New Biography Says Leningrad’s Grigory Romanov Could have Saved USSR

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 6 – Had Grigory Romanov become CPSU leader instead of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Leningrad political figure would have saved the USSR, according to a new biography. But a combination of black PR by Western intelligence services and political maneuvers by Gorbachev cost him and the country that chance.
    The biography, What the Times Required, by Albert Izmaylov, has already gone through two editions and won prizes, seeks to rehabilitate Romanov and does so in ways that suggest he remains very much a valued model for Vladimir Putin, another Leningrad native, as he thinks about the elite he wants to create and leave after him.  
    In a review of the book, Stoletiye writer Vladimir Malyshev says that the book represents an important effort to rehabilitate Romanov, someone whose name was almost banned from any reference besides the most negative since the rise of Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union (stoletie.ru/politika/on_mog_spasti_sssr_975.htm).
    The produce of a peasant family in Petrograd Gubernia, Romanov served as a regular soldier throughout World War II and joined the CPSU only in September 1944. After the war, he finished his education and went to work in the northern capital’s shipyards before turning to party work and rising to become obkom secretary in 1970.
    While in that position, he attracted Leonid Brezhnev’s attention as a potential successor. But he also gained the reputation as someone who repressed dissent, although in fact the new book argues, he only executed orders from Moscow in that regard rather than adopted a particularly hard line of his own.
    But his reputation as a crude hardliner was promoted by Russian liberals and Western intelligence services, the new book says. Most infamously, they circulated the fake news that Romanov had had allowed his daughter to use dinnerware originally belonging to the tsars and that he, she and her guests had smashed it up.
    According to the book, officials at the Hermitage Museum and elsewhere in a position to do say that this claim is completely untrue. It could not have happened, and they suggest that it was put out by Western intelligence services in order to weaken Romanov and open the way for the rise of Gorbachev.
    Izmaylov also says that Gorbachev outplayed Romanov when Chernenko died and the Politburo had to chose a successor. At that moment, Romanov was on vacation in Palanga in Lithuania and Moscow delayed telling him about Chernenko’s death for ten hours. As a result, Romanov did not get back to Moscow before all the decisions were made.
    When Gorbachev got the top party job, he immediately sent Romanov into retirement; and he subsequently refused to allow Romanov any serious work. Had the reverse happened and Romanov rather than Gorbachev become Soviet leader, the book argues, the USSR would have overcome its economic difficulties and survived.