Mikhail Gorbachev
This article may be readable prose size was 17,000 words. . (March 2024) |
Mikhail Gorbachev | |||||||||||||
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Михаил Горбачёв | |||||||||||||
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union | |||||||||||||
In office 11 March 1985 – 24 August 1991[a] | |||||||||||||
Premier | |||||||||||||
Deputy | Vladimir Ivashko | ||||||||||||
Preceded by | Vice President Gennady Yanayev[c] | | |||||||||||
Preceded by |
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Succeeded by |
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Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union | |||||||||||||
In office 1 October 1988 – 25 May 1989 | |||||||||||||
Preceded by | Andrei Gromyko | ||||||||||||
Succeeded by | Himself as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet
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Personal details | |||||||||||||
Born | Russian SFSR, Soviet Union | 2 March 1931||||||||||||
Died | 30 August 2022 Moscow, Russia | (aged 91)||||||||||||
Resting place | Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow | ||||||||||||
Political party |
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Spouse | |||||||||||||
Children | 1 | ||||||||||||
Alma mater | Moscow State University (LLB) | ||||||||||||
Awards | Nobel Peace Prize (1990) | ||||||||||||
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Website | Official website | ||||||||||||
Central institution membership Other offices held
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Leader of the Soviet Union
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Former General Secretary of the CPSU Secretariate (1985–1991)
Presidency (1990–1991)
Foreign policy Post-leadership
Media gallery |
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Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
Gorbachev was born in
Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and its Marxist–Leninist ideals, Gorbachev believed significant reform was necessary for its survival. He
Gorbachev is considered one of the most significant figures of the second half of the 20th century. The recipient of a wide range of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, in the West he is praised for his role in ending the Cold War, introducing new political and economic freedoms in the Soviet Union, and tolerating both the fall of Marxist–Leninist administrations in eastern and central Europe and the German reunification. Gorbachev has a complicated legacy in Russia. While in power, he had net positive approval ratings, being viewed as a reformer and changemaker. However, as the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of these reforms, so did his approval rating; contemporary Russians often deride him for weakening Russia's global influence and precipitating an economic collapse in the country.
Early life and education
1931–1950: childhood
Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in the village of Privolnoye, then in the North Caucasus Krai of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union.[4] At the time, Privolnoye was divided almost evenly between ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians.[5] Gorbachev's paternal family were ethnic Russians and had moved to the region from Voronezh several generations before; his maternal family were of ethnic Ukrainian heritage and had migrated from Chernihiv.[6] His parents named him Viktor at birth, but at the insistence of his mother—a devout Orthodox Christian—he had a secret baptism, where his grandfather christened him Mikhail.[7] His relationship with his father, Sergey Andreyevich Gorbachev, was close; his mother, Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva (née Gopkalo), was colder and punitive.[8] His parents were poor,[9] and lived as peasants.[10] They had married as teenagers in 1928,[11] and in keeping with local tradition had initially resided in Sergey's father's house, an adobe-walled hut, before a hut of their own could be built.[12]
The Soviet Union was a
The country was then experiencing the
Following on from the outbreak of the
The village school was closed during much of the war but re-opened in autumn 1944.[21] Gorbachev did not want to return but when he did he excelled academically.[22] He read voraciously, moving from the Western novels of Thomas Mayne Reid to the works of Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, and Mikhail Lermontov.[23] In 1946, he joined the Komsomol, the Soviet political youth organization, becoming leader of his local group and then being elected to the Komsomol committee for the district.[24] From primary school he moved to the high school in Molotovskoye; he stayed there during the week while walking the 19 km (12 mi) home during weekends.[25] As well as being a member of the school's drama society,[26] he organized sporting and social activities and led the school's morning exercise class.[27] Over the course of five consecutive summers from 1946 onward he returned home to assist his father in operating a combine harvester, during which they sometimes worked 20-hour days.[28] In 1948, they harvested over 8,000 centners of grain, a feat for which Sergey was awarded the Order of Lenin and his son the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.[29]
1950–1955: university
I would consider it a high honour to be a member of the highly advanced, genuinely revolutionary Communist Party of Bolsheviks. I promise to be faithful to the great cause of Lenin and Stalin, to devote my entire life to the party's struggle for Communism.
— Gorbachev's letter requesting membership of the Communist Party, 1950[30]
In June 1950, Gorbachev became a candidate member of the Communist Party.[30] He also applied to study at the law school of Moscow State University (MSU), then the most prestigious university in the country. They accepted him without asking for an exam, likely because of his worker-peasant origins and his possession of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.[31] His choice of law was unusual; it was not a well-regarded subject in Soviet society at that time.[32] At age 19, he traveled by train to Moscow, the first time he had left his home region.[33]
In Moscow, Gorbachev resided with fellow MSU students at a dormitory in the Sokolniki District.[34] He and other rural students felt at odds with their Muscovite counterparts, but he soon came to fit in.[35] Fellow students recall him working especially hard, often late into the night.[36] He gained a reputation as a mediator during disputes[37] and was also known for being outspoken in class, although he would reveal some of his views only privately; for instance, he confided in some students his opposition to the Soviet jurisprudential norm that a confession proved guilt, noting that confessions could have been forced.[38] During his studies, an antisemitic campaign spread through the Soviet Union, culminating in the Doctors' plot; Gorbachev publicly defended Volodya Liberman, a Jewish student who was accused of disloyalty to the country by one of his fellows.[39]
At MSU, Gorbachev became the Komsomol head of his entering class, and then Komsomol's deputy secretary for agitation and propaganda at the law school.[40] One of his first Komsomol assignments in Moscow was to monitor the election polling in Presnensky District to ensure the government's desire for near-total turnout; Gorbachev found that most of those who voted did so "out of fear".[41] In 1952, he was appointed a full member of the Communist Party.[42] As a party and Komsomol member, he was tasked with monitoring fellow students for potential subversion; some of his fellow students said that he did so only minimally and that they trusted him to keep confidential information secret from the authorities.[43] Gorbachev became close friends with Zdeněk Mlynář, a Czechoslovak student who later became a primary ideologist of the 1968 Prague Spring. Mlynář recalled that the duo remained committed Marxist–Leninists despite their growing concerns about the Stalinist system.[44] After Stalin died in March 1953, Gorbachev and Mlynář joined the crowds massing to see Stalin's body lying in state.[45]
At MSU, Gorbachev met Raisa Titarenko, who was studying in the university's philosophy department.[46] She was engaged to another man, but after that engagement fell apart, she began a relationship with Gorbachev;[47] together they went to bookstores, museums, and art exhibits.[48] In early 1953, he took an internship at the procurator's office in Molotovskoye district, but he was angered by the incompetence and arrogance of those working there.[49] That summer, he returned to Privolnoye to work with his father on the harvest; the money earned allowed him to pay for a wedding.[50] On 25 September 1953 he and Raisa registered their marriage at Sokolniki Registry Office[50] and in October moved in together at the Lenin Hills dormitory.[51] Raisa discovered that she was pregnant and although the couple wanted to keep the child she fell ill and required a life-saving abortion.[52]
In June 1955, Gorbachev graduated with a distinction;[53] his final paper had been on the advantages of "socialist democracy" (the Soviet political system) over "bourgeois democracy" (liberal democracy).[54] He was subsequently assigned to the Soviet Procurator's office, which was then focusing on the rehabilitation of the innocent victims of Stalin's purges, but found that they had no work for him.[55] He was then offered a place on an MSU graduate course specializing in kolkhoz law, but declined.[56] He had wanted to remain in Moscow, where Raisa was enrolled in a PhD program, but instead gained employment in Stavropol; Raisa abandoned her studies to join him there.[57]
