PERESTROYKA (the end of the topic)
bloc, which
earned Gorbachev a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, his crack down in 1991 on
Lithuania’s request for independence was a “black eye” that ended the hopeful
Gorbachev era and permanently blemished his image as “a modern white knight-
the Communist who slayed communism.”[1]
“Lithuania was
an appropriate setting for the collapse of Gorbachev’s humane approach. It had
long been the most outspokenly hostile of all republics to Moscow’s rule.” In
1990 when the newly elected republican legislature in Lithuania unanimously voted
to restore independence, the Soviet Union saw Gorbachev in quite a different
light, which, like a flashback, took the people on a trip to the past – to the
pre-Gorbachev era.
Facing the
prospect of the dissolution of the USSR, Gorbachev was desperately trying to
preserve the Party’s role in the union and hence reverted to well known tricks
in “The Bolshevik handbook.” Within a matter of few days under Gorbachev’s
command, Vilnius airport was shut down, trains leaving and entering the city
were halted and the main newspaper press building was taken over. Phony riots
were staged to serve as a pretext for Moscow’s intervention and finally thousands
of paratroopers were dispatched “to bring Lithuanians to heel, violently if
necessary.”[2] The means
to regain control were reminiscent of those employed in the Hungarian
Revolution of 1956 and in Prague Spring of 1968. The events that followed in
Vilnius on January 13th went down in the history of USSR as the
Bloody Sunday of 1991. Less than a year later, a Boris Yeltsin- led group of
former Communist officials dissolved the USSR ending Gorbachev’s “six-year
struggle to carry out a full- scale Soviet reformation.”[3]
Following the
events of 1991, Gorbachev had clearly failed the test of his moral position in
the eyes of the Soviet population. By adhering to old Soviet courses of actions,
he shattered the integrity of policies that, just a few years earlier, he so wholeheartedly
endorsed. Ironically, it was the revolution that Gorbachev began that led his
own people to revolt against a system that he relentlessly was aiming to
preserve. In the eyes of the citizens of the former Soviet states, Gorbachev will
always symbolize the political figure who not only exposed the weaknesses and fragility
of Communism previously so immaculately hidden under the cloak of propaganda,
but also the political persona, who was a driving force behind initiating the
dismantlement of the system of terror that took decades to construct. Nevertheless,
it will not be easily forgotten that Gorbachev, a man who began the process of
reinventing his country, at the most critical moment failed to reinvent
himself.
Komentarų nėra:
Rašyti komentarą