Ligachev and Soviet politics

Abstract

IN REACTION to the central assumption of the totalitarian model that Soviet society is 'conflictless',1 new models of Soviet domestic politics and foreign policy began to appear in the 1960s. All, including, inter alia, the conflict, interest group, bureaucratic politics, organisational process, institutional pluralism and cognitive models, assume that 'conflict' is a 'crucial feature of Soviet politics'.2 Sovietology -that most arcane of sciences-thus postulates an unremitting struggle between Soviet political actors at all levels, including elite members whose political orientations bifurcate along the lines of a 'conservative-moderate' dichotomy.3 Accordingly, the conviction that some Soviet leaders will be stolid bulwarks of political conservatism reigns as an unshaken article of faith, and this is nowhere so apparent as in the case of Egor Ligachev, whose reputation has become larger than life: he is considered the leading conservative in the Soviet leadership, a 'skillful, cunning politician' whose 'tone is rabid',4 who seeks to re-install 'a new form of Brezhnevism';s he is even likened to a military commander leading his 'battalions' against the Gorbachevite infidels.6 Consonant with this emphasis on Soviet elite power struggle, periodic, ferocious Gorbachev-Ligachev battles have been reported-most notably, of course, in newspapers and weekly journals-such as the ouster and political 'disgrace' of Ligachev in April 1988;7 the reported plan by Ligachev to challenge Gorbachev at the second session of the Congress of People's Deputies in December 1989 with an alternative programme which, of course, never materialised (this was accompanied by a rumour that the Politbureau had resigned, which was itself followed several weeks later by widespread reports of Gorbachev's resignation);8 identification of Ligachev as the ringleader of a plot to take 'soundings for a possible coup',9 and so on, ad infinitum. Despite the widespread belief in Ligachev's hard line credentials, however, there is, oddly enough, no consensus omnium on the question. For example, Michel Tatu, one of the most resolute adherents of the 'Ligachev as hard liner' thesis, insists, somewhat paradoxically, that Ligachev supports the cornerstones of perestroika-'reasonable' economic reform and new foreign policy thinking-but objects to 'the political component of Mr. Gorbachev's perestroika: glasnost' and democratisation, a reappraisal of the Stalinist past and the outspoken criticism of the Soviet system in some Soviet news media'.10 A diametrically opposed viewpoint characterises Ligachev's approach to economics as retrograde, limited to preaching 'discipline and order in virtually every speech'.'1 Yet another view holds that while Ligachev is a conservative, he is eclipsed by Ryzhkov, the real moving force behind a 'hard line' faction in the leadership.12