Early CPSU career
1955–1969: Stavropol Komsomol
In August 1955, Gorbachev started work at the Stavropol regional procurator's office, but disliked the job and used his contacts to get a transfer to work for Komsomol,[58] becoming deputy director of Komsomol's agitation and propaganda department for that region.[59] In this position, he visited villages in the area and tried to improve the lives of their inhabitants; he established a discussion circle in Gorkaya Balka village to help its peasant residents gain social contacts.[60]
Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa initially rented a small room in Stavropol,
Stalin was ultimately succeeded as Soviet leader by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin and his cult of personality in a speech given in February 1956, after which he launched a de-Stalinization process throughout Soviet society.[68] Later biographer William Taubman suggested that Gorbachev "embodied" the "reformist spirit" of the Khrushchev era.[69] Gorbachev was among those who saw themselves as "genuine Marxists" or "genuine Leninists" in contrast to what they regarded as the perversions of Stalin.[70] He helped spread Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist message in Stavropol, but encountered many who continued to regard Stalin as a hero or who praised the Stalinist purges as just.[71]
Gorbachev rose steadily through the ranks of the local administration.[72] The authorities regarded him as politically reliable,[73] and he would flatter his superiors, for instance gaining favor with prominent local politician Fyodor Kulakov.[74] With an ability to outmanoeuvre rivals, some colleagues resented his success.[75] In September 1956, he was promoted First Secretary of the Stavropol city's Komsomol, placing him in charge of it;[76] in April 1958 he was made deputy head of the Komsomol for the entire region.[77] At this point he was given better accommodation: a two-room flat with its own private kitchen, toilet, and bathroom.[78] In Stavropol, he formed a discussion club for youths,[79] and helped mobilize local young people to take part in Khrushchev's agricultural and development campaigns.[80]
In March 1961, Gorbachev became First Secretary of the regional Komsomol,
Cleared for travel to Eastern Bloc countries, in 1966 he was part of a delegation which visited East Germany, and in 1969 and 1974 visited Bulgaria.[90] In August 1968 the Soviet Union led an invasion of Czechoslovakia to put an end to the Prague Spring, a period of political liberalization in the Marxist–Leninist country. Although Gorbachev later stated that he had had private concerns about the invasion, he publicly supported it.[91] In September 1969 he was part of a Soviet delegation sent to Czechoslovakia, where he found the Czechoslovak people largely unwelcoming to them.[92] That year, the Soviet authorities ordered him to punish Fagim B. Sadykov , a philosophy professor of the Stavropol agricultural institute whose ideas were regarded as critical of Soviet agricultural policy; Gorbachev ensured that Sadykov was fired from teaching but ignored calls for him to face tougher punishment.[93] Gorbachev later related that he was "deeply affected" by the incident; "my conscience tormented me" for overseeing Sadykov's persecution.[94]
1970–1977: heading the Stavropol region
In April 1970, Yefremov was promoted to a higher position in Moscow and Gorbachev succeeded him as the First Secretary of the Stavropol kraikom. This granted Gorbachev significant power over the Stavropol region.[95] He had been personally vetted for the position by senior Kremlin leaders and was informed of their decision by the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev.[96] Aged 39, he was considerably younger than his predecessors in the position.[97] As head of the Stavropol region, he automatically became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (24th term) in 1971.[98] According to biographer Zhores Medvedev, Gorbachev "had now joined the Party's super-elite".[99] As regional leader, Gorbachev initially attributed economic and other failures to "the inefficiency and incompetence of cadres, flaws in management structure or gaps in legislation", but eventually concluded that they were caused by an excessive centralization of decision making in Moscow.[100] He began reading translations of restricted texts by Western Marxist authors such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Aragon, Roger Garaudy, and Giuseppe Boffa, and came under their influence.[100]
Gorbachev's main task as regional leader was to raise agricultural production levels, a task hampered by severe droughts in 1975 and 1976.
The government considered Gorbachev sufficiently reliable that he was sent as part of Soviet delegations to Western Europe; he made five trips there between 1970 and 1977.[110] In September 1971 he was part of a delegation that traveled to Italy, where they met with representatives of the Italian Communist Party; Gorbachev loved Italian culture but was struck by the poverty and inequality he saw in the country.[111] In 1972, he visited Belgium and the Netherlands, and in 1973 West Germany.[112] Gorbachev and his wife visited France in 1976 and 1977, on the latter occasion touring the country with a guide from the French Communist Party.[113] He was surprised by how openly West Europeans offered their opinions and criticized their political leaders, something absent from the Soviet Union, where most people did not feel safe speaking so openly.[114] He later related that for him and his wife, these visits "shook our a priori belief in the superiority of socialist over bourgeois democracy".[115]
Gorbachev had remained close to his parents; after his father became terminally ill in 1974, Gorbachev traveled to be with him in Privolnoe shortly before his death.[116] His daughter, Irina, married fellow student Anatoly Virgansky in April 1978.[117] In 1977, the Supreme Soviet appointed Gorbachev to chair the Standing Commission on Youth Affairs due to his experience with mobilizing young people in Komsomol.[118]
Secretary of the Central Committee of CPSU
In November 1978, Gorbachev was appointed a Secretary of the Central Committee.[119] His appointment had been approved unanimously by the Central Committee's members.[120] To fill this position, Gorbachev and his wife moved to Moscow, where they were initially given an old dacha outside the city. They then moved to another, at Sosnovka, before finally being allocated a newly built brick house.[121] He was also given an apartment inside the city, but gave that to his daughter and son-in-law; Irina had begun work at Moscow's Second Medical Institute.[122] As part of the Moscow political elite, Gorbachev and his wife now had access to better medical care and to specialized shops; they were also given cooks, servants, bodyguards, and secretaries, although many of these were spies for the KGB.[123] In his new position, Gorbachev often worked twelve to sixteen hour days.[123] He and his wife socialized little, but liked to visit Moscow's theaters and museums.[124]
In 1978, Gorbachev was appointed to the Central Committee's Secretariat for Agriculture (25th term), replacing his old patron Kulakov, who had died of a heart attack.[125] Gorbachev concentrated his attentions on agriculture: the harvests of 1979, 1980, and 1981 were all poor, due largely to weather conditions,[126] and the country had to import increasing quantities of grain.[127] He had growing concerns about the country's agricultural management system, coming to regard it as overly centralized and requiring more bottom-up decision making;[128] he raised these points at his first speech at a Central Committee Plenum, given in July 1978.[129] He began to have concerns about other policies too. In December 1979, the Soviets sent the armed forces into neighbouring Afghanistan to support its Soviet-aligned government against Islamist insurgents; Gorbachev privately thought it a mistake.[130] At times he openly supported the government position; in October 1980 he for instance endorsed Soviet calls for Poland's Marxist–Leninist government to crack down on growing internal dissent in that country.[130] That same month, he was promoted from a candidate member to a full member of the Politburo (25th term), the highest decision-making authority in the Communist Party.[131] At the time, he was the Politburo's youngest member.[131]
After Brezhnev's death in November 1982, Andropov succeeded him as
In February 1984, Andropov died; on his deathbed he indicated his desire that Gorbachev succeed him.[141] Many in the Central Committee nevertheless thought the 53-year-old Gorbachev was too young and inexperienced.[142] Instead, Konstantin Chernenko—a longstanding Brezhnev ally—was appointed general secretary, but he too was in very poor health.[143] Chernenko was often too sick to chair Politburo meetings, with Gorbachev stepping in last minute.[144] Gorbachev continued to cultivate allies both in the Kremlin and beyond,[145] and also gave the main speech at a conference on Soviet ideology, where he angered party hardliners by implying that the country required reform.[146]
In April 1984, Gorbachev was appointed chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Soviet legislature, a largely honorific position.
