Gorbachev: Russia’s Tragic Hero

Mikhail Gorbachev—the last leader of the Soviet Union, architect of perestroika and glasnost , and Nobel Peace Prize winner—passed away recently. At a time when Russia is backsliding into “neo-totalitarianism,” Gorbachev's legacy seems to be fading into oblivion. As the man who “managed to change the world but not his country,” he cast a tragic figure—a visionary too idealistic and too human to reinforce a massive transformation in the country. But is the Gorbachev era truly over? Since he resigned as president of the Soviet Union in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev used to say that he may have lost as a politician, but perestroika had won. That is what he believed until the very end. In one of his last interviews, he added, with a chuckle: “Who said that the Gorbachev era has ended? It has only begun.” He had a point: as Russia is struggling to reckon with its difficult past, now is, perhaps, too early to draw conclusions about his role in history, too close to the date to appreciate the gigantic scale of what had managed to do for the country and the world. As of now, judgments seem to vary to a great degree. Immediately after his death on August 30, 2022, an outpour of praise flooded the media in the West where the last Soviet leader is lionized and lauded for his peace-making efforts. But things are more complicated in Russia. The latest opinion poll by the state-funded WCIOM agency shows that 74 percent of Russians feel antipathy towards Gorbachev—mostly associating his reforms with economic problems that resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union and chaos of the 1990s; only 13 percent said they had positive feelings about him. An earlier survey by an independent pollster Levada Center offers a more nuanced picture: 15 percent have positive feelings, 46 percent feel negative, while 30 percent are indifferent. These numbers can only give an approximation of the public mood in Russia, as the actual attitudes are hard to measure under authoritarian conditions. By his own admission, Gorbachev is difficult to understand. And today, he can be seen as Russia’s tragic hero, a “misunderstood prophet”—the man who stopped an inhumane totalitarian experiment, ended the Cold War, liberated millions of people, and tried to steer the country toward a democratic path, but whose political life was cut short, preventing him from bringing his vision to reality. Mistakes were made, conditions set up for democratization were not fully utilized, and the freedom he had given was used against him, as he was pushed out by more radical—and power-hungry—reformers. Despite all that, it is difficult to even imagine what today’s world would be like without Gorbachev’s reforms. And yet his remarkable achievements are barely remembered, so before any potential judgment of his legacy can be passed, a brief review of both his domestic and international efforts is in order.  Unexpected Democrat Gorbachev’s legacy is defined by three signature policies— perestroika (“rebuilding”), glasnost (“open speech”), and new political thinking (a foreign policy doctrine that envisioned the end of the arms race and Cold War with the West). Gorbachev coined the word “ perestroika ” early in his tenure as General Secretary of the Communist Party, which began in March 1985. At first, he had a somewhat narrow view of the reforms focusing on economy and technological development, but, eventually, his “rebuilding” stretched far beyond and embraced politics, ideology, and culture. Gorbachev inherited the country with a highly centralized political system, bloated military-industrial complex, totalitarian control over society, and planning economic model, which had largely exhausted itself resulting in stagnation, endemic corruption, and the growing technological gap with the West. He was often criticized for lacking a proper plan, but the scale of reforms turned out to be so massive, the complexity of the Soviet system’s problems so unprecedented, that, perhaps, he intuited that any plan he could have devised would inevitably falter. Fairly quickly, Gorbachev realized that cosmetic reforms of economy could not save it, so he went to introduce private business activity through a series of legislation (i.e., on state enterprises and on cooperatives) and partial privatization of the state property. These steps were still insufficient. Even as some planning mechanisms were undermined, others, such as price regulation, were preserved, which hindered the emergence of a full-fledged market and, spurred by the 1986 oil prices collapse, eventually accelerated the system’s demise. In 1990, Soviet industrial production began to decline for the first time since the post-World War II period, the deficit in the consumer market became total, and the financial system went into virtual bankruptcy. The goal of Gorbachev’s political reform was to transfer power from the monopoly of the Communist Party “into the hands of those to whom it should have belonged according to the Constitution—the Soviets [elected councils]—through free elections of people’s deputies.” To achieve this goal, Gorbachev launched the policy of “democratization” and pushed for constitutional changes to separate the Communist Party and the state, which were essentially one governing body under the Soviet system. In 1988, he introduced a new supreme legislative body called the Congress of People’s Deputies and oversaw the first partially free nationwide elections to the Congress the following year. To further separate party leadership from the country leadership, Gorbachev abolished Article VI of the Soviet Constitution on the leading role of the Communist Party, established a multi-party system, and introduced a new office of the Soviet Union president. He was elected the first—and, as it turned out, the last—president of the Soviet Union by the Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1990.