Notes on the Syrian Uprising (Part 1) Gorbachev and Assad
One of the many hidden gems in Jamal Barout’s groundbreaking four-part series on Syria’s political economy is the brief story of the three meetings that took place between former Syrian president Hafez al-Asad and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Based on archives he accessed from the Presidential Palace, Barout narrates that Gorbachev met with Hafez Al-Asad three times, in June 1985, April 1987, and April 1990. In the first two meetings Gorbachev was full of “determination, bravado, and will to implement his programs of ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost.’” By the last meeting, however, poor Gorbachev was reportedly despondent and gloomy complaining to Asad about the downturn of events, even asking the latter how he managed to rule Syria for so long.
It is possible that the dramatic collapse of the socialist bloc taught Asad and the Syrian “inner circle” that even minor political reform may lead to catastrophe. That is to say, the structure of the Syrian regime, which relies on the Presidential Palace-army-security apparatus-Party nexus cannot be reformed without precipitating a total collapse regardless of whether or not the president is willing to reform. At any rate, at the time, and under those conditions, the political reforms promised by the Syrian president in 1989, including major Congresses for the Party and National Progressive Front Congress, as well as amending the emergency law, never materialized. Instead, the regime continued a pattern, started since Hafez al-Asad came to power and lasting until the start of the uprisings, of substituting political reform for economic liberalization or “economic pluralism.” Fast forwarding to today, ten months into Syria’s uprisings, over several thousand dead or wounded and tens of thousands of arrests later, the Syrian regime appears to be still standing.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4382/notes-on-the-syrian-uprisings-(part-1)
