Joshua Andy: Gorbachev was Khrushchev’s successor as a reformer; Russia is still waiting
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Together, the Russian invasion of Ukraine Feb. 24 and Mikhail Gorbachev’s death Aug. 30 serve as a bookend on Russia’s post-Cold War epoch and the end of the possibility of an era of reform.
Born in 1931, Gorbachev was a young child when both his grandfathers were arrested and sent into Joseph Stalin’s Gulag. Several of his extended family members died in Stalin’s forced famine caused by the collectivization of agriculture. A student in Moscow during the Khrushchev “thaw,” Gorbachev was exposed to political theories and books banned for most everyday Soviet citizens.
When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he knew the USSR had to be reformed in order to survive modernity; yet he unleashed forces that were uncontrollable that brought about not only the end of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe but the dissolution of the Union itself.
Welcomed and feted in the West, Gorbachev had a complicated relationship with his country; famously President Vladimir Putin stated the collapse of the USSR was the single worst geopolitical calamity of the 20th century.
Gorbachev’s legacy will be debated by historians. While the West and citizens of Eastern Europe celebrate Gorbachev for choosing not to use force to hold onto the peoples’ democracies, his legacy is more complicated in the territories of the former Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. Gorbachev ordered the Soviet Army to use force in Lithuania and Georgia to hold onto areas once part of the Russian Empire and then the USSR.
Gorbachev is celebrated for an era of glasnost, or openness, and the ability to know the crimes of the Soviet past, including the Stalinist era. As much as he was influenced by Nikita Khrushchev’s criticisms of Stalin during the “secret speech” in 1956, Gorbachev, and Khrushchev before him, refused to challenge the assertions and foundations of Marxism-Leninism and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Gorbachev’s willingness to reform the Soviet system from within unleashed forces that moved beyond his control. As multi-party elections were held across Eastern Europe, citizens of the USSR called for an end to one-party rule at home. Historical openness and debate, coupled with a more free press, led to greater calls that challenged the very founding of the USSR.
Reforms that began under Gorbachev were accelerated by his successor, Boris Yeltsin; however, Yeltsin’s actions in creating a supra-presidential system gave way to Putin.
If the end of the Cold War was a process, it has surely ceased with the invasion of Ukraine and the death of Gorbachev this year. Russians and citizens of the former Soviet Union are still waiting for a reformer who can bring economic stability and growth, coupled with democratic processes and the liberties promised for 30 years. In the end, Gorbachev’s reforms and policies have been undone by Putin’s regime.
Joshua Andy is an upper school history teacher at Winchester Thurston School, Shadyside.