Herbert W Armstrong

It is no secret that Mr. Gorbachev, a polished, urbane, untypical Soviet leader, had already been earmarked by his fellow members of the ruling Politburo for the top position during Mr. Chernenko's short 13-month-long tenure in office, which had been punctuated by long periods of absence due to illness. The uneventful Chernenko rule followed a similar short 14-month-long reign by Yuri Andropov. During these two brief spells, the Soviet leadership bristled under the image of a creaky superpower ruled over by infirm leaders. To counteract this, the ten other Politburo members, all of them older than Mr. Gorbachev, reached down to him at last and thereby passed the reigns of power to a new generation. (But of course they will carefully supervise and scrutinize Gorbachev's activities for a considerable period.)

Mr. Gorbachev (pronounced Gor-bah-TCHOFF) was born on March 2, 1931. He is the first Soviet leader to enter the world after the pivotal 1917 Bolshevik revolution. He is also the first one not to have been an adult at the outset of World War II (called the Great Patriotic War by the Soviets). He was only ten years old when Adolf Hitler launched his "Operation Barbarossa" against the Soviets, opening up the eastern front of the war. This fact alone — the lack of a deep personal involvement in the heroic struggle of the 1940s — could have an impact on the future relations of the Soviet Union with the nations of Western Europe.

The generational passing of the baton of power inside the Soviet Union is yet another milestone showing that we are passing into a new age, as we near the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. For an insight into the new "red star" as well as the perspective generally held by the rising generation of Soviet leaders, the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, in their March 3, 1985 issue, published an article "The Emergence of Gorbachev." Here are key excerpts from the lengthy article that appeared in print before Mr. Gorbachev's accession to power:

The generation that led the Soviet Union from the ravages of Stalinism and World War II through the enormous expansion of power and might over the past three decades is approaching an end. Now a new guard stands poised to take charge, a generation of men in their 50s and 60s, and the question is whether they will prove ready or capable of breathing new life into a system that seems to have followed its leaders into debility and fatigue. More than any other Soviet leader, [Mikhail] Gorbachev has come to personify the new breed....

It was as if in recognition of his importance that a group of heavyset men in dark coats and heavy fur hats marched across the frozen tarmac to a waiting Aeroflot jetliner in December. At the foot of the forward ramp they bid goodbye to Gorbachev, who mounted the steps, pausing for the stiff wave required by the ceremony of a Politburo member setting off on a Kremlin mission. His wife, Raisa Maksimovna, unobtrusively mounted the back steps. In London, the front door opened and the two popped out together, jubilantly waving to the welcoming officials and the banks of photographers.

It was a classic magician's trick: Put a Kremlin heavy into one end, quietly slip an attractive woman into the other, wave through the air and — Presto! — out comes a New Soviet Leader, smiling, charming, gregarious and complete with elegant, educated and cultured wife.

Few in Britain were disappointed.... He wore business suits that made him indistinguishable from the Westerners he courted. She wore a dark suit one day, an executive pin-stripe with satin blouse the next,...and, at a Soviet Embassy reception, a cream satin two-piece dress, gold lame sandals with chain straps and pearl-drop earrings. It was a measure of Gorbachev's success that he managed to generate excitement without diverging one whit from standard Kremlin lines....

"A Red Star Rises in the East," declared The Sunday Times of London over a profile of Gorbachev. But it was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who provided the most fitting epitaph to the visit. "I like Mr. Gorbachev," said she. "We can do business together."...

Who is the real Gorbachev?... Kremlinologists are wary of spotting another "liberal" in the style of the late Yuri V. Andropov, and the debate over the real Gorbachev has gone back and forth. But if the outlines of the man remain a bit fuzzy still, what has emerged with startling clarity is that this stocky, balding peasant's son from southern Russia, with his pleasant style and calm face, has achieved one of the dizzying rises in the annals of modern Soviet politics.

A scant three years ago, he was known to the West, where known at all, largely as the youngster of the Politburo, a farm boy two decades younger than most of his comrades.... Yet by the time Chernenko came to power, Gorbachev was the acknowledged second in command of the Soviet Communist Party, an enormously powerful secretary charged with ideology, party cadres and most of the economy, as well, apparently, as agriculture. He has become the rallying point for an increasingly vocal portion of the white-collar elite that is convinced that the Soviet Union's solvency and credibility at peril without a thorough overhaul of the economy....

