Gorbachev secured his place in history by what he didn't do. While never endorsing the end of the eastern bloc, he made it clear beginning in the late 1980's that unlike his predecessors, he would not oppose democratic reforms in Eastern Europe by force. To general astonishment, he kept this promise, and with the regrettable exception of Lithuania this commitment to not repeating the crimes of his predecessors is Gorbachev's greatest legacy. In 1988 you would have been hard pressed to find anyone who could imagine the mostly peaceful collapse of the Eastern Bloc, but Gorbachev had the moral courage to accept this once unimaginable consequence of his policy and to see it through.
Not to pick a fight, but I feel it's important then to note that it was not Reagan who "won" the Cold War. It was Gorbachev, who had the political courage (and idealism) to take the leap.
The people who "won" the cold war are those Eastern countries that had been occupied by Russia for 45 years and fought for their freedom in Prague, Budapest and especially in Gdańsk.
I mean, if by "won" you mean, "watched powerlessly as the whole rotten system collapsed around him and didn't slaughter thousands of his own people to stop it"... yeah, Gorbachev "won" the cold war.
I thought it was Reagan who forced Gorbachev and the Soviet Union into this position by arms racing them to death. I bet you Gorbachev would try to keep the empire if it wasn't for the economical collapse. He sent tanks to the Baltics. He cheered for the annexation of Crimea. His empire might've been more democratic than the USSR used to be, but still an empire. Also, he was a communist and tried to keep it, but the people were full of communism.
But the dissolution of soviet union is not over yet. You can see this nowhere as clearly as in russias attack on Ukraine[0] where imperialistic russians that dream of restoring the glory and borders of soviet union[1] are waging their genocidal war. Meanwhile they are using hunger[2] and energy as their weapons against the rest of the world[3].
If the russians are not stopped in Ukraine, then there is no reason to believe that they wouldn't rinse and repeat in Baltic states, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and all other now independent former russian states. Including Alaska[4], should opportunity represent itself.
To truly secure Gorbachevs place in history, world must decisively say no to the russians agressions in Ukraine, and help Ukraine deliver a humiliating defeat to the russians and the dissolution of soviet union reach it's logical conclusion by stripping russia and their dreams off of any status as military, or world power.
The Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 26, 1991 [0]. Russia is not the USSR, and it's almost impossible it will never be anything remotely close.
Most of the former USSR industrial capabilities where either abandoned, razed or looted.
Russia's modern industry (including military) depends heavily on European (now sanctioned and obtained via third countries) and Chinese imports. This means that most of their industrial machinery, oil/gas extraction sector, automotive industry, chips... is now strained. They've almost stopped producing cars.
Russia is mostly burning the gigantic former USSR reserves until they dry out. And Ukraine is way bigger than Abkhazia, Ossetia or Transnistria so it has the largest burn rate since Afghanistan.
Just look up at their modern attempts of modernization. The T-14 Armata was expected to have over 100 of them built before 2020 [1] but only a few experimental units can be seen in the wild. Even the Iskander is a USSR design.
The "humiliation" is happening on both sides every day as we speak. No one will either "win" or "lose" the Russia-Ukraine war. It's just an endless attrition warfare [2] were both sides consume their huge military storage (Ukraine using a mix of exUSSR and NATO material and Russia using exUSSR material).
He [Putin] became briefly close to President George W Bush - who even claimed to have glimpsed Putin's soul - until the Iraq War drove them apart. In Iraq, Putin insisted that international law must be upheld - no invasion could be allowed without approval from the United Nations Security Council, and that approval was not forthcoming.
This is also Putin and it is not singular. If you listen to his speeches, he often demands that international laws and treaties should be upheld and he became increasingly frustrated over the years that this was not done. Maybe you can argue that this was his only option out of a position of weakness, but never the less he did this.
Putin wanting to recapture and rebuild a past empire is a very new narrative without much supporting evidence over all those years.
From everything I've read about him, he was a true liberal and egalitarian. How does someone like that rise up the ranks of an authoritarian USSR in the first place? Did he hide his beliefs and present as just a competent bureaucrat until he got to the top?
