Alexander Yakovlev Speech: Sanford S. Elberg Lecture; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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t is true that perestroika as political doctrine and as
practice has appeared on the basis of the socialist idea and on the basis of
the socialist mode of implementing that idea in life. It is also true that in the very beginning perestroika's premise was not
destruction of "real socialism" as we used to call it, but its improvement on
the basis of "humanitarian rationalization." Call it an illusion if you want,
or an attempt that was bound to fail, but at least those were intentions of the
reformers to which I can be a witness. Such were initial intentions and initial
outlooks of the reformers, and it was only in the course of time that they were
bound to change, as some did, to a more conservative posture or more radical
ones. These days we can judge perestroika not only by its intentions and its
ideas but also by the practical deeds which it in fact undertook. What would I
distinguish as those practical deeds? Perestroika stressed rationalization of
doctrine, putting away all sorts of dogmatism and all sorts of scholasticism.
That was a conscious decision and it stemmed from the assumption that sensible
society can be built up only by sensible, critically minded people.
his posture was also based on the assumption that perestroika is not only to
solve the problems of the economy, political system, or foreign policy, but
also it was assumed that perestroika could function as a sort of socialist
Protestantism, without which perestroika would not have historical prospects.
We assumed that perestroika not only needed this sort of reformation but as a
matter of fact it started this reformation and it was a stimulus to its
development. Next, perestroika's central goal was democracy. It was precisely a
central goal, not a tactical one. It was seen as a strategic task, which
stemmed from the understanding that it is precisely the lack of a democratic
beginning that is the source of all the difficulties, all the troubles, and all
the problems that we have in the country. Even the introduction of the market
economy was considered not a goal in itself but as a kind of guarantee for the
establishment of democracy.
ext, perestroika made quite a conscious effort at a nonviolent course of
reforms. It stressed the reformational beginning, not the revolutionary type.
This was caused not by the peculiar personalities involved but from
understanding that revolutions most frequently result in the opposite of what
was originally intended. It stemmed from understanding that revolution is
incompatible with democracy, it is extremely dear and terribly inefficient.
When the former CPSU still existed, revolutionary courses of transformations
would objectively have strengthened precisely those features of the system that
we wanted to change or do away with. That is, revolution would become the
midwife of history, to use the Marxist term. Of course, one could ask the
question whether specific forms of reformation are always shaped in the best
possible way. Obviously, the answer is "no." More than that, mistakes were made
that were sufficiently significant to deform certain directions of perestroika
activities.
nd now let me word the problem like this: Suppose Russia is no longer a
communist state. Would that mean that automatically all the problems in the
field of social psychology are being solved? Would that mean that we have
guaranteed that democracy remains the central goal of the transformations?
Would that mean that we would no longer worry about correlations between
violence and nonviolence? Would the end of communism in Russia mean that from
that moment on, reforms could be executed in the country irrespective of the
quality of life of the population or probably at the expense of the quality of
life? In my opinion, one should answer strictly "no" to all of those questions.
And then one begins to understand the lessons of perestroika under quite a
different angle -- different from the question of whether Stalinist socialism
could have been reformed, a question we will never answer. Do we want reforms
or do we want a social bulldozer? This is where the lessons of perestroika are
still relevant. What is at stake is whether we are going to reform a society or
whether we are going to exercise violence over that society. Perestroika has
become an experiment in conscious social reform. It may mean that the Russian
social environment rejects any kind of reformation, or we may be dealing with a
political idealism that either suffers a defeat immediately or opens up new
chapters in history. I personally believe it is the latter.
Next page: Perestroika's Weakness