Thinking about intelligence after the fall of communism

Abstract

In the mid-1970s the Soviet Union was one of the world's two superpowers. Its aggressive policies in support of successful third-world revolutionaries, its behind-the-scenes influence in the war in the shadows and its ability to export its ideology gave it the appearance of being near triumphant in the Cold War. American foreign policy toward the Soviets in that period was one of reacting to Soviet advancement across the globe. As America viewed with dismay the spread of global Communism, cracks in the Soviet superstructure were already developing. Analysts of Soviet agriculture, looking at year-to-year declining harvests, began to wonder about the economic impact of the USSR's rising population and failing crops. By the end of the decade, economic growth and productivity began to slow and bureaucratic corruption began to increase. An old leadership clung to the prerogatives of power while unable to fulfill its political obligation to lead. The transmission of power from one generation to another short-circuited, and the Politburo looked more like the Ancien Regime on the eve of the French Revolution than the heirs to the historic inevitability of Communism. In the last days of the Brezhnev era, the Politburo had become a geriatric cluster of men spending their twilight years together helping each other stand up and sit down. Mikhail Gorbachev was one of only two of thirteen Politburo