Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin Read online

  The most common grounds for refusing permission to go abroad were considerations of secrecy. On that basis refuseniks could be detained for decades. One’s closest relatives also possessed a virtual “right of veto” on one’s emigration. You could have been prohibited from traveling abroad simply because your apartment faced a secret establishment and you might have seen or photographed those working inside. Those Soviet citizens who went to live abroad permanently were forbidden to return, even to visit their relatives. With the beginning of perestroika the number of refusals to travel abroad for permanent residence was sharply curtailed. The application procedure for temporary travel abroad on private business also was greatly simplified.

  I was involved from the beginning in drafting the law on the freedom of exit and reentry but, unfortunately, was no longer involved when it was finally enacted. This was because unlike Glukhov, Yury Reshetov, who had become the head of the division, reacted very irritably when our unit came into conflict with other ministries. Kuznetsov, who then headed the Visas and Permissions Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and for some reason was viewed as a democrat after the disintegration of the USSR, very clearly expressed his views regarding the position of the Foreign Ministry and my own stance when he began yelling at me during an interministerial conference at the Ministry of Justice: “Do you want to be assigned to felling timber?”2

  “That’s a good idea. Clean air, a healthy way of life. And a civilized bunch of men headed by my minister whose instructions I am now carrying out.”

  A break was declared. Kuznetsov immediately approached me to apologize and claimed it was a joke. After this it became easier to reach agreements with him and his office.

  The struggle over adopting this law not only was torpedoed by certain departments but was also used by other departments to resolve their own problems—to the benefit of the former. The Ministry of Transportation suddenly and categorically opposed the law. It could not guarantee its implementation. Not only would it need to increase the amount of its rolling stock but it would also need to develop new railway lines. The national airline Aeroflot was alarmed, for it had too few aircraft. Nor did the Ministry of Finance remain on the sidelines. “Where will we be able to get enough hard currency?” they asked. The unanimous conclusion of those opposed to the law was they needed more time to take the necessary “preparatory measures.” Naturally, when the law was nevertheless adopted, to be implemented in phases, no one moved a finger to facilitate its implementation.

  As with other bills, I considered it imperative not merely to declare a right but also to bolster it with an appropriate implementation mechanism. The government bill, adopted on the first reading, incorporated many provisions of prime importance.

  It contained a provision stating that persons beginning work in fields where, for reasons of security, travel was restricted would have to be informed of this in advance. It was envisioned that such restrictions would be established directly at the place of employment. An upper limit of five years that departments could not exceed was set on the period of restrictions on travel. This term could be extended only in exceptional cases by a Commission on Citizenship of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Yet another key feature of the law was the opportunity to appeal to this selfsame commission a decision to refuse permission for permanent residence abroad. Everyone feared this feature like fire. Often it simply sufficed to inquire what were the grounds for refusing an exit visa to a certain refusenik for the department itself to rescind the refusal. A judicial complaint was anticipated in controversial cases where the obligations had not been fulfilled regarding persons who wanted to travel abroad. This feature also removed another of the sore points regarding the problem of exit and reentry. Thus, for the first time since the Bolshevik coup of 1917, the right of Soviet citizens to leave and return to the country was secured.

  After our division had just been established, the “traditional” drafters of laws such as officials in the Ministry of Justice and the Procuracy tried to keep from us the bills that were being drafted. As a case in point, one of my colleagues simply stole the text of one of the drafts and enabled us to intervene in a timely fashion. Officials from other ministries simply could not understand what business it was of the Foreign Ministry. Once they figured it out, they tried to hide what was going on and exclude us from the working groups.

  The main thrust of our efforts was to reform legislation regarding criminal activity. The Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the “model to emulate” for the other republics of the USSR, was critically important in the mechanism for maintaining power. Before examining the content of this remarkable document, let us make a historical-juridical excursion. As far back as 1922, the Criminal Code of the RSFSR contained such articles pertaining to “propaganda and agitation directed at helping the world bourgeoisie” and “the preparation and preservation with the intent to disseminate and the dissemination of agitational literature for counterrevolutionary purposes, false rumors or unproven information that could provoke panic in society, arouse distrust toward the authorities or discredit them.” The most curious was “in the absence of proof of the counterrevolutionary character of the aforesaid actions,” punishment may merely be mitigated. The notorious Article 58-10 of the Stalinist Criminal Code, “Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda,” came later, but its path was already well prepared. After Josef Stalin’s death, smoothly and with only a few changes, it metamorphosed into Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and was in force even during the period of perestroika.

