The twelve months between mid-1989 and mid-1990 were one of those turning points in a leader's administration when suddenly things start to go very wrong. Khrushchev experienced this from mid-1960 to mid-1961. For Brezhnev, the tide did not turn so suddenly; his domestic program faltered in 1972, his foreign policy only during 1974–1976. For Gorbachev, as for Khrushchev, one year highlighted the contradictions within both his domestic and foreign policy programs. This also meant that both men suddenly experienced a crisis of credibility. Both of them had promised a great deal and had pushed themselves to the fore as sponsors of a transformative vision. Hence, they could not credibly diffuse responsibility for failure onto the leadership collective. Their authority was on the line. In Gorbachev's case, he found himself at the mercy of domestic and international forces he himself had unleashed as he introduced an autonomous public arena into Soviet politics and as he pursued a conciliatory foreign policy. This chapter analyzes the vulnerabilities of Gorbachev's domestic and foreign policies and his efforts to retain and recoup his political authority as those vulnerabilities became obvious.

VULNERABILITIES OF PEHESTROIKA

During 1988–1989, the contradictions within Gorbachev's program for perestroika started to become obvious. His strategy of giving the official class a stake in the new order by only gradually shifting authority from Party executive organs to soviet legislative organs, while a boon for democracy, created a situation in which officials of the Party and the state had both the incentive and the opportunity to instead “steal the state”: privatizing and stealing the assets of their agencies and contributing thereby to a collapse of public administration that was becoming increasingly evident in 1990