The New Dark Age

24 May 2017 — National Security Archive

Inside the Central Committee during Brezhnev’s stagnation

New details on the historic Tula speech, Vance mission, Carter and dissidents, challenges of Eurocommunism

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 594

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Washington, D.C., May 25, 2017 –The National Security Archive marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 96th birthday today with the publication for the first time in English of his extraordinary diary for 1977, written from inside the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where he was then a Deputy Director of the International Department.

The Archive’s dear friend and partner in opening historical records passed away this past March, but his voice is with us and remains irreplaceable for anybody who wants to understand not only the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, but also what was going on at the very top of thepolitical hierarchy in Moscow in the darkest years before the dawn of the new thinking that would put Chernyaev at the right hand of Mikhail Gorbachev. 

The diary of 1977 continues the themes seen in the earlier 1970s chapters, previously published on this web site, chronicling the decline and atrophy of the Soviet political system, starting with its top leadership.  The first entry of the year vividly describes Chernyaev’s conversation with his close friend and confidant at the time in the International Department—Karen Brutents.  They share their feeling of “despair” about the Soviet Union’s “dead end,” their pessimism about where the country is going, their embarrassment at the party’s empty ideological words and the constant flattery with new medals and awards that the leadership demands. 

The diary describes the long decline of then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who sometimes is barely capable of reading prepared texts in large letters, but is forced by his position to make long speeches and travel abroad.  Yet Chernyaev also details how Brezhnev occasionally promoted new initiatives, himself proposing a détente speech to greet the new U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, before his inauguration in January 1977, which Brezhnev delivered at Tula, emphasizing his genuine desire for arms control and peace.  The speech won praise from Western Europe (especially for one of the sections written by Chernyaev) and, in Chernyaev’s view, some blunting of American rhetoric about the Soviet threat.