  Glasnost, or “transparency,” was a crime according to this article, and it was not treated as a simple one but as especially dangerous. The “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,” as cited in Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, referred to particularly dangerous crimes against the state. The text of this article was formulated in such an all-encompassing manner that it is worth quoting the target it describes in its entirety: “Agitation or propaganda conducted with the aim of undermining or weakening Soviet power or the commission of specific particularly dangerous crimes against the state, the oral dissemination toward the same ends of libelous thoughts that defame the Soviet state and social order, as well as the dissemination or preparation or possession of literature of such content toward these same ends.”

  This article accompanied the less severe Article 190-1, which defined a crime against state authority as “the systematic dissemination in oral form of knowingly false fabrications that defame the Soviet state and social order as well as preparation or dissemination in written, printed or other form of works of like content.” This article enabled the authorities to hold persons criminally liable, for example, for an anecdote or entries in a diary. Anyone who spoke or, even more to the point, anyone who wrote—unless, of course, they exercised extreme caution—would find themselves “under the sword of Damocles” of these two articles. Naturally, we drew parallels between the Criminal Code in force in the Brezhnev era and the Stalinist one, carefully hushing up the fact that the former scarcely differed from the “sacred Leninist norms.”

  On April 8, 1989, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a decree that altered the wording of Article 70. It replaced the former deliberate vagueness of this article with a clear judicial formula containing two fundamentally important criteria. The first specified that the statements covered by the article must be of public character. The second concerned the article’s focus on calls to change the state and social order, and it removed wording that violated the Constitution of the USSR. An important change was also introduced into the literature section of the article stating that only the preparation with intent to disseminate such materials, as well as their dissemination, was prohibited and not, as heretofore, private notes. At the same time, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR revoked Article 190-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. Thus, the juridical foundation for battling dissent by means of the Criminal Code wa
s removed.

  I am especially proud of the changes regarding the political articles of the Criminal Code and, in particular, the new wording of Article 70. My draft was adopted with the exception of one or two clarifying words. The wording occurred to me while I was taking a bath before work, and I dictated it to my wife so I would not forget. The reactionaries, however, took short-term revenge, making it a criminal offense to insult or discredit organs of the state, responsible officials, and, what was most surprising, public organizations and their public media. The notorious Article 11 lasted only until the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR met in the following year (1990).

  However, even the changes introduced into the Criminal Code were insufficient for glasnost and for securing freedom of thought and of the mass media. The most blatant example was the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe of April 1986, for according to the laws then in force, it could not even be mentioned since the location of atomic energy plants was strictly secret. Secrecy, one of the major props of the regime, was founded on lies and fear. We succeeded in tackling this “sacred object” by a multifactor approach, emphasizing its enormous cost, drafting the law on exit and entry, and pointing out the absurdity of the list of what was considered secret information. Finally, the leadership of the ministry understood the need to ease the regime of secrecy.

  Paradoxically, the struggle against the institution of censorship, the state organ in Russia that traditionally embodied the suppression of freedom of speech, culminated in a comparatively easy victory. The partisans of perestroika and glasnost still had to wage a long battle, to be sure, although in what were already objectively different conditions.

  But let us return to the Criminal Code then in effect, starting with Article 64, “Betrayal of the Motherland,” which best illustrates its distinctive character. It immediately becomes clear that this article refers to a “flight abroad or refusal to return from outside the borders of the USSR.” There is probably no need to explain that “non-returnees” generally enjoyed the internationally recognized right to leave their own country. What follows in this article appears at first glance to be even more “criminal”: “rendering assistance to a foreign state in conducting activities that are hostile to the USSR.” If one extracts the meaning from these ominous words, it becomes clear, especially in the context of the subsequent political articles of the RSFSR Criminal Code, that any professional activity abroad—for example, work connected to journalism or to Sovietology—could be subsumed under this article. Punishment could be as severe as the death penalty plus confiscation of property.

  A strange amalgam existed. Proclaimed rights and freedoms were joined with criminal responsibility, thus ensuring the rights would not be exercised. An article in the Criminal Code about parasitism turned the right to work on its head. The right to preserve health was distorted by the Ministry of Health into a license for arbitrary conduct on the part of physicians, while the right to housing in response to the phenomenon of homelessness was twisted by an article about vagrancy and residence permits. The right to enjoy the achievements of culture was nullified by the persecution of its best representatives and bans against their works; thus, the freedom of scientific, technical, and artistic creativity existed only in the private domain. Further, the right to suggest improvements to state organs and public organizations and to criticize their defects was twisted around by Articles 70 and 190-1 of the Criminal Code. A bold person who took the risk of making use of this right hazarded a trip to a psychiatric hospital for “urgent consultations.”

