Nina L. Khrushcheva is professor of International Affairs at The New School and the co-author of In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones.
“We all need to have perestroika,” Mikhail Gorbachev would often say. The Soviet Union’s last leader lived by that credo. After becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 and implementing his program of restructuring and glasnost (openness), he even changed his job title, preferring to be called president.
The first and last Soviet president was the most democratic leader that Russia had over the last century, if not ever. And in the 31 years since the Soviet collapse, his belief in peace, mutual understanding, dialogue and democracy remained unwavering.
It was these values that led Mr. Gorbachev to withdraw the Soviet Union from a decade-long, disastrous war in Afghanistan, and in 1993 use the money from his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize to help fund Novaya Gazeta, the flagship media outlet of Russia’s democrats. Along with dozens of other independent media outlets, Novaya Gazeta was forced to suspend operations soon after President Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” in Ukraine in February.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet leader who helped end the Cold War, dies at 91
Mr. Gorbachev, too, suffered for his beliefs. By starting perestroika, which many in Russia today, including Mr. Putin, consider a disaster, Mr. Gorbachev exposed himself to criticism from every direction: for being too radical, too conservative or too feeble. But he did not flee from public scrutiny.
Like Mr. Putin, Mr. Gorbachev thought that it would have been better if the USSR had continued. But, unlike Mr. Putin, he envisaged a reformed, democratized federation, rather than a union of nations unwillingly submitting to Kremlin rule.
In the 2000s, Mr. Gorbachev told me why he didn’t send tanks to Germany in 1989 to prevent the destruction of the Berlin Wall (built in 1961 on the order of my great-grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev): “We shouldn’t dictate to sovereign countries their way of life.”
Mr. Gorbachev himself was partly to blame for the antipathy he faced after the Soviet collapse. Reformers often lack patience, and his plan for sweeping economic changes in just 500 days was as utopian as Nikita Khrushchev’s 1961 promise of “developed communism” in 20 years. But what made him different from other Russian leaders was that he accepted responsibility for the consequences of his rule. While his successor Boris Yeltsin also did, he left public life altogether. Mr. Gorbachev, by contrast, joined historians, politicians, his own comrades and the public in reviewing his rule. Ironically, he helped bury himself as a historical figure while still alive.
While the consensus in Russia is that Mr. Gorbachev’s reforms failed because of his bad choices, his legacy is perceived very differently internationally – and justifiably so. The last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of this one were the heyday of globalization, in large part because of Mr. Gorbachev’s efforts to embrace the world.
Mr. Gorbachev was eager to address the problems for which he felt responsible. Although his position was weak, his quixotic candidacy in the 1996 presidential election made casting a ballot worthwhile for at least some Russians (like me). Mr. Yeltsin’s candidacy that year inspired very few.
I never believed that Mr. Gorbachev had a serious chance of winning, or that he would be a good president. But he was the first president in Russian history to re-emerge as a candidate after years of efforts to bury him, able to speak as both a leader from the past and a voice for the future.
World leaders react to Mikhail Gorbachev’s death with tributes on social media
The retired Mr. Khrushchev could only dream of that after his ouster from the Kremlin in 1964. Before his death – with ample time to contemplate the past – my great-grandfather concluded that his greatest achievement was not the policy of the “thaw” – denunciation of Stalin’s crimes, along with some political and cultural liberalization – but his own dismissal by means of a simple vote. He was not declared an “enemy of the people,” nor banished to the gulag, nor physically liquidated; he was simply forced into “a retirement of merit” at his dacha. Nevertheless, Mr. Khrushchev regretted his lack of courage and wished he had used his time to push his thaw further, so that even political death would be optional.
Twenty-five years later, Russian history made that liberal turn. If Mr. Gorbachev did not have a chance to win in 1996, he at least had the chance to run. Perestroika and glasnost prepared the ground for that under Mr. Yeltsin, who – while no fan of his predecessor – was democratic enough to keep the spirit of change.
Mr. Gorbachev’s legacy today seems to be dead. But he himself was more optimistic. He often noted that he was a product of Mr. Khrushchev’s thaw, and he would no doubt encourage us to believe that a new leader will emerge in Russia one day, start a new perestroika and resurrect the values to which he devoted his life.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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