobbish or debased about it? Did the public see Gorbachev as a typical provincial Party boss etc.? It did - if only because he had done his best to appear in that light, with his ridiculous "Ipatyev method" and similar antics. Did our hero have that accent? Still does. Did the hope stir? You bet. Is the subject of G.'s accent unmentionable? If Archie Brown thinks so, I beg to differ, that's all.

Actually, I rather enjoyed the passage, probably because it reminded me of a line from G.B. Shaw: "Your moral duty is done when you have called everybody names." And Archie Brown so obviously wants to have it both ways - Gorbachev the refined Gramschi scholar and Gorbachev the poor kid from the sticks who, try as he might, just can't get rid of his rural accent, despite his brilliant intellect.

You know, I even think I detect signs of a certain insular snobbery here - Professor Brown making so bold as to judge a feature of Russian culture that he obviously knows very little about. Let me explain.

It is a simple historical fact that the word "intelligentsia" originated in 19th-century Russia, along with the class of people itself. Now, a member of the Russian intelligentsia, an intellighent, just does not insult the whole Azeri nation - as Gorbachev did, whatever his IQ - by not bothering to get right the name of their land, Azerbaijan, and distorting it on every occasion. I just don't see, say, Andrei Sakharov speaking of Latvia while he is in Litva, as Gorbachev did. An intellighent will not speak to a university audience and shift his stresses around in total disregard of the audience's sensitivities. That audience will inevitably react with a barrage of snide jokes, the more so that it has had a lot of training in this pastime. After 1917, Russia was ruled for decades by a semi-literate bureaucracy that took pride in its illiteracy and developed a crass disdain for the intelligentsia, its culture, mannerisms of speech, body language, and even its apparel. In the circles in which Gorbachev moved, a heavy South Russian accent was a sign that he was "one of the boys," a passkey to their circle. Why bother changing it? He'd rather go along with the crowd. If the intelligentsia feels despised and a teeny bit downtrodden, so much the worse for it. Let them eat cake.

All I can say is, we have eaten so much of that particular cake that a little more from Archie Brown will not make much difference.

(5) There is a long paragraph in Archie Brown's "Reply" devoted to Archie Brown's role in the meeting between Gorbachev and Thatcher. Luckily, the only thing I am accused of here is confusing the chronology: It was in September 1983 that he gave some advice to Mrs. Thatcher, says Archie Brown. Sorry, but I did not mention September 1983 at all - I only quoted a book by Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev's biographer (very loyal biographer, I should stress) to the effect that Archie Brown was consulted on the upcoming visit. Archie Brown himself says, towards the end of that long paragraph: "I was invited to brief Margaret Thatcher on Gorbachev at a meeting in 10 Downing Street on the evening prior to his arrival (italics mine. - SR)." It does look rather confusing at this point, only I am not sure who confuses the dates: Grachev, me or, Heaven forbid, Archie Brown.

(6) Further down Prof. Brown criticizes what I wrote about Gorbachev's speech in the British parliament in December 1984:

Contrary to what Sergei Roy suggests, it was not so much the substance of what Gorbachev was arguing at that time that impressed his British hosts. He still stayed largely within the parameters of what was official Soviet foreign policy at the time.

To use Archie Brown's own favorite put-down, that is surely "impressionistic." Mr. Gorbachev's impression at any rate was quite different. Here is a bit of the Gorbachev prose (translation mine):

"It was here, before the British parliamentarians, that all those observations and thoughts on problems of foreign policy and world order that had occurred to me in recent years were expressed for the first time" (italics mine. - SR). [Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn i reformy (Life and Reforms). Book 1. Novosti Publishers, Moscow 1995, p.257]

Gorbachev himself obviously did not think his "observations and thoughts," revealed "for the first time," were an expression of "official Soviet foreign policy." And, you know, I rather tend to agree with him, and I said so in my notes: it was his emphasis (I might even say carping) on the dangers of continued gamboling on the brink of a nuclear holocaust, so different from the routinely belligerent tone of most Politburo foreign policy statements, that must have produced the main impression (that word again!) on any reasonable person in or out of parliament. Archie Brown's impression (oops!) that Gorbachev's openness, intelligence and charm, the fact that he admitted having been baptized in his infancy "pleasantly surprised his interlocutors" - all that may be correct; it is harder to accept that the substance of what he was saying played second fiddle to those charming details of his childhood and mature life.

(7) Towards the end, Prof. Brown's critique somewhat loses direction, and his "Reply" to me degenerates into ill-tempered grumbling that has little to do with my text. Here is a real gem: "…building on the false premise of Raisa Gorbacheva "dexterously using a credit card to spend vast sums of money", Roy quite erroneously goes on to describe Gorbachev as "corrupt"."

In my text, the relevant lines are these: "Gorbachev's wife went shopping in London, dexterously using a credit card to spend vast sums of money, by Soviet standards - or so the Western media said." Do I have to put that final disclaimer in bold type, for Archie Brown to notice it? I am describing events in December 1984 as they happened. I heard with my own ears that statement repeated on the BBC every hour on the hour ad nauseam, and it created a certain attitude toward the visiting couple in me and masses of other people. That attitude was a fact, and an important fact as far as the public in Russia and elsewhere was concerned. Do I have to suppress that fact in my present account because Archie Brown's impression is that British journalists were guilty of "calumny"? If that is an objective, non-conjectural, non-impressionistic approach to history, then I don't want to have anything to do with it. Things were as they were, and calumny, greed, gullibility, sensationalism, envy, the masses' envy included - all played a role in it. Archie Brown wishes to see his hero as a knight in shining armor. Again, that is his privilege. But that is not the way I and the people I am part of saw it, and I refuse to clean up history to suit Archie Brown's or anyone else's Gorbimania. I insist on my right to tell things the way they happened to me, my class, my country - be it impressionistically or conjecturally. Humanly.

On Gorbachev and the adjective "corrupt." The reader may have noticed Prof. Brown's mastery of the art of quoting other people's lines to best advantage. What I actually wrote was this: "This placed her husband among the corrupt top officials throwing the people's money about while the country made do with shoddy, Soviet-made consumer goods." That is exactly what the Soviet people felt about their top bosses, and I am morally certain that I know more of these feelings than someone in a remote - very remote - book-lined study. If Prof. Brown prefers books to raw life, let him read what Yeltsin wrote about Gorbachev's predilection for the goodies of life - before he himself succumbed to the same lure in a big way. Let him read Vladimir Voynovich's "Ivankiada," as an illustration of the ways of the top Partocracy and the intelligentsia's attitude towards them . Let him read - only I somehow fear that no amount of reading can change a Gorbimaniac's mind.

(8) As I have said a few times already I believe, Archie Brown is quite welcome to his passionate views on the subject of Gorbachev. True, they collapse at contact with arguments born of living experience, as I have tried to show, but that is what often happens to theories formulated at long distance from the object of inquiry. What I find amazing, though, is the line that Archie Brown started out with - that it was not worthwhile publishing something that deviates from those theories. That's the sort of Bolshevik standpoint that even Prof. Brown's hero Gorbachev would not subscribe to, with all his Bolshevik past. And that is certainly not the liberal spirit that we "democrats of the first wave" looked to the West for, and fought for here in Russia in those memorable years.

Sergei Roy
Editor, The Moscow News
11 April 2004