The Making of Gorbachev’s Strategic Thought Part 1: The Predecessors

Gorbachev led the Soviet Union party from 85-91 with intent to reform the party’s decline through the perestroika and glasnost movement. In a series of blogs we will be looking closely at what contributed to the development of Gorbachev’s strategic thinking and state planning and whether his attempts to save to Soviet Union could have been successful. In this blog, the focus will be centred on his predecessors in the Soviet Union and the resulting evolution of strategic thinking within the party.

Vladimir Lenin, one of the most significant leaders in materialising the concept of communism into practice, was the first to lead the party. Expanding on Marx’s theory of communism he developed his own view, leading to the term Leninism. The Marxism theory is that the economy will inevitably progress from capitalism into a state of socialism and finally to communism. Lenin proposed that the way to establish communism was that smaller countries would adopt the ideology and join together as a more powerful force to challenge more capitalistic countries. He sought to begin this by subverting the current state of government, leading to the 1917 revolt, and established a dictatorship. While his efforts were successful, communism was then strongly linked with brutality for much of its later history. Lenin used force and violence in the form of dictation to exercise his power and control over the people and this distinctly influenced the strategy of his successor Joseph Stalin.

Lenin’s firm stance that the shift away from capitalism would require force through a dictatorship of the working class was strongly adopted by Stalin. Holding office for nearly 30 years as the Soviet Union leader, Stalin further strengthened the link between communism and oppressive totalitarian power. He went even further with the Leninist view and used propaganda and executions as a prevalent attempt to exert power and force on the people. His use of oppressive operations exemplifies the influence of Lenin’s strategy, which, when contrasted against Marx’s original ideology in achieving a harmony among the people, shows how much they adapted the idea to suit their own philosophy.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, Georgy Malenkov briefly took his place for 6 months. As a Stalinist, he shared similar beliefs to his predecessor, but didn’t lead the party long enough to distinguish himself strongly. Next in line was Nikita Khrushchev, leading the party from 1953 to 1964. Khrushchev had an interesting relationship with Stalin, appearing to regard him highly before his death and be in support of his purges but ultimately turned to condemn much of his crimes later. He criticised Stalin in his speech for failing to empower collective decision-making among the party and acknowledges his fear of conspiracy from colleagues. Ultimately, Stalin’s approach did seem to influence Khrushchev in a new direction as he did adopt a far more relaxed approach in his thinking and running of the SU. He worked on decentralising the economy and increasing food production through agriculture, which did successfully increase the standards of living. Whether Khrushchev’s philosophy evolved from what was aligned with Stalin’s or whether he had been complying throughout the Stalin era in order to gain his own power and subsequently turn against him remains a grey area.

Leonid Brezhnev followed Khrushchev, serving from 1964 until his death in 1982. Leaders around this time are beginning to recognise the corruption that exists from within the party and a more democratic approach is adopted. While Brezhnev initiated more inclusive decision-making, he did fail to bring significant change and his time in office was later known as the Brezhnev stagnation. While this saw a positive improvement in the form of more collective decision-making, his strategy to reform was poor and non-progressive.

Yuri Andropov took his place in 1982 and, contrast to the new direction of the party, resorted back to the authoritarian approach as his leadership strategy. Famous in soviet history as having restored law and order, he set out to eliminate the corruption and abuse of power that existed in the party, probing officials for breaches. He cracked down on labour inefficiencies and growing alcoholism, showing how pragmatic objectives can provide effective and fast improvements.

After Andropov died in office, Konstantin Chernenko took over with some apprehension from within the party, as he was also ill. Hence, he didn’t achieve much but he is known to have been in support of growing labour unions, reforming education and combatting propaganda. His philosophy shows a shift from the goals of Stalin and Lenin to a much more liberal and democratic form of leadership.

All of these contrasting leadership strategies of the soviet leaders have had a significant influence on the last man to lead the party. While Mikhail Gorbachev stood in on many occasions while Chernenko was ill, he officially took office in 1984. His views are closely aligned with Chernenko, representing an overdue shift toward a social democracy. He showed leadership which was pragmatic and in opposition to his earliest predecessors. His role in ending the cold war, policies liberating the public and efforts to boost to soviet economy show his contrasting efforts to that of Stalin’s and highlight the gradual shift of thinking from totalitarian to liberal.