Titans of History

We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The fall of communism, the break-up of the Soviet empire, the liberation of eastern Europe from Soviet oppression and the emergence of a new Russia were the achievements of two rival Russian leaders, both of whom had decent intentions that were ruined by the pressures of real politics. Neither of them intended things to turn out as they did. Both of their careers ended in failure—and both actually produced effects that were the very opposite of their intentions. Indeed the achievements of each were counterproductive—and yet world changing.

A communist believer during his entire active career and indeed a believer in one-party rule, Mikhail Gorbachev, son of a combine harvester driver from Stavropol in south Russia, swiftly entered the top stream of Soviet leadership: he qualified in law and then climbed the Communist Party hierarchy to become first secretary of Stavropol in 1970. Early on in his life he married Raisa, who was to be his partner and adviser in power: both of their families had experienced Stalin’s Terror in their own families—yet neither lost their faith in the party.

By the 1970s, the reign of Leonid Brezhnev had produced economic stagnation, political sclerosis and falling prestige for the communist regime. In a party ruled by octogenarian Stalinist bureaucrats, the dynamic, cheerful and highly intelligent Gorbachev was noticed: in 1979 he was promoted to the Politburo in Moscow and placed in charge of agriculture under the wing of the KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, probably the most capable politician in the leadership during the last decades of Soviet rule.

After Brezhnev’s death Andropov succeeded to the top post but was too old to reform the USSR. On his death in 1984, Gorbachev did not push for the leadership: the senile and exhausted Konstantin Chernenko assumed power and survived just a few months. With this death it was clear that a new and young leader was needed: Gorbachev became first secretary and took control.

Swiftly he changed both the tone and facts of Soviet rule: he declared perestroika—restructuring—and glasnost—openness; but as a devout communist committed to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the party on which his power depended, he was no Western liberal democrat. He simply hoped to reform, consolidate and strengthen the Soviet dictatorship but instead unleashed forces he could not control. His economic mismanagement undermined his own achievements: his ban on alcohol deprived a desperate budget of key funds. Gorbachov’s tinkering with the command economy produced instant shortages and discontent—he did not understand how capitalism worked.

But he did gradually open up a semi-free press and allowed limited free elections—though he did not risk any kind of vote on his own role, relying on the party for his legitimacy. To Russians, he came to stand for a dangerous experiment, his tone—so charming to Westerners—sounded pompous and lecturing to his own people.

Abroad his achievements were truly revolutionary and titanic: he overturned the Brezhnev Doctrine of intervention in eastern European satellites: in partnership with his Georgian foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, he negotiated arms control agreements with US President Ronald Reagan; more amazingly he offered to free countries like Poland after decades of tyranny. In 1989, he withdrew Soviet troops from their catastrophic war in Afghanistan and allowed eastern Europeans to grasp freedom: Soviet client regimes fell in every country. In Germany, he allowed the Berlin Wall to be brought down—and Germany to be reunited. Reagan had confronted the Soviet Union with powerful democratic rhetoric and rising American defense spending—both of which certainly played a part in the fall of the Soviet imperium—but the achievement of this was overwhelmingly thanks to Gorbachev’s conviction that this could be done peacefully. At home Gorbachev was determined to promote communist rule and the coherence of the Soviet Union but his own actions had undermined both fatally: the elections of leaders in the separate republics had produced a more legitimate leadership than that of the party.