Yesterday, August 30th, 2022, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the first and last President of the Soviet Union, and an exceptionally controversial (spurring Western-Russian controversy) figure in the recent history of International Relations, died at the age of 91. He was renowned globally for his indispensable and decisive role in ending last century’s Cold War (1947 – 1991). Conversely, for that very indispensable and decisive role, he had acquired an irremediable notoriety among the Russian public; for the decisiveness [emphasis] thereof was in large part due to the dissolution of the USSR, an inevitable consequence of his resignation at the time. To be fair, his resignation at that juncture was nothing but inevitable.
Incontrovertibly, Gorbachev’s policies and their aftermaths had notably molded the fin de siècle of the twentieth century for both the West and Russia, and shaped Europe’s geopolitical landscape in the twenty-first century. By the same token, however, they were his undoing. Those policies and undertakings, namely perestroika and the German unification treaty, have been analyzed by myself and others ad nauseam. But, what of him? Who or what was Gorbachev?
Gorbachev, the politician, was the victim of a paradox. And this paradox had him enmeshed in an angelic-diabolic dialectic. Regardless which side one leans to, Russia’s or the West’s, his perception of Gorbachev could have shifted radically, from viewing him as an angel or a devil, at any point of time prior to the vivid and definitive manifestation of the outcomes of perestroika.
Had perestroika rendered its sought results—transcending the quality of the USSR’s political life and reviving its then completely dysfunctional economy—to the consternation of the West; Gorbachev would have been a national hero in Russia, in whose honor monuments would have been erected; whilst, he would have been declared the devil-incarnate in the West. To his misfortune, perestroika had backfired. The point is, everything could have been dramatically different for him on every dimension, no less.
What I found most noteworthy, was the fact that he was fully aware of the stakes and the extremities of possible outcomes. Notwithstanding, he chose to go all in on his perestroika hand on the blind; “Burning the ships at the beach,” as the saying goes; ipso facto depriving himself of every opportunity for reflection, reassessment, and redirection throughout the process. In essence, Gorbachev in his commitment to perestroika had put to application 2 Corinthians 5:7, “For we walk by faith, not by sight,” (KJV) with a suicidal zeal [emphasis added].
So, to the question: Was he a devil or an angel? Born of heaven or hell?
The subject to the direct control of the paradox, that he was; Gorbachev was both and neither, simultaneously. He was a utopian zealot, no doubt; who “walked by faith, not by sight,” till the every end. Surely enough, Gorbachev was one of the most unenviable statesmen of all time.
I am strongly inclined to conclude this writing with a recollection from Alexander Likhotal of Gorbachev:
“In 1991, Gorbachev traveled to Japan. During the voyage, a university student asked this question: “Mr. Gorbachev do you realize this process released by Perestroika can bring you and your government down?” Gorbachev replied, “Yes I know that. But I think that I will win even if that happens—because if that happens constitutionally, and by election, then I think that Perestroika has succeeded.” Gorbachev’s attitude brings to mind the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, who once said, “Sometimes statesmen need to take the right position and lose.”” (Fitzgerald and Packwood 130)
Related Publications: “Post-Soviet Russian-Western Relations [Part I: Glasnost and Perestroika],” and, “Post-Soviet Russian-Western Relations [Part II: German Unification]”
Reference
Fitzgerald, Michael R., and Allen Packwood, Out of the Cold: the Cold War and its Legacy. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 2013.
