By William Taubman
Mikhail Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at 91, changed both his country and the world, but neither as much as he wished. His ultimate failure seems almost inevitable in retrospect, but he deserves to be celebrated, in the worlds of the late Russian scholar Dmitry Furman, as “the only politician in Russian history who, having full power in his hands, voluntarily opted to limit it and even risk losing it, in the name of principled moral values.”
When he entered office in 1985, Gorbachev had almost unlimited power. He could have presided indefinitely over the status quo. Instead, he destroyed what remained of Soviet totalitarianism; brought freedoms of speech, assembly and conscience to people who had never known them; and introduced free elections and genuine parliamentary institutions. More than anyone else, it was he who ended the Cold War and reduced the danger of a nuclear holocaust. He acquiesced in the dismemberment of the Soviet empire without the violence that accompanied the collapse of most other empires. He dreamed of a new world order, based on the renunciation of force, in which divisions between East and West disappeared.
Gorbachev had liberal allies, until they turned against him; hard-line communist adversaries, who tried to oust him in August 1991; and personal rivals, prime among them Boris Yeltsin. Western leaders doubted Gorbachev, then embraced him and finally abandoned him. But Gorbachev was unique. The only three Politburo members who backed him almost until the end—Aleksandr Yakovlev, Eduard Shevardnadze and Vadim Medvedev—were in a position to do so only because Gorbachev appointed them or kept them on.
In the beginning, Gorbachev had the wind at his back. The parlous state of the Soviet economy prompted his Kremlin colleagues to choose him to embark on reforms. The deepening Cold War persuaded the Kremlin to ease tensions with the West. The contrast with Gorbachev’s three aged predecessors, all of whom died in office, made the young, vigorous new leader highly popular with the Soviet intelligentsia, military and KGB.
His own character equipped him to succeed. He grew up amid famine, purges and war, yet emerged self-confident, optimistic and trusting in his fellow citizens. A canny politician, he persuaded communist hard-liners to vote themselves out of office. He convinced Western leaders that, as Margaret Thatcher put it after meeting him in December 1984, they could “do business” with him.
But the centralized economy resisted his early, moderate reforms, slowed to a crawl as he tried to revive it, and threatened to crash if he tried to create a market system overnight (as it did when Yeltsin administered shock therapy in 1992). Latent ethnic and national resentments in the multinational Soviet Union, which Gorbachev ignored for too long and then addressed too tentatively, burst forth when he allowed free speech and political organizing. Deep-seated suspicions didn’t deter Ronald Reagan from joining Gorbachev’s quest to abolish nuclear weapons but did dissuade George H.W. Bush’s administration, at least for a while, from continuing the effort.
On top of all this, Gorbachev turned out to be less adept at leading democratic institutions than maneuvering within the party bureaucracy. Instead of calling an election for president in 1990, he chose to be selected by the new Parliament, depriving himself of popular legitimacy.
The obstacles to reform grew out of Russian history: czarist authoritarianism morphing into Soviet totalitarianism, slavish obedience to authority occasionally punctuated by eruptions of bloody violence, hostility to compromise (a word with a negative connotation in Russian), no tradition of democratic self-organization, minimal experience with free markets, no real rule of law. Gorbachev’s domestic critics complained that he “listened” and “changed his mind”—virtues in a democracy. When Yeltsin’s popularity exceeded Gorbachev’s in late 1990, Gorbachev likened Yeltsin to an emperor: “A czar must conduct himself like a czar. And that I do not know how to do.”
In the face of all this, the surprise is not that Gorbachev failed to establish a functioning Russian democracy, but that the effort lasted as long as it did.
Likewise, long-established patterns of international relations thwarted his hopes for a new, post-Cold War order. He wanted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to become a strictly political institution, replaced by a new pan-European security architecture. But the West insisted on preserving and eventually expanding NATO, infuriating Moscow. Gorbachev was happy to give up domination of Eastern Europe, but most Russians resented the loss of empire and superpower status.
Gorbachev’s character also undermined him. His self-confidence led him to underestimate his foes. He disdained Politburo hard-liners as “simply limited people” who needed him more than he needed them. According to one of his aides, Gorbachev “didn’t consider Boris Yeltsin an important political figure on the chessboard” until it was too late. And if Gorbachev trusted “the people” to embrace self-government, he also trusted the aides and seeming allies who eventually betrayed him in August 1991.
Gorbachev tried to save the Soviet Union but ended up hastening its destruction. When it became clear in late 1991 that his great project was doomed, he could have lashed out, mobilizing the military to save him and what was left of the U.S.S.R., at the risk of civil war. Instead, he bowed out with dignity.
Gorbachev leaves an uncertain legacy. Russia has abandoned his path and reverted to its traditional authoritarian, anti-Western norm. The old Cold War has given way to a new one, and a hot one in Ukraine. Even Gorbachev himself became more pessimistic as he aged, observing in November 2003 that full democracy in Russia may take “decades,” perhaps “the whole twenty-first century,” to achieve. But in December 2011, when thousands of demonstrators poured into Moscow streets to protest Vladimir Putin’s rigging of parliamentary elections, Gorbachev’s optimism resurfaced. He rejoiced that “a new generation,” a “powerful united movement of voters,” had followed his 1985 injunction: “We can’t go on living like this.”
One day Russia may resume its tramp toward democracy, and the world may find its way beyond cold war. If and when that happens, Gorbachev will deserve to be hailed as the leader who was present at the creation.
Mr. Taubman is a professor emeritus of political science at Amherst College and author of “Gorbachev: His Life and Times.”
Courtesy - The WSJ
0 comments:
Post a Comment