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365 Document No. 42: Memorandum from the Bogomolov Institute, “Changes in Eastern Europe and their Impact on the USSR” February 1989 Like the International Department memo above, this assessment is sent to Yakovlev (and read by Gorbachev, according to his aides) as part of the analytical process commissioned by the January 21 Politburo discussion. But the think-tank reformers here go much further than the Central Committee staff, both in terms of frank description and support for change. The head of the institute (officially, the Institute of the Economy of the World Socialist System) is Oleg Bogomolov, one of the “people of the Sixties” who was disillusioned by the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. (He publicly opposed the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.) This memo does not just refer to the crisis of the socialist system, but concludes that “[t]he model of economic and political development imposed on these countries after 1948 has clearly exhausted itself.” Compare the word “imposed” to the word “transferred” employed as recently as October 1988 by Shakhnazarov (see Document No. 29). The document explicitly warns that “[t]he direct use of force by the USSR, its intervention in the course of events on behalf of conservative forces that are alienated from the people, will most evidently signify the end of perestroika and the crumbling of trust on the part of the world community in [our reforms]. But it will not prevent a disintegration of the social-economic and social-political systems in these countries.” At the same time, the Bogomolov memo provides reassurance about the outcomes of reform and even about more fundamental processes that might occur—what historian Timothy Garton Ash would later call “refolution.” The memo says: “By itself the fact of a transfer of power to alternative forces does not mean an external and military threat to our country.” Likewise, even though an Eastern Europe that successfully instituted perestroika would inevitably gravitate to the West economically, they would be “pioneers” not traitors; and the process would benefit the USSR. Missing from even this radical vision, however, is any sense of how much of their legitimacy the region’s communist parties have already lost; any inkling of the possible dissolution of the WTO; and any foresight that East Germany might end up folding into West Germany rather than becoming a neutral confederated state. The memo tracks remarkably with the actual attitudes that Gorbachev would display through 1989, indicating that it may have been an important influence on, or reflection of, his thinking. As such, its limitations would explain in part why Gorbachev would be so ill-prepared for the eventual discussions on German unification. CHANgES IN EASTERN EUROPE AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE USSR Societies in the Eastern European countries are beginning to change their character . Attempts to build socialism with Stalinist and neo-Stalinist methods, not without active involvement by the Soviet side, have ended in a deadlock. This situation carries with it an aggravation of contradictions and crisis developments. Melyakova book.indb 365 2010.04.12. 16:20 366 The degree and scale of conflicts vary from more or less hidden social-political tensions pregnant with sudden explosions to a chronic crisis without any visible ways out—a crisis that signals the beginning of the disintegration of the socialpolitical system and also does not exclude cataclysms. Such processes are irreversible ; they result from the long-term evolution of the regime, and in a majority of countries they favor the transition to a new model of socialism but can also possibly lead to the collapse of the socialist idea. In the last year or year-and-ahalf there has been a rapid acceleration of developments in Eastern Europe, and there are more elements of unpredictability there. A gENERAL CHARACTERIZATION OF SOCIAL-POLITICAL PROCESSES IN THE COUNTRIES OF EASTERN EUROPE Crisis symptoms are visible in all spheres of public life inside those countries as well as in relations among them. In the national economy, the intensity of these symptoms varies from a slowdown of economic growth, a widening social and technological gap with the West, a gradual proliferation of the deficit in domestic markets and the growth of external debts (gDR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria), all the way to the real threat of economic collapse (Yugoslavia, Poland). Particularly dangerous is the open and hidden inflation that has become a common phenomenon and only varies by degree: creeping and galloping inflation are predominant, but one cannot exclude its escalation into hyperinflation (Poland, Yugoslavia). A “black market...

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