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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Karen Dawisha suggests that Cohen's argument is based on a minimalist definition of the requirements for the survival of the “Soviet Union” and that it ignores what she asserts is its most fundamental feature, the essential internalized and structural violence that was at the heart of the Soviet system. She therefore disagrees with Cohen, arguing that at the end of the day, Gorbachev's brilliance and capabilities were restricted by the fact that he was die leader of a country almost totally lacking in political, economic, or social capital.
1 Lenin, V.I., “What Is to Be Done?” V. I. Lenin Selected Works (Moscow, 1975), 1:177 Google Scholar.
2 Brown, Archie, The Gorbachev Factor (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Hough, Jerry F., Democratizationand Revolution in the USSR, 1985–1991 (Washington, D.C., 1997)Google Scholar; and Reddaway, Peter and Glinski, Dmitri, The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms (Washington, D.C., 2001)Google Scholar.
3 Ed Hewett, A., “Is Soviet Socialism Reformable?” in Dallin, Alexander and Lapidus, Gail W., eds., The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse, rev. ed. (Boulder, Colo., 1995), 320 Google Scholar
4 Ed Hewett, A., “Gorbachev's Economic Strategy: A Preliminary Assessment,” Milsstonesin Glasnost and Perestroyka: The Economy (Washington, D.C., 1991), 22 Google Scholar.
5 Pravda, 30 June 1988, quoted in Hewett, Milestones, 230.
6 Ibid., 244-45.
7 Malia, Martin, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar.
8 See “Pattern of Violence: Lithuania Is Latest Example of Soviet Army's Use of Lethal Force,” News from Helsinki Watch, 25 January 1991, http://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/U/USSR/USSR911.PDF (last consulted 29 April 2004).
9 For more on this period, see Dawisha, Karen and Parrott, Bruce, Russia and the NewStates of Eurasia: The Politics of Upheaval (Cambridge, Eng., 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 “Mikhail Gorbachev's Address to the UN General Assembly,” 7 December 1988, as reprinted in Sakwa, Richard, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 1917–1991 (New York, 1999), 462 Google Scholar.
11 Elsewhere I have extensively discussed the connection between the events in eastern Europe and the collapse, including in Dawisha, Karen, Eastern Europe, Gorbachev andReform:The Great Challenge, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 245 Google Scholar: “Finally, there is die internal cohesion of the Soviet Union itself, which threatens to dissolve under the burden of economic collapse, ethnic strife, and rival nationalism. These processes are accelerated by the events in Eastern Europe. Nationalities draw inspiration from the ease of the transformation in East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia, where almost overnight mass demonstrations effected a transfer of power. At the same time, the incredible vilification in the Soviet mass media of [Nicolae] Ceaujescu—frequently called ‘Dracula-Ceausescu'— for the cold-blooded killing of peaceful demonstrators has put enormous additional constraints on the use of force by Soviet leaders.“
12 Nina Andreeva, “I Cannot Forgo Principles,” Sovietskaia Rossiia, 23 March 1988.
13 The Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation, f. 2, op. 2, from Tlie End of the ColdWar in Europe, 1989: “New Thinking” and New Evidence, National Security Archives Critical Oral History Conference, Musgrove, St. Simon's Island, Georgia, 1-3 May 1998 (emphasis added).
14 See both John, Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971)Google Scholar and more especially his Political Liberalism (New York, 1993).
15 Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography,1888-1938 (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar.
16 Furet, Francois, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the TwentiethCentury (Chicago, 1999), 70–71 Google Scholar.
17 Mandelshtam, Nadezhda, Hope Abandoned (New York, 1974), 249.Google Scholar
18 Walter Duranty, “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving,” New York Times, 31 March 1933.
19 Orwell, George, “Notes on Nationalism,” in Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian, eds., TheCollected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (Boston, 2000), 3:370Google Scholar.
20 Mandelshtam, Hope Abandoned, 249.
21 Deutscher, Isaac, The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917-1967 (Oxford, 1967), 105 Google Scholar.
22 Stalin, Josef, Foundations of Leninism (Moscow, 1924)Google Scholar, as quoted in McLellan, David, ed., Marxism: Essential Writings (Oxford, 1988), 307 Google Scholar.
23 Drakulic, Slavenka, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York, 1992), 125 Google Scholar.
24 Brown, Michael, Who Owns Native Culture'? (Cambridge, Mass., 2003)Google Scholar, asks similar questions about how intellectual property law might apply to ownership of cultural tradition by indigenous peoples.
25 J. Arch Getty, “The Future Did Not Work,” The Atlantic Online, March 2000 http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/getty.htm (last consulted 29 April 2004). Also see Gomstyn, Alice, “Where the Cold War Still Rages,” Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 22 (6 February 2004)Google Scholar: A12; Paul Hollander, “Which God Has Failed,” New Criterion, February 2002 http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/feb02/holland.htm (last consulted 29 April 2004). Also see my review of Steve Cohen's Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedyof Post-Communist Russia, in Russian Review 61, no. 2 (April 2002): 335-36.
26 Lenin, Vladimir, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1961-1965), 34:280–82Google Scholar, as quoted in Volkogonov, Dmitri, Lenin: A New Biography (New York, 1994), 148–49Google Scholar (emphasis in the original).
27 Gorbachev, Mikhail, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New York, 1987), 191–97Google Scholar passim.
28 Vladimir Lukin (then a member of the Soviet Foreign Ministry's Planning and Assessments Department, later the head of Gorbachev's own planning staff, and after 1991 a cofounder of the liberal democratic political party Iabloko), in MoscowNews, no. 38 (25 September- 2 October 1988), as quoted in Dawisha, Eastern Europe, Gorbachev and Reform, 22.
29 As brilliantly explored in Svetlana Boym, TheFuture of Nostalgia (New York, 2001).
30 See, for example, the interview with Masha Gessen, the former managing editor of Itogi, in RFE/RI Media Matters 4, no. 3 (13 February 2004).
31 Havel, Vaclav, “Farewell to Politics,” Neiv York Review of Books 49, no. 6 (24 October 2002)Google Scholar.
