Currently, there are very harsh discussions about the role of Gorbachev in the history of the Soviet Union in the last years of its existence. Often he is regarded as a person who undermined the whole structure of this country. Very often, he is considered as a traitor in Russia. On the contrary, in the West, he is believed as a person who ended the Cold War. But nevertheless, the fact that harsh discussions about his person and role are going on is the best evidence that Gorbachev is an outstanding person with great contribution to the world history and the system of international relations. So what is his personal role in the processes which happened in the USSR in the late 1980s?
Rise to power & overall aim
When Gorbachev came to power in the 80s, the USSR was already in disorder. It was a superpower with an impressive space program and a huge arsenal of atomic bombs. Regardless, all these attributes of might, 300 million of citizens, unfortunately, had to wait for hours to buy cheese or a simple pair of shoes. Despite the huge territory of Russia as the center of the Soviet Union, its satellites such as Ukraine and the Baltic nations began to push for independence. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Communist Party. But nearly simultaneously his vision of peace and democratic reform ideologies was put under pressure on the part of the more conservative hawks of the Communist party elite. His plan to establish democracy by creating an elected parliament had the effect of giving power to the enemies of the communist system. Boris Yeltsin was the most powerful of such enemies. In some years, he played a crucial and dramatic role in the history of the Soviet Union collapse.
In August 1991, a junta of orthodox communist extremists managed to make a coup which failed when Yeltsin, already president of the Russian Republic, gathered crowds in Moscow. Gorbachev admitted defeat in a short speech of 25 December. The red flag of the Soviet Union gave way to the tricolor flag of Russia. Unfortunately, the fall of communism brought a little happiness to the Russians. Economic reforms introduced by Yeltsin lead to unemployment and high poverty rates. Although the Russians now are freer than they have ever been in their history, a recent survey indicates that nearly two-thirds of Russians are nostalgic for the Soviet welfare, social order and the pride of being a world superpower. All these attributes were lost during the collapse the Soviet empire. On March 11, 1985, Gorbachev became the leader of the USSR. He became the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), he committed a series of radical reforms which were named "perestroika" (restructuring) and "glasnost" (transparency).
Gorbachev resigned in December 1991 after the collapse of the communist bloc and he is the last communist leader of the USSR. What were the limitations and contradictions of Gorbachev's policy? Gorbachev denounced the political immobility and noted that the economic situation is very close to catastrophic, there were a lot of money wasted, shortages, low productivity, and corruption. He wanted to save the country and regenerate communism. "Glasnost" and "Perestroika" in the USSR between 1985 and 1991 were above-driven reforms that were in no way intended to put into question the Soviet values. To this end, Gorbachev looked to make the system more effective: he appealed to the "glasnost" (openness, that is to say, freedom of speech, the abolition of censorship, restoration of historical truth). He also suggested the "perestroika" (a move intended to modernize economic structures, enabling the development of free enterprise). But the economy was still administered by the state.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s decisions had a lasting impact on the development of Russian and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev found himself against the social movement. Social discontent due to the shortage of products and money was growing. To counter this, Gorbachev hardened his attitude: it prohibited strikes, rejected the accelerated program of transition to a market economy, all in the 1990s. The revolutionary contagion erupted in the USSR. A powerful party movement, challenging the Soviet model developed in the people's democracies and spreads in the Baltic republics.
It resulted from a convergence of factors. The disarmament of the policy was conducted to reduce military spending eases the Soviet pressure. The abandonment of the doctrine of limited sovereignty in 1987 brought about hope for a return to political freedom for each of democracies (Gorbachev, 95). There was an awakening of civilian activists, who dared to express their desire for freedom and rejection of the economic and social system. The opposition of Churches (Catholic in Poland, Protestant in GDR) gave enough strength to the general discontent of the population. Some people find it hard to understand why the reforms of "Gorby" will both become warm, very strained relations with the United States and precipitate the collapse of the USSR (Gorbachev, 80).
