Free Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 by Stephen Kotkin

war in neighbouring Afghanistan (nominally to protect a client), without properly informing the rest of the elite, let alone the people. The Soviet political system had no mechanisms for self-correction.
    In the wider world, computers were revolutionizing communications, services were forming an increasing share of economic activity, manufacturing was being 50
    reviving the dream
    transformed by flexible production, and cross-border capital flows were escalating, penetrating even Eastern Europe. Japan had become an economic colossus on the basis of high-value-added exports. East Asia also saw the emergence of the ‘Four Tigers’, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, whose GDP had been as low as Ghana’s as recently as the early 1960s. In China, the elderly Communist leadership, while maintaining a firm grip on central power, sanctioned a move to the market throughout the countryside and in urban areas of select coastal provinces. Denouncing China’s ‘capitalist road’
    deviationism, Moscow fell into a recession in 1980. A decree announcing a Soviet economic reform was published the year before, but no concrete measures followed.
    Finally, in January 1982, the 79-year-old Suslov—the party’s unofficial number two, but a man who had not aspired to the top job—triggered a succession struggle by dying. Brezhnev, himself on death’s door, moved the 68-year-old Andropov from the KGB to Suslov’s office in the CC Secretariat, but allowed his own main minder, the 70-year-old Chernenko, to perform Suslov’s duties of chairing the Secretariat. The two invalids jockeyed for power until November 1982, when Brezhnev died. Andropov, supported by Ustinov, became general secretary. Gromyko privately suggested himself as second secretary (and putative successor), but that honour fell on the wheezing Chernenko. It all was just intrigue. No Brezhnev succession had taken place. Nationally, much hope was placed in 51
    reviving the dream
    Andropov, who was seen as a vigorous leader, but after just three months at the helm, he became bedridden. By the autumn of 1983, his lungs and liver, on top of his kidneys, had ceased working.
    Sick as he was, Andropov managed to put in place a new potential ruling team. Evidently seeing the uncorrupt, close-to-the-soil Gorbachev as the man who could ‘bear our hopes into the future’, Andropov instructed his protégé while he was still CC secretary for agriculture to assume responsibility for the entire economy. 18 To back Gorbachev up, Andropov transferred Nikolai Ryzhkov from Gosplan to a newly revamped economics department within the CC Secretariat. Andropov also summoned Yegor Ligachev, a Gorbachev acquaintance, from western Siberia to take charge of the critical CC department for personnel. Ligachev, an acclaimed arm-twister, writes that he assumed ‘the unpleasant mission’ of appris-ing numerous officials of their enforced retirements, while Gorbachev informed those to be promoted. 19 With Andropov having lost every bodily function except his mind, whispers of a Gorbachev succession brushed the corridors of power. In February 1984, Andropov fell into a coma and died.
    Behind the scenes, Ustinov, Tikhonov, and Gromyko rallied around Chernenko, by then an invalid dying of emphysema. Gorbachev was crestfallen, but Chernenko tapped him to become number two and chair the Secretariat. At the politburo meeting to rubber stamp the recommendation, however, the 80-year-old Tikhonov 52
    reviving the dream
    pointedly asked if there were no other candidates. Someone else suggested they could all rotate. The 75-year-old Gromyko, appearing the conciliator, proposed that, since there was disagreement, the question should be postponed. Gorbachev was not allowed to move into Chernenko’s (and Suslov’s) old office, and was never confirmed as second secretary. He performed the duties anyway, including chairing politburo meetings when Chernenko became bedridden. Thus, despite the intrigues,