  I have already spoken of freedom of speech and of the press. The freedom of assembly, of meetings, and of street marches and demonstrations was “implemented” exclusively so the toiling masses could show their support for the policies of the CPSU and the Soviet government. Otherwise, the exercise of this right was equated with hooliganism or stirring up the public. Freedom of conscience was achieved to a considerable degree by the religious articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The inviolability of the person and of one’s dwelling was included in the Constitution just to observe the niceties. And Article 56, which proclaimed that “the personal life of citizens, privacy of correspondence, of telephone conversations, and telegraphic communications is protected by law,” was simply a mockery.

  Throughout most of perestroika, a fierce battle was fought over the abolition of the death penalty, a measure we insisted on. Almost all the nonspecialists opposed its abolition. They were actively supported by the mass media. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not surrender. A compromise was reached. The list of capital crimes was drastically cut. Specifically, economic crimes were taken off the list.

  The lion’s share of this work was mainly directed toward restoring what had long been uprooted from Soviet life—that is, the right of persons to be themselves. Without taking a risk, it was impossible to hold opinions that contradicted the official ideology on major questions or the official point of view on current events, to move from one apartment to another without permission from the authorities, to “break loose from the collective,” and so forth. Each person had to be just like everyone else.

  Andrei Sakharov, in writing about the need of human society for intellectual freedom, included the right to receive and disseminate information, the freedom of “unprejudiced and fearless discussion,” and the freedom from “the pressure of authorities and prejudices.” In his opinion, “this three-fold freedom of thought is the only guarantee against infecting the people with massive myths that, in the hands of perfidious, hypocritical demagogues can easily turn into a bloody dictatorship. This is the sole guarantee for implementing a scientific-democratic approach to politics, economics, and culture.” He defined the threat to intellectual freedom as follows: “It is a threat to the independence and value of the human personality, a threat to the meaning of human life.” After Gorbachev came to power, a turning point occurred in society, and the country’s leadership regarding all questions concerning its worldview centered on freedom.

  An integral component of the ruling political cult was a dogmatic, belligerent, and ignorant type of atheism. To a large extent the education of the “New Man” was built upon this principle. The main reason for persecuting even the most harmless dissent was a strict political-ideological prescription for the “moral-political unity of society.” In other words, translating from Soviet newspeak to normal language, it eliminated any convictions that were not included in the directives from on high. This, naturally, included all religious teachings. In the best of cases, believers and, even more to the point, churchgoers were merely tolerated, but they were seen as second-class persons for whom the doors of the GULAG and the psychiatric hospitals were always open.

  While taking our bearings from international standards, we realized that we could not automatically transfer foreign experience and the provisions of the relevant international rights documents to Soviet soil. For example, in the sphere of freedom of conscience, the existence in the country of various confessions, denominations, interpretations, and tendencies was a reality that contained significant moral potential, but if handled incautiously it was rife with new and serious problems that would be difficult to resolve.

  Not infrequently stocktaking occurred under the pressure of circumstances. During the years of perestroika, extremists fired shots first in one region of the country and then in another. Each time it was a disaster. A majority of cases were provoked by the neo-Stalinists for whom force was an instrument of their political game. People’s lives and welfare were small change in their struggle to achieve their political and other ambitions.

  The sharp interethnic conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, was the raison d’être for devising a legal framework for a state of emergency. About a year before its adoption, I was included in an interministerial group to draft a directive for what was then still the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Considering the events that followed, I
do not presume to say whether this effort was the beginning of an attempt to resolve the problems facing the country posed by those who resorted to force, especially since there are grounds for supposing that the events in Nagorno-Karabakh were one of the provocations that opponents of reform initiated.

  I had not expected such an assignment at all. I learned that I would have to deal with it only when I was hastily summoned to the initial meeting, which was held in the hall of the collegium of the Ministry of Justice. It was a typical meeting. Literally right after it began one of the generals in attendance took the floor and argued in favor of handing all power to the military during a state of emergency. Speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I took the initiative to neutralize this danger. To be honest, I had no right to do so at the time.

  Subsequently, by then fully authorized to defend the ministry’s position, I succeeded first of all in ensuring that the draft bill fully conformed to the USSR’s international obligations. Another extremely important feature was strengthening the draft edict to include a detailed regulatory mechanism for declaring and implementing a state of emergency and thus preclude any arbitrary, unjustifiable restrictions on human rights.