September 1, 2022
BLESS HIS IDEOLOGICAL BLINDNESS:
How Gorbachev tried to save the USSR (MAXIMILIAN HESS, 1 September 2022, UnHerd)
Gorbachev shaped generations of European foreign policy towards Russia, most notably that of Angela Merkel, whose defining experience was witnessing Soviet troops standing down as the Berlin Wall crumbled. But his actions were guided not by benevolence but by the misguided belief it would enable the Soviet Union to focus on protecting its internal cohesion.Gorbachev did not idly stand by as the Soviet Union collapsed. In most former Soviet territories, his legacy is shaped by the violence that proliferated at the end of his rule, particularly in the Baltics and the Caucasus. He fought to retain the Soviet Union, cracking down on pro-independence protests.Gorbachev may have been a genuine reformer, but he was also a card-carrying communist. His reforms and the internationalism represented by his withdrawal from the Cold War battlefield were an attempt to restore the Soviet state to the Leninist mission he believed Stalin and his ilk had corrupted. In response to unrest in the ethnic republics, Gorbachev sought to refashion the USSR as a new 'Union of Sovereign States,' keeping Leninist internationalism at the core of his planned cure for USSR's ills, even as rivals such as Boris Yeltsin abandoned the Communist Party. Gorbachev only allowed the Soviet Union to breathe its last when he lost his faith.
The Failed Dream of Mikhail Gorbachev (Casey Michel, August 31, 2022, New Republic)
Gorbachev, of course, failed--thanks in large part to his own myopic efforts to steer the Soviet Union to a newer, brighter future. There was his blinkered anti-alcohol campaign, which starved the Soviet economy of much-needed revenue. There was his noteworthy political aloofness, which alienated potential allies and provided further fodder for his domestic opponents. (Gorbachev's naivete about basic politics earned him the nickname "The Martian.") And there was the fact that, despite the promise of perestroika and glasnost, Gorbachev always seemed hesitant to follow through on many of his pledges. He was a man in a blindfold, groping his way toward some unknown destination, increasingly frustrated that he kept getting lost and that fewer and fewer people were following him.As events began spiraling beyond his control--as pushback in places like East Germany and the Baltics and the Caucasus began eroding the Kremlin's influence faster and faster--Gorbachev flailed, tacking right, and then left, and then right again. He was praised in the West for his international maneuvers: for pulling Soviet troops from both Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, and for talking about potentially ridding the world of nuclear weapons once and for all. "Gorbymania" was a real phenomenon, especially once the Cold War ended.But domestically, Gorbachev showed a different side. An autocrat like his predecessors, Gorbachev couldn't handle the fact that Soviet citizens weren't coming along with his project--and that, in fact, some were outright opposed to his rule altogether.Which is why, in 1986, Soviet forces under Gorbachev began massacring protesters in Kazakhstan. And then they did the same against anti-Soviet protesters in Georgia. And then again in Azerbaijan. And then again in Lithuania. And then again in Latvia. The dissolution of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev may have avoided some of the worst-case scenarios. But it was never the peaceful venture that some in the West still regard it. Gorbachev's victims were almost always those populations colonized by the Soviet Union, firmly opposed to Moscow's rule and trying to finally break free.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 1, 2022 7:28 AM