Getting It Wrong

Mr. Fairbanks, a research professor of international relations at the Nitze School of International Studies, was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration. The footnotes to this article, cut for lack of space, are available from NR.

TANKS in the streets, the general secretary held prisoner by his trusted aides, elite units of the KGB voting on whom to obey: if we had heard about any of this before, it was from paperback thrillers, not (with a few exceptions), from Soviet specialists. The public relied on us during the years of perestroika to penetrate into a remote world, with odd jargon and unfamiliar structures, and prepare the public for unexpected events. But what the public heard (for example, from the sophisticated and enormously learned Seweryn Bialer, two years ago) was that “There is no danger of an anti-Party group, a coalition of old-guard leaders, or Stalinists forming in the Politburo.” Or again: “The unquestionable existence of opposition to Gorbachev does not, however, constitute a real present danger to his leading position. The struggle at the top concerns the extent of Gorbachev’s power. It is also extremely unlikely that . . . Gorbachev [could face] his own ‘anti-Party’ group with a majority in the Politburo, as Khrushchev did in June 1957.”

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Charles Fairbanks

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Mr. Fairbanks, a research professor of international relations at the Nitze School of International Studies, was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration. The footnotes to this article, cut for lack of space, are available from NR.

TANKS in the streets, the general secretary held prisoner by his trusted aides, elite units of the KGB voting on whom to obey: if we had heard about any of this before, it was from paperback thrillers, not (with a few exceptions), from Soviet specialists. The public relied on us during the years of perestroika to penetrate into a remote world, with odd jargon and unfamiliar structures, and prepare the public for unexpected events. But what the public heard (for example, from the sophisticated and enormously learned Seweryn Bialer, two years ago) was that “There is no danger of an anti-Party group, a coalition of old-guard leaders, or Stalinists forming in the Politburo.” Or again: “The unquestionable existence of opposition to Gorbachev does not, however, constitute a real present danger to his leading position. The struggle at the top concerns the extent of Gorbachev’s power. It is also extremely unlikely that . . . Gorbachev [could face] his own ‘anti-Party’ group with a majority in the Politburo, as Khrushchev did in June 1957.”