If I remember correctly (and please correct me if I’m wrong) his ascent was influenced by his predecessor Andropov, which was one of the original revolutionaries but like Gorby he had a more liberal approach. Andropov’s health was really bad and Gorby being his right arm ended up as chairman of the union.
The way I remember as a far off observer was the Soviet Union went through a few very old and ineffective leaders after Brezhnev died, while their war in Afghanistan drained resources so they couldn't possibly keep up with Reagan's Star Wars initiative. Gorbachev was a young, vital fresh face with new ideas that they had to go with to try to reform and survive.
No doubt the opinions of Americans here on HN will do a swift 180 once they realize Gorbachev supported the annexation of Crimea and that he condemned the growing NATO presence in eastern europe.
He was not. He send tanks to crush protests, arresting killing and wounding people. He has his own massacre's. It is just that they did not happened in west.
Well, while the satellite countries were allowed to leave, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was met with stiff and deadly resistance. Not just Lithuania but Latvia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan all had their deadly clashes with Soviet forces.
Not true, under Gorbachov SU raided every and each country seceding SU. One example being Georgia where Russians soldairs raided public protest and killed dozens of kids.
Personally, I try to avoid characterizing anyone in politics as a "genuinely good person" or otherwise. I don't think it's a useful framing.
As humans, we gravitate toward personalities, identities, and stories, and these all matter for the people we keep close to us. In the public sphere, however, actions and legacy are what matter, for better or worse. For a major historical figure like Gorbachev, there is bound to be both better and worse, and to me the most valuable analysis is of those actions and legacy rather than personal character.
I think sincerity is a better measure. As leaders go, he is one of the lasts of his kind.
He was 14 when the war ended. “Our generation is the generation of wartime children,” he said. “It has burned us, leaving its mark both on our characters and on our view of the world.” -- Quote from the WAPO article on this.
I saw that Pizza Hut commercial earlier today and I can't stop thinking about it. It has so much going on. It's the victory of capitalism over Soviet communism, the rise of neoliberalism to global hegemony, and the "End of History" in the form of a 30-second ad for pizza.
It was also the start of the rush to full neo feudalism. Many conflate capitalism (oppossed) with what we had after the USSR got weak capitalism(unopossed). Turns out the remarkable archievments happen with systemic competition.
For the West he was a hero, for the Russians he was a disaster https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Russia/Death_rate/ . I don't blame Gorbachev for this. Just as in the case of Nikolai II Russian totalitarian state and lack of checks and balances washed out an inept person to rule the country.
The communist system is responsible for that, not Gorbachev. Centralized gov't controlled economies create corruption which results in ultimate economic collapse.
He also did a cameo in Faraway, So Close! (1993)[1] by Wim Wenders:
> Mikhail Gorbachev only appears because his secretary was familiar with the movies of Wim Wenders and was a great admirer. She talked Gorbachev into giving up a couple of hours to do the cameo as he was on a trip to Germany anyway.
Supported the annexation of Crimea. Organized highly corrupt privatization of Soviet Union assets. Robbed Soviet working class of their pensions. Handled Chernobyl by throwing people into the furnace and withholding information.
Not sure where you were back in the 80s, but he is one of the etalons of a horrible, corrupt politician.
Gorbachev good? You think sending tanks to Lithuania to kill people is what good person does? Or hiding everything about Chernobyl and not telling people what happened is also good person best move?
I wish I had it! I think I would have to travel to some physical German archive to lookup old magazines... Or maybe Apple itself has the original digital version in their archives.
Say what you will, he seemed a politician very keen on world peace, beyond mere lip service. He understood the lacunae of the Soviet system and genuinely set about to reform them. But ultimately it was Ethno-national interests in Ukraine, Baltics and Central Asian republics along with the rise of opportunist power-grabbers like Yeltsin that did him and Soviet Union in.
And perhaps his own reluctance to follow the Chinese model. He prefered to do political reforms before economic ones, while the Chinese prefered the economic reforms first and foremost.
He ended the war in Afghanistan. He was more keen on Nuclear disarmament than Western leaders: Western leaders dragged their feet on that matter, and ultimately we didn't get no where near Nuclear disarmament.
He ushered in reforms. See the Soviet films of the period to see a very different picture from cold war era Hollywood depictions.