General Secretary of the CPSU
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On 10 March 1985, Chernenko died.[153] Gromyko proposed Gorbachev as the next general secretary; as a longstanding party member, Gromyko's recommendation carried great weight among the Central Committee.[154] Gorbachev expected much opposition to his nomination as general secretary, but ultimately the rest of the Politburo supported him.[155] Shortly after Chernenko's death, the Politburo unanimously elected Gorbachev as his successor; they wanted him rather than another elderly leader.[156] He thus became the eighth leader of the Soviet Union.[10] Few in the government imagined that he would be as radical a reformer as he proved.[157] Although he was not a well-known figure to the Soviet public, there was widespread relief that the new leader was not elderly and ailing.[158] Gorbachev's first public appearance as leader was at Chernenko's Red Square funeral, held on 14 March.[159] Two months after being elected, he left Moscow for the first time, traveling to Leningrad, where he spoke to assembled crowds.[160] In June he traveled to Ukraine, in July to Belarus, and in September to Tyumen Oblast, urging party members in these areas to take more responsibility for fixing local problems.[161]
1985–1986: early years
Gorbachev's leadership style differed from that of his predecessors. He would stop to talk to civilians on the street, forbade the display of his portrait at the 1985 Red Square holiday celebrations, and encouraged frank and open discussions at Politburo meetings.[162] To the West, Gorbachev was seen as a more moderate and less threatening Soviet leader; some Western commentators however believed this an act to lull Western governments into a false sense of security.[163] His wife was his closest adviser, and took on the unofficial role of a "first lady" by appearing with him on foreign trips; her public visibility was a breach of standard practice and generated resentment.[164] His other close aides were Georgy Shakhnazarov and Anatoly Chernyaev.[165]
Gorbachev was aware that the Politburo could remove him from office, and that he could not pursue more radical reform without a majority of supporters in the Politburo.[166] He sought to remove several older members from the Politburo, encouraging Grigory Romanov, Nikolai Tikhonov, and Viktor Grishin into retirement.[167] He promoted Gromyko to head of state, a largely ceremonial role with little influence, and moved his own ally, Eduard Shevardnadze, to Gromyko's former post in charge of foreign policy.[168] Other allies whom he saw promoted were Yakovlev, Anatoly Lukyanov, and Vadim Medvedev.[169] Another of those promoted by Gorbachev was Boris Yeltsin, who was made a Secretary of the Central Committee (26th term) in July 1985.[170] Most of these appointees were from a new generation of well-educated officials who had been frustrated during the Brezhnev era.[171] In his first year, 14 of the 23 heads of department in the Secretariat were replaced.[172] Doing so, Gorbachev secured dominance in the Politburo within a year, faster than either Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev had achieved.[173]
Domestic policies
Gorbachev recurrently employed the term perestroika, first used publicly in March 1984.
The purpose of reform was to prop up the
In the Soviet Union, alcohol consumption had risen steadily between 1950 and 1985.
In the second year of his leadership, Gorbachev began speaking of
Some in the party thought Gorbachev was not going far enough in his reforms; a prominent liberal critic was Yeltsin. He had risen rapidly since 1985, attaining the role of party secretary in Moscow.[210] Like many members of the government, Gorbachev was skeptical of Yeltsin, believing that he engaged in too much self-promotion.[211] Yeltsin was also critical of Gorbachev, regarding him as patronizing.[210] In early 1986, Yeltsin began sniping at Gorbachev in Politburo meetings.[211] At the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February, Yeltsin called for more far-reaching reforms than Gorbachev was initiating and criticized the party leadership, although he did not cite Gorbachev by name, claiming that a new cult of personality was forming. Gorbachev then opened the floor to responses, after which attendees publicly criticized Yeltsin for several hours.[212] After this, Gorbachev also criticized Yeltsin, claiming that he cared only for himself and was "politically illiterate".[213] Yeltsin then resigned both as Moscow party secretary and as a member of the Politburo.[213] From this point, tensions between the two men developed into a mutual hatred.[214]
In April 1986 the Chernobyl disaster occurred.[215] In the immediate aftermath, officials fed Gorbachev incorrect information to downplay the incident. As the scale of the disaster became apparent, 336,000 people were evacuated from the area around Chernobyl.[216] Taubman noted that the disaster marked "a turning point for Gorbachev and the Soviet regime".[217] Several days after it occurred, he gave a televised report to the nation.[218] He cited the disaster as evidence for what he regarded as widespread problems in Soviet society, such as shoddy workmanship and workplace inertia.[219] Gorbachev later described the incident as one which made him appreciate the scale of incompetence and cover-ups in the Soviet Union.[217] From April to the end of the year, Gorbachev became increasingly open in his criticism of the Soviet system, including food production, state bureaucracy, the military draft, and the large size of the prison population.[220]
Foreign policy
In a May 1985 speech given to the
Gorbachev had inherited a renewed period of high tension in the Cold War.
Both Gorbachev and Reagan wanted a summit to discuss the Cold War, but each faced some opposition to such a move within their respective governments.
In January 1986, Gorbachev publicly proposed a three-stage programme for abolishing the world's nuclear weapons by the end of the 20th century.[235] An agreement was then reached to meet with Reagan in Reykjavík, Iceland, in October 1986. Gorbachev wanted to secure guarantees that SDI would not be implemented, and in return was willing to offer concessions, including a 50% reduction in Soviet long range nuclear missiles.[236] Both leaders agreed with the shared goal of abolishing nuclear weapons, but Gorbachev ultimately thought that too out of reach and instead proposed a mutual elimination of all medium-range nuclear missiles. Reagan refused to terminate the SDI program and no deal was reached.[237] After the summit, many of Reagan's allies criticized him for going along with the idea of abolishing nuclear weapons.[238] Gorbachev meanwhile told the Politburo that Reagan was "extraordinarily primitive, troglodyte, and intellectually feeble".[238]
In his relations with the
1987–1989: further reforms
Domestic reforms
In January 1987, Gorbachev attended a Central Committee plenum where he talked about perestroika and democratization while criticizing widespread corruption.[242] He considered putting a proposal to allow multi-party elections into his speech, but decided against doing so.[243] After the plenum, he focused his attentions on economic reform, holding discussions with government officials and economists.[244] Many economists proposed reducing ministerial controls on the economy and allowing state-owned enterprises to set their own targets; Ryzhkov and other government figures were skeptical.[245] In June, Gorbachev finished his report on economic reform. It reflected a compromise: ministers would retain the ability to set output targets but these would not be considered binding.[246] That month, a plenum accepted his recommendations and the Supreme Soviet passed a "law on enterprises" implementing the changes.[247] Economic problems remained: by the late 1980s there were still widespread shortages of basic goods, rising inflation, and declining living standards.[248] These stoked a number of miners' strikes in 1989.[249]
By 1987, the ethos of glasnost had spread through Soviet society: journalists were writing increasingly openly,[250] many economic problems were being publicly revealed,[251] and studies appeared that critically reassessed Soviet history.[252] Gorbachev was broadly supportive, describing glasnost as "the crucial, irreplaceable weapon of perestroika".[250] He nevertheless insisted that people should use the newfound freedom responsibly, stating that journalists and writers should avoid "sensationalism" and be "completely objective" in their reporting.[253] Nearly two hundred previously restricted Soviet films were publicly released, and a range of Western films were also made available.[254] In 1989, Soviet responsibility for the 1940 Katyn massacre was finally revealed.[255]
In September 1987, the government stopped jamming the signal of the
In August 1987, Gorbachev holidayed in Nizhnyaya Oreanda in
In March 1988, the magazine Sovetskaya Rossiya published an open letter by the teacher Nina Andreyeva. It criticized elements of Gorbachev's reforms, attacking what she regarded as the denigration of the Stalinist era and arguing that a reformer clique—whom she implied were mostly Jews and ethnic minorities—were to blame.[265] Over 900 Soviet newspapers reprinted it and anti-reformists rallied around it; many reformers panicked, fearing a backlash against perestroika.[266] On returning from Yugoslavia, Gorbachev called a Politburo meeting to discuss the letter, at which he confronted those hardliners supporting its sentiment. Ultimately, the Politburo arrived at a unanimous decision to express disapproval of Andreyeva's letter and publish a rebuttal in Pravda.[267] Yakovlev and Gorbachev's rebuttal claimed that those who "look everywhere for internal enemies" were "not patriots" and presented Stalin's "guilt for massive repressions and lawlessness" as "enormous and unforgiveable".[268]
Forming the Congress of People's Deputies
Although the next party congress was not scheduled until 1991, Gorbachev convened the
These proposals reflected Gorbachev's desire for more democracy; however, in his view there was a major impediment in that the Soviet people had developed a "slave psychology" after centuries of Tsarist autocracy and Marxist–Leninist authoritarianism.[272] Held at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, the conference brought together 5,000 delegates and featured arguments between hardliners and liberalisers. The proceedings were televised, and for the first time since the 1920s, voting was not unanimous.[273] In the months following the conference, Gorbachev focused on redesigning and streamlining the party apparatus; the Central Committee staff—which then numbered around 3,000—was halved, while various Central Committee departments were merged to cut down the overall number from twenty to nine.[274]
In March and April 1989, elections to the new Congress were held.[275] Of the 2,250 legislators to be elected, one hundred—termed the "Red Hundred" by the press—were directly chosen by the Communist Party, with Gorbachev ensuring many were reformists.[276] Although over 85% of elected deputies were party members,[277] many of those elected—including Sakharov and Yeltsin—were liberalisers.[278] Gorbachev was happy with the result, describing it as "an enormous political victory under extraordinarily difficult circumstances".[279] The new Congress convened in May 1989.[280] Gorbachev was then elected its chair—the new de facto head of state—with 2,123 votes in favor to 87 against.[281] Its sessions were televised live,[281] and its members elected the new Supreme Soviet.[282] At the Congress, Sakharov spoke repeatedly, exasperating Gorbachev with his calls for greater liberalization and the introduction of private property.[283] When Sakharov died shortly after, Yeltsin became the figurehead of the liberal opposition.[284]
Relations with China and Western states
Gorbachev tried to improve relations with the UK, France, and West Germany;[285] like previous Soviet leaders, he was interested in pulling Western Europe away from US influence.[286] Calling for greater pan-European co-operation, he publicly spoke of a "Common European Home" and of a Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals".[287] In March 1987, Thatcher visited Gorbachev in Moscow; despite their ideological differences, they liked one another.[288] In April 1989 he visited London, lunching with Elizabeth II.[289] In May 1987, Gorbachev again visited France, and in November 1988 Mitterrand visited him in Moscow.[290] The West German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, had initially offended Gorbachev by comparing him to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, although he later informally apologized and in October 1988 visited Moscow.[291] In June 1989 Gorbachev then visited Kohl in West Germany.[292] In November 1989 he also visited Italy, meeting with Pope John Paul II.[293] Gorbachev's relationships with these West European leaders were typically far warmer than those he had with their Eastern Bloc counterparts.[294]
Gorbachev continued to pursue good relations with China to heal the Sino-Soviet Split. In May 1989 he visited Beijing and there met its leader Deng Xiaoping; Deng shared Gorbachev's belief in economic reform but rejected calls for democratization.[295] Pro-democracy students had massed in Tiananmen Square during Gorbachev's visit but after he left were massacred by troops. Gorbachev did not condemn the massacre publicly but it reinforced his commitment not to use violent force in dealing with pro-democracy protests in the Eastern Bloc.[296]
Following the failures of earlier talks with the US, in February 1987, Gorbachev held a conference in Moscow, titled "For a World without Nuclear Weapons, for Mankind's Survival", which was attended by various international celebrities and politicians.
