Beyond Gorbachev

XAN SMILEY

THERE ARE worrying signs that President Bush has become hooked on President Gorbachev— that he is unable to contemplate, let alone encourage, the full-blooded democratization and decolonization of the Soviet Union because the Kremlin leader seems reluctant to stomach them. Appreciating the West’s embarrassing impotence in the face of the bullying of Lithuania, Gorbachev may have gained the impression that Americans consider him irreplaceable. Ritual incantations about “helping him make peresfrorfca succeed” are beginning to expose a dangerous lack of definition about what the West actually wants the Soviet Union to become—and they could encourage Gorbachev to slam on the brakes. Instead of preparing for the probability that the final consequence of Russia’s reforms will be the demise of the Communist Party and of Gorbachev himself, Western policy-makers seem to be locked into the belief that Mikhail the Miracle-Maker must remain in power at virtually any cost and that enlightened despotism in Russia may contribute to world stabihty.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Foreign Policy

Cold War

XAN SMILEY

THERE ARE worrying signs that President Bush has become hooked on President Gorbachev— that he is unable to contemplate, let alone encourage, the full-blooded democratization and decolonization of the Soviet Union because the Kremlin leader seems reluctant to stomach them. Appreciating the West’s embarrassing impotence in the face of the bullying of Lithuania, Gorbachev may have gained the impression that Americans consider him irreplaceable. Ritual incantations about “helping him make peresfrorfca succeed” are beginning to expose a dangerous lack of definition about what the West actually wants the Soviet Union to become—and they could encourage Gorbachev to slam on the brakes. Instead of preparing for the probability that the final consequence of Russia’s reforms will be the demise of the Communist Party and of Gorbachev himself, Western policy-makers seem to be locked into the belief that Mikhail the Miracle-Maker must remain in power at virtually any cost and that enlightened despotism in Russia may contribute to world stabihty.