The Americans Finale and Input from Herbert Meyer

 

(Author’s note: I wrote most of this article last year, but events interrupted its publication, as I will detail)

It’s been just over a year since the series finale of FX’s excellent Cold War drama, The Americans. I’ve written about it here before and sung its praises at length, but a brief recounting of the show’s gist is worthwhile: Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys star as Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, deep-cover KGB agents who pose as red-blooded Americans while committing espionage for their nation. As much as I would like to talk about it, the finale of the show brought me to a different place, which I think is far more interesting.

The series works because it functions on several levels, showing us that many forms of relationship, from marriages to organisms as large as nations function around a set of guiding principles – visions, if you will – and the state of the Jennings’ marriage frequently mirrored the problems which bedeviled the Soviet Union. A marriage, like the bonds which form a nation can only withstand so many internal contradictions, lies, and deceits until they begin to break down the connective tissue of the Ur-myth which animated that entity in the first place.

That Ur-myth, of course, was the idea of international socialism itself – Its promise of a truly egalitarian society premised upon the notion of “from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs.” The truth as experienced by those forced to live within its reality could see it for what it was: a sham.  That lie was better summed up by the grim Russian joke: “They pretend to pay us; we pretend to work.”

The show itself is set near the close of the Cold War, and its writers did an excellent job of ignoring – or at least not egregiously pointing at – the elephant we all know to be sitting in the room. Obviously, within a couple of years of the show’s final, fictional bow the KGB and its Soviet masters were doomed. (Spoiler alert!) It makes sense within the confines of the show, as the Jennings would have had no feel for the broader cultural winds and unrest that was working its way up from the ground floor of the shambolic and sclerotic Soviet Union. Add in the fact that nobody knows how history will turn out as we’re living it.

Surveying history, the Soviet Union is somewhat unique when viewed from the perspective of “where empires go to die.” Most great empires don’t dissolve themselves; they’re torn apart, either by internal friction or by foreign conquest. While it is fairly demonstrable that the implosion of the Soviet Union was principally economic, this meta-narrative was enabled by the Soviets’ inability to keep pace at the micro level either technologically or economically. It seems that what ultimately brought the Soviet juggernaut to its knees was the failure and loss of its animating myth.

This, in a nutshell, is what I wanted to discuss with Herbert Meyer, the prognosticator of the USSR’s demise: Did the Soviet Union lose its will to live when it lost sight of its vision? Did it just turn out that the vision was impossible? Lastly, and perhaps most ominous of all: Could a similar dissolution of myth happen here in America?

(My initial discussion with Herb was lost due to technical error, but the topic of the discussion began with my central thesis, which, in a sense, he batted away.)

Fortunately, I kept notes on the conversation.

Herb’s observation was that outside of a few “psychotic” true believers in the Communist party hierarchy, that nobody who had to live within the reality of the Soviet Prison-State truly believed the Marxist claptrap, and the thing most attributable to the maintenance of order within the state was that guns were essentially pointed at the people at all times.

People who never have a vision of that type to begin with can’t lose it. The Leadership, however, can lose confidence in their ability to enforce order through the application of violence. Witness the difference between the outcomes of the 1968 uprising in Czechoslovakia and Tiananmen Square and what happened when the Berlin Wall fell. In the latter case, the political will and confidence that men with guns could put the toothpaste back in the tube had simply evaporated, and Gorbachev couldn’t be convinced to (literally) pull the trigger on those trying to escape.

Now we got to the part of the conversation which I found to be both truly interesting and slightly terrifying.

For the sake of clarity, I asked Herb specifically about circumstances surrounding the Soviet Union’s breakup, where you had the General Secretary go on television and announce that the super-state of the USSR was simply over. Kaput. This would be comparable in some ways to the President of the United States going on television and announcing that the federal government was disbanded and that the various states were now 50 independent nations. Why, I asked, did that seem to be such an incomprehensible thing for the United States?

Here, Herb threw me an unexpected curveball: What if, he asked, that dissolution of myth had already occurred here, and the turmoil we’re seeing is merely a consequence of its failure? My thesis, he asserted was correct, but in a sort of upside-down fashion. My intent was to press him on this topic later, but I never got the chance.

I wish I had the ability to go back in time to re-conduct this interview – But sadly, as many of you know, Herb suffered a serious bicycle accident last fall, which has rendered him permanently comatose. I might have been one of the last people on Earth to interview this brilliant man, and I’m ashamed of having squandered the opportunity to share it with the world. Having spoken with him, I can share with you that I certainly know the feeling of being in the presence of a man who is, far and away, my intellectual superior and that he is a resource which we cannot regain.

Tom Meyer is very fortunate to have had him as a father.

Published in History
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  1. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Herb thrilled me once with a personal message here on Ricochet, saying he liked my posts but rarely commented on the blog. I was delighted, knowing the impact he’d had on the United States. It would have been fascinating for you to have been able to press him further. And yes, Tom is lucky.

    • #1
  2. Tom Meyer, Common Citizen Member
    Tom Meyer, Common Citizen
    @tommeyer

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk):

    Here, Herb threw me an unexpected curveball: What if, he asked, that dissolution of myth had already occurred here, and the turmoil we’re seeing is merely a consequence of its failure?

    It’s a hell of a question.

    If the US were to break up and the contingent states would form under something like the Constitution that could be a good thing. Unfortunately, the chances for that seem rather slim.

    I hope we can solve our problems with more federalism and subsidiarity, but there are times I worry that option’s off the table as everyone fights for an all-or-nothing battle on the federal level.

    I miss my Dad.

    • #2
  3. Shawn Buell (Majestyk) Member
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)
    @Majestyk

    Tom Meyer, Common Citizen (View Comment):

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk):

    Here, Herb threw me an unexpected curveball: What if, he asked, that dissolution of myth had already occurred here, and the turmoil we’re seeing is merely a consequence of its failure?

    It’s a hell of a question.

    If the US were to break up and the contingent states would form under something like the Constitution that could be a good thing. Unfortunately, the chances for that seem rather slim.

    I hope we can solve our problems with more federalism and subsidiarity, but there are times I worry that option’s off the table as everyone fights for an all-or-nothing battle on the federal level.

    I miss my Dad.

    Thank you for giving me the opportunity to get to know him – even if only a little bit.

    • #3
  4. Shawn Buell (Majestyk) Member
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)
    @Majestyk

    Tom Meyer, Common Citizen (View Comment):

    It’s a hell of a question.

    If the US were to break up and the contingent states would form under something like the Constitution that could be a good thing. Unfortunately, the chances for that seem rather slim.

    Regarding the question itself, it certainly put me in the frame of mind to reconsider how I’d been viewing the disruption surrounding 2016 and its aftermath.  Not all of my thoughts about that were happy ones, sadly.

    • #4
  5. Yuma93 Inactive
    Yuma93
    @Yuma93

    Can’t recommend this enough:

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?424370-2/chris-miller-discusses-the-struggle-save-soviet-economy

    • #5
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