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Chapter 11. Seaparation of Stages in Powered Ascent

Whitish winter jacket goes from Gdansk to Moscow (pp. 238-242)

[In 1989,] the country was gradually turning unstable and authorities at all levels were loosening control. Frictions among various ethnic groups grew across the vast empire. Major clashes erupted in Kazakhstan in December 1986. Then, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan became bloody and turned into an existential fight between the two peoples in 1988 (Chapter 10). Even such a politically reliable and docile part of Soviet society as the bulk of scientists in the Academy of Sciences began showing dissatisfaction and to ask heretofore forbidden questions. (The number of those with truly dissident views, in "internal emigration," and resisting the regime was always small.)

One day in late February 1989, .... [I met a West German colleague in my institute] ..., who immediately asked, "Are you OK? Are you in trouble?" I could not understand what happened and what was this about. He explained that in early February, his wife ..., who had known me well, saw me in a news program on the German television "enticing the crowd." The reality was less dramatic.

Communist reformer Gorbachev regally allowed various entities, including the Academy of Sciences, to propose candidates for the election of deputies of the Supreme Soviet, a controlled and choreographed rubber-stamp parliament. The arrangement resembled choosing subservient representatives of the estates of the Marxist realm.

Consequently, in late January 1989, the politically obedient officialdom of the Academy of Sciences made public the list of trusted loyal academicians and rejected a few candidates for election proposed by the awakening Academy's rank and file. The eliminated candidates included dissident academician Andrei Sakharov and IKI director Sagdeev. [One my colleague] Baranov, who got involved in the process as an "elector," representing IPM scientists, later described the Academy as "a very dark reactionary organization."[3]

Then, an event took place that would have been unheard of in the past. Grassroots activists organized a protest meeting against the manipulation of the candidate selection process by the officials of the Academy's Presidium. Scientists from fifty academic institutes gathered on February 2, 1989, near the buildings of the Presidium.

I was not involved in these activities but had to drop off some paperwork at Academy's offices. So I timed my trip in such a way as to take a look at the protest (Fig. 11.2, middle). A couple of thousand scientists gathered with banners denouncing and shaming the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences. Some displayed the names of their institutes, including IKI (Fig. 11.2, top). Andrei Sakharov also attended the meeting (Fig. 11.2, bottom). Several foreign television crews were present. It was a peaceful gathering with practically no police around.

For many years, the Soviet people had been seeing on television screens footage of protests by "progressives" and other assorted socialists in foreign countries, with people chanting slogans and waving their hands. Nobody had experience in doing this in the totalitarian Soviet Union, where the Communist Party organized and staged all pro-regime meetings and demonstrations. The inertia of fear lived in the majority of the population. Repressive and coercive socialism ultimately destroys human dignity and corrupts souls.

Several activists and organizers spoke to the crowd. The meeting passed a resolution of no confidence in the Presidium and adopted appeals to the Academy of Sciences and the scientific community, demanding the Presidium to change its decisions on the selection of the candidates.[4] Some speakers shouted slogans, such as "Bureaucrats out!" or similar, and tried to excite the people.

The gathered scientists, probably one-half of them with Ph.D. degrees, remained static and unmoved (Fig. 11.3). The totalitarian Marxist state efficiently eliminated the concept of a public protest. The meeting participants simply did not know what to do. For many, it was the first time in their lives that they defied the authorities, overcame fear, and came together to express their views. Resurrecting the civil society that was annihilated by the communists would take a few generations.

Somehow I ended up in the middle of the crowd. When a speaker again shouted a slogan, "Shame to the Academy," I raised my fist and yelled "Ya!" As the speaker followed with another slogan, I again raised my fist and shouted. After four or five such consecutive yells, the people around began joining me in raising their fists and shouting.

I noticed that whenever a speaker shouted a slogan, television cameras turned away from him to point at me in anticipation as I raised my fist and yelled. This pattern continued for a couple of minutes with more and more people shouting with me and the cameras getting back and forth.

[My German colleague’s] wife saw this footage on German television. They got understandably worried about the consequences for me.

When I walked to IKI the next morning the first thing I saw was a page from a major national daily newspaper, Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya (Socialist Industry), pinned on a bulletin board near the entrance gate.[5] It prominently had my photograph (Fig. 11.4) with the raised fist in the middle of the protesters. I was again in the same whitish winter jacket as in Gdansk in 1984.

The centrifugal forces continued to grow across the country. Aside from the bloody conflict in the Caucasus and growing interethnic tensions elsewhere, almost two million people in the Baltic republics literally joined their hands in a human chain, stretching more than 400 miles (650 km). This action on August 23, 1989, called The Baltic Way (Fig. 11.5), commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 that cleared the way for the Soviet Union to “swallow” Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

The "eternal" socialist paradise showed growing fissures. At the same time, the 19-million strong Communist Party of the Soviet Union still ruled the country and controlled the society and lives of the people. The Marxists, fellow travelers, left-leaning liberals, and other Soviet supporters in the West had mixed feelings about the events. Many adored Gorbachev and hoped for a return of the tarnished socialism to prominence. A keen observer, dissident Yuri Orlov, viewed it as "the curious phenomenon of Western Gorbamania" when "millions of people were riveted by the man they saw as the liberal czar of a backward nation."[6]

Insightful U.S. commentator Rush Limbaugh noted that "Gorbachev was genuinely thought to be savior" and "every time he and [U.S. President] Reagan got together [for a summit meeting], there literally were Gorbasms" by the leftists.[7] On the other hand, the weakening of the communist state by Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost dismayed numerous Western Marxists and dispirited many illiberal liberals. They cheered and rooted for the continuation of this cruel social experiment with an incalculable human cost.

Fig. 11.2. Meeting near the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow on February 2, 1989. Top and middle: scientists of the Academy with banners "New Statute to the Academy," "Out Academy bureaucrats!" and "Fire [sack] the Presidium of the Academy!" Other banners display the names of the institutes, including the Space Research Institute. Bottom: Andrei Sakharov at the meeting near television crews. Photographs courtesy of Mike Gruntman.

Fig. 11.3. Meeting near the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow on February 2, 1989. The scientists remained largely static and unmoved during the speeches of the activists. Photograph courtesy of Mike Gruntman.

Fig. 11.4. Photograph in a major national newspaper (Scientists protesting, 1989) showing the author with a raised fist at a meeting near the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow on February 2, 1989. The banners read "We are also the Academy" and "Sakharov, Sagdeev,\ Likhachev to deputies."

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