Mikhail Gorbachev and the most beautiful mistake

There is an important symbolism in the death of Mikhail Gorbachev just when Russia seems to have changed course to resume its historical trend towards imperialism.

Gorbachev he was the involuntary architect of the dramatic changes which occurred in the 1990s and which led to the disintegration of what was the USSR, these changes known as Perestroika (reform) and Glasnot (transparency) also produced a fundamental change in the economic and social structure.

Gorbachev assumed the presidency of the USSR from the hands of a gerontocracy and with the stagnant economy losing large spaces in the Cold War. From the beginning he gradually sought to modify the rigidities of the planned economyfor this he decided that it was necessary to open up to the West.

All his acts of opening were marked by the conviction that it was possible to reform the USSR without leading to its dismembermentand this was his miscalculation, which was dubbed “the most beautiful mistake in history”.

prevent falling

Towards the end of the 1980s, his effort to get closer to the international community leads him to present a petition to the G7 a detailed study of the Soviet economy, undertaking to facilitate access to all necessary information.

As a result, an international commission was formed, made up of the IMF, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and the OECD, which delegated the task, which required two years of work, to a group of experts.

In this context, I led the group dedicated to the study of the characteristics of the monetary and financial sector, including the functions of the Russian central bank, delivering the respective recommendations that had to be implemented.

On two occasions I had the opportunity to speak directly with Gorbachev. I’ve always been struck by how someone with clear intentions and willing to take risks for their beliefs, to the point of openly challenging the status quo.

He could not

At this point I wanted to make changes, even to the health of the whole, thatand drastically regulated the consumption of vodka try to avoid obesity and alcoholism. At this point, what he got was an exponential increase in the price of the drink, abandoning the project due to the social discontent it caused. Needless to say, vodka has never been lacking in the meetings he himself organized.

Paradoxically, in 1992, when the study was delivered, Gorbachev was no longer the president of the USSR, which also no longer existed despite the leader’s efforts. Russia was now ruled by Yeltsin and the fifteen republics of the USSR declared their independence.

Gorbachev’s legacy seemed to be a sea change in Russian history, which it was always based on the constant expansion of the empire from the time of Ivan the Terrible and Catherine. We were in the presence of a historical turning point that seemed to be definitive.

Today it does not seem to be so, Putin’s imperial tendencies, which are reflected in the invasion of Ukraine, have the clear intention of rebuilding the lost hegemony. The time of Gorbachev and Yeltsin may remain an irrelevant deviation in the annals of history.