The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in his time spoke of
crossing the river by feeling for the stones, emphasising a gradualist approach to reform. Gorbachev, by contrast, jumped right into the river, learning to swim even as the raging currents carried him thence. This was a brave, admirable, dramatic, even a foolhardy attempt. He drowned.
As the economic situation went from bad to worse, queues lengthened, and poverty deepened. But there was also a new, exhilarating sense of freedom. In March 1989 Soviet citizens took to the first reasonably democratic polls in the country’s history, electing the Congress of People’s Deputies. The often unruly sessions of this experimental assembly were subsequently televised to stunned audiences around the country, completely upending Soviet politics. The shelves were empty, but the minds were alive to remarkable changes. Fewer potatoes, true — but more freedom!
Yet when all was said and done, freedom alone was not enough. Impoverished, embittered populace looked away from Gorbachev: towards the fire-breathing demagogues, the would-be authoritarians, the prophets of nationalist causes. In short — to those who promised to deliver order — and potatoes. Are we to blame them? They were just trying to survive.
But Gorbachev backed off. He was not a Stalinist. He put his faith in the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and often cited his well-known adage:
Sergey RadchenkoEverything flows, everything changes. Gorbachev wanted to flow with, but also to direct change, to be recognised not just as the leader of a superpower but as the world’s strategist-in-chief for change: it was his mission, his historical role, and his claim to legitimacy.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s death at the end of August this year was largely overshadowed in the press by the passing of another major head of state, Queen Elizabeth II. In retrospect though, I would argue that his role on the world stage was evidently more impactful than the Queen’s, despite her exceptionally long reign. Granted, I may be biased in this opinion as a citizen of a former Communist country. I vaguely remember the fall of the Soviet Union from my childhood and the reverence people had for Gorbachev because he allowed Eastern European countries to go their own ways instead of attempting to repress the democratic revolutions.
The bitterness that emerged from dismissing Russia as irrelevant created a climate ripe for the rise of an autocratic leader who would instead demand respect and power through force. And there is no force greater than possessing a nuclear arsenal capable of bringing about the end of humanity. For those who had asked,
William J. Perrywhat could this defeated nation do to us?the newly installed President Vladimir Putin would soon have an answer.
He was certainly an idealist when it came to Russia’s future on the world stage and relation to Europe, and it’s insightful to examine his views and criticism of Western foreign policy, particularly now in the light of the war in Ukraine. While I agree to some extent that Western actions and attitudes towards Russia throughout the past three decades contributed to the buildup of tensions, his expectation that Russia be treated as an equal partner seems unrealistic. The dominating position of the Soviet Union, at least in Europe, was built on fear, coercion and exploitation; after its fall, there was little respect for Russia in the West, seen as the remains of a failed socioeconomic model, and even less trust in Eastern Europe, having suffered soviet occupation for almost half a century. Is there any wonder that these states immediately turned to the prospect of freedom and prosperity offered by the European Union, and the security of NATO?
As a committed multilateralist, Gorbachev viewed NATO’s expansion—along with its transformation from a defensive alliance to a vehicle for proactive military force—as a blow to a budding world order where problems would be resolved via international law, diplomacy, and institutions like the United Nations.
The United States and its allies instead decided to expand NATO eastward, bringing that military alliance closer to Russia’s borders while claiming for it the role of a pan-European or even a global policeman, he said in 2011.This usurped the functions of the United Nations and thus weakened it.
I believe that instead this will boomerang and they will certainly rue this and the view of the people, not just the Yugoslav people, but the people throughout the world, is very negative, he said. Meanwhile, he urged the Russian government tonot lose our heads, andstick to the position that it is for a political settlement. (The later deployment of Russian troops to the conflict nearly triggered war between the two nuclear powers).The NATO bombing was arguably the most pivotal early episode in the decline of U.S.-Russian relations, even more so than the alliance’s first eastward expansion. The pro-Western president Boris Yeltsin announced he was
deeply angered, cut Moscow’s ties to NATO, and recalled his chief military representative to the alliance, while a Russian man shot up the U.S. embassy in Moscow with a submachine gun. Decades later, Putin himself pointed to the bombing as the starting point of deteriorating relations, as well as to justify his illegal annexation of Crimea.
It should all cause serious rethinking of the belief that simply replacing Putin, even with a liberal alternative, will solve current U.S.-Russia tensions, or allow the past decades’ direction of U.S. foreign policy in that part of the world to carry on unimpeded. And it should trigger serious self-reflection in the West: that maybe Putin, as bad as he is, is not the only thing that has to change for the sake of peace and stability.
Branko Marcetic
Perhaps if Gorbachev managed to stay on as the country’s leader he could have built trust and respect with the US and the rest of Europe over time. But hypothesizing over what would have happened to Russia under different leadership is hardly constructive; better to reexamine whether the West – the US in particular – could have done things differently, exercised more restraint and employed more diplomacy to solve conflicts instead of reaching for the guns.
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