A second US–Soviet summit occurred in Moscow in May–June 1988, which Gorbachev expected to be largely symbolic.[304] Again, he and Reagan criticized each other's countries—Reagan raising Soviet restrictions on religious freedom; Gorbachev highlighting poverty and racial discrimination in the US, but Gorbachev related that they spoke "on friendly terms".[305] They reached an agreement on notifying each other before conducting ballistic missile tests and made agreements on transport, fishing, and radio navigation.[306] At the summit, Reagan told reporters that he no longer considered the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and the two revealed that they considered themselves friends.[307]
The third summit was held in New York City in December.[308] Arriving there, Gorbachev gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly where he announced a unilateral reduction in the Soviet armed forces by 500,000; he also announced that 50,000 troops would be withdrawn from Central and Eastern Europe.[309] He then met with Reagan and President-elect George H. W. Bush, following which he rushed home, skipping a planned visit to Cuba, to deal with the Armenian earthquake.[310] On becoming US president, Bush appeared interested in continuing talks with Gorbachev but wanted to appear tougher on the Soviets than Reagan had to allay criticism from the right wing of his Republican Party.[311] In December 1989, Gorbachev and Bush met at the Malta Summit.[312] Bush offered to assist the Soviet economy by suspending the Jackson–Vanik amendment and repealing the Stevenson and Baird Amendments.[313] There, they agreed to a joint press conference, the first time that a US and Soviet leader had done so.[314] Gorbachev also urged Bush to normalize relations with Cuba and meet its president, Fidel Castro, although Bush refused to do so.[315]
Nationality question and the Eastern Bloc
On taking power, Gorbachev found some unrest among different national groups within the Soviet Union. In December 1986, riots broke out in several Kazakh cities after a Russian was appointed head of the region.[316] In 1987, Crimean Tatars protested in Moscow to demand resettlement in Crimea, the area from which they had been deported on Stalin's orders in 1944. Gorbachev ordered a commission, headed by Gromyko, to examine their situation. Gromyko's report opposed calls for assisting Tatar resettlement in Crimea.[317] By 1988, the Soviet "nationality question" was increasingly pressing.[318] In February, the administration of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast officially requested that it be transferred from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic; the majority of the region's population were ethnically Armenian and wanted unification with other majority Armenian areas.[319] As rival Armenian and Azerbaijani demonstrations took place in Nagorno-Karabakh, Gorbachev called an emergency meeting of the Politburo.[320] Gorbachev promised greater autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh but refused the transfer, fearing that it would set off similar ethnic tensions and demands throughout the Soviet Union.[321] In the end however, greater autonomy was never given, and instead Gorbachev ordered the further violent ethnic cleansing of Armenians in parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent Armenian-populated Shahumyan region, in what was named Operation Ring.[322]
That month, in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait, Azerbaijani gangs began killing members of the Armenian minority. Local troops tried to quell the unrest but were attacked by mobs.[323] The Politburo ordered additional troops into the city, but in contrast to those like Ligachev who wanted a massive display of force, Gorbachev urged restraint. He believed that the situation could be resolved through a political solution, urging talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani Communist Parties.[324] Further anti-Armenian violence broke out in Baku in January 1990, followed by the Soviet Army killing about 150 Azeris.[325] Problems also emerged in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic; in April 1989, Soviet troops crushed Georgian pro-independence demonstrations in Tbilisi, resulting in various deaths.[326] Independence sentiment was also rising in the Baltic states; the Supreme Soviets of the Estonian, Lithuanian, and Latvian Soviet Socialist Republics declared their economic "autonomy" from the Soviet central government and introduced measures to restrict Russian immigration.[327] In August 1989, protesters formed the Baltic Way, a human chain across the three countries to symbolize their wish to restore independence.[328] That month, the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet ruled the 1940 Soviet annexation of their country to be illegal;[329] in January 1990, Gorbachev visited the republic to encourage it to remain part of the Soviet Union.[330]
Gorbachev rejected the Brezhnev Doctrine, the idea that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene militarily in other Marxist–Leninist countries if their governments were threatened.[331] In December 1987 he announced the withdrawal of 500,000 Soviet troops from Central and Eastern Europe.[332] While pursuing domestic reforms, he did not publicly support reformers elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc.[333] Hoping instead to lead by example, he later related that he did not want to interfere in their internal affairs, but he may have feared that pushing reform in Central and Eastern Europe would have angered his own hardliners too much.[334] Some Eastern Bloc leaders, like Hungary's János Kádár and Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski, were sympathetic to reform; others, like Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu, were hostile to it.[335] In May 1987 Gorbachev visited Romania, where he was appalled by the state of the country, later telling the Politburo that there "human dignity has absolutely no value".[336] He and Ceaușescu disliked each other, and argued over Gorbachev's reforms.[337]
In August 1989, the Pan-European Picnic, which Otto von Habsburg planned as a test of Gorbachev, resulted in a large mass exodus of East German refugees. According to the "Sinatra Doctrine", the Soviet Union did not interfere and the media-informed Eastern European population realized that on the one hand their rulers were increasingly losing power and on the other hand the Iron Curtain was falling apart as a bracket for the Eastern Bloc.[338][339][340]
Unraveling of the USSR
In the
1990–1991: presidency of the Soviet Union
In February 1990, both liberalisers and Marxist–Leninist hardliners intensified their attacks on Gorbachev.[348] A liberalizer march took place in Moscow criticizing Communist Party rule,[349] while at a Central Committee meeting, the hardliner Vladimir Brovikov accused Gorbachev of reducing the country to "anarchy" and "ruin" and of pursuing Western approval at the expense of the Soviet Union and the Marxist–Leninist cause.[350] Gorbachev was aware that the Central Committee could still oust him as general secretary, and so decided to reformulate the role of head of government to a presidency from which he could not be removed.[351] He decided that the presidential election should be held by the Congress of People's Deputies. He chose this over a public vote because he thought the latter would escalate tensions and feared that he might lose it;[352] a spring 1990 poll nevertheless still showed him as the most popular politician in the country.[353]
In March, the Congress of People's Deputies held the first (and only)
In the 1990 elections for the Russian Supreme Soviet, the Communist Party faced challengers from an alliance of liberalisers known as "Democratic Russia"; the latter did particularly well in urban centers.[357] Yeltsin was elected the parliament's chair, something Gorbachev was unhappy about.[358] That year, opinion polls showed Yeltsin overtaking Gorbachev as the most popular politician in the Soviet Union.[353] Gorbachev struggled to understand Yeltsin's growing popularity, commenting: "he drinks like a fish ... he's inarticulate, he comes up with the devil knows what, he's like a worn-out record".[359] The Russian Supreme Soviet was now out of Gorbachev's control;[359] in June 1990, it declared that in the Russian Republic, its laws took precedence over those of the Soviet central government.[360] Amid a growth in Russian nationalist sentiment, Gorbachev had reluctantly allowed the formation of a Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as a branch of the larger Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev attended its first congress in June, but soon found it dominated by hardliners who opposed his reformist stance.[361]
