There was a a time when Mikhail Gorbachev meant freedom. The young, energetic leader of the then- Soviet Union was taking the world by storm. The moment was brief, but it impacted the lives of hundreds of millions around the world. He meant freedom to the Germans, to the Baltic States, to Soviet satellite republics, to Soviets and to Americans. That was the time when he was bigger than history.
He single-handedly—despite American claims—ended the Cold War and, arguably, the Soviet Union and its domination of Eastern Europe. Then history and events grew bigger than him. Somehow, he never got the credit that he deserved. He bears the blame for the shortcomings in much of Russia and Eastern Europe still.
Frail, puff-faced, disheveled, and mostly ignored in one of his last interviews, the man who ruled the world for that brief shining moment in its history was a feeble shadow of his former self, his shoes drawing the pity of an aunt, an old babushka who fuzzed after him like a child; there was the once vibrant leader of the USSR, a largely forgotten man. He died this week after what was described only “a long illness.” But the Gorbachev we knew had died long ago.
Off the world stage, he ceased to matter in world affairs and was relegated to the status of a badge to have in one’s chest of medals. That is how the West treated him, politely listening to him, but without giving him much importance, after all, winners do not credit the other side for their victories. Russia was less kind to him. But in his heart and intellect he remained principled and convinced he had done the right thing, though perhaps not in the right way.
In a country that produced Ivan the Terrible and Stalin, Gorbachev was a Peter the Great. But he was relevant well beyond his country. He was a man of enormous integrity and courage who rightfully earned his place as perhaps the most consequential figure of our times, a huge historical marker for the world.
In his speech taking control as the youngest leader of the Soviet Union, he laid out his values and his marker as a peacemaker. “The right to live in peace and freedom is the most important right of each individual,” he said to little notice.
But soon the world would notice.
He arrived and freedom followed. Moving swiftly to improve his country, he set aside Politburo sclerosis, he lifted the oppressive censorship that characterized the Soviet Union with a new openness, Glasnost, freedom of speech, freedom to criticize, to speak up. A loosening of the tightly controlled economy allowed Soviets the freedom to travel and more individual economic freedom and though it failed as an economic model in a society without the traditions and institutions of a free market, it became an impetus for more change, change that eventually overcame him.
“Perestroika was a wide-ranging humanist project. It was a break with the past, with the centuries when the state—autocratic and then totalitarian—dominated over the human being. It was a breakthrough into the future,” he wrote in his final published essay a year ago this month. “This is what makes perestroika relevant.’
The significance of it all is sorely understated today, lost in revisionism, resentment for the economic misery that befell sectors of the population, and an ongoing effort to erase much of his legacy in Russia.
But it is difficult to understate his role in world affairs. His time at the helm marked a historic point in time.
Gorbachev lifted the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since 1945. He visited East Germany, kissed the repressive Eric Honecker and told him the Soviet Union would not support crackdowns on protesters. Honecker resigned a week later. The Berlin Wall fell within a month. Eastern Europe soon followed declaring freedom from the Soviet Union.
In the context of how many people died and would have died in bringing down the wall, that act alone is one of major historical significance. It occurred bloodlessly and largely because of the will of Gorbachev to create a more open society where the values he espoused upon taking office were being put to action. His restraint earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gorbachev was freedom.
A visit to Beijing spurred the imagination of Chinese students leading to the Tiananmen Square that showed the world the true nature of the Chinese power machine.
With the glad acceptance of the United States, it was Gorbachev who ended the Cold War and brought the arms race between the Soviet Union and United States to a peaceful conclusion. The winners always get to write the pages of history, and in taking the first step to dial down the tensions, the Soviet Union was not triumphant in the Cold War. But the US has sold it as an American triumph, and that is the image that remains, to the detriment of the credit Gorbachev deserves.
The net result, however, was a safer world and more freedom for millions of people...and the saved lives of those who did not die in conflicts that did not occur because of Gorbachev.
"For everyone, and above all for our two great powers, the treaty whose text is on this table offers a big chance, at last, to get onto the road leading away from the threat of catastrophe,” he said In Washington in 1987, at the signing of the Intermediate Force Nuclear Treaty with Ronald Reagan. "It is our duty to take full advantage of that chance and move together toward a nuclear free world, which holds out for our children and grandchildren, and for their children and grandchildren, the promise of a fulfilling and happy life, without fear and without a senseless waste of resources on weapons of destruction."
Do Reagan and the US get credit for that signing? Sure. But it happened because of Gorbachev; he was perhaps the single most consequential person to come to peace through power and in his restraint from using deadly power, says world affairs analyst Roger Flynn, speaking from Washington DC.
Gorbachev was “a miracle,” famously said American diplomat and Sovietologist George F. Kennan.
He gave the world hope and optimism by taking off the table the possibility of mutual annihilation, added Flynn. “He was the man who did it. The world owes him a debt of gratitude for making that happen.”
Indeed, this is the passing of a giant in history whose name is hardly known among the young who are benefitting from the way he changed the world.
His vision of a democratic Russia in a friendly relationship with the West is now in shambles in the wake of a new East-West confrontation in Ukraine. In Russia and Eastern Europe obituaries do not fail to note that “he was instrumental in bringing about the collapse of the state,” and in death he is squarely blamed as “responsible for the economic misery that followed.”
"We were searching, we had our illusions, we made mistakes, and we had our achievements. If given a chance to start anew, I would have done many things differently, but I am confident that historically perestroika (restructuring) was a just cause," wrote Gorbachev on the issue in 2021.
Despite his failure to find an economic model that converted from Communism to capitalism without inflicting hardship and pain on the population, Gorbachev did change the course of history and is still a giant in 20th Century world events, perhaps the reason why, even in the assessments of his life at his passing, he is still more highly regarded abroad than at home.
To the end, Gorbachev remained a man of peace, a silent guard for the right of humans to live in peace and freedom. “All nations must declare that nuclear weapons must be destroyed,” he told the BBC three years ago. “That is to save our planet.”
Profoundly aware of the colossal danger of weapons of mass destruction, he saw nuclear weapons as a way of telling other people, other countries to obey, “or we will drop a bomb on you.” He died believing there cannot be true freedom “as long as the threat of nuclear weapons is upon any of us on Earth.”
As he exists the final stage, words from his final televised address as the leader of the dissolving Soviet Union on its last day of existence, Christmas day 1991, ring as a message of both reflection on his legacy and hope:
"I leave my post with concern - but also with hope, with faith in you, your wisdom and spiritual strength. We are the heirs of a great civilization, and its revival and transformation to a modern and dignified life depend on all and everyone.”
