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414 Document No. 51: Notes of Mikhail gorbachev’s Meeting with Soviet Ambassadors to Socialist Countries March 3, 1989 These notes reproduce a remarkable oration by Gorbachev to an audience that traditionally consisted of party functionaries picked for their ideological correctness rather than their diplomatic skills. But by now the Soviet leader and his foreign minister are in the midst of a process of installing more reform-oriented emissaries to the socialist community. Gorbachev’s consistent message leaps from this text—and one can imagine how vividly this must have come across in person. He insists over and over on a policy of non-intervention and the rejection of force—“we are excluding the possibility of bloody methods”—and connects this policy to the new Soviet sense of the allies as burdens, rather than as unquestioned assets for the USSR. He further shows his resentment of the allies who “reproach us” for “giving up [our] leadership role.” But if we “go back to this practice … we will once again assume full responsibility for their actions.” However, the allies are also taking advantage of the Soviet Union: even though the GDR enjoys much higher meat supplies per capita than Soviet citizens, the East Germans still “demand raw materials for special prices!” Chernyaev’s notes convey the written equivalent of Gorbachev banging the podium: “They resell the specially priced resources they get from us to the West for hard currency. Such is their reciprocity! This is where I turn into a nationalist!” Small wonder the Soviet leader and his circle show so little reluctance to see Eastern Europe go. Gorbachev: Nothing is going to be easy. Everything depends on the staff and the people. We need to change the approach to our work—all of it, entirely. This is the most important thing. Even our first reaction, as we were rotating the flywheel of perestroika and feeling that it was not working as planned, was to reach for the stick and to punish someone because of ideological or economic issues. Either do what we tell you or leave, so to speak. This concerns Politburo members as well. We ourselves are gaining experience and wisdom, and in society everything is still very tentative. Routine work is holding us up more than anything. We still have to finish thinking through and making a prognosis at least of what the contours of future society might be as conceptions become transformed into policy. There is movement forward. But so far we have not acquired much through perestroika. Perestroika is moving deeper into society, and we must offer society forms of life that everyone is able to understand. The philosophy of our movement is another matter. But we must not be naïve. We must reach each person through reform. The individual is our main focus. Melyakova book.indb 414 2010.04.12. 16:20 415 Sometimes we hear from different sides: perestroika will not give you anything , you will not succeed, the country will fall apart and you will return to Brezhnev , if not to Stalin. Yes, there are many mistakes, but that is inevitable. We have no other choice but to add more to perestroika and to move forward. The people are growing stronger. The people believe. A CPSU candidate to the Congress of People’s Deputies40 traveled around the entire Urals region and then came to me. Everything is in motion, he told me, but it bumps up against old thinking and habits. Novelty is frightening. I told him: what kind of a revolution would it be if there was nothing new in it. We are not just applying new wallpaper, as [Kurt] Hager said. We have started such a project! And we started it after serious analysis. The fate of the country is [tied up] in it; this is the country’s chance for a future. If we go back now, the fate of socialism in general will be up in the air. Even the Social Democrats want very much for perestroika to be successful. They say they have their model and we have our model. But the socialist idea is shared in common between them. The ambassador of Cuba said to me: the reactionaries in the West have come to the conclusion that perestroika is not beneficial to them. Yes, a real struggle is going on. Perestroika has hit the military industrial complex hard, and it is clear that it is not profitable for weapons manufacturers. Baker traveled around Europe and he...

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