German reunification and the Gulf War
In January 1990, Gorbachev privately agreed to permit East German reunification with West Germany, but rejected the idea that a unified Germany could retain West Germany's NATO membership.[362] His compromise that Germany might retain both NATO and Warsaw Pact memberships did not attract support.[363] On 9 February 1990 in a phone conversation with James Baker, then the US secretary of state, he set out his position that "a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable" to which Baker agreed. Scholars are puzzled why Gorbachev never pursued a written pledge.[364] In May 1990, he visited the US for talks with President Bush;[365] there, he agreed that an independent Germany would have the right to choose its international alliances.[363] Ultimately he acquiesced to the reunification on the condition that NATO troops not be posted to the territory of Eastern Germany.[366] There remains some confusion over whether US secretary of state James Baker led Gorbachev to believe that NATO would not expand into other countries in Eastern Europe as well. There was no oral or written US promise that explicitly said so. Gorbachev himself has stated that he was only made such a promise regarding East Germany and that it was kept.[367][368] In July, Kohl visited Moscow and Gorbachev informed him that the Soviets would not oppose a reunified Germany being part of NATO.[369] Domestically, Gorbachev's critics accused him of betraying the national interest;[370] more broadly, they were angry that Gorbachev had allowed the Eastern Bloc to move away from direct Soviet influence.[371]
In August 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government invaded Kuwait; Gorbachev endorsed President Bush's condemnation of it.[372] This brought criticism from many in the Soviet state apparatus, who saw Hussein as a key ally in the Persian Gulf and feared for the safety of the 9,000 Soviet citizens in Iraq, although Gorbachev argued that the Iraqis were the clear aggressors in the situation.[373] In November the Soviets endorsed a UN Resolution permitting force to be used in expelling the Iraqi Army from Kuwait.[374] Gorbachev later called it a "watershed" in world politics, "the first time the superpowers acted together in a regional crisis".[375] However, when the US announced plans for a ground invasion, Gorbachev opposed it, urging instead a peaceful solution.[376] In October 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; he was flattered but acknowledged "mixed feelings" about the accolade.[377] Polls indicated that 90% of Soviet citizens disapproved of the award, which was widely seen as a Western and anti-Soviet accolade.[378]
With the Soviet budget deficit climbing and no domestic money markets to provide the state with loans, Gorbachev looked elsewhere.[379] Throughout 1991, Gorbachev requested sizable loans from Western countries and Japan, hoping to keep the Soviet economy afloat and ensure the success of perestroika.[380] Although the Soviet Union had been excluded from the G7, Gorbachev secured an invitation to its London summit in July 1991.[381] There, he continued to call for financial assistance; Mitterrand and Kohl backed him,[382] while Thatcher—no longer in office—also urged Western leaders to agree.[383] Most G7 members were reluctant, instead offering technical assistance and proposing the Soviets receive "special associate" status—rather than full membership—of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.[384] Gorbachev was frustrated that the US would spend $100 billion on the Gulf War but would not offer his country loans.[385] Other countries were more forthcoming; West Germany had given the Soviets DM60 billion by mid-1991.[386] Bush visited Moscow in late July, when he and Gorbachev concluded ten years of negotiations by signing the START I treaty, a bilateral agreement on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms.[387]
August coup and government crises
At the
By mid-November 1990, much of the press was calling for Gorbachev to resign and predicting civil war.[395] Hardliners were urging Gorbachev to disband the presidential council and arrest vocal liberals in the media.[396] In November, he addressed the Supreme Soviet where he announced an eight-point program, which included governmental reforms, among them the abolition of the presidential council.[397] By this point, Gorbachev was isolated from many of his former close allies and aides.[398] Yakovlev had moved out of his inner circle and Shevardnadze had resigned.[399] His support among the intelligentsia was declining,[400] and by the end of 1990 his approval ratings had plummeted.[401]
Amid growing dissent in
In August, Gorbachev and his family holidayed at their dacha, "Zarya" ('Dawn') in
Yeltsin, now President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, went inside the Moscow White House. Tens of thousands of protesters massed outside it to prevent troops storming the building to arrest him.[417] Outside of the White House, Yeltsin, atop a tank, gave a memorable speech condemning the coup.[418] Gorbachev feared that the coup plotters would order him killed, so had his guards barricade his dacha.[419] However, the coup's leaders realized that they lacked sufficient support and ended their efforts. On 21 August, Vladimir Kryuchkov, Dmitry Yazov, Oleg Baklanov, Anatoly Lukyanov, and Vladimir Ivashko arrived at Gorbachev's dacha to inform him that they were doing so.[419]
That evening, Gorbachev returned to Moscow, where he thanked Yeltsin and the protesters for helping to undermine the coup.[420] At a subsequent press conference, he pledged to reform the Soviet Communist Party.[421] Two days later, he resigned as its general secretary and called on the Central Committee to dissolve.[422][423] Several members of the coup committed suicide; others were fired.[424] Gorbachev attended a session of the Russian Supreme Soviet on 23 August, where Yeltsin aggressively criticized him for having appointed and promoted many of the coup members to start with.[425]
Final days and collapse
After the coup, the Supreme Soviet indefinitely suspended all Communist Party activity, effectively ending communist rule in the Soviet Union.[426][427] From then on, the country collapsed with dramatic speed.
On 30 October, Gorbachev attended a conference in Madrid trying to revive the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. The event was co-sponsored by the US and Soviet Union, one of the first examples of such cooperation between the two countries. There, he again met with Bush.[428] En route home, he traveled to France where he stayed with Mitterrand at the latter's home near Bayonne.[429]
To keep unity within the country, Gorbachev continued to pursue plans for a new union treaty but found increasing opposition to the idea of a continued federal state as the leaders of various Soviet republics bowed to growing nationalist pressure.[430] Yeltsin stated that he would veto any idea of a unified state, instead favoring a confederation with little central authority.[431] Only the leaders of Kazakhstan and Kirghizia supported Gorbachev's approach.[432] The referendum in Ukraine on 1 December with a 90% turnout for secession from the Union was a fatal blow; Gorbachev had expected Ukrainians to reject independence.[433]
Without Gorbachev's knowledge, Yeltsin met with Ukrainian president
Gorbachev reached a deal with Yeltsin that called for Gorbachev to formally announce his resignation as Soviet president and Commander-in-Chief on 25 December, before vacating the Kremlin by 29 December.
Post-USSR life
1991–1999: initial years
Out of office, Gorbachev had more time to spend with his wife and family.
To finance his foundation, Gorbachev began lecturing internationally, charging large fees to do so.
