ONE YEAR WITH GORBACHEV

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706000002-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 14, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 11, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/12/14: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706000002-0
LEAFPEARED
1H 'AGE J -71-)
1,JASH I NGTON TIMES
11 March 1986
JOHN SEILER
One year with Gorbachev
Let's sip a little vodka, and
toast the West's survival of
the first 365 days since the
rise to power of Mikhail
Sergeyevich Gorbachev. Since Mr.
Gorbachev is trying to drain vodka
from Soviet society our celebration
splashes a blow against his Soviet
Empire.
In his first 365 days in office, Mr.
Gorbachev has proved himself
Lenin's most faithful heir.
Khrushchev and Brezhnev were
crude, blustering peasants, Stalin a
Georgian seminary student, and
Andropov a superspy out of the mold
of Lenin's secret police boss, Dzer-
zhinsky.
In contrast, Comrade Mikhail has
spent 12 months proving himself the
perfect Leninist ? the pure New So-
viet Man ? the ultimate totalitarian
apparatchik. That's just what we
should expect from the first Krem-
lin dictator not born under the czars,
but hatched whole from a Leninist
egg.
Across Moscow, Soviet propa-
ganda banners proclaim the slogan:
"Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will
live!" Let's see how closely Lenin
lives in Mr. Gorbachev.
? Mr. Gorbachev has launched
what I term the Gorbachev Doctrine
? a truly Leninist face-lift for Soviet
foreign policy What is the Gorba-
chev Doctrine? Wherever Ronald
Reagan implements the Reagan
Doctrine, Mr. Gorbachev launches a
counteroffensive. Wherever Mr.
Reagan aids indigenous freedom
fighters, Mr. Gorbachev immedi-
ately strikes back to ensure that even
the smallest seed of liberty doesn't
take root. The three most con-
spicuous examples prove this.
1. Last year, Mr. Reagan increased
covert aid to the Afghan
mujahideen. In response, Mr. Gorba-
chev launched a May-June offensive
in the strategic Kunar Valley border-
ing Pakistan, hoping to seal off
Afghanistan from the outside world.
Mr. Gorbachev also stepped up the
Red Army's scorched-earth policy,
aimed at depopulating the country.
According to the U.N. Human Rights
Commission, "The target is primar-
ily the civilian population, the vil-
lages, and the agricultural
structure." Genocide is a synonym
for the Gorbachev Doctrine.
2. In June 1985, Mr. Reagan ca-
joled congress into repealing the
Clark Amendment (which banned
aid to Angolan treedom fighters),
And started trickling a little Qygrt
aid to Jonas Savimbi's UNITA. Just
three mon-ths later, Mr. Gorbachev
launched a two-month offensive
against UNITA. Soviet and Cuban
fighter pilots flew MiG-21 and
MiG-23 warplanes, Su-22 ground-
strike fighters, and Mi-24 Hind heli-
copter gunships. Soviet generals co-
ordinated attacks by Angolan
Marxist and Cuban troops driving
T-34, T-55, and T-62 tanks. In all, So-
viet military aid totaled more than
$2 billion. Mr. Savimbi repulsed the
Gorbachev offensive, but only at
great cost.
3. In June 1985, Mr. Reagan
coaxed from Congress $27 million in
"humanitarian" aid for the Nicara-
guan "contra" freedom fighters; no
military aid was included. In re-
sponse, over the last six months of
1985, Mr. Gorbachev shipped to San-
dinista Comandante Daniel Ortega
95 howitzers, tripling Managua's ar-
senal to 145; and a dozen new war-
planes, running Mr. Ortega's air
force inventory to 77. The shipments
included two Polish Mi-2 Hoplite he-
licopter gunships.
Mr. Ortega feels so confident
ot his public relations dis-
information campaign, it-
self a key part ot the Gorbachqy
Doctrine, that last wIslie ,*icete i
to Havana. ' trii? to vast
year actually goaded Congress into
passing the $27 million aid bill. But
this year, as Mr. Ortega and Cuban
junta leader Fidel Castro presum-
ably puffed cigars together and dis-
cussed the Gorbachev Doctrine's
next offensive in the Western Hemi-
sphere, four congressional panels
voted down Mr. Reagan's new, $100
million "contra" aid request. Lenin
would have termed such con-
gressmen useful idiots.
? Lenin insisted that "A good Com-
munist is a good Chekist" ? a mem-
ber or helper of theNcheka, the
Bolshevik secret police and the fore-
runner of the KGB. Following this
advice, Disciple Mikhail Ser-
geyevich has granted the KGB more
power than it has had since Lenin's
time. Indeed, he has restored the
KGB to its true Leninist function as
the heart and soul of the Communist
Party. (Stalin had eviscerated the
KGB, relegating it to a role as his
personal enforcers, and keeping it
loyal through periodic purges.)
At last November's Geneva sum-
mit, Mr. Gorbachev promised to tone
down his anti-American smear cam-
paign. Instead, he has boosted KGB
disinformation assaults on America,
and has granted the KGB complete
control o all Soviet broadcasting
units.
irAgain like Lenin, Mr. Gorbachev
has shown himself less vain than
earlier Soviet dictators. Stalin had
his personality cult and Brezhnev
his fleet of Cadillac Eldorados. Of
course, Comrade Mikhail gets
"enough to eat" and "lives well," as
First Deputy Prime Minister Geidar
A. Aliyev said recently about the So-
viet nomenklatura, or ruling elite.
