Mikhail Gorbachev: Man who presided over landmark events whose reverberations we feel even today

Tribune News Service

Sandeep Dikshit

Mikhail Gorbachev, the man whose attempt at reforming the Soviet system spun out of control with tragic consequences for the communism-socialism movements all over the world, died in Moscow after a long illness. He was 91. 

In six tumultuous years in power as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Gorbachev presided over landmark events, from the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, a coup attempt and finally the chaotic disintegration of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states whose reverberations we feel today in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Perestroika (Restructuring) and Glasnost (Openness) were the catch words for the Communists the world over. As Cuban leader Fidel Castro was to warn in early 1988, neither concept ended well for them.

Born in a peasant family as most Soviet politicians, he initially drove combine harvesters for a living. We will never get to know the qualities that made him a member of the Politburo at 48 though he is credited with overseeing a major irrigation project as a regional party boss. Opportunism may have been one of them in the unremitting struggle for power in the corridors of the Kremlin.

Gorbachev saw an opportunity of a lifetime when Konstantin Chernenko died. He moved quickly to convene a Politburo meeting while two supporters of his opponent were not in Moscow. When a tie emerged among the available members, Gorbachev voted in his favour as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Writes journalist Vladimir Pozner stated in his account of the unraveling of the Soviet Union: “American conservatives love to take credit. What a self-indulging understanding of history. One vote, one single change, would have changed the world. There would have been no Gorbachev as head of USSR!”

But Gorbachev did become the top leader of the Soviet Union when Soviet-US ties were at their nadir. It is reckoned that the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was when he was convinced that things had to change in the Soviet Union. Contrary to popular impression, he did make one last effort to pull back matters from the brink. As chronicled by Artyom Borovik in his “Hidden War”, it included a renewed military thrust in Afghanistan in 1988 besides sending troops into several republics where people were demanding the same right of regime-change that was being exercised with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

India made its first contact with Gorbachev during Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Moscow for Konstantin Chernenko’s funeral in March 1985. He and Chernenko’s successor established an immediate rapport which was reinforced by his first official visit two months later.

While many may wax about Rajiv's chemistry with Gorbachev during his India visit in November 1985, the personal friendship could not disguise the declining importance of the Indian special relationship for the Soviet Union. So much so that Narasimha Rao was not among the world leaders Gorbachev called up after he was released from a coup against him by the hardliners, writes KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin. Of course, by then the widespread hopes in the Third World in the 50s and 60s about the Soviet model offering a blueprint for modernising their economies had vanished.

 Within two years of taking over, Moscow Mayor Boris Yeltsin fell foul of Gorbachev and was promptly sacked. To his eternal credit, Gorbachev did not send the KGB after Yeltsin. Gorbachev was to pay with his post four years later. But this time, Yeltsin was also generous. Announcing a retirement package for Gorbachev, Yeltsin said this marked a break from the past when the only option for heads of state was to be buried in the Kremlin.

But Gorbachev had become deeply unpopular at home as he was courted abroad, given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. The brutal regime of privatisation and shock therapy that so endeared him to the West led to tripling of poverty, the death of millions and mass trafficking of women and children. It was no wonder that he received just one per cent vote when he once ran for President of Russia. It was the detritus of this collapse under Gorbachev and Yeltsin that Valdimir Putin tried to clean up.  

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