Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985 and was effectively the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for the next six years. He outlined two main projects for his leadership: to reform the economy (perestroika) and to reform the political system (glasnost), and make peace with the capitalist West. Neither policy orientation resulted in the revitalisation of the USSR. Both—the internal reform and the overtures for peace—resulted in the destruction of the USSR and the deterioration of the everyday lives of the people in its republics.
Gorbachev, who was of mixed Russian and Ukrainian heritage, passed away on August 30 even as Russia, the largest of the Soviet Republics, was at war with Ukraine, one of the most prosperous of the Soviet Republics. The war in Ukraine is a direct consequence of the collapse of the USSR.
Early years
Born on a collective farm in 1931 in the north Caucuses, Gorbachev came of age during great turbulence in the USSR. As a young teenager, he was aware of the Nazi onslaught towards Rostov-on-Don, an area about 100 km north of his home, an area of immense interest to the Germans for its oil reserves.
At great cost, the valiant Soviet forces, through Operation Uranus (1942) and Operation Little Saturn (1942-1943), blocked the advance of the Germans into the region of Gorbachev’s home, just north of the Soviet republic of Georgia.
Great destruction of life and property in the war marked Gorbachev’s life, which was equally dazzled by the remarkable recovery of the USSR in the immediate aftermath of the war. In 1950, Gorbachev arrived in Moscow at the age of 19 to study law. There he became a member of the Communist Party and close friends with Marxists such as Zdenek Mlynar, the Czechoslovak student leader of the 1968 uprising,who had doubts about the Soviet system under the leadership of Joseph Stalin.
Within the Soviet Union, a debate opened about the need to revitalise the economy. This debate was carried forward by the Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin in two phases (1965 and 1979), both of which resulted in some modest changes but not an overall shift of orientation on issues such as economic incentives and enterprise accounting.
These debates and proposals to energise the Soviet economy continued for decades, a sign that the USSR was not as rigid as it was being made out in the Western press. Large parts of the social surplus in the USSR went towards the fulfilment of the basic needs of the people, a commitment by the Soviet project that was unshakeable. The Soviet system certainly had problems, but the general view of Western governments and the Western press, of a system too sclerotic to function effectively (inaccurate as it was), set the stage for Gorbachev’s own commentary on his country.
Bringing about change
It is not uncommon for a political force to arise in any society with claims of having all the answers for its problems. In both his memoirs (1996) and in William Taubman’s biography (2017), Gorbachev describes himself as being deeply concerned about the economic and political problems in the USSR. He fashions himself as a reformer even though he rose through the ranks rapidly to become the leader of the USSR. This was a convenient way to reimagine his own history and difficult to challenge.
In fact, his swift rise suggests that regardless of whatever feelings he harboured in his heart, he did not act in any way contrary to the general tide of Soviet history, which was not as problematic as he suggested after its fall. Both the Western accounts of the Soviet period from Brezhnev onwards and Gorbachev’s later rationalisation of his life suggest that it was he, Mikhail Gorbachev, who valiantly tried to reform a system that had always been troubled.
There are two problems with this account: first, the system had problems, but it was also able to acknowledge them and reform itself to some extent, and second, there were several other people who worked hard to improve the functioning of the USSR while maintaining its core socialist commitments.
In leadership, Gorbachev proposed to reform the economy and the political system through two policies known as perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Little in these ideas would have been alien to Kosygin, whose two reforms had entertained many of the policies associated with market reforms and greater transparency in the bureaucracy.
But rather than root these reforms in the Soviet structure, Gorbachev’s cohort in the state system sidelined the Communist Party (and in fact, brought in anti-Communists into the party as well) and began to put ideas of profit ahead of ideas of social good.
These organisational changes in decision-making and the shift in the orientation of economic policy weakened the Soviet system and allowed the opponents of socialism—many of them gathered around the party’s first secretary in Moscow, Boris Yeltsin—to prevail. By 1990, Gorbachev was outflanked by Yeltsin, who dismantled the Soviet Union.
In his memoir (1996), Gorbachev writes of Yeltsin’s “overgrown ambition and lust for power” and also indicates that he was likely a creature of Western intelligence services. These remarks by Gorbachev—written with great bitterness—show either his attempt (once more) to immunise himself from blame for the fall of the USSR or his naivete in bringing in people with no commitment either to Marxist-Leninism or to social democracy (which is the political ideology that Gorbachev most adhered to as party leader, according to his biographer Taubman).
Gorbachev’s naivete
The argument for Gorbachev’s naivete is not far-fetched, since his proposal for a Common European Home (first put on the table in 1987) hoped that the West would allow for Eurasian integration without military blocs. Gorbachev’s overtures to US President Ronald Reagan on weapons regulation and for a broad peace approach showed his incredulous faith in the Western leadership, which had openly called for the destruction of the USSR.
Nothing like a Common European Home was allowed then, and nothing like the historical process of Eurasian integration is being allowed now (with the US provoking conflicts in Ukraine and Taiwan to either slow down or block this integration process).
Mikhail Gorbachev with US president Ronald Reagan at the Geneva conference in November 1985. | Photo Credit: AP
The hand of peace that Gorbachev extended to the West was met with the iron hand of “Star Wars” and the Afghan jihad. This faith in Western handshakes extended to the “gentleman’s agreement” over the unification of Germany that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) would not extend east of the new German border; even that deal was broken, as NATO marched closer and closer to the Russian frontier.
In 2005, Russia’s premier Vladimir Putin called the fall of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. Within Russia itself, the end of the USSR produced great problems for the people, with the most dramatic data point being 3 million excessive deaths following the collapse of the price control system and the contraction of the economy.
Food grain demand in the former USSR fell by 112.8 million tonnes between 1991 and 1999, starvation being the natural consequence. Not only did the quality of life deteriorate in the republics of the former Soviet Union, the political leadership under Yeltin surrendered to the West and allowed the systematic privatisation of state assets, building up the oligarchic class that retained a stranglehold over the system for at least two decades.
Everything that the Western media now bemoans about the Russian system (such as the presidential system and the role of oligarchs) was created by Western advisors who worked with Yeltsin to dismantle the Soviet structures.
Much will be written about Gorbachev, with the Western media applauding his role in the collapse of the Soviet system. Within Russia, however, the record is being understood far more critically, in line with Putin’s assessment in 2005.
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