But then, the proletariat's rubles al-
ways bought Lenin "enough to eat,"
and let him "live well," even during
his Zurich exile.
Yet for men like Lenin and Gorba-
chev, such things are mere comforts,
not life's aim. Such men instead lust
for power ? which Henry Kissinger
called "the ultimate aphrodisiac."
Some men are consumed by the pur-
suit of gold or harlots, but such
things pale next to the ultimate cor-
ruption: the pursuit of the kind of
power delivered only by mass inter-
national terror. In 12 months, Mr.
Gorbachev has shown that his goal
remains that of Lenin: to run concer-
tina wire around every square inch
of the globe, and clap irons around
every pair of human wrists.
? Even in his failures, Mr. Gorba-
chev resembles Lenin. Last Novem-
ber, Mr. Gorbachev couldn't
schnooker Mr. Reagan into cancel-
ing the Strategic Defense Initiative,
or into pulling American Pershing II
and cruise missiles out of Western
Europe. But after all, Lenin urged
patience; one can't do everything in
12 months. And Comrade Mikhail is
no Ilbotskyite, itching for instant
world Communism!
Lenin himself implemented a
strategic holding action when the
Poles repulsed the Red Army in
1920, thwarting the Bolshevik at-
tempt to conquer all of Europe. But
within 24 years Poland was con-
quered, with the rest of Eastern Eu-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/12/14: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706000002-0
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/12/14: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706000002-0
rope thrown in as lagniappe. Over
the past 12 months, Comrade Mi-
khail has shown he can wait 12 or 24
years, if necessary, to conquer West-
ern Europe.
Because Mr. Reagan's term ex-
pires in less than three years,
Mr. Gorbachev's experts on
America have advised him to wait on
arms control, if necessary, while
advancing in other areas. The next
American president might be a San
Francisco Democrat, like Mario
Cuomo or Gary Hart, who would cut
America's military budget sharply.
Or a moderate Republican, like
George Bush or Howard Baker, who
would pare the Pentagon moder-
ately. In either case, the next Amer-
ican president can't possibly be a
charismatic, conservative movie
star ? a Great Communicator II ?
who can rebuff the liberal-opinion
monopoly's demands for arms con-
trol, yet remain popular.
In 1989, the new American pres-
ident will also be hankering for a big
foreign-policy success, hoping to
score some points in the public opin-
ion polls. He'll sign an arms control
treaty for a song. And as to treaties,
didn't Lenin once write about the
Brest-Litovsk treaty: "Yes, of
course, we are violating the treaty;
we have violated it 30 or 40 times... .
As every sensible man will under-
stand, by signing this treaty we do
not put a stop to our workers' rev-
olution." lreaties are for capitalists
to obey, not Communists.
? In economics, Mr. Gorbachev
has displayed vaunting Leninist in-
competence. The Soviet economy
doesn't work. But Lenin never de-
signed it to work. Liberal
Sovietologists tell us that Mr. Gorba-
chev is restoring "vigor" to the econ-
omy. Yet that doesn't mean more re-
frigerators and Moskvich cars for
the masses, but a few more tanks
and bullets squeezed out for the Red
Army. As Soviet agricultural boss in
the late 1970s, Mr. Gorbachev almost
brought on a nationwide famine. But
far from exiling him to run a col-
lective farm in Yakutsk, such disas-
ters gave him a clear edge in the
Politburo dictatorship primaries.
Obsessed with electrical power,
Lenin made up this equation: Com-
munism = socialism + electricity.
Disciple Mikhail Sergeyevich has
updated that Leninist mania to the
1980s, in the form of electronic tech-
nology. He fears Ronald Reagan's
latest American whiz-bang gadget,
Star Wars, and is rapidly building his
own. One of Mr. Gorbachev's top
military advisers is Marshal Nikolai
Ogarkov, the Red Army's prime tech-
nocrat and an advocate of a Soviet
first strike. And Mr. Gorbachev is
painfully trying to erase the
U.S.S.R.'s computer incompetence.
Indeed, the Leninist equation might
be updated to: Communism = so-
cialism + microchips.
In conclusion, Mr. Gorbachev has
spent 12 months earning for
himself the title Lenin II.
The Gorbachev Doctrine ad-
vances, enslaving or butchering a
few hundred more people every day,
thwarting humankind's few cries for
freedom.
The KGB spreads its tentacles
across the world, spreading terror-
ism and poisoning further the wa-
ters of public opinion.
The Red Army's arsenal grows, as
prosperity and peace again lull the
capitalist nations into weakness.
We have survived Mr. Gorba-
chev's first year ? yes. But unless
we awake from our slumbers and re-
alize the danger this aggressive Le-
ninist poses, we might not survive
many more.
And that's something which, in
spite of our earlier celebrations, is
very sobering.
John Seiler is a member of the
editorial staff of The Washington
Times.
a.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/12/14: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706000002-0