Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday, 30 at the age of 91, changed the course of history by dissolving the Soviet Union (USSR), which had earned the respect in the West and the disdain of many Russians.
Gorbachev initiated reforms to achieve “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring), unleashing forces that inadvertently led to the dissolution and overthrow of the USSR.
Revered in the West for advocating freedom and change at a time when many thought the Cold War would never end, Gorbachev became a figure hated by many Russians, who blamed him for the destruction of the once mighty Soviet empire.
While in power, he often preferred peace over conflict and hastened the dissolution of relations with the West, thanks to his close ties with leaders such as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and US President Ronald Reagan.
A well-remembered quote by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sums up how he was seen from the other side of the Iron Curtain: “I love Gorbachev. We can do business together.”
But the more he loosened the reins during his tenure (1985-1991), the more he was overshadowed by the energetic Boris Yeltsin, then a rising communist.
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Gorbachev was already insignificant.
winds of change
Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931 to a peasant family in the Stavropol region of southern Russia.
From an early age, Gorbachev was bright and hardworking. At 16, he received the Red Labor Banner for helping with a record harvest, and in 1950 entered the coveted place at Moscow State University to study law.
Five years later, the ambitious graduate and his young wife, Raisa, returned to Stavropol, where she began a rapid rise through the ranks of the Communist Party, becoming the youngest member of the Politburo in 1979 at age 49.
Six years later, he took over the world’s largest state and second superpower when he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party in 1985.
Gorbachev, 54 years old and full of fresh ideas, was in stark contrast to the ideological greats who had until then controlled the Kremlin.
His foreign policy shook the world order. He neutralized the nuclear conflict between the United States and the USSR with disarmament agreements, withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan and loosened the reins of Eastern Europe’s satellite countries.
In Russia, perestroika and glasnost caused seismic waves. Tens of thousands of political prisoners were released, including scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov.
end of an era
But Gorbachev was gathering gray clouds. The attempt to eradicate chronic alcoholism in 1985 was a disaster that undermined the state budget and earned the ire of the drinking-hungry villagers.
Its promotion of freedom accelerated the disintegration of the multiethnic Soviet empire.
From the Baltic republics to the Caucasus and Central Asia, glasnost brought a series of embarrassing revelations about the Soviet Union’s dark past, as independence movements and ethnic struggles shook the seemingly invincible Soviet structure.
In 1989, Eastern European countries overthrew their communist governments and the Berlin Wall came down.
In 1990, Gorbachev was elected the first and last president of the Soviet Union, but within a few months he had to face the uprising of the hardcore communists.
A coup d’etat in August 1991 failed, but when Gorbachev was under house arrest in Crimea, it was the audacious Boris Yeltsin who opposed the rebels and became a national hero.
Soon after, the Soviet Union and with it Gorbachev’s power disappeared.
In an article published in 2016, he admitted his share of responsibility for the collapse of the Soviet world.
“But my conscience is clear,” he wrote in a Russian newspaper. “I defended the Union to the end by political means.”
Facing exclusion in Russia, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, traveled the world giving lectures, supported environmental causes, and ran fundraising campaigns for his foundation.
Mixed feelings with Putin
He ran for president in 1996, but received only 0.5% of the vote in the election that Yeltsin won. However, he maintained some influence through the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, of which he was one of the owners.
While Putin claimed to be in power, Gorbachev seemed torn between concern about crackdowns on civil liberties under the former KGB operative and respect for Russia’s resurgence on the international stage.
Gorbachev, who turned 80 in 2011, criticized what he saw as an “imitation” of democracy in Russia.
In 2014, however, he supported Putin in Ukraine’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and after the collapse of the USSR he scolded the West for “an air of happiness and victory”.
Over the years he has reduced his public appearances, but has continued to defend the causes he has defended all his life.
It was very clear in 2018 when Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which Gorbachev negotiated with Reagan in 1987.
“The great danger … stands above everything we have achieved in the years since the end of the Cold War,” he wrote in the newspaper Vedomosti. However, he remained hopeful.
“The key to solving security problems is politics, not weapons,” Gorbachev said. said.
source: Noticias
