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Soviet Union [USSR] Gorbachev Era
After gaining the post of general secretary in March 1985,
Gorbachev moved with unprecedented speed to implement personnel
changes in the party and government. His success in getting rid of
so many potential political opponents in such a short time
surprised Western Soviet experts, particularly because Gorbachev
did not have a substantial power base or patronage network of his
own when he took office. Gorbachev apparently relied on the same
bases of support that Andropov had used in his ascent to the top,
which included the KGB. According to Western experts, Gorbachev
appealed to the KGB for help in purging the Brezhnev old guard. The
main vehicle used by Gorbachev in carrying out these purges was the
anticorruption campaign. By the late summer of 1985, hardly a day
passed without a report in the press on cases on bribery,
embezzlement, or other forms of economic crime. In addition to
high-level party and state officials, MVD and Procuracy employees
came under fire for their failure to uncover crimes. Even MVD chief
Vitalii Fedorchuk fell victim to Gorbachev, losing his post in
early 1986. Fedorchuk's replacement, Aleksandr Vlasov, was a former
party
apparatchik (see Glossary) with no experience in law
enforcement.
Although the regular law enforcement agencies were subjected to
sharp attacks for their failure to combat crime, the KGB remained
unscathed, despite the fact that it was empowered by law to
investigate certain types of economic crime. There was some
turnover in key KGB posts, but these changes were not nearly as
widespread as were the changes in the CPSU apparatus and in other
state agencies.
Numerous signs pointed to the fact that the Gorbachev
leadership was cultivating good relations with the KGB by
maintaining its high prestige and political status. KGB chairman
Chebrikov was promoted to full membership in the Politburo just a
month after Gorbachev came to power. He also figured prominently in
the Soviet media. At the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in FebruaryMarch 1986, for example, he delivered a speech that was an
unprecedented assertion of the power and authority of the KGB.
Although Gorbachev continued to rely on the KGB in his drive to
purge the party and state apparatus of corrupt officials, toward
the end of 1986 signs indicated that his relations with this
organization were becoming strained. The KGB cannot have been
pleased about the reformist polices promoted by Gorbachev, in
particular openness in the media and liberalization of cultural
norms. Calls for reform of the judicial and legal systems, voiced
with increasing frequency in the autumn of 1986, signified that the
Gorbachev leadership was attempting to curtail arbitrary KGB
actions against citizens. This attempt became even more apparent in
January 1987, when Chebrikov acknowledged, on the front page of
Pravda, that employees of the KGB had committed
illegalities. Such an acknowledgment of KGB abuses was
unprecedented. Even during the Khrushchev era, when the crimes of
Stalin's security police were exposed, the KGB was never criticized
in the press. Observers speculated that, having depended initially
on KGB support to purge the Brezhnevites, Gorbachev decided by
early 1987 that he was strong enough to embark on reforms that
might antagonize this institution.
It was not long, however, before signs of opposition to
Gorbachev's policies arose, and a "conservative backlash" occurred.
Although the opposition appears to have been led by disgruntled
party leaders such as Egor K. Ligachev, the second-ranking member
of the Politburo, the KGB probably joined forces with these
conservatives. Chebrikov's comments, in particular his strident
speech delivered in September 1987, made it clear that the KGB
would not allow the democratic reforms to go too far: "There must
be a clear awareness that the restructuring is taking place in our
state and society under the leadership of the Communist Party,
within the framework of socialism and in the interests of
socialism. This revolutionary process will be reliably protected
against any subversive intrigues." The subsequent ouster of a
leading proponent of Gorbachev's reforms, Moscow party chief Boris
El'tsin, was an indication of the strength of the opposition to
Gorbachev.
Although he made some strategic retreats in early 1988,
Gorbachev continued to pursue his policy of perestroika, and
exposures of illegal KGB activities continued. Even more
threatening for the KGB were unprecedented revelations about
security police terror under Stalin. Although the role of the
police in the purges had been discussed since the Khrushchev era,
glasnost' resulted in a much more devastating critique of
the role of the police during this period. Ethnic unrest of various
nationalities, together with increasingly bold political demands by
the Soviet intelligentsia, also presented the KGB with significant
challenges. In a speech delivered in mid-April, Chebrikov expressed
concern that things were going too far and that some individuals
were "unleashing a wide-ranging arsenal of methods of social
demagoguery and substituting bourgeois liberalism for the essence
of the concept of socialist democracy." Subsequently, in October
1988 Chebrikov lost his position as chief of the KGB and was
replaced by Vladimir Kriuchkov.
Data as of May 1989
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