In 1993, Gorbachev launched Green Cross International, which focused on encouraging sustainable futures, and then the World Political Forum.[462] In 1995, he initiated the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates.[463]
External videos | |
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Booknotes interview with Gorbachev on his memoirs, 24 November 1996, C-SPAN |
Gorbachev had promised to refrain from criticizing Yeltsin while the latter pursued democratic reforms, but soon the two men were publicly criticizing each other again.[464] After Yeltsin's decision to lift price caps generated massive inflation and plunged many Russians into poverty, Gorbachev openly criticized him, comparing the reform to Stalin's policy of forced collectivization.[464] After pro-Yeltsin parties did poorly in the 1993 legislative election, Gorbachev called on him to resign.[465] In 1995, his foundation held a conference on "The Intelligentsia and Perestroika". It was there that Gorbachev proposed to the Duma a law that would reduce many of the presidential powers established by Yeltsin's 1993 constitution.[466] Gorbachev continued to defend perestroika but acknowledged that he had made tactical errors as Soviet leader.[462] While he still believed that Russia was undergoing a process of democratization, he concluded that it would take decades rather than years, as he had previously thought.[467]
In contrast to her husband's political activities, Raisa had focused on campaigning for children's charities.[468] In 1997, she founded a sub-division of the Gorbachev Foundation known as Raisa Maksimovna's Club to focus on improving women's welfare in Russia.[469] The Foundation had initially been housed in the former Social Science Institute building, but Yeltsin introduced limits to the number of rooms it could use there;[470] the American philanthropist Ted Turner then donated over $1 million to enable the foundation to build new premises on the Leningradsky Prospekt.[471] In 1999, Gorbachev made his first visit to Australia, where he gave a speech to the country's parliament.[472] Shortly after, in July, Raisa was diagnosed with leukemia. With the assistance of German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, she was transferred to a cancer center in Münster, Germany, and there underwent chemotherapy.[473] In September she fell into a coma and died.[223] After Raisa's passing, Gorbachev's daughter Irina and his two granddaughters moved into his Moscow home to live with him.[474] When questioned by journalists, he said that he would never remarry.[461]
1996 presidential campaign
The Russian presidential elections were scheduled for June 1996, and although his wife and most of his friends urged him not to run, Gorbachev decided to do so.[475] He hated the idea that the election would result in a run-off between Yeltsin and Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation candidate whom Yeltsin saw as a Stalinist hardliner. He never expected to win outright but thought a centrist bloc could be formed around either himself or one of the other candidates with similar views, such as Grigory Yavlinsky, Svyatoslav Fyodorov, or Alexander Lebed.[476] After securing the necessary one million signatures of nomination, he announced his candidacy in March.[477] Launching his campaign, he traveled across Russia giving rallies in twenty cities.[477] He repeatedly faced anti-Gorbachev protesters, while some pro-Yeltsin local officials tried to hamper his campaign by banning local media from covering it or by refusing him access to venues.[478] In the election, Gorbachev came seventh with approximately 386,000 votes, or around 0.5% of the total.[479] Yeltsin and Zyuganov went through to the second round, where the former was victorious.[479]
1999–2008: promoting social democracy in Putin's Russia
In December 1999, Yeltsin resigned and was succeeded by his deputy, Vladimir Putin, who then won the March 2000 presidential election.[480] Gorbachev attended Putin's inauguration ceremony in May, the first time he had entered the Kremlin since 1991.[481] Gorbachev initially welcomed Putin's rise, seeing him as an anti-Yeltsin figure.[462] Although he spoke out against some of the Putin government's actions, Gorbachev also had praise for the new government; in 2002, he said: "I've been in the same skin. That's what allows me to say that what [Putin] has done is in the interest of the majority."[482] At the time, he believed Putin to be a committed democrat who nevertheless had to use "a certain dose of authoritarianism" to stabilize the economy and rebuild the state after the Yeltsin era.[481] At Putin's request, Gorbachev became co-chair of the "Petersburg Dialogue" project between high-ranking Russians and Germans.[480]
In 2000, Gorbachev helped form the
Gorbachev was critical of US hostility to Putin, arguing that the US government "doesn't want Russia to rise" again as a global power and wants "to continue as the sole superpower in charge of the world".
2008–2022: growing criticism of Putin and foreign policy remarks
Barred by the constitution from serving more than two consecutive terms as president, Putin stood down in 2008 and was succeeded by his chosen successor,
In 2009, Gorbachev released Songs for Raisa, an album of Russian romantic ballads, sung by him and accompanied by musician
After Putin announced his intention to run for president in the 2012 election, Gorbachev was opposed to the idea.[501][502][503] He complained that Putin's new measures had "tightened the screws" on Russia and that the president was trying to "completely subordinate society", adding that United Russia now "embodied the worst bureaucratic features of the Soviet Communist party".[501]
In 2015, Gorbachev ceased his frequent international traveling.[504] He continued to speak out on issues affecting Russia and the world. In 2014, he defended the Crimean status referendum and Russia's annexation of Crimea that began the Russo-Ukrainian War.[487] In his judgment, while Crimea was transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, when both were part of the Soviet Union, the Crimean people had not been asked at the time, whereas in the 2014 referendum they had.[505] After sanctions were placed on Russia as a result of the annexation, Gorbachev spoke out against them.[506] His comments led to Ukraine banning him from entering the country for five years.[507]
Russia can succeed only through democracy. Russia is ready for political competition, a real multiparty system, fair elections and regular rotation of government. This should define the role and responsibility of the president.
– Gorbachev, 2017[508]
At a November 2014 event marking 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev warned that the ongoing
Following the death of former president George H. W. Bush in 2018, a critical partner and friend of his time in office, Gorbachev stated that the work they had both accomplished led directly to the end of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, and that he "deeply appreciated the attention, kindness and simplicity typical of George, Barbara and their large, friendly family".[517]
After the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Gorbachev declared, "The storming of the capitol was clearly planned in advance, and it's obvious by whom." He did not clarify to whom he was referring. Gorbachev also stated that the attack "called into question the future fate of the United States as a nation".[518]
In an interview with Russian news agency TASS on 20 January 2021, Gorbachev said that relations between the United States and Russia are of "great concern", and called on US president Joe Biden to begin talks with the Kremlin to make the two countries' "intentions and actions clearer" and "in order to normalize relations".[519] On 24 December 2021, Gorbachev said that the United States "grew arrogant and self-confident" after the collapse of the Soviet Union, resulting in "a new empire. Hence the idea of NATO expansion". He also endorsed the upcoming security talks between the United States and Russia, saying, "I hope there will be a result."[520]
Gorbachev made no personal comment publicly on the 2022
Political ideology
Even before he left office, Gorbachev had become a kind of
social democrat—believing in, as he later put it, equality of opportunity, publicly supported education and medical care, a guaranteed minimum of social welfare, and a "socially oriented market economy"—all within a democratic political framework. Exactly when this transformation occurred is hard to say, but surely by 1989 or 1990 it had taken place.
— Gorbachev biographer William Taubman, 2017[483]
According to his university friend Zdeněk Mlynář, in the early 1950s "Gorbachev, like everyone else at the time, was a Stalinist".[525] Mlynář noted, however, that unlike most other Soviet students, Gorbachev did not view Marxism simply as "a collection of axioms to be committed to memory".[526] Biographers Doder and Branson related that after Stalin's death, Gorbachev's "ideology would never be doctrinal again",[527] but noted that he remained "a true believer" in the Soviet system.[528] Doder and Branson noted that at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 1986, Gorbachev was seen to be an orthodox Marxist–Leninist;[529] that year, the biographer Zhores Medvedev stated that "Gorbachev is neither a liberal nor a bold reformist".[530]
By the mid-1980s, when Gorbachev took power, many analysts were arguing that the Soviet Union was declining to the status of a Third World country.[531] In this context, Gorbachev argued that the Communist Party had to adapt and engage in creative thinking much as Lenin had creatively interpreted and adapted the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to the situation of early 20th century Russia.[532] For instance, he thought that rhetoric about global revolution and overthrowing the bourgeoisie—which had been integral to Leninist politics—had become too dangerous in an era where nuclear warfare could obliterate humanity.[533] He began to move away from the Marxist–Leninist belief in class struggle as the engine of political change, instead viewing politics as a way of coordinating the interests of all classes.[534] However, as Gooding noted, the changes that Gorbachev proposed were "expressed wholly within the terms of Marxist-Leninist ideology".[535]
According to Doder and Branson, Gorbachev also wanted to "dismantle the hierarchical military society at home and abandon the grand-style, costly, imperialism abroad".[536] However, Jonathan Steele argued that Gorbachev failed to appreciate why the Baltic nations wanted independence and "at heart he was, and remains, a Russian imperialist".[537] Gooding thought that Gorbachev was "committed to democracy", something marking him out as different from his predecessors.[538] Gooding also suggested that when in power, Gorbachev came to see socialism not as a place on the path to communism, but a destination in itself.[539]
Gorbachev's political outlook was shaped by the 23 years he served as a party official in Stavropol.
