the Gorbachev factor

The thesis

In The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford University Press, 1996), Archie Brown explained the end of the Soviet system not by external pressure but by Gorbachev's political and economic reforms. On his account, despite the structural problems of the 1980s there was no sign of an impending collapse, and the implosion of the system had more to do with the will of one man than with outside forces. Brown identified four areas of transformation, namely the political structure of the state, the economy, centre-periphery relations and foreign policy, judging political reform and the reformulation of foreign policy the most successful. Contested elections to a legislature with real powers in 1988 were the most significant step in democratization and, at the same time, the beginning of the erosion of state control over the political process. Abroad, Gorbachev stressed the freedom of every country to choose and renounced violence as a means of keeping other communist regimes in power, clearing the way for the overthrow of communist systems in Eastern and Central Europe from 1989 on.

Brown's own formulation

Brown later extended the thesis into the 'human factor'. In a 2020 interview he said he rejected both the assumption that the Soviet Union had no alternative to ending the Cold War as it did and simplistic materialist and triumphalist explanations, arguing that Gorbachev not only changed Soviet foreign and domestic policy fundamentally but spearheaded a conceptual revolution. Its content was New Thinking, the idea of 'all-human values' and 'universal interests' taking precedence over any social class or nation. Of the ten remaining full Politburo members from among whom a successor to Chernenko had to be chosen in March 1985, Brown argues, none but Gorbachev would have risked political pluralism or freedom of speech and publication. Refuting economic determinism and the claim that Reagan's rearmament won the Cold War is the point of the argument.

Points of dispute

Brown's account conflicts with interpretations centred on structural crisis. As he himself allows, the forces released by reform escaped control. Political reform delegitimized Marxism-Leninism and left an ideological vacuum for which nationalism was the obvious candidate, and rivals such as Yeltsin torpedoed any union-wide arrangement. Economic reform failed against the resistance of the ministerial bureaucracy and the leadership's zig-zag course. Gorbachev's consensus-building served him well in implementing reforms but later exposed him to attack from radicals on both sides. Such passages show that his choices did not control the outcome, and the argument between agent-centred and structural explanation remains open.