When he came to power in 1984, the Soviet Union was in the period of an internal succession crisis. Leonid Brezhnev, old and sick with cancer for years, who died in 82, his successors Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko had been just as old and died in the year following their election. A 54-year-old Gorbachev represented a new generation of Soviet leaders and a desire for change in the country. He was a real economist who in the 1970s conducted a study showing that the Soviet economy was overtaken by all the Western economies.
But he was also a product of the Soviet system and a convinced communist. He was the man who did not intend to eliminate communism, but to improve it. Indeed, nothing was going better in the USSR, the Afghanistan war turned out to be a quagmire, differences in the countries of Eastern Europe as the interior of the Soviet state continued to grow. Technologically the USSR barely lagged behind the United States as weakened by the Chernobyl disaster. But it is especially in the economic field that difficulties accumulated. The stores were empty, insufficient production, corruption gangrene reached the highest strata of the state (even the family of Brezhnev was charged).
The difficulties were such that the USSR had to import Western grain to feed its population. Almost 25% of the budget went for military spending because of the Afghan war and trying to follow the arms race imposed by the United States (including the draft Strategic Defense Initiative project of "Star Wars" around a hypothetical network satellite capable of falling nuclear missiles in flight) (Gwertzman and Kaufman, 48). The "Glastnost" reforms and "perestroika" were made in order to restore order in the country and revive the economy, but in doing so, they put Gorbachev on the need to negotiate a new relaxation and disarmament with the United States especially for financial and technological support from the West.
Western companies arrived in the East but in return, Gorbachev had to promise to increase the weight of human rights in the USSR. These meetings with Reagan allowed to drop this atmosphere of the tension of the Cold War, Gorbachev and his characteristic forehead becoming very popular in the West birthmark (we see here caricatured in the cartoon The Simpsons in the early 90s). He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his work in favor of disarmament (Marshall, 95). The transparency policy to protest the regime's opponents stepped into the breach. Protests were becoming stronger, Gorbachev did not want to use force as its predecessors to subdue. It is in this atmosphere the revolt broke out in November 1989.
This crisis will be later precipitated as the first sign of the collapse of the USSR. Gorbachev wanted, but never imagined that someone might destroy this symbol of the Soviet system, that all communist would fall with. Gorbachev was increasingly fragile as a political leader. The traditional Communists accused him precipitated the fall of the system, reformers grouped around Yeltsin accusing him of not going far enough with reforms (Gwertzman and Kaufman, 38).
Gorbachev was definitely discredited when in August 1991 the military attempted to commit a coup to restore the hard line of communism. Enclosed by the coup plotters in his second home, he saw Yeltsin became the symbol of resistance against the coup, the latter rallying the troops to his cause and faint fail the attempt. On December 25, 1991, having zero credit to his opinion, he resigned. In the wake of the dissolution of the USSR ruled by supporters of Yeltsin, who became president of the newly regained independence while Russia from Ukraine to Kazakhstan, autonomous republics form. Gorbachev then retired from politics, devoting himself from conferences, especially in the West. He tried unsuccessfully to find a New communist even Russia party in 2001 (Medvedev, 71). Gorbachev did not want the end of the Soviet system, but such a pressure cooker, as soon as he releases the pressure that kept the lid on the country, it is the Soviet Union and its communist model that was taken away.
The Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation in a speech on television: the Communist empire was lasting some 70 years and its death marks the end of a world order based on the rivalry with the United States (Medvedev, 73) after the departure of Gorbachev, the red flag with a sickle and the hammer was removed from the Kremlin. Such was a turn of the communist empire that played a major role in the victory over the Nazis and sent the first man into space, but whose leaders ruthlessly eliminated millions of their own citizens. This is the definitive end of the Cold War and the bipolar world, making the United States the world's only superpower. Most of the 15 Soviet republics become independent for the first time in their history and were faced with the challenge of creating a national identity and a strong economy, goals that many of them have still not reached. Russia suffered having lost its superpower status with the United States. The Soviet Union was nothing but "Great Russia," said the ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin, flattering nationalism Russians during his power was confronted by this year end in an unprecedented protest after legislative marked by accusations of massive fraud. His predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who died in 2007, considered for his part that the collapse of the USSR was inevitable (Gorbachev, 14).
