Mikhail
Sergeyevich Gorbachev, penultimate General Secretary of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union, and the last leader of the USSR is perhaps one of the most
controversial political figures of the 20th century. In the eyes of
the Westerners, the legacy that Gorbachev has left behind is straightforward
and assured, forever tied to the collapse of the Evil Empire and most
significantly to the end of the Cold War. Yet the merits of Gorbachev’s
leadership have left his persona subject to controversy in the eyes of his
fellow Russians as well as the citizens of the former Soviet states. It is in
the light of Gorbachev’s policies, their successes and failures, that we find
the origin of the bitter sweet assessment of his bequest.
The goal of this
term paper, therefore, is to explore Gorbachev at the dawn of the Soviet Union
and to delineate how his personality and his policies at the time have shaped
Russian and post-Soviet peoples’ views on his political figure.
Gorbachev’s
entry to the USSR’s political arena marked an age of change and reform. Unlike
the many previous leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),
Gorbachev was young; hence he shared ideals very distinct from those adopted by
the former party members. It should come to no surprise that the age gap
between Gorbachev and the rest of the CPSU members allowed for a fresh
perspective on the Communist regime. That is to say that Gorbachev belonged to
a generation of “so called children of the 20th Congress,”[1] an
idiom indicating his awareness of Stalin’s atrocities. In fact, Gorbachev was
well aware of the tragic downfalls of Stalinist era for his grandfather was a
victim of Stalin’s launched arrests, and his father served in the Soviet army
during the World War II. As delineated by Robert Kaiser in Why Gorbachev Happened: His Triumphs and His Failures, these and
many other experiences, including his exposure to the Western world, bear great
significance on Gorbachev’s political career. Kaiser, however, is also quick to
indicate that, although Gorbachev led the revolution, “he also tried to
preserve the prerevolutionary political arrangement- a Party-run sate- that the
revolution would ultimately destroy.”[2]
This so termed Gorbachev paradox bears responsibility for his ultimate
successes as well as failures. In due course Gorbachev’s internal conflict between
his responsibilities as a party man and his obligations as a reformer is the
key factor which affected people’s outlook on his persona.
When Mikhail
Gorbachev came into power in 1985, the Stalinist model of the Soviet economy
“had long outlived its utility and was nearing collapse after doing an
immeasurable amount of damage to the country.”[3]
Gorbachev was well aware that the Stalinist mode of a vast industrial economy, subject
to planning and control by the very few Party officials in Moscow, could not
survive much longer as it was “falling farther and farther behind the developed
world.”[4] He
quickly realized that “either there would be change, or there would be a disaster.”[5] In his attempts to salvage the country from
economic ruins through the initiation of various reforms, Gorbachev effectively
initiated the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire. That is to say that
Gorbachev never purposely intended to end the realm of Communist power in the
USSR and that the disintegration of the Soviet Empire was merely an inevitable
effect of Gorbachev’s policies aimed to strengthen and revive the collapsing Soviet
economy.
As an antidote
to the stagnant and stale economic and social structures Gorbachev initiated
policies of glasnost, perestroika, democratizatsiya, and uskoreniye; terms that
refer to openness, restructuring, democratization and acceleration of economic
development, respectively. These reforms came about because Gorbachev and “thousands
of intelligent people”[6] of
his generation recognized the need for the Soviet system to loosen up and to rehabilitate
the dormant population by allowing “more freedom [which candidly] had to
connect work to rewards and prices to values.”[7]
Policies introduced
as a part of perestroika infused the elements of democracy into the socialist
regime. New laws were passed to give enterprises more freedom in the private
sector. The Law on Cooperatives enacted in 1988 extended these liberties to
include private ownership in manufacturing, service, and trade sectors. In
addition, perestroika resumed efforts on De-Stalinization by rehabilitating
many of Stalin’s opponents and releasing countless political prisoners. Hand in
hand with perestroika went the policy of glasnost or “openness,” which for the
first time since the reign of Stalinism gave Soviet people the freedom of
speech. These attempts to spark new life into the Soviet population and
therefore to revive the driving force behind USSR’s economy allowed Gorbachev
to shine in the eyes of the many Soviet citizens.
In addition to
these domestic policies, Gorbachev was keen to pursue a new approach towards
Soviet foreign policy. Recognizing that the acceleration of the arms race,
especially with Reagan’s Strategic Arms Initiative introduced in 1983, was a
commitment that in a long run USSR’s economy could not sustain, Gorbachev
pursued initiatives aimed towards disarmament. Intermediate-range nuclear
weapons reduction initiative discussed with Reagan in Reykjavik in 1986, which
culminated in signing Intermediate- Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987,
is just one of the examples of Gorbachev’s efforts to relieve the Soviet
economy of this stifling strain, which resulted in the thawed relations between
East and West.
Perhaps the most
significant policy, which in due course resulted in the crumbling of both the
Soviet bloc and the USSR, was the abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine in 1988.
By forsaking the Brezhnev Doctrine, Gorbachev effectively opened the gates for
Eastern bloc nations to take matters pertaining to their internal affairs into
their own hands. Consequently, in 1989 the world watched in awe as a string of
revolutions across the Soviet bloc resulted in the liberation of many nations
and at fall of the Berlin Wall, which became a landmark symbolizing the end of
the Cold War. The Scorpions hit “Wind of Change” seamlessly captured the prevailing
mood within the global community. This wind of change did in deed blow “straight
into the face of time” and rang the bell of freedom in the Soviet republics, awakening
formerly suppressed sense of nationalism and reinforcing the desire for
independence.
It was in the face of the uprisings that threatened
the existence of the Soviet Union itself, when the people of the Soviet
republics came to think that Gorbachev was “something less than noble,
something more recognizably Soviet and Communist and political.”[8] That is to say that in the light of the
reforms that took place in the Eastern bloc, which earned Gorbachev a Nobel
Peace Prize in 1990, his crack down in 1991 on
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