Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931–)

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV is appreciated as one of the most distinguished and controversial leaders of the last quarter of the 20th century. He headed the Soviet Union (USSR) as the Communist Party general secretary beginning on March 11, 1985, and his policy brought an end to the 70-year experiment in constructing a social alternative to capitalism. The failure occurred at the time when “real socialism” seemed to achieve the greatest success and needed just more propulsion. In spite of lower living standards than in the West, the USSR was remarkable for impressive social guarantees and stability. The country that declared worldwide victory of communism as an official goal had a large zone of influence in East-Central Europe, Asia, and Africa and enjoyed military parity with the United States.

When Gorbachev, at age 54, received supreme power, the array of daunting problems was striking and included economic slowdown, losses in Afghanistan, destabilization in Poland, and the intention of the United States, headed by Ronald Reagan, to get an advantage in the Cold War by deploying new missiles in Europe and launching the Strategic Defense Initiative. International tension had reached a dangerous level.

Gorbachev was radically different from his authoritarian predecessors. Being able to search for political solutions and compromises based on dialogue, he represented another type of leader who aimed at popularity through active public policy; however, he only had a slight idea of what end he was going to achieve. [Page 195]Gorbachev started the “revolution from above” by introducing glasnost—openness and publicity, which evoked rampageous debates on historical and sociopolitical issues in media and at meetings. Soviet society was split and baffled. The painful problem of a totalitarian past laid a trap at his every step. Gorbachev also launched perestroika—economic and administrative restructuring. Cutting subventions resulted in halting enterprises and whole manufacturing branches, especially in the military-industrial complex. Private entrepreneurship legalization, under the cover of supporting cooperatives, did not undermine the shadow economy, but led to rampancy of crime and rackets. Anti-alcohol prohibitionist arrangements resulted in budget shortages and people's discontent.

Gorbachev acquired a qualitatively new set of foreign policy beliefs and preferences expressed in the concept of the Unified European House. He rejected the Brezhnev Doctrine of firm control over satellites. “Each of Central-Eastern European peoples is the master of his own country and should be totally responsible for what is going on there,” Gorbachev declared. The old nomenklatura, a significant part of the Communist Party, interpreted this as a lack of firmness, or as hesitation, while those from the hard-line camp called it a betrayal of Gorbachev vis-a-vis his former partners and “friends” from abroad. The foreign-policy reforms had a far-reaching impact on Soviet international behavior and did much to ensure that the Cold War came to an unexpected and peaceful end. Gorbachev and his allies had few opportunities to take advantage of his worldwide popularity, to build state capacity, or to institutionalize his new approach to foreign affairs. The give-and-take policy toward the West had turned into one-sided Soviet concessions from Gorbachev, who was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1990, some say as a sort of consolation.

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