What are some Alternative Explanations and causes for the Collapse?
The USSR disappeared without cataclysm, but the following years were marked by deteriorating infrastructure, impoverishment of the population and local conflicts that have killed hundreds of thousands. Tajikistan was the scene of a civil war against Islamists. Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed around the breakaway territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Russia has fought two bloody campaigns in his the small rebel republic of Chechnya. Georgia fought separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. None of these conflicts has been finally settled: the Islamists still threaten Tajikistan, Nagorno Karabakh a fragile peace and now Islamist rebellion has spread across the Russian Caucasus. For the first time since the fall of the Soviet regime, Russia sent its tanks in August 2008 in a former republic sister, Georgia, who had undertaken to regain control of South Ossetia (Hayoz, Jesień, and Koleva, 127).
At the risk of being accused of wanting to restore the Soviet Union, which he described in 2005 the disappearance of "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century Putin tries to gather the former communist soviet republics around Russia. After a frank expansion in the 1990s and despite a "restart" announced by President Barack Obama, Moscow manifests again a world power ambitions, particularly strongly opposing to NATO and the United States on their project missile shield in Europe. Russia, which continues to maintain special relations with former allies of the Soviet era, such as North Korea, Iran, Cuba or Syria, also willingly uses its veto in the Security Council of UN to counter China with Western initiatives, particularly against the Damascus regime. But twenty years later, there is no indication that a new union is possible in the territory of the former USSR. The three Baltic countries joined the EU and NATO, Georgia hopes to do the same, and Ukraine, tempted by the same route, it is also reluctant to submit to Moscow. The socioeconomic consequences of the USSR's fall also continue to be felt in the region (Volodina, 179).
Gorbachev did not want the collapse of communism. He simply was a realistic politician and wanted to rebuild the system. In my opinion, he is not guilty in the breakup of the Soviet Union. It was an objective historical process which was much more important than hypothetical efforts of one person. On the contrary, sometimes he behaved as the leader who was adhering to the hard line of policy. His steps towards the processes of nationalism in the Baltic republics and in the Caucasus demonstrate this. Gorbachev went on the reconciliation with the West in the result of a deep and comprehensive political and economic crisis in the Soviet Union.
The same was the reason behind the striking of article 6 of the Soviet Constitution, which enshrined the monopoly of the Communist party policy and decision-making. Political pluralism which was brought about by this step made the collapse of the superpower inevitable. Furthermore, the processes in the countries of the communist Warsaw pact – allies of the USSR went out of the control of Moscow. Finally, Gorbachev simply did not have another way out: he allowed the development of anti-communist processes and driven out the Soviet troops (Volodina, 195).
Gorbachev merits respect because he ended the Cold war and saved humanity from nuclear war with catastrophic consequences. Modern Russia tries to exploit soviet ideology and it is very comfortable to blame one person at the end of the USSR.
Works cited
Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich. Perestroika. Cambridge: Harper & Row, 1987. Print.
Gwertzman, Bernard M and Michael T Kaufman. The Collapse of Communism. New York, N.Y.: Times Books, 1990. Print.
Hayoz, Nicolas, Leszek Jesień, and Daniela Koleva. 20 Years After The Collapse Of Communism. Bern: Peter Lang, 2011. Print.
Medvedev, Zhores A. Gorbachev. New York: Norton, 1986. Print.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev. 1st ed. 2016. Print.
Marshall I. “The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics". New York: Norton, 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.
Volodina, Tatyana. "Teaching History in Russia after the Collapse of the USSR". History Teacher 2005: 179. Web.
