IN ALL the fulsome media tributes to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as the statesman who ended the Cold War, there is one thing missing: there were two sides in that decades-long war.  

Gorbachev did his bit, withdrawing troops from eastern Europe and Afghanistan, disbanding the Warsaw Pact — and what did the West do in return? Nothing.  

In February 1991, when the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist, did Nato disband?  No. Nato started its expansion eastwards in 1999, and by 2004 all the former Warsaw Pact countries were in Nato.  

I arrived in Moscow, together with my family, on February 19 1985, to take up my post as the Morning Star’s Moscow correspondent.  

I had barely had time to unpack our suitcases and go shopping for winter coats and boots for our three children when elderly Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko died. The following day, Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), nominated by the country’s well respected foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko.

For me, it was a true baptism of fire. The new well-educated leader, son of peasants from the agricultural region of Stavropol, started on his path of reform, or perestroika, and soon all of us Moscow correspondents were struggling to keep up with the avalanche of changes initiated by the new leadership.

On a first visit to Leningrad, Gorbachev was like a breath of fresh air, seen on TV surrounded by eager happy faces as Soviet people welcomed his friendly and approachable demeanour, so different from previous leaders. 

At first talk was of “accelerating” the economy, not restructuring.  Perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) would begin the following year. First there would be the anti-alcohol campaign, when vodka and most wines disappeared from shops.  

Russians soon cleared the shops of sugar as they made their own moonshine. Much later, Gorbachev admitted the campaign had been an unmitigated disaster — tax revenue to the state coffers plummeted, resentment grew, ancient vineyards were destroyed, to the anger of Georgian and Moldovan winemakers.

After decades when the Soviet centralised economy had stagnated, there was widespread recognition of the need for reform among the party leadership. The centralised planning system had been effective during WWII, under a war economy, but by now the shortcomings were there for all to see — shortages in the shops, apathy and low productivity at work, poor-quality consumer goods and an increasing distrust of the Communist Party leadership as people saw the gap between what was said and what was done in practice. 

So reform was needed. In my first years in Moscow I travelled to several republics and regions of this vast multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual nation, and everywhere I found enthusiasm and goodwill towards the new leadership.

People sensed that here was someone who was not out to feather his own nest — as he pointed out on one early walkabout, as CPSU general secretary, he was, in 1985, all-powerful. And the people, who bore the brunt of the shortages and inadequate housing — many still lived in kommunalki, sharing bathroom and kitchen with others — welcomed the prospect of change.  

What went wrong?  Why, after such positive beginnings, did everything start to fall apart, ending with the destruction of the USSR itself and its leading Communist Party?

Gorbachev and the reform-minded economists around him were well aware of how the last significant reform attempt under Nikita Khrushchev had ended in 1964, when he was ousted. During the previous 10 years, Khrushchev had denounced Stalinist crimes, released political prisoners, loosened censorship and opened the USSR up to the rest of Europe.  

For this reason, Gorbachev was convinced that he had to act quickly and decisively to replace anti-reform people in the central committee and in the top echelons of the 15 constituent republics and main regions of the country. Thus began a process of bringing reform-minded people into those positions, which meant sacking leaders who had sometimes been in situ for decades.  

This caused resentment by those who had been removed and the gradual emergence of an anti-reform bloc within the CPSU.

At the same time, media editors were replaced and the policy of glasnost  revealed the many problems, mistakes, corruption, nepotism and thievery prevalent in the country.

When I read the telexes I sent daily to the Morning Star (all of which I have kept), I see that over the next five years I was becoming increasingly unhappy at the extent and tone of many of these articles and TV reports. I wrote that it sometimes seemed to me that editors had thrown all caution to the winds and seemed to be competing among themselves as to who could publish the most sensational stuff. I talk of the lack of balance and the possible destabilising effect of so much negative reporting.  

After all, there was much that was positive in Soviet socialism: a well-educated populace, free healthcare and education, very cheap rents, heating and telephone charges, theatres, cinemas, libraries, universities and colleges throughout the country, even in remote areas; high levels of bilingualism in this nation of over 130 languages and ethnicities, and many other positive achievements.

Like Gorbachev’s peace initiatives, the moratorium on nuclear weapons testing (not reciprocated by the US), the US-Soviet summits of Geneva and Reykjavik and the visionary proposal made in January 1986 for the step-by-step elimination of all nuclear weapons arsenals by the year 2000.
 
From 1987 onwards the avalanche of proposals for new political structures increased. Increasingly, it began to smack of desperation, especially since there had been no visible improvements to people’s standard of living.

Since the early eighties some important economic experiments had been introduced at a number of big industrial plants, like one in Sumy in Ukraine.  These plants had to be run as profitable enterprises, and were allowed to use their profits for the benefit of the workforce and for investment. The results had been positive, and productivity had greatly increased.

One of the main problems in the economy was that a huge number of enterprises were loss-making and were propped up by funds being taken away from the profitable enterprises.

Increasingly it seemed to me that what was needed was to greatly extend experiments like that at Sumy rather than concentrating on political reforms. 
People needed to see improvements in food and consumer goods soon, otherwise no amount of political reform would suffice.

If this had been done, people would have started to see tangible economic results. Only then, I think, should political changes have been gradually introduced.  

More gradualism was needed, and more balance. Whilst glasnost was welcomed, Gorbachev should have intervened when he saw that media editors were losing all balance and concentrating exclusively on negative phenomena.

Gorbachev’s intentions may have been good, but any leader, especially a leader of the sole ruling party as was the CPSU, had to keep a steady hand on the helm and know when to be firm. Instead of which he lost control of the processes he had unleashed. 

Unbridled glasnost allowed hitherto suppressed nationalistic tendencies to be given voice — hugely dangerous in such a multi-ethnic country. What other country would allow one of its parts — Lithuania — to simply announce it was leaving the union, and do nothing to stop that? 

Yet in March 1991 the vast majority of the people of the Soviet Union voted for the USSR to be preserved — nearly 78 per cent. Whilst the small republics Armenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia and Moldova did not take part, Ukraine voted 71 per cent for on an 83 per cent turnout and Kazakhstan 95 per cent for on an 88 per cent turnout.  

This result was ignored and nine months later the leaders of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia declared the USSR defunct, by which time Gorbachev was powerless to prevent it. 

No wonder Gorbachev is largely blamed for the end of the USSR — the world’s first attempt to build socialism in one country.