McCauley noted that perestroika was "an elusive concept", one which "evolved and eventually meant something radically different over time".[542] McCauley stated that the concept originally referred to "radical reform of the economic and political system" as part of Gorbachev's attempt to motivate the labor force and make management more effective.[543] It was only after initial measures to achieve this proved unsuccessful that Gorbachev began to consider market mechanisms and co-operatives, albeit with the state sector remaining dominant.[543] The political scientist John Gooding suggested that had the perestroika reforms succeeded, the Soviet Union would have "exchanged totalitarian controls for milder authoritarian ones" although not become "democratic in the Western sense".[538] With perestroika, Gorbachev had wanted to improve the existing Marxist–Leninist system but ultimately ended up destroying it.[544] In this, he brought an end to state socialism in the Soviet Union and paved the way for a transition to liberal democracy.[545]
Taubman nevertheless thought Gorbachev remained a socialist.[546] He described Gorbachev as "a true believer—not in the Soviet system as it functioned (or didn't) in 1985 but in its potential to live up to what he deemed its original ideals".[546] He added that "until the end, Gorbachev reiterated his belief in socialism, insisting that it wasn't worthy of the name unless it was truly democratic".[547] As Soviet leader, Gorbachev believed in incremental reform rather than a radical transformation;[548] he later referred to this as a "revolution by evolutionary means".[548] Doder and Branson noted that over the course of the 1980s, his thought underwent a "radical evolution".[549] Taubman noted that by 1989 or 1990, Gorbachev had transformed into a social democrat.[483] McCauley suggested that by at least June 1991 Gorbachev was a "post-Leninist", having "liberated himself" from Marxism–Leninism.[550] After the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly formed Communist Party of the Russian Federation would have nothing to do with him.[551] However, in 2006, he expressed his continued belief in Lenin's ideas: "I trusted him then and I still do".[546] He claimed that "the essence of Lenin" was a desire to develop "the living creative activity of the masses".[546] Taubman believed that Gorbachev identified with Lenin on a psychological level.[552]
Personal life
By 1955, Gorbachev's hair was thinning,[554] and by the late 1960s he was bald,[555] revealing a distinctive port-wine stain on the top of his head.[556] Gorbachev reached an adult height of 5 foot 9 inches (1.75 m).[557] Throughout the 1960s, he struggled against obesity and dieted to control the problem;[87] Doder and Branson characterized him as "stocky but not fat".[557] He spoke in a southern Russian accent,[558] and was known to sing both folk and pop songs.[559]
Throughout his life, he tried to dress fashionably.[560] Having an aversion to hard liquor,[561] he drank sparingly and did not smoke.[562] He was protective of his private life and avoided inviting people to his home.[115] Gorbachev cherished his wife,[563] who in turn was protective of him.[106] He was an involved parent and grandparent.[564] He sent his daughter, his only child, to a local school in Stavropol rather than to a school set aside for the children of party elites.[565] Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Soviet administration, he was not a womanizer and was known for treating women respectfully.[82]
Gorbachev was baptized Russian Orthodox and when he was growing up, his grandparents had been practicing Christians.
Personality
Gorbachev's university friend, Mlynář, described him as "loyal and personally honest".[576] He was self-confident,[577] polite,[562] and tactful;[562] he had a happy and optimistic temperament.[578] He used self-deprecating humor,[579] and sometimes profanities,[579] and often referred to himself in the third person.[580] He was a skilled manager,[82] and had a good memory.[581] A hard worker or workaholic,[582] as general secretary, he would rise at 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning and not go to bed until 1:00 or 2:00.[583] He commuted from the western suburbs between 9 and 10 in the morning and returned home around 8 in the evening.[584] Taubman called him "a remarkably decent man";[563] he thought Gorbachev to have "high moral standards".[585]
Zhores Medvedev thought he was a talented orator, in 1986 stating that "Gorbachev is probably the best speaker there has been in the top Party echelons" since Leon Trotsky.[586] Medvedev also considered Gorbachev "a charismatic leader", something Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko had not been.[587] Doder and Branson called him "a charmer capable of intellectually seducing doubters, always trying to co-opt them, or at least blunt the edge of their criticism".[588] McCauley thought Gorbachev displayed "great tactical skill" in maneuvering successfully between hardline Marxist–Leninists and liberalisers for most of his time as leader, adding, though, that he was "much more skilled at tactical, short-term policy than strategic, long-term thinking", in part because he was "given to making policy on the hoof".[589]
Doder and Branson thought Gorbachev "a Russian to the core, intensely patriotic as only people living in the border regions can be".[540] Taubman also noted that the former Soviet leader has a "sense of self-importance and self-righteousness" as well as a "need for attention and admiration" which grated on some of his colleagues.[585] He was sensitive to personal criticism and easily took offense.[590] Colleagues were often frustrated that he would leave tasks unfinished,[591] and sometimes also felt underappreciated and discarded by him.[592] Biographers Doder and Branson thought that Gorbachev was "a puritan" with "a proclivity for order in his personal life".[593] Taubman noted that he was "capable of blowing up for calculated effect".[594] He also thought that by 1990, when his domestic popularity was waning, Gorbachev had become "psychologically dependent on being lionized abroad", a trait for which he was criticized in the Soviet Union.[595] McCauley was of the view that "one of his weaknesses was an inability to foresee the consequences of his actions".[596]
Death
Gorbachev died at the
Preceding deterioration of health
For a number of years before his death, Gorbachev suffered from severe
The length of his hospital visits increased in 2019, with Gorbachev hospitalized in December with
Russian president Vladimir Putin bid an official farewell to Gorbachev on 1 September 2022 during a visit to the Central Clinical Hospital, where he laid flowers at his coffin.[614][615] His press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the "tight schedule of the president" would not allow him to be present at the funeral, as he was scheduled to visit Kaliningrad.[614][616]
Funeral and burial
A funeral for Gorbachev was held on 3 September 2022 from 10 a.m. to 12 noon in the Column Hall of the
Gorbachev was buried at Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, in the same grave as his wife Raisa, as requested by his will.[427]
Reactions
Russian president Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences on the death of Gorbachev,[620] and paid tribute to him at the Moscow hospital where the ex-president had died but, according to spokesman Dmitry Peskov, had no time to attend his funeral due to a busy work schedule. Putin also sent a telegram to Gorbachev's family, calling him "a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of world history".[621] Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin called Gorbachev an "outstanding statesman".[622] Other reactions were less positive, with the leader of Russia's Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, stating that Gorbachev was a leader whose rule brought "absolute sadness, misfortune and problems" for "all the peoples of our country".[623] Naina Yeltsina, widow of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, said that Gorbachev "sincerely wanted to change the Soviet system" and transform the USSR into a "free and peaceful state".[624]
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen paid tribute to him on Twitter, as did the UK's prime minister Boris Johnson, former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Ireland's Taoiseach Micheál Martin.[625]
United Nations secretary-general
The
Reception and legacy
Opinions on Gorbachev are deeply divided.[580] According to a 2017 survey carried out by the independent institute Levada Center, 46% of Russian citizens have a negative opinion towards Gorbachev, 30% are indifferent, while only 15% have a positive opinion.[636] Many, particularly in Western countries, see him as the greatest statesman of the second half of the 20th century.[637] US press referred to the presence of "Gorbymania" in Western countries during the late 1980s and early 1990s, as represented by large crowds that turned out to greet his visits,[638] with Time naming him its "Man of the Decade" in the 1980s.[639] In the Soviet Union itself, opinion polls indicated that Gorbachev was the most popular politician from 1985 through to late 1989.[640] For his domestic supporters, Gorbachev was seen as a reformer trying to modernise the Soviet Union,[641] and to build a form of democratic socialism.[642] Taubman characterized Gorbachev as "a visionary who changed his country and the world—though neither as much as he wished".[643] Taubman regarded Gorbachev as being "exceptional ... as a Russian ruler and a world statesman", highlighting that he avoided the "traditional, authoritarian, anti-Western norm" of both predecessors like Brezhnev and successors like Putin.[644] McCauley thought that in allowing the Soviet Union to move away from Marxism–Leninism, Gorbachev gave the Soviet people "something precious, the right to think and manage their lives for themselves", with all the uncertainty and risk that that entailed.[645]
Gorbachev succeeded in destroying what was left of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union; he brought freedom of speech, of assembly, and of conscience to people who had never known it, except perhaps for a few chaotic months in 1917. By introducing free elections and creating parliamentary institutions, he laid the groundwork for democracy. It is more the fault of the raw material he worked with than of his own real shortcomings and mistakes that Russian democracy will take much longer to build than he thought.
