An update: Tuesday, August 30, 2022, Gorbachev died. I remind readers of this essay, a timely effort to put into perspective for Europeans & Americans the legacy of a famous politician.
March 2 is the 91st anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Михаил Сергеевич Горбачёв), the man, you will remember, who brought the USSR crashing down after a decade of competition with the US. In the ‘70s, it was America that seemed to threaten to commit suicide—the economy, the society, the military were all failing. But then America returned to power with Reagan, & the Soviet answer, Gorbachev, proved to be catastrophic for the evil empire… Far from being able to restore any strength to the USSR, Gorbachev famously undermined the system entirely by trying to reform it. He lacked the appetite for rule by terror & was all told an incompetent ruler, unable to understand or wield the Communist Party as an instrument of state. His ascent to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party in March 1985 was itself impressive evidence that Soviet elites had become clueless about their own history, character, & prospects. We may say that he was the ideal of a Russian ruler from the liberal point of view, since he brought his empire to ruin, but seemed more cultured & more sophisticated as a thinker than previous, less catastrophic General Secretaries.
Gorbachev retained rule of the Soviet empire after 1989 and the restoration of political freedom in most of Europe—further evidence that Soviet elites were clueless. He was only ousted in 1991 by newcomer Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Борис Николаевич Ельцин), also born in 1931, but a month older. Indeed, Yeltsin dissolved the USSR without Gorbachev’s knowledge, by agreeing with the rulers of Ukraine & Belorussia that union was no longer practical or credible. Such things happen in times of confusion… Earlier that year, in August, Gorbachev suffered an attempted coup while he was summering in his Crimean dacha. The event made Yeltsin the most important figure in Russia, when he faced down the KGB-led coup & restored order. Yeltsin was famously even much more of a reformer than Gorbachev, introducing capitalism in Russia through his right-hand man Mr. Chubais, a favorite of American politicians & think tanks in the ‘90s. The consequences were catastrophic, destroying the Russian economy twice, at the beginning & the end of the decade, reducing the people who had borne the burden of empire to misery, despair, abortion, & suicide. Yeltsin famously had then-President Clinton’s support when he threw a coup against the democratically-elected Russian legislature in October ‘93. He had the military on his side & sent in tanks to put an end to a legislature that wouldn’t adopt his economic reforms; after a couple of hundred dead & more wounded, globalization won the battle! In that short period from ‘89 to ‘93, Russian GDP had already collapsed to half its value, but Yeltsin was very popular in America, so he had no problems keeping control of Russia for years. With considerable American help, he even won re-election in ‘96. He was a remarkably clever politician in the early part of his rule, easily undoing Mr. Gorbachev, primarily because Mr. Gorbachev was thinking about the USSR, an unwieldy state, falling apart around him, whereas Yeltsin’s concern was only the Russian state, which could be recreated & empowered to control Russia. He left the rest of the empire to fend for itself, piece by piece, region by region, & many despotisms emerged from this ruin. Yeltsin’s rule was, however, even more catastrophic than Gorbachev’s, he had his own horrible war, in Chechnya, after Gorbachev’s slaughter in Lithuania, he was often nakedly tyrannic, & he accordingly thoroughly discredited elections, representative democracy, liberalism, international organizations, &c. His rule ended in 1999, when he resigned & named as his successor the current president, whom he had named PM the same year. Yeltsin died hated or loathed in Russia in 2007, an infamous drunk, but secure from any prosecution as part of his resignation deal.
This brings us to President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Владимир Владимирович Путин), the most successful ruler of Russia since Stalin, not merely in terms of the length of his rule, but the avoidance of regime-ending catastrophes; of course, we cannot say what will come of the current invasion of Ukraine. President Putin seems decided to avoid the mistakes of his reformist predecessors; whatever restoration of an ordinary life has occurred in Russia is owed to him—his rule is not comparable in cruelty with the Soviet tyrants, but he is a despot, one who rules as a master does slaves, sometimes popular, other times less so. He is everywhere feared & he usually destroys people who are a danger to his rule, or even nuisances. He rules as Russia has been ruled for almost a millennium. He is a very dangerous man, partly because he knows American corruption, from how America dealt with Russia in the ‘90s, partly because he hates what his predecessors did to allow Russia to fall into misery. You may guess that he wishes to be the anti-Gorbachev, who has, by the way, won the Nobel Prize, since the world has neither interest nor care for the suffering he occasioned for the people he was supposed to rule. It is, of course, right that we should worry about ourselves first & rejoice in the collapse of the Soviet Union, since it did not occasion war or worse; but it would be foolish, ultimately mad to ignore the Russians & Russian elites who do not view things the same way. Somehow, we have ignored the dangers of this man for a long time, partly because American presidents have been mad in this generation, partly because Europeans are cowards on principle. It was therefore impossible to speak publicly with any seriousness about what might be done. NATO seemed invincible & perpetually expanding, until American arrogance led to catastrophic wars in the Middle East. President Putin has found his moment to exploit the weakness of both Europe & America; it remains to be seen whether he will horrify the world or fail.
Gorbachev is still of beloved memory among our elites; it is not too hard to find even ordinary people who have a sentimental attachment to him, because he let the Berlin Wall fall & the USSR after it. Of course, he is especially adored by liberals who despised Reagan against all reason & patriotism. He is loathed in Russia; he has criticized his successors, but it is hard to say with what right. He is more responsible than anyone else for their political misery, just as Yeltsin is for economic misery. A generation of Russians has lived with the consequences of his rule. Indeed, inasmuch as we have rejoiced in a post-Cold War world, they have lived with humiliations we cannot even imagine. Our elites cannot even now countenance the fact that they neither removed the power of Russia—after all, it still has the world’s greatest nuclear arsenal—nor did they remove the causes of Russian hatred of us, NATO expansion above all. So long as our idea of Russia is that there should be many like Gorbachev among them, it is not merely a matter of our not understanding Russian character or history, but not even being able to ask how they see us, a matter of some importance now that there is war in Europe. Gorbachev has been the symbol of our contempt for Russia, a contempt we have not earned & which the men of the previous generation, to the extent they earned it, squandered it.
Liberalism in our time is cowardly on principle. Not only is this not the Cold War liberalism which was able to plan a strategy of containment & execute it fairly well, to great success—it is not even a liberalism that can remember that earlier version or admire it. Back then, liberalism had quite some knowledge of affairs & the limits of American power to improve events. Now, endless arrogance is paired with impotence. Liberal contempt for Russia is embodied in Gorbachev, a man flattered for initiating a series of catastrophes that have benefited us, a bungler, finally. His people would be right to see him as a traitor; obviously, Russian elites see us as enemies. Only when we get rid of the nonsense of the Nobel Prize-winning Gorbachev will we begin to see Russians as they are, starting by looking at them as they look at themselves. They are alike to America only in being radically egalitarian & spanning a continent without care for nationality, but even their Christianity is different to American Christianity. But they are a great people & must be reckoned with, especially since there is no possible basis for friendship between them & us.
Provocative and informative overview. Very interesting take on the why and wherefore of today's state of affairs.
Thanks, Cathy--it's a very human mess, but we might deal with it without so much hysteria, & perhaps even win!