My Six Years with Gorbachev

In an interview on 1989

Let’s move on to Anatoly Chernyaev’s My Six Years with Gorbachev, which has been translated and edited by Robert English and Elizabeth Tucker. 

To put this title in context: if I were giving you a longer list of recommended books, it would include many in foreign languages, as well as collections of original documents from the time, and various memoirs such as this one. An honest memoir, written by someone of significance, who either has some documents or notes taken at the time, is always a valuable resource.

I usually hesitate to recommend translations because you lose some of the original flow, but this is a very interesting book and English-language readers are fortunate to have this skilfully translated version. Anatoly Chernyaev was one of Gorbachev’s top foreign policy aides. He kept a diary which has since been summarised into this memoir, translated by some very capable experts who are good at giving added value through detail and explanation. So, if you are interested in understanding Gorbachev, this is one way to get into his mind, so to speak: through the diary of one of his closest advisers, who spent six years working with him.

And what types of things were going through Gorbachev’s mind at this critical time?

Well, it becomes apparent that, on the one hand, he is very optimistic. He has great hopes that he can reform the Soviet Union. But it is also apparent that he feels embattled. By the end he only trusts a very few people (with some justification, because in 1991 there was a coup against him). So, this book is by one of the people who was part of his inner circle and was privy to his thoughts. 

Before we move on to the next book, what is it about 1989 that you find so fascinating?

I am a historian of international relations in the modern period, which all too often means I am an historian of war. I wanted to write a book about what I thought was a happy ending – a peaceful ending to the thermonuclear stand-off between the superpowers. So that was why I started to write the book. And, of course, when you start writing a book and doing the work, it becomes more and more interesting, because surprises start to pop up.

What became apparent to me, surprisingly, is that 1989 is really a Janus-faced story. On the one hand you have this wonderfully peaceful ending to the conflict that could have ended in nuclear war, but on the other, you have missed opportunities afterwards. The ending could have been a lot worse, but it could have been a lot better if there had been more of an outreach to Russia at the end of the cold war. 

Another complete surprise that emerged while I was researching the book was the way in which the origins of NATO expansion got tied up with German reunification. Up until I wrote this book, the general assumption was that NATO expansion started in the mid 90s with the Clinton administration; but I found a great deal of evidence showing that the Bush administration in 1990 anticipated it, so that was a real surprise to me. It became a priority of the United States to keep NATO’s options open. That kind of big surprise comes up when you research a book.