— Gorbachev biographer William Taubman, 2017[643]
External videos | |
---|---|
Q&A interview with William Taubman on Gorbachev: His Life and Times, October 15, 2017, C-SPAN |
Gorbachev's negotiations with the US helped bring an end to the Cold War and reduced the threat of nuclear conflict.
He also faced domestic criticism during his rule. During his career, Gorbachev attracted the admiration of some colleagues, but others came to hate him.[585] Across society more broadly, his inability to reverse the decline in the Soviet economy brought discontent.[649] Liberals thought he lacked the radicalism to really break from Marxism–Leninism and establish a free market liberal democracy.[650] Conversely, many of his Communist Party critics thought his reforms were reckless and threatened the survival of Soviet socialism;[651] some believed he should have followed the example of China's Communist Party and restricted himself to economic rather than governmental reforms.[652] Many Russians saw his emphasis on persuasion rather than force as a sign of weakness.[547]
For much of the Communist Party nomenklatura, the Soviet Union's dissolution was disastrous as it resulted in their loss of power.[653] In Russia, he is widely despised for his role in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing economic collapse in the 1990s.[580] General Varennikov, one of those who orchestrated the 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev, for instance called him "a renegade and traitor to your own people".[466] Many of his critics attacked him for allowing the Marxist–Leninist governments across Eastern Europe to fall,[654] and for allowing a reunited Germany to join NATO, something they deem to be contrary to Russia's national interest.[655]
The historian Mark Galeotti stressed the connection between Gorbachev and his predecessor, Andropov. In Galeotti's view, Andropov was "the godfather of the Gorbachev revolution", because—as a former head of the KGB—he was able to put forward the case for reform without having his loyalty to the Soviet cause questioned, an approach that Gorbachev was able to build on and follow through with.[656] According to McCauley, Gorbachev "set reforms in motion without understanding where they could lead. Never in his worst nightmare could he have imagined that perestroika would lead to the destruction of the Soviet Union".[657]
According to The New York Times, "Few leaders in the 20th century, indeed in any century, have had such a profound effect on their time. In little more than six tumultuous years, Mr. Gorbachev lifted the Iron Curtain, decisively altering the political climate of the world."[658]
Awards and honors
In 1988, India awarded Gorbachev the
In 2002, Gorbachev was awarded the Charles V Prize by the European Academy of Yuste Foundation.[667] Gorbachev, together with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren, were awarded the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for their recording of Sergei Prokofiev's 1936 Peter and the Wolf for Pentatone.[668] In 2005, Gorbachev was awarded the Point Alpha Prize for his role in supporting German reunification.[669]
Bibliography
Year | Title | Co-author | Publisher |
---|---|---|---|
1987 | PERESTROIKA - New Thinking for Our Country and the World | – | Harper & Row |
1996 | Memoirs | – | Doubleday |
2005 | Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century: Gorbachev and Ikeda on Buddhism and Communism | Daisaku Ikeda | I. B. Tauris |
2016 | The New Russia | – | Polity |
2018 | In a Changing World | – | |
2020 | What Is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom | – | Polity |
In popular culture
In 2020/2021, the Theatre of Nations in Moscow, in collaboration with Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, staged a production called Gorbachev.[670] Yevgeny Mironov and Chulpan Khamatova played the roles of Gorbachev and his wife Raisa respectively.[671]
Gorbachev was portrayed by David Dencik in the 2019 miniseries Chernobyl,[672] and by Matthew Marsh in the 2023 film Tetris.[673]
See also
Explanatory notes
- ^ On 14 March 1990, the provision on the CPSU monopoly on power was removed from Article 6 of the Constitution of the USSR. Thus, in the Soviet Union, a multi-party system was officially allowed, and the CPSU ceased to be part of the state apparatus.
- August Coup.
- ^ De facto until 21 August 1991; de jure until 4 September.
- ^ This post was abolished on 25 December 1991 and powers were transferred to Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia. Functions of the presidency were succeeded by the Council of Heads of State and the Executive Secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
- ^ Himself as the Chairman of the United Social Democratic Party of Russia until 24 November 2001, and the Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Russia until 20 October 2007
- ^ In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Sergeyevich and the family name is Gorbachev.
- ^ UK: /ˈɡɔːrbətʃɒf, ˌɡɔːrbəˈtʃɒf/, US: /-tʃɔːf, -tʃɛf/;[1][2][3] Russian: Михаил Сергеевич Горбачёв, romanized: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov, IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪdʑ ɡərbɐˈtɕɵf]
- ^ The Queen died only nine days after Gorbachev.[626]
- ^ Gorbachev at the time asserted that no one in Moscow gave orders to start the violent confrontations of the so-called January Events in Lithuania that cost the lives of 14 civilians.[632]
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Sources
- Bhattacharya, Jay; Gathmann, Christina; Miller, Grant (2013). "The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia's Mortality Crisis". American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. 5 (2): 232–260. PMID 24224067.
- Bunce, Valerie (1992). "On Gorbachev". The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review. 19 (1): 199–206. .
- Doder, Dusko; Branson, Louise (1990). Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin. London: Futura. ISBN 978-0-70884940-8.
- Galeotti, Mark (1997). Gorbachev and his Revolution. London: Palgrave. ISBN 978-0-33363855-2.
- Gooding, John (1990). "Gorbachev and Democracy". Soviet Studies. 42 (2): 195–231. JSTOR 152078.
- McCauley, Martin (1998). Gorbachev. Profiles in Power. London and New York: Longman. ISBN 978-0-58221597-9.
- Medvedev, Zhores (1986). Gorbachev. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-39302308-4.
- Steele, Jonathan (1996). "Why Gorbachev Failed". New Left Review. 216: 141–152.
- Tarschys, Daniel (1993). "The Success of a Failure: Gorbachev's Alcohol Policy, 1985–88". Europe-Asia Studies. 45 (1): 7–25. JSTOR 153247.
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- Tuminez, Astrid S. (2003). "Nationalism, Ethnic Pressures, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union". Journal of Cold War Studies. 5 (4): 81–136. S2CID 57565508.
Further reading
- Brown, Archie. The human factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the end of the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2020).
- Duncan, W. Raymond, and Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl. Moscow and the third world under Gorbachev (Routledge, 2019).
- Eklof, Ben. Soviet briefing: Gorbachev and the reform period (Routledge, 2019).
- Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (2nd ed. 2008) excerpt Archived 31 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine
- Kramer, Mark. "Mikhail Gorbachev and the Origins of Perestroika: A Retrospective." Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 29.3 (2021): 255–258.
- Lane, David. "The Gorbachev revolution: The role of the political elite in regime disintegration." Political studies 44.1 (1996): 4–23.
- McHugh, James T. "Last of the enlightened despots: A comparison of President Mikhail Gorbachev and Emperor Joseph II." Social Science Journal 32.1 (1995): 69–85 online abstract Archived 15 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine.
- Woodby, Sylvia Babus. Gorbachev and the decline of ideology in Soviet foreign policy (Routledge, 2019).
- Ostrovsky, Alexander (2010). Кто поставил Горбачёва? (Who put Gorbachev?) Archived 7 August 2022 at the Wayback Machine – М.: Алгоритм-Эксмо, 2010. – 544 с. ISBN 978-5-699-40627-2.
- Ostrovsky, Alexander (2011). Глупость или измена? Расследование гибели СССР. (Stupidity or treason? Investigation of the death of the USSR) Archived 30 August 2022 at the Wayback Machine М.: Форум, Крымский мост-9Д, 2011. – 864 с. ISBN 978-5-89747-068-6.
External links
- Official website
- Mikhail S. Gorbachev collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Mikhail Gorbachev at IMDb