That was a very human mistake to prioritize politics (people) over essential root-causes (money). I am convinced that for most people, their development years (pre-adolescent) shape them, and for Mikhail, the experiences of his father and maternal grandfather as he witnessed as a child shaped him. He saw a cruel world made by people and tried to fix it, but for humans, the root cause is always superseded by basic needs.
> And perhaps his own reluctance to follow the Chinese model.
I always thought it was the other way. The Chinese saw what Gorbachev did and didn't like the results. June 4th (this was 1989, where Gorbachev's reforms were well on their way) was the turning point where the CCP decided collectively to conclusively reject political reforms and crack down on those who insisted on them. I think the hardliners in CCP felt vindicated when USSR disintegrated a short while after believing they dodged a similar bullet by the crackdowns.
Now we're right back in the Cold War, tensions right up around Able Archer level, ready to torch much of the world on another misunderstanding. No, you won't hear about it on social media but I bet all the nuclear submarine commanders have been doing extra drills lately, what?
As far as economics, what did Russia ever have that China didn't? An absence, that's what China had. An absences of lucrative fossil fuel reserves to sell to Western countries, isn't that the Russian resource curse model? What if Europe stops buying Russian gas? But China never had any gas to sell, just rice. Now, what, we'll all be buying Chinese silicon instead? Why didn't Russia develop modern tech, while China did?
Putin would have got on just fine with Wall Street, like Mohammed Bin Bone Saw Sultan did, but he didn't sign up for petrodollar recycling, so war. Not much more to it than that, really. Same with Qadafy, Sadam, etc. Old dying empires are so ugly on their way down aren't they?
For anyone interested in getting a vague sense of what it might have been like to be Mikhail Gorbachev there is a pretty low-fi simulator game called Crisis in the Kremlin on Steam.
I played through it and it requires juggling the various factions in Soviet Russia. I ended up getting couped by the military but just reading the various prompts and choosing where to put resources gave me a better understanding of the dilemmas anyone in power in the USSR might have been going through.
I can't attest to whatever bias might have been embedded in the game mechanics but it was interesting. Actually I only played the 2017 re-make. I didn't realize there was an original game from 1991. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_the_Kremlin
Hard to know the man behind the image, but Gorbachev seemed like a fundamentally decent man, who was perhaps over his head at a moment no one could be reasonably be expected to prepare for. Still, with him at the helm of the sinking ship, chaos and conflict was at least avoided, or at least deferred, and for that we should be thankful. RIP
It was very sympathetic toward him. And I don't think it is a "great" film in any sense. But I did feel like I got a taste for who he was. And I also felt he was a fundamentally decent person.
Fundamentally decent man ... don't want to jinx it but reminded me of Jimmy Carter. Separated by 5-10 years in their peak power, with similar difference in their age. Both well regarded by their followers but eventually significantly irrelevant (except symbolism) once out of power.
Carter made peace between Israel and Egypt. Hardly a term without significance. Carter went against the real powers in the US and that's why he is being written off history.
Reading the description of the events, it sounds like they intervened militarily after this event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom , which sort of makes sense.
He was able to get into politburo very young because he was a good administrator and he had powerful patrons. But he became the leader of the USSR just because there was nobody else. Politburo was so old that everybody ahead of him, or more power hungry than him was in hospice or otherwise not fully functioning.
Then he started finally some of the common sense reforms needed.
His intention was never to drop communism or let the soviet block to disintegrate, but things got out of hand. His greatest act was let it happen even when it was against everything he had worked for.
Maybe not a popular opinion, I think that had Gorby been able to succeed in his reforms rather than be squeezed from both sides, Russia would have been better off in the long run both economically and politically. Instead, it swung from autocratic communism one day to near total collapse ("free market" anarchy) the next during which those with connections and saw the opportunity gobbled up all the resources eventually leading to a oligarchical authoritarianism.
