In the West, Mikhail Gorbachev was and will always be “Gorbi”: an angel of peace who helped end the arms race and left the soldiers stationed in the GDR in their barracks when the people took to the streets. In Russia, Gorbachev is accused of having gambled away the empire. He wanted to preserve the Soviet Union. The “man of the system”, as he called himself, failed because of the system.
Gorbachev, who was born on March 2, 1931 in the North Caucasus region of Stavropol, joined the Communist Party at the age of 19. He studied law in Moscow, returned to Stavropol and made a career in the party. On March 11, 1985, at the age of 54, Gorbachev, who had been a member of the Politburo for five years, became the party’s general secretary. He cultivated an open style, became popular, and was a symbol of hope. As early as October 1985, Gorbachev presented his program for a conversion (“Perestrojka”): initiative should be encouraged, production should be more geared to demand.
The financial crisis and the realization that a nuclear war could not be won made Gorbachev realize that the arms race was fatal. That was the background to the disarmament agreements with the United States: the elimination of all intermediate-range nuclear missiles, the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons, the reduction of conventional armed forces in Europe.
In May 1988, Gorbachev initiated the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. He also moved away from the Brezhnev Doctrine, which subordinated the sovereignty of the member states of the Warsaw Pact to the interests of Moscow. Addressing the GDR leadership, which rejected the new course, Gorbachev said: “Dangers lurk only for those who do not react to life”. In 1990 he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Soviet Union remained a prison for the peoples of Central Europe. But it was also thanks to Gorbachev’s policy that this could be said. In 1987, the Secretary-General had pledged “glasnost” (openness) to win the people over to his side in the struggle with reactionary forces. In April 1990, the Soviet Union officially claimed responsibility for the shooting of thousands of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940.
Michail Gorbatschow
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Loved abroad, hated at home
At the same time, nationality conflicts flared up (again) on the fringes of the empire. In 1989, 21 people were killed in the violent dispersal of a pro-Georgian independence demonstration in Tbilisi. In the spring of 1990, the Baltic republics demanded their independence. In the summer of the same year, a number of republics declared themselves sovereign within the framework of the Soviet Union, including the Russian heartland. The elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies at the end of May had made the contrasts between reformers and reactionaries more apparent.
In August 1991, reactionaries staged a coup against Gorbachev
Congress elected Gorbachev as the first and last President of the Soviet Union. There was discussion about significantly reducing arms spending. The reactionary forces rejected this. The beleaguered President finally gave in. In the fall of 1990, Gorbachev surrounded himself with forces from the anti-reform camp. His confidant, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, resigned in December 1990, speaking of the “danger of fascism”. In January 1991, special units from the Ministry of the Interior took action against demonstrators in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, killing at least 15 people. In Riga, Latvia, there were five.
Gorbachev only half-heartedly condemned the action, blamed the army and drew no conclusions. The decay continued. The President held a referendum on preserving the Union, which respects human rights. But six republics did not take part. Gorbachev negotiated with the rest a new treaty that would have turned the Soviet Union into a confederation.
That went too far for the reactionaries: they staged a coup against Gorbachev in August 1991 while he was on vacation in the Crimea. Russian President Boris Yeltsin called for resistance. The coup failed. Gorbachev was now president by the grace of Yeltsin. He banned the Communist Party in his domain. Gorbachev resigned from the post of Secretary General. In December 1991, Yeltsin and the Presidents of Belarus and Ukraine declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev also resigned as President of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev remained a celebrated Elder Statesman abroad. In Russia he no longer got through, and political initiatives fizzled out. In 2011 he complained that President Vladimir Putin had created an “imitation of democracy”. Until the end of his life, Gorbachev was a shareholder of the newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”, which was critical of the Kremlin. In terms of foreign policy, however, he supported Putin’s course, defending the annexation of Crimea, for example. Gorbachev’s wife Raissa died in 1999 and he mourned her to the end. Now Mikhail Gorbachev has followed her at the age of 91.