Gorbachev, like every Party general secretary before him, tried to maintain a centrist position, while the whole spectrum was moving toward reform. At some point, however, the centrist position became narrower and narrower while, as we saw in the last elections, the democratic process came to encompass about two-thirds of the population in the large cities. Reactionary forces, from monarchists to Stalinists, comprise about 10 percent. But lately Gorbachev seems to be reaching toward those reactionary forces for many things. The appointments to the Presidential Council, the shift in tone in the newspapers, all the stories about the republics' owing so much to the Soviet Union, the territorial demands—they are a small, but growing number of indicators portending a shift to a more conservative position. We do not know whether this shift is due to army pressure or to his fear of becoming an apprentice sorcerer who has created forces he can no longer control. I should add that the Communist ideology is losing ground every day, and there is danger of its being replaced with a chauvinist Russian ideology, a kind of national socialist ideology. If I had to choose between the Communists and the National Socialists, I would choose the Communists. At least they offer equal oppression for everybody instead of unequal oppression for selected peoples. These developments lead to the extremely dangerous idea of holding the empire at all costs. Gorbachev has the chance to become the Soviet Union's de Gaulle. For the time being, however, de Gaulle's mantle is still beyond his reach.
Middle Eastern Economic Relations with the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Mainland China.