Is seems clear that Russia did not fare well in its move from corrupt authoritarian Communism (a tautology if ever there was one) to the kleptocracy which replaced it - often by the hands of the same people. It is just as clear that eastern Europe did fare well by the fall of the Soviet empire. If Gorbachev had succeeded in dissolving the Soviet Union without having Russia descend into the chaos which followed things might have been better but I find it hard to see how something like that could have been orchestrated. It more or less worked in Eastern Germany due to the efforts (financially and socially) of Western Germany. The way this was handled in Russia was scandalous and led the country from one failed economic system into another failing one with the oligarchs and their cronies taking the place of the Party. Which country could have been the 'Germany' for Russia? Who could have dissolved the inefficient state conglomerates like Treuhandanstalt [1] did in Eastern Germany, who would have covered the financial losses?
Historically it's very unusual for someone with so much power to allow his regime to collapse so peacefully. And it's remarkable that Soviet politics, some of the most brutal and self-serving in history, would find such a figure at its head. God bless him and keep him.
Indeed, what he did by stepping down peacefully was highly unusual for a politician in his circumstances. It was like a miracle. And now we're seeing a more typical behavior from the successor of his successor.
It is too bad that in his later years he kinda regretted it, and kept saying "I should have kept going until the end". Perhaps it is natural to regret past decisions wondering if an alternative decision might have led to a better outcome. Hope that before he died he realized that had he pursued that alternative path he'd end up like Putin.
In summary -- Mr. Gorbachev was one of the most decent politicians and upstanding people in general that ever lived.
Readit News
Not what I would define as "winning", but ok.
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
If the russians are not stopped in Ukraine, then there is no reason to believe that they wouldn't rinse and repeat in Baltic states, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and all other now independent former russian states. Including Alaska[4], should opportunity represent itself.
To truly secure Gorbachevs place in history, world must decisively say no to the russians agressions in Ukraine, and help Ukraine deliver a humiliating defeat to the russians and the dissolution of soviet union reach it's logical conclusion by stripping russia and their dreams off of any status as military, or world power.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26769481 [2] https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/russia/957367/russ... [3] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-en... [4] https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/03/19/does-russia-want-alas...
The Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 26, 1991 [0]. Russia is not the USSR, and it's almost impossible it will never be anything remotely close.
Most of the former USSR industrial capabilities where either abandoned, razed or looted.
Russia's modern industry (including military) depends heavily on European (now sanctioned and obtained via third countries) and Chinese imports. This means that most of their industrial machinery, oil/gas extraction sector, automotive industry, chips... is now strained. They've almost stopped producing cars.
Russia is mostly burning the gigantic former USSR reserves until they dry out. And Ukraine is way bigger than Abkhazia, Ossetia or Transnistria so it has the largest burn rate since Afghanistan.
Just look up at their modern attempts of modernization. The T-14 Armata was expected to have over 100 of them built before 2020 [1] but only a few experimental units can be seen in the wild. Even the Iskander is a USSR design.
The "humiliation" is happening on both sides every day as we speak. No one will either "win" or "lose" the Russia-Ukraine war. It's just an endless attrition warfare [2] were both sides consume their huge military storage (Ukraine using a mix of exUSSR and NATO material and Russia using exUSSR material).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Unio...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-14_Armata
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attrition_warfare
He [Putin] became briefly close to President George W Bush - who even claimed to have glimpsed Putin's soul - until the Iraq War drove them apart. In Iraq, Putin insisted that international law must be upheld - no invasion could be allowed without approval from the United Nations Security Council, and that approval was not forthcoming.
This is also Putin and it is not singular. If you listen to his speeches, he often demands that international laws and treaties should be upheld and he became increasingly frustrated over the years that this was not done. Maybe you can argue that this was his only option out of a position of weakness, but never the less he did this.
Putin wanting to recapture and rebuild a past empire is a very new narrative without much supporting evidence over all those years.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares...
No reason? I can think of 1365 reasons, if Wikipedia is up to date.
Dead Comment
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crimea-gorbachev-...
After he retired from politics, he was featured in several advertisements:
- In 1994 for Apple Computer: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/10/07/The-first-advertisem...
- In 1998 for Pizza Hut: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev_Pizza_Hut_commercial
- In 2000 for the ÖBB, the Austrian railways: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLscz8kEg6c
- In 2007 for Louis Vuitton: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/business/media/05vuitton....
