Mikhail Gorbachev is the last head of state and party leader of the Soviet Union, which fell in 1991. He played a key role in the political upheaval in Europe. In his own country he failed with his attempts at reform.
Is he a reformer or just the man who destroyed the great and powerful Soviet Union? Opinions are divided on Mikhail Gorbachev. His tenure as first man in Moscow was relatively short by Soviet standards, at just under seven years. He was in the Kremlin longer than the CPSU general secretaries Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, who died in 1984 and 1985 respectively. But these two were already old and seriously ill when they took office. Shortly before Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, scoffers suggested moving the UN headquarters from New York to Moscow, because the world's top politicians would meet there every year for the funeral anyway.
So it was not surprising that the world reacted spellbound to the news that a 54-year-old was now to determine the fortunes of the communist superpower. Because even before Andropov and Chernenko there had been a long phase of stagnation - underpinned by years of wasting away for Leonid Brezhnev.
There were already indications that Gorbachev's entry into the Kremlin would bring a breath of fresh air. In any case, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was very taken with the then CPSU Politburo member after a meeting in 1983. "You can do business with the man," she cabled US President Ronald Reagan to Washington. Gorbachev is a new type of functionary - open, charming and eloquent. The man from the North Caucasus region of Stavropol had already worked as a party apparatchik for decades. Thatcher's German colleague Helmut Kohl took a little longer to reach the same opinion as the "iron lady".
The fresh wind turned into a hurricane that permanently changed the European map. What is certain is that Gorbachev did not want that. The party leader planned a reform of the communist system in his vast empire. Together with his comrades-in-arms, above all Alexander Yakovlev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, Gorbachev immediately set to work to break up the encrusted Soviet system. Glasnost (openness, transparency) and perestroika (reorganization) are still the defining terms of the Gorbachev era.
In the mid-1980s, the second superpower alongside the USA was economically devastated. The military-industrial complex devours vast sums of money, and the supply of the population with the bare necessities can hardly be guaranteed. The Soviet Union had already lost economic competition with the USA when Gorbachev took office. The Reagan administration's armament policy is increasingly affecting her. It is therefore in the economic interests of the USSR that Gorbachev seeks talks with the West in order to initiate a process of detente. At the same time, he faces the Herculean task of putting the ineffective Soviet planned economy on a course for growth. As it will turn out later, this is an impossible undertaking.
Gorbachev quickly achieved success in foreign policy. The chemistry between the communist and the Californian conservative Ronald Reagan is right. The growing trust between the two politicians leads to disarmament treaties. The Cold War era is drawing to a close because Gorbachev is also making important advance payments. Against the resistance in his own ranks, he ordered the Soviet troops back from Afghanistan. In 1988 the CPSU General Secretary distanced himself from the Brezhnev Doctrine. This means that the Warsaw Pact states can determine their own destiny from now on. With the exception of Romania, this enabled the predominantly peaceful revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, as a result of which the reunification of Germany also became possible.
Domestically, on the other hand, the situation is getting worse. Gorbachev cannot get the desolate economy under control. People sometimes stand in front of empty shops. T he economic reforms that have been introduced prove to be insufficient, because Gorbachev does not touch the fundamental evil of the Soviet Union - the ineffective planned economy. Things are seething in the huge empire, and the policy of openness allows nationality conflicts to erupt. Two Caucasus republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia, are at war over Nagorno-Karabakh. The Baltic republics, annexed by the USSR in 1940, are striving for independence. In Moscow, hardliners do not forgive their Secretary General for the loss of the satellite states. The Soviet Union began to disintegrate, and the former hopeful Gorbachev, who had himself elected President of the Soviet Union at the People's Congress of People's Deputies in March 1990, got into trouble. Even the award of the Nobel Peace Prize does not strengthen Gorbachev's position in Moscow.
Gorbachev's tragedy is that he initially does not want to recognize that the communist system cannot be reformed. His maneuvering between reformers and conservatives in the CPSU means that things are becoming more and more lonely around him. His worst adversary, Boris Yeltsin - the freely elected President of the Russian Federation since the spring of 1991 - works against the central government in Moscow and aims to weaken it. He used the coup of die-hards against Gorbachev in August 1991 to ditch his competitor and at the same time to ban the CPSU on Russian soil. Yeltsin humiliates Gorbachev at a session of the Russian parliament. At the end of 1991, the superpower disappeared from the map without a trace. It is thanks to Gorbachev that the Soviet Union imploded and its disintegration did not drag the rest of Europe down with it.
Highly regarded abroad, hated by many people in his own country: Gorbachev spent his last months in the Kremlin as president without a country. The republics renounce him, the Soviet Union is just an empty shell. Among other things, it is this serious political defeat that makes Gorbachev rethink. After his disempowerment, he sees himself as a social democrat and tries to gain a political foothold in Russia - in vain. In the 1996 presidential election, he received 0.5 percent of the votes cast. He sees the economic upheaval in the Federation under Yeltsin as unbridled capitalism. At the same time, however, Gorbachev glorified his failed perestroika as a social-democratic program that was not completed by Yeltsin's market reforms.
In the reunified Germany, in particular, he is still being celebrated: Gorbachev remains loyal to politics even when he is not in power. In 1993 he founded the International Green Cross, an environmental protection organization committed to sustainability. It aims to resolve and prevent conflicts caused by environmental degradation and to provide assistance where environmental degradation occurs as a result of war or conflict. Gorbachev also becomes a member of the Club of Rome, and his opinion is asked for when global problems are discussed.
Gorbachev suffered a heavy loss in 1999, his wife Raissa died of leukemia in the University Hospital in Münster. A broken man stands by her coffin, who shuns the public for a long time afterwards. Gorbachev is no longer the healthiest either. In the summer of 2013, speculation about his condition led to false reports about his death. "You hope in vain. I'm alive and well," he denied. According to media reports, Gorbachev suffers from diabetes.
But he cannot be defeated. The rapidly deteriorating relations between Russia and the West as a result of the Ukraine crisis have brought Gorbachev onto the scene. When he appears abroad, he never tires of explaining President Vladimir Putin's behavior and at the same time denouncing the West's attitude towards Moscow after the demise of the Soviet Union. His main criticism is the extension of NATO to the Russian border. Gorbachev insists on verbal promises from the time of upheaval, which, however, have not been put on paper and are therefore not binding under international law. His commitment is not entirely altruistic, because it is about his life's work in foreign policy. With regard to Putin's restrictive domestic policy, Gorbachev does not hold back when it comes to criticism.
For most Russians, he is the man responsible for the destruction of the Soviet Union and the subsequent decline of Russia. For the West, on the other hand, he is a reformer who did a great deal for the removal of the Iron Curtain in Europe.
He himself often spoke up until the end, albeit only via his website gorby.ru because of his old age and the corona pandemic. However, his criticism of Russia's President Putin has always been cautious. He spoke of the harmfulness of autocracy, compared the Kremlin party "United Russia" with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and condemned the suppression of the media. At the same time, Gorbachev repeatedly supported the foreign policy of the Russian President.
Gorbachev has not publicly commented on the events since Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine began. According to a journalist who was a friend of the politician, Gorbachev was deeply disappointed by the war that Putin unleashed. Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the opposition radio station Echo Moskvy, said in an interview with the Russian branch of the business magazine Forbes at the end of July that he was of the opinion that the Kremlin boss had "destroyed his entire legacy and his life's work".
