From the Records Vault: Mikhail Gorbachev

A lot of bomb threats... a lot.

I’ve posted a few times historical events, especially when I can tie them into FOIA. Luckily for me the FBI released several hundred pages relating to Mikhail Gorbachev. The reason? It was so frequently requested under FOIA, it made more sense for the FBI to post their Gorbachev records online rather than respond to each request individually (more on that in a minute).

Since the end of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev (the last-but-one General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the USSR's last president) has remained a focus of interest almost everywhere, except in Russia. After starting perestroika and radical reforms in 1986, he became very popular in the West and as early as 1984, when he visited the UK for he first time, he was a majority celebrity.

Background

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For a little context, sixty years after the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Gorbachev believed the Soviet system needed reform. He was confronted by a set of choices that determined, as he put it, whether or not the Soviet Union would enter the twenty-first century "in a manner worthy of a great power." Years after the fall of the Soviet Union he later detailed within the Soviet elite a dramatic struggle over how the Soviet Union should have addressed a combination of external and internal factors, a struggle at least as momentous as the one that followed Stalin's death in 1953.

His answers were perestroika, which championed economic reform, and glasnost, which championed a more open political system. As for where Gorbachev got these ideas, they were not necessarily that uncommon among his generation of Soviet leaders, who came of age in the 1960s and were influenced by Khrushchev's domestic reforms.

For example, the "Prague Spring" of January to August 1968, when Alexander Dubcek held the position of First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Dubček advocated what was called "socialism with a human face,” and adopted a program that in many ways would be one Gorbachev would mirror some 20 years later: a more federal structure for Czechoslovakia, Communist-led economic reforms with a greater emphasis on consumer goods and better relations with Western countries, and a freer media allowing for criticism of Stalinist-era abuses. The Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev and the rest of the Warsaw Pact disliked these measures, especially the opening of the Czechoslovak press, and this lead to the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, the firing of Dubček, and the "normalization" of Czechoslovakia under a more hardline regime.

Many of Dubcek's policies were written by Zdeněk Mlynář, who was Secretary of the Czechoslovak Central Committee. Mlynář had studied law in Moscow in the 1950s, and one of his closest personal friends had been one Mikhail Gorbachev.

Despite striking parallels to Khrushchev's earlier campaign for de-Stalinization and the reform of the Soviet system, the scope of Gorbachev’s efforts was broader and its thrust different. At issue was not merely the errors of a single leader, however significant his role, but the very nature of the Soviet System. Although Gorbachev never questioned the fundamental economic and political arrangements or the overarching values of the Soviet system, his call for far-reaching departures from prevailing practices and norms across virtually every area of Soviet life eventually ended with the end of the Soviet Union.

FOIA

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Subsection (a)(2) of the Freedom of Information Act requires that certain agency records must routinely be made "available for public inspection and copying.” This public inspection obligation applies to all federal agencies, it governs almost all records covered by subsection (a)(2) and in subsequent rulemaking has extended to the maintenance of electronic reading rooms.

Electronic reading rooms are as they sound. Agencies post to public facing web portals documents containing material of public interest released in response to prior FOIA requests.

As far as the FBI goes, officially, the DOJ has said there are no bright line rules for when the requirements trigger. If the agency has records "likely to become the subject of subsequent requests,” then agencies should put them in the reading room. However, there’s no set number for when ‘likely’ becomes likely enough. Likewise, the requirement was designed to help the citizen find agency statements 'having precedential significance' when he becomes involved in 'a controversy with an agency.’ However, neither DOJ nor the appellate courts have defined exactly what significance is significance enough.

Even still, I’m happy the FBI released these documents. The document dump is a fun mix of security / travel arrangements, historical time capsule and a little insight into an era that is increasingly “historical.”

What captured my interest the most were the bomb threats that the FBI had to deal with. Partially, I understand the hatred. Soviet Union was an opponent of the U.S. I wouldn’t call in a bomb threat, but if I was someone experiencing a mental health crisis I could understand how the connection is made. If I thought the USSR was evil, and Gorbachev leads the USSR, then Gorbachev is evil.

Even still the amount of bomb threats and threats on Gorbachev’s life generally was surprising to read. Perhaps there’s an element of hindsight when I think of Gorbachev, given how the Soviet Union turned out.

There were quite a few newspaper clippings. As I mentioned before about James Baldwin, I am not the first one to observe that the ensemble of bits and bobs resembles a work of nonfiction. The Gorbachev documents scan as a postmodern novel, as fiction. I could see Jonathan Franzen, or maybe David Foster Wallace, making a book that looks very similar to these pages — except perhaps more cul-de-sacs into the etymology of some word I’ve never heard before.

There are inclusions of media, and bizarre meandering observations. Characters appear, disappear and then are never explained. For me, I can hardly believe the document set existed as a set — but apparently it did as a huge, inscrutable redwall folder of clippings and excerpts.