As humans, we gravitate toward personalities, identities, and stories, and these all matter for the people we keep close to us. In the public sphere, however, actions and legacy are what matter, for better or worse. For a major historical figure like Gorbachev, there is bound to be both better and worse, and to me the most valuable analysis is of those actions and legacy rather than personal character.
He was 14 when the war ended. “Our generation is the generation of wartime children,” he said. “It has burned us, leaving its mark both on our characters and on our view of the world.” -- Quote from the WAPO article on this.
700+ injured and 14 dead doesnt sound like something "genuinely good person" does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania)
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
> Mikhail Gorbachev only appears because his secretary was familiar with the movies of Wim Wenders and was a great admirer. She talked Gorbachev into giving up a couple of hours to do the cameo as he was on a trip to Germany anyway.
[1] https://imdb.com/title/tt0107209/mediaviewer/rm1602489600
Not sure where you were back in the 80s, but he is one of the etalons of a horrible, corrupt politician.
[1] https://youtu.be/ZT2z0nrsQ8o?t=103
Deleted Comment
And perhaps his own reluctance to follow the Chinese model. He prefered to do political reforms before economic ones, while the Chinese prefered the economic reforms first and foremost.
He ended the war in Afghanistan. He was more keen on Nuclear disarmament than Western leaders: Western leaders dragged their feet on that matter, and ultimately we didn't get no where near Nuclear disarmament.
He ushered in reforms. See the Soviet films of the period to see a very different picture from cold war era Hollywood depictions.
I guarantee you that people existed before money, and that people create(d) money. People are the root cause.
I always thought it was the other way. The Chinese saw what Gorbachev did and didn't like the results. June 4th (this was 1989, where Gorbachev's reforms were well on their way) was the turning point where the CCP decided collectively to conclusively reject political reforms and crack down on those who insisted on them. I think the hardliners in CCP felt vindicated when USSR disintegrated a short while after believing they dodged a similar bullet by the crackdowns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huQL5SHpFJ0
Now we're right back in the Cold War, tensions right up around Able Archer level, ready to torch much of the world on another misunderstanding. No, you won't hear about it on social media but I bet all the nuclear submarine commanders have been doing extra drills lately, what?
As far as economics, what did Russia ever have that China didn't? An absence, that's what China had. An absences of lucrative fossil fuel reserves to sell to Western countries, isn't that the Russian resource curse model? What if Europe stops buying Russian gas? But China never had any gas to sell, just rice. Now, what, we'll all be buying Chinese silicon instead? Why didn't Russia develop modern tech, while China did?
Putin would have got on just fine with Wall Street, like Mohammed Bin Bone Saw Sultan did, but he didn't sign up for petrodollar recycling, so war. Not much more to it than that, really. Same with Qadafy, Sadam, etc. Old dying empires are so ugly on their way down aren't they?
I played through it and it requires juggling the various factions in Soviet Russia. I ended up getting couped by the military but just reading the various prompts and choosing where to put resources gave me a better understanding of the dilemmas anyone in power in the USSR might have been going through.
I can't attest to whatever bias might have been embedded in the game mechanics but it was interesting. Actually I only played the 2017 re-make. I didn't realize there was an original game from 1991. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_the_Kremlin
I caught this movie at the Tribeca Film festival: https://tribecafilm.com/festival/archive/meeting-gorbachev-2...
It was very sympathetic toward him. And I don't think it is a "great" film in any sense. But I did feel like I got a taste for who he was. And I also felt he was a fundamentally decent person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania)
Then he started finally some of the common sense reforms needed.
His intention was never to drop communism or let the soviet block to disintegrate, but things got out of hand. His greatest act was let it happen even when it was against everything he had worked for.
Politically and in terms of press freedom, maybe.
Economically it was a disaster that ruined an already stagnating growth and turned it into recession.
Economic reforms were trash, the Chinese did them better. Political reforms broke the system. The Chinese avoided doing them and look at them today.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treuhandanstalt
It is too bad that in his later years he kinda regretted it, and kept saying "I should have kept going until the end". Perhaps it is natural to regret past decisions wondering if an alternative decision might have led to a better outcome. Hope that before he died he realized that had he pursued that alternative path he'd end up like Putin.
In summary -- Mr. Gorbachev was one of the most decent politicians and upstanding people in general that ever lived.