THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601180574
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JOHN A. FAHEY
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
AUTOPSY OF AN EMPIRE
The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union
JACK F. MATLOCK JR.
Random House. 836 pp. $35.
Career diplomat Jack F. Matlock Jr., serving as U.S. Ambassador to Moscow under presidents Reagan and Bush, had a view from the catbird seat of the demise of the Communist Party and the fall of the Soviet Empire. With his foreign service background, Russian language proficiency and knowledge of Soviet lifestyle and culture, he was able to take advantage of it. Autopsy on an Empire reflects his keen insight and position.
Matlock followed two U.S. ambassadors to Moscow who encountered difficulties on station. President Carter's appointment to Moscow, IBM chief executive officer Thomas J. Watson Jr., was a complete failure. Watson's lack of professional qualifications and knowledge of the Russian language spelled doom from the start.
After his inauguration in 1981, Reagan sent Matlock to Moscow to take charge of the U.S. Embassy until Reagan appointed Arthur Hartman as his ambassador to the Soviet Union in the fall. In his best seller, Moscow Station, investigative reporter Ronald Kessler attacked Hartman for exercising poor leadership and permitting serious embassy security breaches.
In the spring of 1987, Matlock became U.S. ambassador and thus began his fourth tour of duty in the Soviet Union. Kessler praises Matlock for changing Hartman's practices. Finally, a hard-nosed professional with a profound understanding of the Russian leaders, language, people, culture and psyche had arrived.
In Autopsy on an Empire, Matlock admires Reagan's initiatives, but strongly criticizes Bush. Bush's tendency to bank too much on a single individual worried him. He speculates that Bush refused to send a high-level emissary from the United States to represent the president at Andrei Sakharov's funeral because of a misguided concern for Mikhail Gorbachev's ego. Bush, he writes ``lacked the vision of how his leadership might shape the future and thus chose a reactive stance: waiting for Gorbachev to find the keys to reform for himself. . . . ''
Matlock also charges both Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker with amateurishly handling a report signaling an impending coup to remove Gorbachev from power. Matlock considers Baker to have been thoughtless and Bush reckless in revealing a source on a phone line that was monitored by the KGB. Matlock is convinced that flaws in the White House's judgment of events in the Soviet Union plagued Bush's team throughout his term.
While an excellent book in dissecting the complicated anatomy of the political Soviet Empire, Autopsy on an Empire fails to achieve a passing grade in elementary geography. Matlock states incorrectly that the country covers nine time zones rather than 11. Ukraine is labeled as the second largest republic instead of the Kazakh Republic, which was the second largest in area but not in population. Belarussia received proportionately more radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl disaster than Ukraine, but Matlock locates Belarussia upwind rather than correctly downwind from the power plant.
The book's strength lies in Matlock's keen analysis of dynamics that led to the empire's fall. He traces every step in minute detail, viewing the Soviet Union's collapse as a result of its own political processes and not because of any U.S. policies. He considers Reagan's bringing about the end to the Cold War to be a major factor in the need for Gorbachev's sudden reforms. Matlock faults Gorbachev for foolishly believing that he could reform the Communist Party; for not understanding the force of nationalism in the Soviet Union; and for failing to realize that only an end to state control of the economy could save the country.
Autopsy on an Empire may deserve a failing grade in geography, but it merits an A+ in advanced anatomy. There is no other book today that examines the decomposed corpse of the Soviet Union with such clinical expertise. MEMO: John A. Fahey is an associate professor emeritus of foreign languages
and literature at Old Dominion University. by CNB