A Clear View From U.S. Embassy

Jack Matlock was essentially the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. His period in Moscow, from 1987 to 1991, coincided with the key years of Mikhail Gorbachev's presidency, from the heyday of glasnost and perestroika to the fall of Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet state itself. Unlike so many U.S. ambassadors, Matlock was a longstanding Soviet expert and a distinguished diplomat. And "Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union," as its title suggests, is not so much an autobiography as an attempt to describe and explain the Soviet Union's collapse.


Until the Soviet archives are opened and the inside story of Gorbachev's administration becomes clearer, if indeed it ever does, Matlock's account of the period will remain critically insightful and useful. And beyond that, of course, his position close to the heart of U.S. policy-making will give it enduring value as a historical document in its own right.


Given his own central involvement in the events described, Matlock's book is strikingly objective and fair minded. Having recognized in 1987 that Gorbachev was a genuine reformer, Matlock came to have great sympathy with the beleaguered Soviet president. He regards Gorbachev as a tragic figure, doomed to try to save a system and a country that were possibly beyond saving. "I am convinced that Russia will eventually regard Mikhail Gorbachev as the person who led it out of bondage. The fact that he failed to reach the promised land is secondary."


Nonetheless, Matlock has a keen eye for Gorbachev's weaknesses, which ranged from his love of the sound of his own voice to his inability to tolerate strong and able people in his entourage (with the partial exception of Eduard Shevardnadze); from his devotion to the "policy of the diagonal," tacking continuously between the pressures of reformers and conservatives until both lost faith in him, to his failure to manage relations with Boris Yeltsin. In addition, "he was the first Russian leader in history who used force as a first and not a last resort."


In common with U.S. foreign policy of the period, Matlock remains broadly sympathetic to Gorbachev's attempts to keep the Soviet Union together, minus, of course, the Baltics. In his view, "a voluntary union of limited powers, with democratic institutions and the checks and balances essential to an effective democracy, could have provided freedom and a framework for more effective economic development."


This seems to me questionable. Once the ideological and institutional glue of communism was removed, the only thing that could have held together this kind of union would have been some form of East Slavic nationalism, with Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus at least "united through the centuries by Great Rus," as the Soviet anthem had it. While this has indeed worked for Belarus, Ukrainian nationalism has subsequently proved just strong enough to make it unworkable as a general formula. And that is without even beginning to tackle the more burdensome relationship with the republics of Central Asia.


Nationalists in the republics and Russian nationalists at the center might indeed unite in regarding Matlock's view on the possible preservation of the union as a piece of naive liberalism. One of the chief charges Russians level against Gorbachev is that so mesmerized was he by the language of universal human rights and democracy that he forgot certain elemental truths about how multinational states are ultimately held together.


Matlock played a leading part in persuading President Ronald Reagan to moderate his policy toward the Soviet Union and trust Gorbachev more. And, on the whole, Reagan comes out a lot better than his successor, George Bush. Reagan is credited with an appealing and not ineffective emotional directness in his relations with Gorbachev, while Bush's indecisiveness and conservatism provokes Matlock's irritation now as it did then.


Matlock's last chapter deals with the post-Soviet years after he had left Moscow. In my view, Matlock's physical distance from events has made him insufficiently sympathetic to Russia for the immense retreats that have been undertaken during these years. Far from being a unique post-Soviet legacy, Russian policy toward the "near abroad" is in fact typical of the behavior of Western former imperial powers as well. And although Matlock warns of the danger of criminalization and corruption, he does not show just what a repulsive society this new "democratic" Russia has turned out to be, with some of the leading "democrats" of 1990-91 having proved the most corrupt and cynical of all.


Nonetheless, his final conclusions make good sense, and are reinforced by the events of the past year. Matlock argues that, whatever the results of the presidential elections, there can be no wholesale return to the past, either economically or politically. The Russian economy is far too weak to realize the nostalgic dream of recreating the Russian empire.


I hope that the present U.S. administration reads this admirable book and applies the lesson not to overreact to future developments in Russia.





"Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union" By Jack F. Matlock Jr., Random House, 829 pages, $35.