when the Soviet grain harvest exceeded two hundrednmillion tons. The year Stalin developed the atom bomb thenSoviet grain harvest was less than fifty million tons.nYet instead of looking at the reality of totalitarianism, withnits historic chasm between the burgeoning military-industrialnand destitute civilian spheres, the West’s Sovietologists andnthe decision-making establishment as a whole chose to looknat the “unprecedented” changes in Soviet ideology. Unablento grasp that the discarding of Marxism under Gorbachevnhad its analogue in the discarding of Bolshevism undernStalin, or that the new Soviet approach to Eastern Europenhas its roots in Stalin’s restraint in Finland and Austria,nWestern observers convinced themselves that what theynwere witnessing was “irreversible.”nAnd so it was. In the context of growing Soviet militaryindustrialnpower, the massive infusions of Western sciencenand technology that Gorbachev’s totalitarianism with ancapitalist face has been able to secure have opened the waynto irreversible Soviet dominance over the common Eurasiannhome. Even if Gorbachev’s fall from grace within the KGBnoligarchy is permanent and has the effect of a TiananmennSquare, it is highly unlikely that Western business, gearingnup since 1986 to sell Moscow whatever science andntechnology had been withheld before perestroika, can nownwalk away from it all. Nor are the West’s conservativengovernments, mindful of their debt to big business, free tonreevaluate their foreign policy in the light of these rudenrealizations.nGorbachev has done his KGB employers a lot of good.nHis abrupt dismissal had nothing to do with the “break-up ofnthe Soviet Union,” which the West has been reading intonthe Union Treaty. Gorbachev was ousted, for interoligarchicnreasons, as soon as his employers became concernednthat he was seeking to accrue powers separate fromnthose of the ruling KGB apparatus. So Khrushchev, whonhad done his Communist Party employers a lot of good, wasnousted when his personal power began to threaten thenPolitburo’s collective leadership.nIs it likely that Washington will now risk “a new ColdnWar,” with which Gorbachev has threatened the West onnmany recent occasions, or merely beg Moscow to bring backnthe man with whom “the West can do business”? It is farnmore likely that the West will interpret Gorbachev’s downfallnas a temporary wrinkle in the otherwise smooth East-nWest consensus. After all, it was only the unexpected deathnof KGB chief Andropov, Gorbachev’s mentor and thenoriginal architect of perestroika, that prevented him fromnbecoming the treasured receptacle of Western wishfulnthinking that Gorbachev became in 1985. In the comingnmonths, another such receptacle will doubtless be providednby the ruling secret-police apparatus, and Sovietologists willnchatter about the personality of the new lucky winner in thenKremlin sweepstakes as exhaustively as the West had studiednthe old one.nThe above political obituary of Gorbachev was publishednin Britain on August 20 and reprinted in the first daysnof September by the Hungarian dissident weekly Beszelo. Inhave not changed a single sentence of my original textnbecause I stand by every word I wrote, as I stand by mynwords of last January.n20/CHRONICLESnnnSince then, the fake coup — which seemed real onnAugust 20 because inter-oligarchic strife has been a genuinenfeature of Soviet rule since the death of Stalin — has lent thencharade of perestroika a dimension so vast that unilateralndisarmament can now be expected from the West withoutnany further pretense to cauhon. As I write these lines I readnthat COCOM, the NATO-sponsored monitor of the West’snscience and technology export restrictions, has been all butnabolished. No Western newspaper so much as reportednGorbachev’s demand, for its abolition during his July visit tonLondon. I read it in Pravda.nWhat really happened in Moscow? As I write these lines,nlooking back in September on the events of last August, onenthing is immediately clear. The people’s power, whichnfrustrated the inept plotters of Gorbachev’s downfall andnmade Yeltsin the hero of the hour, is a myth to many innRussia. Muscovites who watched it emerging in the glare ofnWestern media coverage are increasingly cynical about thenplot’s happy ending, which has left Gorbachev in effectivencontrol of both the military-industrial and the secret-policenbases of power. Others are equally apprehensive about thenrise of Yeltsin, whom they see as a nationalistic opportunistncarving a personal fiefdom out of the totalitarian bodynpolitic.nStill other native observers, such as Boris Kagarlitskynwriting in New Statesman & Society, have gone still further,nraising the issue of Yeltsin’s complicity in provoking a coupnthat was never actually intended to topple Gorbachev. Whatnall these eyewitnesses share is an unwillingness to accept thenpeople’s power myth, conjured up in different ways by bothnGorbachev and Yeltsin only to be echoed uncritically bynWestern politicians and media. Clearly, the explanationnproffered on Soviet television by Gorbachev’s loyal ideologist,nAlexander Yakovlev, to the effect that the plotters weren”fools” and Gorbachev’s past association with them was an”mystery,” is less than convincing. Thus even the mostnelementary questions asked by the “coup skeptics” havengone unanswered, and deserve a hearing.nWhy was no attempt made to arrest Yeltsin or to cut offnhis communications? Why did several of the alleged plottersn”commit suicide” and one, KGB’s Kryuchkov, make use ofna TV interview to advertise his “perfect health”? Why, onnAugust 21, did Pravda describe the barricades as “stage-setnprops” and, in its last issue before closure, give space ton”persistent rumors that Gorbachev had known of thenplanned coup in advance”? Why were the only ordersnreceived by the Commander of the Moscow MilitarynDistrict “to move out and remain in position”? Why werenthe tanks arriving in Moscow not battle-ready, withoutnammunition supplies, and with regulation andaircraft gunsnremoved? Why were the tanks not accompanied by a singlenIMR, the unique Soviet military product capable of clearingnany barricade in minutes?nThese obvious questions frame the fundamental issue ofnthe coup. Did Gorbachev’s former associates invent thatnthey had seen him “lying unconscious in bed” when theynfirst came to the Crimea, or did he feign illness to provokenthem into their “unconstitutional action”? Did they later flynto the Crimea — instead of out of the country, for instancen— in order to seek his explanation for how the misunderstandingnhad arisen? Had Gorbachev conspired with theirn