At a meeting of party workers last December, Gorbachev spelled out his program in unusually clear terms: "We will have to carry out profound transformations in the economy and in the entire system of social relations.... Only an intensive, highly developed economy can guarantee the consolidation of the country's positions in the international arena, can permit the country to enter the new millennium as a great and flourishing state."

There is something in the notion of a young, educated and smooth leader advocating change and lambasting the bureaucracy that the West finds irresistible.... Law school graduate, successful politician, foe of bloated bureaucracies and inefficiency, an advocate of change — these are elements dear to a Western heart....

There is...the impression among Russians that he lacks an element of ruthlessness. His rise, after all, was due more to patronage than to brute force. Suslov [Mikhail A. Suslov, the powerful ideologue and kingmaker in Brezhnev's Kremlin] and Andropov may have launched him into an orbit far higher than he could have achieved on his own.... What he does have, probably to a greater degree than any previous candidate for Soviet power, is a platform. He is identified, more closely than any member of the Politburo, with calls for fundamental changes in economic, organizational and social thinking....He seems to have the backing of the brighter and younger minds in the Soviet leadership.

Nobody in the soviet leadership is against economic change. The long lines outside stores alone make any other position politically untenable. But Soviet thinking on the issue has split roughly into two trends. On one side are the "hard-liners," men like [Grigory] Romanov and Prime Minister Nikolai A. Tikhonov, whose solution has been to cry out for more discipline within existing structures, for stronger centralized control, increased party supervision, for ruthless treatment of managers who don't achieve. Against these are ranged the "reformers," with Gorbachev at their head — men who advocate loosening of centralized controls, less party meddling, more self-management, greater use of market mechanisms and financial incentives.... [The success of the reforms in China has had an impact on those advocating reform.]

The greatest barrier before the "reformers" is the institutional resistance of a party bureaucracy that derives its power and privilege from things as they are.... What makes the prospect of internal change more propitious now is a sense of crisis that seems to be spreading among Soviet economic managers, sense that something must change and change fast. Oil production has fallen off, industrial output is climbing at a snail's pace and agriculture remains in dismal straits. The military is clamoring for more money to match President Reagan's military buildup, and consumers are becoming more vocal in their frustration....

A Soviet Union under Gorbachev or another of his ilk would not be radically different in the immediate future. Yet Gorbachev is a man Mrs. Thatcher found likable and possible to do business with. That and his youth and the pragmatism his statements reflect probably make him as good a Soviet politician as the West can expect.

Mr. Gorbachev could indeed be the spearhead of growing Soviet awareness of the need to cooperate more with Western Europe. In the January 11, 1985 issue of the PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT we quoted the advice of Zbigniew Brzezinski who expressed the belief that "the fear that America may be turning from the Atlantic to the Pacific...justifies a wider economic, and potentially even a political accommodation between an industrially obsolescent Western Europe and the even more backward Soviet bloc, a logical customer for what Western Europe can produce. Why then should not the next generation of Soviet leaders," Brzezinski continued [this was before Gorbachev's election], "be pressed also to come to terms with the fact that the interests of the Soviet people would be better served by a less frustrated and oppressed east-central Europe, partaking more directly of the benefits of all-European cooperation?" The ultimate goal should therefore be, Brzezinski said, "the emergence of a truly European Europe capable both of attracting Eastern Europe and of diluting Soviet control over the region."

In the LOS ANGELES TIMES of March 12, journalist Robert Gillette wrote of the cautious optimism expressed by influential figures in Eastern Europe in the article, "East Europe Hopeful Gorbachev Will Be Somewhat Progressive":

If Eastern Europe had a voice in choosing the new leader of its dominant neighbor, the Soviet Union, it would most likely have picked the man the Kremlin chose — Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

There are few, if any, people in Eastern Europe who harbor illusions that the new general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party is a closet liberal.... Among ordinary Poles — and almost certainly among Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Bulgarian and other East European workers — there is a widespread feeling that one Soviet leader is indistinguishable from another, that this third Kremlin succession in less than three years will make no more difference in their lives than the last two.

