Moscow and Beyond, 1986 to 1989

This book was written before a gigantic economic collapse wiped out the savings of people in the Soviet Union who were hardly prosperous, but were highly aware that the rest of the world was leaving them behind in the quest for material comforts. At the time, "Wages represent only 37-38 percent of our gross national product--for the rest of the developed world that figure is 70 percent and over." (p. 142). Parallels with present problems that continue to bother people who consider continuous progress an economic necessity of the first order might occur to any reader who is willing to think that the design of thermonuclear devices, for which the author, Andrei Sakharov, is famous, might be trivial compared to the kind of chain reactions which monetary policy produces. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a main character in this book, and Sakharov's attempt to tell him what needed to be done on June 1, 1989, reflects how rigidly the old system clung to "achievement of unlimited personal power." (p. 133) This book suggested Sakharov's solution: "In brief, economic reform is practicable only if there are changes in the character of ownership in agriculture and industry, if the Party's and state's stranglehold on power is ended and if the highway robbery practiced by the central committees is eliminated." (p. 130).Global capitalism is not what it used to be. Those who have taken control have pushed the envelope of subjugation and economic strangulation so far that it is difficult to refute the idea that the west supported the looting of the public assets in the former Soviet Union with the observation that those who were previously capable of highway robbery merely found an economic method for maintaining this power, as well as greatly increasing their wealth.Soviet methods of maintaining control over the economy still seemed brutal in Sakharov's time. "In those same days there was a shocking massacre in Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley. The main victims were Meshki Turks, but Russians, Tatars, Jews, Armenians, and Ukrainians were also slaughtered." (p. 137) "in any case, religious differences cannot be the motive--both the Uzbeks and the Meshki are Sunni Muslims. Property disputes have been mentioned, and in fact the monocultivation of cotton has deprived Uzbeks of much of their farmland and doomed them to hunger. Perhaps some Meshki had small plots of land, and the mutual support system that always exists among a persecuted minority may have made their life a hair better than that of the native population. . . . We are forced to the conclusion that someone directed the crowd and channeled its hostility." (p. 138). "Another sidelight on events in Fergana, although I can't vouch for its accuracy: I was told that in the videotapes made of the bloody events in Uzbekistan people had recognized in the crazed crowd agents of the Armenian KGB, who had been hurriedly summoned to Moscow a few days before the events. If true, this suggests participa