On 11 March 1985, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev came to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, inheriting a superpower that was faltering and demanding reform. His aim was not to emulate the West. Instead, what he desired was to make more efficient and liberal a party that has been losing against its arch-rival, the United States. Enmeshed in Afghanistan, and threatened by Ronald Reagan, a hawk in the White House, the economy was in freefall and living standards were plummeting. Under the shadows of Brezhnev, the USSR was largely cut off from the rest of the world, and lags in technological innovation were a relevant issue. His predecessor Yuri Andropov already realised reform was needed but was terminally ill before being able to initiate them. Although issues persisted, millions of troops in the armed forces and the vast apparatus of the State Security Committee (KGB) made the prospect of the USSR falling in less than a decade seem entirely fanciful.
The seven years of Gorbachev’s rule ended up changing everything. Although coming into office seeking to strengthen the USSR and consolidate the Warsaw Pact, he ultimately failed to achieve either of these goals and instead presided over the dismantling of both the Warsaw Pact and the USSR. Yet although he failed to accomplish his main goals, his “monumental” failures were accompanied by magnificent achievements. Although other political leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush also played key roles in the ending of the Cold War, Gorbachev deserves the greater shares of credit even through his relatively brief tenure.
A leader, or a dismantler?
Born in 1931 in Privolonoye near Stavropol, Gorbachev’s experience includes both rural hardship and the rewards of Party loyalty. Driving combine harvesters in his teens, he went on to read law at Moscow State University. His career advancement is appropriately described as rapid: he became the youngest of the provincial party chiefs, then the youngest member of the ruling politburo. His accession to the position of General Secretary would finally unleash the ideas developed earlier on in his career.
In the first few years as leader, Gorbachev grasped the nettle of war in Afghanistan, abandoning the “imperial-revolutionary” basis for the USSR’s foreign policy, and oversaw the withdrawal of troops in February 1989. Pursuing relatively orthodox policies of uskorenie (acceleration) in the first eighteen months after coming to power, the results were modest.
Gorbachev soon embarked on a greater scale of reform, centering on two ideas. Perestroika, the restructuring of the political and economic system, and glasnost, the end of censorship and introduction of the freedom of speech and press. The economic reforms, however, were somewhat doomed from the start. Problems including the fall in the price of oil (the USSR’s then greatest source of foreign exchange), a devastating earthquake in Armenia and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster impoverished the country and eroded Gorbachev’s domestic popularity. Unable to adopt radical free-market reforms as Deng Xiaoping had implemented in China in the 1970s, Gorbachev still contributed to the decline of central control economically and socially.
His foreign policy achievements, such as withdrawing from war in Afghanistan according to the Geneva Accords, liberating Soviet satellite states in East Europe and reducing nuclear arms won him friends abroad. However, many in the military and especially in the KGB were appalled by his surrender of what they considered their gains from World War II. On Gorbachev’s watch, the Soviet Union contracted its influence abroad, such as by allowing the reunition of the two German States without gaining much from the deal.
Economic stagnation and the sudden greater leeway for political protest and mobilization produced a highly volatile society made even more combustible with the polarization of elites varying in degree of support for reform. Gorbachev was caught between a conservative elite, and self-styled democrats led by Yeltsin, who clamoured for more radical change. Reaching a democratic end without undemocratic means therefore appeared impossible for Gorbachev. Mostly unwilling to use force, he was ineffective against nationalist resistance in non-Russian republics like Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Lithuania.
The fall of the Soviet Union
On 17 March 1991, a referendum was held in which over 80% of the Soviet population took part. 76.4% voted in favour of creating a democratic federation of equal nations from an empire dominating over subordinate peoples.
A few months later, a “constitutional coup” was staged by hardliners in the KGB, the army, and the Party. It failed not because the plotters lacked enough force, having immense numbers of well-armed troops, but because they were averse to taking responsibility for large-scale bloodshed unless they have explicit authorization from Gorbachev, the country’s highest command authority. Though the plot failed, the winner of the standoff was not Gorbachev, but Yeltsin due to the loss of faith in the Soviet government following the failure.
After widespread pressure for Gorbachev’s resignation, the leaders of 11 of the 12 remaining republics met in a forest in the absence of Gorbachev. There, they came up with a hastily conceived plan to dismantle the USSR and abolish Gorbachev’s presidency. Borrowing from T. S. Eliot, the Soviet world ended “not with a bang but a whimper”. In Gorbachev’s resignation speech, he expressed regret for the breakup of the USSR but cited what he saw as achievements during his administration: political and religious freedom, introduction of democracy, a market economy, and an end to the arms race and cold war.
Legacy
His legacy is debated both in terms of whether he played the biggest role in the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Few scholars argue that Reagan was more responsible for bringing down the Soviet Union, but it becomes contended whether he was more responsible for ending the Cold War. Here, more suggest that Gorbachev made fundamental contributions necessary to the end of the Cold War. The first was to remove its ideological foundations. Calling in 1988 for the “de-ideologisation of interstate relations” and arguing for priority to be given to the values and interests of the whole of humanity rather than one class, he breaks away to some extent from Soviet Marxism-Leninism. Secondly, his embrace of fundamental change in Soviet political system and Soviet society including freedom of religion, speech, and press reduced the sense of Soviet threat, especially when contested elections were introduced. Thirdly, his eschewal of the use of force and his faith in persuasion differentiated him from previous Soviet leaders who slowed any peace processes. These all are crucial to the thawing of international relations.
Some argue with a “structuralist” approach, which suggests that the Soviet Union was “a doomed experiment”. Interestingly, Gorbachev argued for this himself, calling the USSR in 1985 a “pre-crisis state” or even in a “serious crisis” to argue that there was no alternative to reform. It is however worth noting that the era of economic stagnation did not preordain the collapse of the political systems, as seen in a range of communist party states’ responses to previous crises allowing them to survive decades after this point.
On the other hand, the Soviet system was highly centralized and governed in a top-down approach, meaning it was Gorbachev who put reforms into motion and removed members who opposed reforms. Although increasing decentralisation and radicalisation of reforms led to the 1990-91 chaos where Gorbachev loses some control, effective power did not transition to a new leader, but instead to the group of leaders of republics. Other historians may emphasize different aspects of his leadership, for example the “reformist generation” (i.e. the Communist Party elites including Gorbachev who were interested in reforms), as well as the role of Alexander Yakovlev, the “godfather of glasnost” as the intellectual force behind reform.
At the end of the day, Gorbachev was in charge, and he was the one who retired members of the old guard and push reforms through. Losing control of the situation, he paved the way for the unraveling of Soviet institutions by his mishandling of elite and popular forces. At the same time, he expanded freedom for millions and changed the political landscape of the world.
Yet anyone who thinks that Soviet leaders had no option but to accept the end of their hegemony in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union need look no further than the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The brutal war there is a reminder that the Soviet Union did have the option of preserving statehood by force with their strong military. In the same year, Gorbachev passed away aged 91. It is confirmation that the values of political leaders, from Gorbachev to Putin, still matter.
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