However, among intellectuals and the managers of Eastern Europe's Communist regimes, Gorbachev is widely thought to be the one Kremlin leader most likely to understand the need for modernizing the Soviet economy.... If Gorbachev is able to promote the gradual decentralization of the Soviet economy that many believe he favors, it is assumed that the six nations of Moscow's East European empire will also find it easier to gradually shift toward the kind of semi-market economy that has given Hungary the highest standard of living and the lowest level of popular discontent in Communist Eastern Europe.

Few people hold any hope for revolutionary change, but many believe that Gorbachev is the Soviet figure most likely to look favorably on evolution in Eastern Europe toward something more closely resembling the freedoms Westerners enjoy, so long as it does not threaten Moscow's concept of security.

That last phrase — "so long as it does not threaten Moscow's concept of security" — is the key one. A changed relationship between Eastern Europe and its big brother will likely have to await changes between Western Europe and the U.S. — specifically the souring of relations over Central America, as we covered last week.

The new leadership in Moscow might eventually offer the prospects of "peace" and vastly increased trade — and, at the very least, a neutralization of Eastern Europe — providing the Americans leave the western half. It increasingly appears that only when America's direct presence in Europe is removed and the Soviets relax their grip on the East, will the last ten­ nation revival of the Roman system in Europe arise — in the partial political vacuum created. The passing of the baton of leadership to the new generation of Soviet leaders at this unique time of history is thus a major milestone along the way to fulfilling Bible prophecy.

"Christian Rock"

Finally, here are excerpts from a March 11, 1985 TIME article about a new kind of pop-rock music. The article is entitled "New Lyrics for the Devil's Music."

If you had to guess their name, you might think of the Devil's Disciples or the Beelzebubs. Or perhaps the Killer Bees, which is what the four young men on the stage look like in their tight leather-and-spandex costumes crisscrossed with garish black and yellow stripes. Piles of makeup, spiky hair and enough dangling chains to tie up half the elephants in Africa complete the picture of the up-to-date heavy-metal rock group. Even the music, the sound of a swarm of angry insects electronically amplified several thousand times, fits the image.

But wait; don't walk away without listening to the words of their song..."So many bands give the devil all the glory. It's hard to understand we want to change the story. We want to rock one way on and on. You'll see the light some day. I'll say Jesus is the way.”

The group is actually called Stryper, a name inspired by the biblical assurance that "with His stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). Instead of throwing drumsticks into the audience, these metal missionaries toss out about 500 imitation-leather copies of the New Testament. "We are rock-'n'-roll evangelists," says Drummer Robert Sweet, 24. "Stryper is a modern-day John the Baptist crying in the world of rock for those who don't have the life of Christ to turn on the light switch. Our message is J-E-S-U­S."

Stryper is only one of dozens of groups...all part of gospel, a musical category that also includes soul gospel and hymns. But these new entertainers create sounds that have never been heard in churches, sounds that range from Stryper's heavy beat...to the mellow pop of Amy Grant, who last week won her third Grammy for her song Angels. Indistinguishable — except for their lyrics-­ from their secular counterparts, these performers represent one of the most interesting, fastest-growing trends in the music world: Christian contemporary music, or evangelical pop.... Its chief audience is the generation of the New Squares, primarily young whites, 24 to 35, who like the beat of rock but disavow the drugs and sexual permissiveness that are associated with it. "The people who buy my records like danceable, modern music, but they don't want to feel guilty supporting music with trashy lyrics," says Steve Taylor, 27, who sings his own songs. "Rock is associated with evil, but that is guilt by association. Music is music, and it is the vehicle of expression for my generation."

The rationale behind "Christian Rock" is really nothing new. The false churches have a tradition of absorbing the customs of this world and coating them with a veneer of so-called Christianity.

And while we're on the subject, that new record cut by 45 American pop-rock artists for the benefit of African famine relief, contains an interesting phrase repeated again and again throughout the song: "We are the world, we are the children." Truer words were never sung. But since the lyrics are repetitious and lack a bit of originality, the writers should have included passages from II Cor. 4:4, John 8:44 and I John 2:15-17, to name only a few.

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau