Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev ( ; born 2 March
1931) was the second-to-last
General
Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, serving
from 1985 until 1991, and the last head of state of the USSR,
serving from 1988 until its collapse in 1991. He was the only
Soviet leader to have been born after the
October Revolution of 1917.
Gorbachev was born in
Stavropol Krai
into a peasant family, and in his teens operated combine harvesters
on collective farms.
He graduated from Moscow State
University
in 1955 with a degree in law. While in
college, he joined the
Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, and soon became very active within it. In 1970,
he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol
Kraikom, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and
appointed a member of
Politburo in 1979.
After the deaths, within three years, of Soviet Leaders
Leonid Brezhnev,
Yuri Andropov, and
Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was
elected General Secretary by Politburo in 1985. Already before he
reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in western
newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger
generation at the top level.
Gorbachev's attempts at reform as well as summit conferences with
United States President
Ronald Reagan
and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the
end of the
Cold War, ended the political
supremacy of the
Communist Party of the
Soviet Union (CPSU) and led to the dissolution of the Soviet
Union. He was awarded the
Nobel Peace
Prize in 1990.
In September 2008 Gorbachev and billionaire
Alexander Lebedev announced they would
form the
Independent Democratic
Party of Russia together, and in May 2009 Gorbachev announced
that the launch was imminent. This is Gorbachev's third attempt to
establish a political party of significance in Russian politics
after having started the
Social Democratic Party of
Russia in 2001 and the
Union of Social-Democrats in
2007.
Early life
Gorbachev
was born on 2 March 1931 in Stavropol
, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
into a peasant family, and in his teens operated
combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from
Moscow State
University in 1955 with a degree in law. While in
college, he joined the
Communist Party of the
Soviet Union and soon became very active within it.
Marriage and family
Gorbachev met his future wife,
Raisa
Titarenko, at Moscow State University. They married in
September 1953 and moved to Stavropol upon graduation. She gave
birth to their only child, daughter
Irina Mihailovna Virganskaya (Ири́на
Миха́йловна Вирга́нская), in 1957. Raisa Gorbachev died of
leukemia in 1999.
Rise in the Communist Party
Gorbachev attended the important
twenty-second
Party Congress in October 1961, where
Nikita Khrushchev announced a plan to
surpass the U.S. in per capita production within twenty years. At
this point in his life, Gorbachev would rise in the Communist
League hierarchy and worked his way up through territorial leagues
of the party. He was promoted to Head of the Department of Party
Organs in the Stavropol Agricultural Kraikom in 1963. In 1970, he
was appointed First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, a
body of the CPSU, becoming one of the youngest provincial party
chiefs in the nation. In this position he helped reorganise the
collective farms, improve workers' living conditions, expand the
size of their private plots, and give them a greater voice in
planning. He was soon made a member of the
Communist
Party Central Committee in 1971. Three years later, in 1974, he
was made a Representative to the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet
Union and Chairman of the Standing Commission on Youth Affairs.
He was subsequently appointed to the Central Committee's
Secretariat for Agriculture in 1978, replacing Fyodor Kulakov, who
had supported Gorbachev's appointment, after Kulakov died of a
heart attack. In 1979, Gorbachev was promoted to the
Politburo, the highest authority in the country,
and received full membership in 1980. Gorbachev owed his steady
rise to power to the patronage of
Mikhail
Suslov, the powerful chief ideologist of the CPSU.
During
Yuri Andropov's tenure as
General Secretary (1982–1984), Gorbachev became one of the
Politburo's most visible and active members. With responsibility
over personnel, working together with Andropov, 20 percent of the
top echelon of government ministers and regional governors were
replaced, often with younger men. During this time
Grigory Romanov,
Nikolai Ryzhkov, and
Yegor Ligachev were elevated, the latter two
working closely with Gorbachev, Ryzhkov on economics, Ligachev on
personnel. Gorbachev's positions within the CPSU created more
opportunities to travel abroad, and this would profoundly affect
his political and social views in the future as leader of the
country. In 1972, he headed a Soviet delegation to Belgium, and
three years later he led a delegation to West Germany; in 1983 he
headed a delegation to Canada to meet with
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and members of the
Commons and
Senate. In 1984, he travelled to the United
Kingdom, where he met British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher.
Upon Andropov's death in 1984, the aged
Konstantin Chernenko took power; after
his death the following year, it became clear to the party
hierarchy that younger leadership was needed. Gorbachev was elected
General Secretary by Politburo on 11 March 1985, only three hours
after Chernenko's death. Upon his accession at age 54, he was the
youngest member of Politburo.
General Secretary of the CPSU
Mikhail Gorbachev became the Party's first leader to have been born
after the
Revolution. As
de facto ruler of the USSR, he tried to reform the stagnating Party
and the state economy by introducing
glasnost ("openness"),
perestroika ("restructuring"),
demokratizatsiya ("democratization"),
and
uskoreniye ("acceleration"
of economic development), which were launched at the 27th Congress
of the CPSU in February 1986.
Domestic reforms
Gorbachev's primary goal as General Secretary was to revive the
Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev years. In 1985, he
announced that the Soviet economy was stalled and that
reorganization was needed. Gorbachev proposed a "vague programme of
reform", which was adopted at the April Plenum of the Central
Committee. He called for fast-paced technological modernization and
increased industrial and agricultural productivity, and he
attempted to reform the Soviet bureaucracy to be more efficient and
prosperous. Gorbachev soon realised that fixing the Soviet economy
would be nearly impossible without reforming the political and
social structure of the Communist nation. Gorbachev also initiated
the concept of
gospriyomka ("approval") during his time as
leader, which represented state approval of goods in an effort to
maintain quality control and combat inferior manufacturing.
He made a
speech in May 1985 in Leningrad
(now St. Petersburg
) advocating widespread reforms. The reforms
began in personnel changes; the most notable change was the
replacement of
Andrei Gromyko as
Minister of Foreign Affairs with
Eduard Shevardnadze. Gromyko, disparaged
as "Mr Nyet" in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of
Foreign Affairs and was considered an 'old thinker'. Robert D.
English notes that, despite Shevardnadze's diplomatic inexperience,
Gorbachev "shared with him an outlook" and experience in managing
an agricultural region of the Soviet Union (
Georgia), which meant that both had weak links
to the powerful
military-industrial
complex.
A number of reformist ideas were discussed by Politburo members.
One of the first reforms Gorbachev introduced was the anti-alcohol
campaign, begun in May 1985, which was designed to fight widespread
alcoholism in the Soviet Union. Prices of
vodka,
wine, and
beer were raised, and their sales were restricted. It
was pursued vigorously and cut both alcohol sales and government
revenue. It was a serious blow to the state budget—a loss of
approximately 100 billion rubles according to
Alexander Yakovlev—after
alcohol production migrated to the
black
market economy. The program proved to be a useful symbol for
change in the country, however. The reduction in sales greatly
expanded the purchasing power of the Soviet citizens, as alcohol
was very expensive.
Perestroika
Gorbachev initiated his new policy of
perestroika and its attendant radical
reforms in 1986; they were sketched, but not fully spelled out, at
the
XXVIIth Party Congress in
February-March 1986. The new policy of "reconstruction" was
introduced in an attempt to overcome the economic stagnation by
creating a dependable and effective mechanism for accelerating
economic and social progress. According to Gorbachev,
perestroika was the "conference of development of
democracy, socialist self-government, encouragement of initiative
and creative endeavor, improved order and disciple, more glasnost,
criticism and self-criticism in all spheres of our society. It is
utmost respect for the individual and consideration for personal
dignity."
Domestic changes continued apace. In a bombshell speech during
Armenian SSR's Central Committee Plenum
of the Communist Party the young First Secretary of Armenia's
Hrazdan Regional Communist Party, Hayk Kotanjian, criticised
rampant corruption in the Armenian Communist Party's highest
echelons, implicating Armenian SSR Communist Party First Secretary
Karen Demirchyan and calling for
his resignation.
Symbolically, intellectual Andrei Sakharov was invited to return to
Moscow by Gorbachev in December 1986 after six years of internal
exile in Gorky
.
During the
same month, however, signs of the nationalities problem that would
haunt the later years of the Soviet Union surfaced as riots, named
Jeltoqsan, occurred in Kazakhstan
after Dinmukhamed
Kunayev was replaced as First Secretary of the Communist Party of
Kazakhstan.
The
Central
Committee Plenum in January 1987 would see the crystallisation
of Gorbachev's political reforms, including proposals for
multi-candidate elections and the appointment of non-Party members
to government positions. He also first raised the idea of expanding
co-operatives at the plenum. Economic reforms took up much of the
rest of 1987, as a new law giving enterprises more independence was
passed in June and Gorbachev released a book,
Perestroika: New
Thinking for Our Country and the World, in November,
elucidating his main ideas for reform. In 1987 he rehabilitated
many opponents of
Stalin, another part of the
De-Stalinization,
which began in 1956, when
Lenin's
Testament was published.
Glasnost
1988 would see Gorbachev's introduction of
glasnost, which gave new freedoms to the
people, including greater freedom of speech. This was a radical
change, as control of speech and suppression of government
criticism had previously been a central part of the Soviet system.
The press became far less controlled, and thousands of political
prisoners and many dissidents were released. Gorbachev's goal in
undertaking
glasnost was to pressure conservatives within
the CPSU who opposed his policies of economic restructuring, and he
also hoped that through different ranges of openness, debate and
participation, the Soviet people would support his reform
initiatives. At the same time, he opened himself and his reforms up
for more public criticism, evident in
Nina Andreyeva's critical letter in a March
edition of
Sovetskaya
Rossiya. Gorbachev acknowledged that his liberalising
policies of
glasnost and
perestroika owed a great
deal to
Alexander Dubček's
"Socialism with a human face".
The
Law on Cooperatives enacted
in May 1988 was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms
during the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time
since
Vladimir Lenin's
New Economic Policy, the law permitted
private ownership of businesses in the service, manufacturing, and
foreign-trade sectors. The law initially imposed high taxes and
employment restrictions, although these were ignored by some SSRs.
Later the restrictions were revised to avoid discouraging
private-sector activity. Under the provision for private ownership,
cooperative restaurants, shops, and manufacturers became part of
the Soviet scene. Under the new law, the restructuring of large
'All-Union' industrial organisations also began.
Aeroflot, was split up eventually becoming several
independent airlines. These newly autonomous business organisations
were encouraged to seek foreign investment.
In June 1988, at the CPSU's Party Conference, Gorbachev launched
radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government
apparatus. He proposed a new executive in the form of a
presidential system, as well as a new legislative element, to be
called the
Congress of
People's Deputies. Elections to the Congress of People's
Deputies were held throughout the Soviet Union in March and April
1989. This was the first free election in the Soviet Union since
1917. Gorbachev became
Chairman of the Supreme
Soviet (or
head
of state) on 25 May 1989. On 15 March 1990, Gorbachev was
elected as the first executive
President of the Soviet Union
with 59% of the Deputies' votes being an unopposed candidate. The
Congress met for the first time on 25 May in order to elect
representatives from Congress to sit on the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet
Union. Nonetheless, the Congress posed problems for Gorbachev;
its sessions were televised, airing more criticism and encouraging
people to expect ever more rapid reform. In the elections, many
Party candidates were defeated. Furthermore,
Boris Yeltsin was elected in Moscow and
returned to political prominence to become an increasingly vocal
critic of Gorbachev.
Foreign engagements
In contrast to his controversial domestic reforms, Gorbachev was
largely hailed in the West for his 'New Thinking' in foreign
affairs. During his tenure, he sought to improve relations and
trade with the West by reducing Cold War tensions. He established
close relationships with several Western leaders, such as West
German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl, U.S.
President
Ronald Reagan, and
British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher - who famously remarked:
"I like Mr Gorbachev, we can do business together".
Gorbachev understood the link between achieving international
détente and domestic reform and thus began extending 'New Thinking'
abroad immediately. On 8 April 1985, he announced the suspension of
the deployment of
SS-20s in Europe as
a move towards resolving intermediate-range nuclear weapons (INF)
issues. Later that year, in September, Gorbachev proposed that the
Soviets and Americans both cut their nuclear arsenals in half. He
went to France on his first trip abroad as Soviet leader in
October. November saw the
Geneva
Summit between Gorbachev and
Ronald
Reagan. Though no concrete agreement was made, Gorbachev and
Reagan struck a personal relationship and decided to hold further
meetings.
January 1986 would see Gorbachev make his boldest international
move so far, when he announced his proposal for the elimination of
intermediate-range
nuclear weapons
in Europe and his strategy for eliminating all nuclear weapons by
the year 2000 (often referred to as the 'January Proposal').
He also
began the process of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan
and Mongolia
on 28
July. Nonetheless, many observers, such as
Jack F. Matlock Jr. (despite generally praising
Gorbachev as well as Reagan), have criticised Gorbachev for taking
too long to achieve withdrawal from the
Afghanistan War, citing it as an
example of lingering elements of 'old thinking' in Gorbachev.
On 11
October 1986, Gorbachev and Reagan met in Reykjavík
, Iceland
to discuss
reducing intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. To
the immense surprise of both men's advisers, the two agreed in
principle to removing INF systems from Europe and to equal global
limits of 100 INF missile warheads. They also essentially agreed in
principle to eliminate all nuclear weapons in 10 years (by 1996),
instead of by the year 2000 as in Gorbachev's original outline.
Continuing trust issues, particularly over reciprocity and Reagan's
Strategic Defense
Initiative , meant that the summit is often regarded as a
failure for not producing a concrete agreement immediately, or for
leading to a staged elimination of nuclear weapons. In the long
term, nevertheless, this would culminate in the signing of the
Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, after Gorbachev had proposed
this elimination on 22 July 1987 (and it was subsequently agreed on
in Geneva on 24 November).
In February, 1988, Gorbachev announced the full withdrawal of
Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The withdrawal was completed the
following year, although the civil war continued as the
Mujahedin pushed to overthrow the pro-Soviet
Najibullah regime. An estimated
28,000 Soviets were killed between 1979 and 1989 as a result of the
Afghanistan War.
Gorbachev in one-on-one discussions
with Reagan
Also during 1988, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would
abandon the
Brezhnev Doctrine, and
allow the
Eastern bloc nations to
freely determine their own internal affairs. Jokingly dubbed the
"
Sinatra Doctrine" by Gorbachev's
Foreign Ministry spokesman
Gennadi
Gerasimov, this policy of non-intervention in the affairs of
the other
Warsaw Pact states proved to
be the most momentous of Gorbachev's foreign policy reforms.
In his 6
July 1989 speech arguing for a "common European home" before the
Council of Europe in Strasbourg
, France, Gorbachev declared: "The social and
political order in some countries changed in the past, and it can
change in the future too, but this is entirely a matter for each
people to decide. Any interference in the internal affairs,
or any attempt to limit the sovereignty of another state, friend,
ally, or another, would be inadmissible."
Moscow's abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine led to a string of
counter-revolutions in
Eastern Europe
throughout 1989, in which Communism was overthrown. By the end of
1989, revolts had spread from one Eastern European capital to
another, ousting the regimes built on Eastern Europe after
World War II.
With the exception of Romania
, the popular upheavals against the pro-Soviet
Communist regimes were all peaceful ones. (
See Revolutions of 1989) The loosening
of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe effectively ended the
Cold War, and for this, Gorbachev was
awarded the
Otto Hahn Peace Medal
in Gold in 1989 and the
Nobel
Peace Prize on 15 October 1990.
The rest of 1989 was taken up by the increasingly problematic
nationalities question and the dramatic collapse of the
Eastern Bloc. Despite international détente
reaching unprecedented levels, with the Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan completed in
January and U.S.-Soviet talks continuing between Gorbachev and
George H. W. Bush,
domestic reforms were suffering from increasing divergence between
reformists, who criticised the pace of change, and conservatives,
who criticised the extent of change. Gorbachev states that he tried
to find the middle ground between both groups, but this would draw
more criticism towards him. The story from this point on moves away
from reforms and becomes one of the nationalities question and the
eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
On 9
November, people in the German Democratic Republic
(East
Germany
, GDR) broke down the Berlin Wall
after a peaceful protest against the country's
dictatorial administration, including a demonstration by some one
million people in East Berlin on 4
November. Unlike earlier riots which were ended by military
force with the help of USSR, Gorbachev, who came to be lovingly
called "Gorby" in West Germany, now decided not to interfere with
the process in Germany. He stated that German reunification was an
internal German matter.
Coit D. Blacker wrote in 1990 that the Soviet
leadership "appeared to have believed that whatever loss of
authority the Soviet Union might suffer in Eastern Europe would be
more than offset by a net increase in its influence in Western
Europe." Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Gorbachev ever intended
for the complete dismantling of Communism in the Warsaw Pact
countries. Rather, Gorbachev assumed that the Communist parties of
Eastern Europe could be reformed in a similar way to the reforms he
hoped to achieve in the CPSU. Just as
perestroika was
aimed at making the USSR more efficient economically and
politically, Gorbachev believed that the
Comecon and Warsaw Pact could be reformed into more
effective entities.
Alexander Yakovlev, a close
advisor to Gorbachev, would later state that it would have been
"absurd to keep the system" in Eastern Europe. In contrast to
Gorbachev, Yakovlev had come to the conclusion that the
Soviet-dominated Comecon was inherently unworkable and that the
Warsaw Pact had "no relevance to real life."
Collapse of the Soviet Union
While
Gorbachev's political initiatives were positive for freedom and democracy in the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc
allies, the economic policy of his government gradually brought the
country close to disaster. By the end of the 1980s, severe
shortages of basic food supplies (
meat,
sugar) led to the reintroduction of the
war-time system of distribution using food cards that limited each
citizen to a certain amount of product per month. Compared to 1985,
the state deficit grew from 0 to 109 billion rubles; gold funds
decreased from 2,000 to 200 tons; and external debt grew from 0 to
120 billion dollars.
Furthermore, the
democratisation of
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had irreparably undermined the
power of the
CPSU and Gorbachev
himself. The relaxation of censorship and attempts to create more
political openness had the unintended effect of re-awakening
long-suppressed nationalist and anti-Russian feelings in the
Soviet republics.
Calls for
greater independence from Moscow's rule grew louder, especially in
the Baltic republics of Lithuania
, Latvia
, and
Estonia
which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by
Stalin in 1940. Nationalist feeling
also took hold in Georgia
, Ukraine
, Armenia
and Azerbaijan
.
In
December 1986, the first signs of the nationalities problem that
would haunt the later years of the Soviet Union's existence
surfaced as riots, named Jeltoqsan,
occurred in Alma
Ata
and other areas of Kazakhstan after Dinmukhamed
Kunayev was replaced as First Secretary of the Communist Party of
Kazakhstan. Nationalism would then surface in Russia in
May 1987, as 600 members of
Pamyat, a nascent
Russian nationalist group, demonstrated in Moscow and were becoming
increasingly linked to
Boris Yeltsin,
who received their representatives at a meeting.
Glasnost hastened awareness of the national
sovereignty problem. The free flow of information had been so
completely suppressed for so long in the Soviet Union that many of
the ruling class had all but forgotten that the Soviet Union was an
empire conquered through military force and consolidated by the
persecution of millions of people, and not a union voluntarily
entered into by local populations. Thus, the extremity of local
desire for independent control of their own affairs took these
leaders by surprise, and the leaders were unprepared for the depth
of the long pent-up feelings that were released.
Violence
erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh - an
Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan - between February and April, when Armenians living
in the area began a new wave of protests over the arbitrary
transfer of the historically Armenian region from Armenia to Azerbaijan in 1920 upon Joseph Stalin's
decision. Gorbachev imposed a temporary solution, but it did
not last, as fresh trouble arose in Nagorno-Karabakh between June
and July.
Turmoil would once again return in late
1988, this time in Armenia itself, when the Leninakan
Earthquake
hit the region on 7 December. Poor local
infrastructure magnified the hazard and some 25,000 people died.
Gorbachev
was forced to break off his trip to the U.S. and cancel planned
travels to Cuba
and Britain
.
In March and April 1989 elections to the
Congress of People's Deputies
took place throughout the Soviet Union. This returned many
pro-independence republicans, as many
CPSU candidates were
rejected. The televised
Congress debates allowed the
dissemination of pro-independence propositions. Indeed, 1989 would
see numerous nationalistic expressions protests. Initiated by the
Baltic republics in January, laws were passed in most non-Russian
republics giving precedence for the republican language over
Russian.
9 April would
see the crackdown of nationalist demonstrations by Soviet troops in
Tbilisi
. There would be further bloody protests in
Uzbekistan
in June, where Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks clashed
in Fergana. Apart from this violence, three major events
that altered the face of the nationalities issue occurred in 1989.
Estonia had declared its sovereignty in November, 1988, to be
followed by Lithuania in May 1989 and by Latvia in July (the
Communist Party of
Lithuania would also declare its independence from the
CPSU in December). This
brought the Union and the republics into clear confrontation and
would form a precedent for other republics.
Following this, in July, on the eve of the anniversary of the
signing of the
Nazi-Soviet
Pact, it was formally revealed that the treaty did indeed
include a plan for the annexation of the Baltic countries into the
USSR (as happened in 1940) and the division of Poland between the
two countries. The unsavory past was exposed and gave impetus to
the peoples of the Baltic countries who could now even more
legitimately claim that they were subject to oppression. Finally,
the
Eastern bloc collapsed in the
autumn of 1989, raising hopes that Gorbachev would extend his
non-interventionist doctrine to the internal workings of the
USSR.
Crisis of the Union, 1990-91
_186420.jpg/180px-Gorbachev_(cropped)_186420.jpg)
Gorbachev in 1990
1990 began with nationalist turmoil in January.
Azerbaijanis rioted and troops were sent in to restore order;
many Moldavians demonstrated in favour of
unification with the post-Communist Romania; and Lithuanian demonstrations continued. The same month, in a
hugely significant move, Armenia asserted its right to veto laws coming from the
All-Union level, thus intensifying the 'war of laws' between
republics and Moscow.
Soon after, the
CPSU, which had already
lost much of its control, began to lose even more power as
Gorbachev deepened political reform. The February Central Committee
Plenum advocated multi-party elections; local elections held
between February and March returned a large number of
pro-independence candidates. The
Congress of People's Deputies
then amended the Soviet Constitution in March, removing Article 6,
which guaranteed the monopoly of the CPSU. The process of political
reform was therefore coming from above and below, and was gaining a
momentum that would augment republican nationalism.
Soon after the
constitutional amendment, Lithuania declared independence and elected Vytautas Landsbergis as
President.
On 15 March, Gorbachev himself was elected as the only
President of the Soviet Union
by the
Congress of
People's Deputies and chose a
Presidential Council of 15
politicians. Gorbachev was essentially creating his own political
support base independent of CPSU conservatives and radical
reformers. The new Executive was designed to be a powerful position
to guide the spiraling reform process, and the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet
Union and Congress of People's Deputies had already given
Gorbachev increasingly presidential powers in February. This would
be again a source of criticism from reformers. Despite the apparent
increase in Gorbachev's power, he was unable to stop the process of
nationalistic assertion.
Further embarrassing facts about Soviet
history were revealed in April, when the government admitted that
the NKVD had carried out the infamous Katyn
Massacre
of Polish
army officers during World War II;
previously, the USSR had blamed Nazi Germany.
More significantly for Gorbachev's position, Boris Yeltsin was
reaching a new level of prominence, as he was elected
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian
SFSR in May, effectively making him the de jure leader of the
Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Problems for Gorbachev
would once more come from the Russian parliament in June, when it
declared the precedence of Russian laws over All-Union level
legislation.
Gorbachev's personal position continued changing. At XXVIIIth CPSU
Congress in July, Gorbachev was re-elected General Secretary but
this position was now completely independent of Soviet government,
and the Politburo had no say in the ruling of the country.
Gorbachev further reduced Party power in the same month, when he
issued a decree abolishing Party control of all areas of the media
and broadcasting. At the same time, Gorbachev was working to
consolidate his Presidential position, culminating in the Supreme
Soviet granting him special powers to rule by decree in September
in order to pass a much-needed plan for transition to a market
economy. However, the Supreme Soviet could not agree on which
programme to adopt. Gorbachev pressed on with political reform, his
proposal for setting up a new Soviet government, with a Soviet of
the Federation consisting of representatives from all 15 republics,
was passed through the Supreme Soviet in November. In December,
Gorbachev was once more granted increased executive power by the
Supreme Soviet, arguing that such moves were necessary to counter
"the dark forces of nationalism". Such moves led to
Eduard Shevardnadze's resignation;
Gorbachev's former ally warned of an impending dictatorship. This
move was a serious blow to Gorbachev personally and to his efforts
for reform.
Meanwhile, Gorbachev was losing further ground to nationalists.
October
1990 saw the founding of DemoRossiya,
the Russian nationalist party; a few days later, both Ukraine and Russia declared their laws completely sovereign
over Soviet level laws. The 'war of laws' had become an open
battle, with the Supreme Soviet refusing to recognise the actions
of the two republics. Gorbachev would publish the draft of a new
union treaty in November, which envisioned a continued union called
the
Union of
Sovereign Soviet Republics, but, going into 1991, the actions
of Gorbachev were steadily being overtaken by the centrifugal
secessionist forces.
January and February would see a new level of turmoil in the
Baltic republics. On 10 January
1991 Gorbachev issued an ultimatum-like request addressing the
Lithuanian Supreme
Council demanding the restoration of the validity of the
constitution of the Soviet Union in Lithuania and the revoking of
all anti-constitutional laws.
In his Memoirs, Gorbachev asserts
that, on 12 January, he convened the Council of the Federation and
political measures to prevent bloodshed were agreed, including
sending representatives of the Council of the Federation on a
"fact-finding mission" to Vilnius
. However, before the delegation arrived, the
local branches of the KGB
and armed
forces had worked together to seize the TV tower in Vilnius;
Gorbachev asked the heads of the KGB and military if they had
approved such action, and there is no evidence that they, or
Gorbachev, ever approved this move. Gorbachev cites
documents found in the RSFSR Prokuratura after the August coup,
which only mentioned that "some 'authorities'" had sanctioned the
actions.
A book called Alpha – the KGB's Top
Secret Unit also suggests that a "KGB operation co-ordinated
with the military" was undertaken by the KGB Alpha Group. Archie Brown, in
The Gorbachev Factor,
uses the memoirs of many people around Gorbachev and in the upper
echelons of the Soviet political landscape, to implicate General
Valentin Varennikov, a member of
the August coup plotters, and General
Viktor Achalov, another August coup
conspirator. These persons were characterised as individuals "who
were prepared to remove Gorbachev from his presidential office
unconstitutionally" and "were more than capable of using
unauthorised violence against nationalist separatists some months
earlier".
Brown criticises Gorbachev
for "a conscious tilt in the direction of the conservative forces
he was trying to keep within an increasingly fragile coalition" who
would later betray him; he also criticises Gorbachev "for his
tougher line and heightened rhetoric against the Lithuanians in the
days preceding the attack and for his slowness in condemning the
killings" but notes that Gorbachev did not approve any action and
was seeking political solutions.
As a
result of continued violence, at least 14 civilians were killed and
more than 600 injured from 11-13 January 1991 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The strong Western reaction and
the actions of Russian democratic forces put the president and
government of the Soviet Union into an awkward situation, as news
of support for Lithuanians from Western democracies started to
appear.
Further problems surfaced in Riga
, Latvia, on
20 January and 21, where OMON (special Ministry of the Interior)
troops killed 4 people. Archie Brown suggests that
Gorbachev's response this time was better, condemning the rogue
action, sending his condolences and suggesting that secession could
take place if it went through the procedures outlined in the Soviet
constitution. According to Gorbachev's aide, Shakhnazarov (quoted
by Archie Brown), Gorbachev was finally beginning to accept the
inevitability of "losing" the Baltic republics, although he would
try all political means to preserve the Union. Brown believes that
this put him in "imminent danger" of being overthrown by
hard-liners against the secession.
Gorbachev thus continued to draw up a new treaty of union which
would have created a truly voluntary federation in an increasingly
democratised Soviet Union. The new treaty was strongly supported by
the
Central Asian republics, who needed
the economic power and markets of the Soviet Union to prosper.
However, the more radical reformists, such as
Russian SFSR President
Boris Yeltsin, were increasingly convinced
that a rapid transition to a market economy was required and were
more than happy to contemplate the disintegration of the Soviet
Union if that was required to achieve their aims. Nevertheless, a
referendum on the future of the Soviet Union was held in March
(with a referendum in Russia on the creation of a presidency),
which returned an average of 76.4% in the 9 republics where it was
taken, with a turn-out of 80% of the adult population.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova
did not participate. Following this, an
April meeting at Novo-Ogarevo
between Gorbachev and the heads of the 9 republics
issued a statement on speeding up the creation of a new Union
treaty. Meanwhile, on 12 June 1991 Boris Yeltsin was elected
President of the
Russian Federation by 57.3% of the vote (with a turnout of
74%).
The August 1991 coup
In contrast to the reformers' moderate approach to the new treaty,
the hard-line
apparatchiks, still strong
within the CPSU and military establishment, were completely opposed
to anything which might lead to the break-up of the Soviet Union.
On the eve of the treaty's signing, the hardliners struck.
Hardliners in the Soviet leadership, calling themselves the
'
State
Emergency Committee', launched the
August coup in 1991 in an
attempt to remove Gorbachev from power and prevent the signing of
the new union treaty.
During this time, Gorbachev spent three days
(19, 20 and 21 August) under house arrest at a dacha in the Crimea
before
being freed and restored to power. However, upon his return,
Gorbachev found that neither union nor Russian power structures
heeded his commands as support had swung over to Yeltsin, whose
defiance had led to the coup's collapse. Furthermore, Gorbachev was
forced to fire large numbers of his Politburo and, in several
cases, arrest them. Those arrested for high treason included the
"
Gang of Eight" that
had led the coup, including
Kryuchkov,
Yazov,
Pavlov
and
Yanayev.
Pugo was found shot; and
Akhromeyev, who had offered his assistance
but was never implicated, was found hanging in his Kremlin office.
Most of these men had been former allies of Gorbachev's or promoted
by him, which drew fresh criticism.
Aftermath of the coup and the final collapse
Between
21 August and 22 September, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus
, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan
, and Turkmenistan
declared their independence. Simultaneously,
Boris Yeltsin ordered the CPSU to suspend its
activities on the territory of Russia and closed the Central Committee building at Staraya
Ploschad
. The Russian flag now flew beside the Soviet
flag at the
Kremlin. In light of these
circumstances, Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the CPSU
on 24 August and advised the Central Committee to dissolve.
Gorbachev's hopes of a new Union were further hit when the
Congress of People's Deputies
dissolved itself on 5 September.
Though Gorbachev and the representatives
of 8 republics (excluding Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) signed an agreement on forming a new economic
community on 18 October, events were overtaking
Gorbachev.
With the country in a rapid state of deterioration, the final blow
to Gorbachev's vision was effectively dealt by a Ukrainian
referendum on 1 December, where the Ukrainian people voted for
independence.
The presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met in Belovezh Forest
, near Brest, Belarus
, on 8 December, founding the Commonwealth of Independent
States and declaring the end of the Soviet Union in the Belavezha Accords
. Gorbachev was presented with a fait
accompli and reluctantly agreed with Yeltsin, on 17 December, to dissolve the
Soviet
Union. Gorbachev resigned on 25 December and the
Soviet
Union was formally dissolved the next day. Two
days later, on 27 December,
Yeltsin
moved into Gorbachev's old office.
Gorbachev had aimed to maintain the
CPSU as a united party
but move it in the direction of
social
democracy. But when the CPSU was proscribed after the
August coup, Gorbachev was left
with no effective power base beyond the armed forces.
Activities after resignation
[[Image:Mulroney Thatcher and Gorbachev at Reagan's
funeral.jpg|thumb|right|Gorbachev (left) with former Canadian
PrimeMinister
Brian Mulroney and
former British Prime Minister
Margaret
Thatcher at the
funeral of Ronald
Reagan, 11 June 2004]]Following his resignation and the
collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev remained active in Russian
politics. Especially during the early years of the post-Soviet era,
he expressed criticism at the reforms carried out by Russian
president
Boris Yeltsin. When
president Yeltsin called a referendum for 25 April 1993 in an
attempt to achieve even greater powers as president, Gorbachev did
not vote, and instead called for new presidential elections to
happen soon.
Following a failed run for the presidency in 1996, Gorbachev
established the
Social
Democratic Party of Russia, a union between several Russian
social democratic parties. He
resigned as party leader in May 2004 over a disagreement with the
party's chairman over the direction taken in the December 2003
election campaign. The party was later banned in 2007 by the
Supreme Court of
the Russian Federation due to its failure to establish local
offices with at least 500 members in the majority of Russian
regions, which is required by Russian law for a political
organisation to be listed as party. Later that year, Gorbachev
founded a new political party, called the
Union of Social-Democrats. In June
2004, Gorbachev represented Russia at the
funeral of Ronald
Reagan.
Gorbachev has also appeared in numerous media events since his
resignation from office. In 1993, Gorbachev appeared as himself in
the
Wim Wenders film,
Faraway, So Close!, the sequel to
Wings of Desire. In 1997,
Gorbachev appeared with his granddaughter Anastasia in an
internationally-screened television commercial for
Pizza Hut. The U.S. corporation's payment for the
60-second ad went to Gorbachev's not-for-profit
Gorbachev Foundation. In 2007,
French luxury brand
Louis Vuitton
announced that Gorbachev would be shown in an ad campaign for their
signature luggage.
On June 16, 2009, Gorbachev announced that he had recorded an album
of old Russian romantic ballads entitled
Songs for Raisa
to raise money for a charity dedicated to his late wife. On the
album, he sings the songs himself accompanied by Russian musician
Andrei Makarevich.
Since his resignation, Gorbachev has remained involved in world
affairs.
He founded the Gorbachev Foundation in 1992,
headquartered in San Francisco, California
. He later founded
Green Cross International, with
which he was one of three major sponsors of the
Earth Charter. He also became a member of the
Club of Rome and the
Club of Madrid.
In the decade that followed the Cold War, Gorbachev opposed both
the U.S.-led
NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999 and the U.S.-led
Iraq
War in 2003. On 27 July 2007, Gorbachev criticised U.S. foreign
policy: “What has followed are unilateral actions, what has
followed are wars, what has followed is ignoring the U.N. Security
Council, ignoring international law and ignoring the will of the
people, even the American people,” he said.
That same year, he
visited New
Orleans, Louisiana
, a city hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina, and promised he would
return in 2011 to personally lead a local revolution if the U.S.
government had not repaired the levees by that time. He said
that revolutionary action should be a last resort.
Concerning the
2008 South Ossetia
war, in a 12 August 2008 op-ed in
The Washington Post, Gorbachev
criticized the U.S. support for Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili and for moving to
bring
Caucasus into the sphere of its
"national interest." He later said the following:
In
September 2008 Gorbachev announced he would make a comeback to the
Russian politics along with a former KGB officer,
Alexander Lebedev. Their
party is known as the
Independent Democratic
Party of Russia. He also is part owner of the opposition
newspaper
Novaya
Gazeta.
On 20 March 2009, Gorbachev met with United States President
Barack Obama and Vice President
Joe Biden in efforts to "reset" strained
relations between Russia and the United States.
On 27
March 2009, Gorbachev visited Eureka
College in Eureka,
Illinois
which is the alma mater of former president
Ronald Reagan. He toured the campus
and later traveled to Peoria, Illinois
as the keynote speaker at the Reagan Day
Dinner.
To
commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev
accompanied former Polish leader Lech
Walesa and German Chancellor Angela
Merkel at a celebration in Berlin
on 9
November 2009.
Call for global restructuring
Gorbachev calls for a kind of perestroika or restructuring of
societies around the world, starting in particular with that of the
United States, because he is of the view that the economic crisis
of 2007-present shows that the
Washington consensus economic model is
a failure that will sooner or later have to be replaced.
According
to Gorbachev, countries such as Brazil
, Malaysia
and China
which rejected the Washington consensus and the
International Monetary Fund
approach to economic development, have done far
better economically on the whole and achieved far more fair results
for the average citizen, than countries that accepted
it.
Honours and accolades
- In 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his leading role in
the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the
international community."
- In
1995, Gorbachev received an Honorary Doctorate from Durham
University
, County Durham,
England for his contribution to "the cause of political tolerance
and an end to Cold War-style confrontation".
- For his historic role in the evolution of glasnost,
and for his leadership in the disarmament negotiations with the
United States during the Reagan administration, Gorbachev
was awarded the Courage of Conscience award 20 October 1996.
- In
2002, Gorbachev received an honorary degree of a Doctor in Laws
(LL.D.) "in recognition of his political service and contribution
to peace" from Trinity College, Dublin
, Ireland
.
Religious affiliation
Gorbachev was baptised in the
Russian Orthodox Church as a child.
He campaigned for establishment of freedom of religion laws in the
former Soviet Union.
Remarks by Gorbachev to Ronald Reagan in discussions during their
summits, made the U.S. President deeply intrigued by the
possibility that the leader of the
Evil
Empire might be a "closet Christian." Reagan seems to have seen
this as the most interesting aspect of his meeting with the Soviet
leader in Geneva.
At the end of a November 1996 interview on CSPAN's Booknotes,
Gorbachev described his plans for future books. He made the
following reference to God: "I don't know how many years God will
be giving me, [or] what His plans are."
In 2005, he said that Pope
John Paul
II's "devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all
of us" following the pontiff's death. "What can I say -- it must
have been the will of God. He acted really courageously." In a 1989
meeting, he had told him "We appreciate your mission on this high
pulpit, we are convinced that it will leave a great mark on
history." On the other hand, some have alleged that Gorbachev
signed a
contract killing against
Pope John Paul II back in 1979, which resulted in a failed
assassination attempt. However, he has categorically denied this
accusation.
Gorbachev
was the recipient of the Athenagoras Humanitarian Award of the
Order of St.
Andrew Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of
Constantinople
on 20 November 2005.
On 19
March 2008, during a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of Saint Francis in Assisi
, Italy, Gorbachev made an announcement which has
been interpreted to the effect that he was a Christian. Gorbachev stated that "St
Francis is, for me, the
alter
Christus, another
Christ. His story
fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life." He
added, "It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so
it was important that I came to visit his tomb."
However, a few days later, he reportedly told the Russian news
agency
Interfax, "Over the last few days
some media have been disseminating fantasies—I can't use any other
word—about my secret Catholicism, [...] To sum up and avoid any
misunderstandings, let me say that I have been and remain an
atheist." In response, a spokesman for the
Russian Orthodox patriarch
Alexei II told the Russian media: "In
Italy, he (Gorbachev) spoke in emotional terms, rather than in
terms of faith. He is still on his way to Christianity. If he
arrives, we will welcome him."
Naevus flammeus
Mikhail Gorbachev in 2007
Gorbachev is one of the most famous people in modern times with
visible
naevus flammeus. The crimson
birthmark on the top of his bald head was
the source of much satire among critics and cartoonists. Contrary
to some accounts, it is not
rosacea. In his
official photos as a
Politburo member this
birthmark was removed.
Though some suggested that it be surgically removed, Gorbachev
opted not to, as once he was publicly known to have the mark, he
believed it would be perceived as his being more concerned with his
appearance than other more important issues.
See also
References
- Raisa Gorbachyova's Biography on the Gorbachyov Foundation
website
- Gorbachev, M. S., Memoirs, 1996 (London: Bantam
Books)
- Chiesa, Giulietto, 1991, Time of change: an insider's view of Russia's
transformation, I.B.Tauris, pp.30.
- Hosking, By Geoffrey A., 1991, The awakening of the Soviet Union, Harvard
University Press, pp.139.
- English, R., D, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev,
Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War, 2000 (Columbia
University Press)
- Hough, Jerry F. (1997), pp. 124-125
- Kishlansky, Mark (2001), p. 322
- Matlock, J. F. Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War
Ended, 2004
- Coit D. Blacker. "The Collapse of Soviet Power in Europe."
Foreign Affairs. 1990.
- Steele, Jonathan. Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev and the
Mirage of Democracy. Boston: Faber, 1994.
- Boltunov, M., Alfa – Sverkhsekretnyi Otryad KGB [Alpha –
The KGB's Top-Secret Unit], 1992, (Moscow: Kedr)
- Brown, A., The Gorbachev Factor, 1996, (New York:
Oxford University Press). ISBN 0-19-288052-7
- Maurizio Giuliano, Müssen schnell
wählen (interview), Profil, nr. 19, 10 May 1993, page 61
- Mosnews.com
- Mikhail Gorbachev appears in Pizza Hut
advertising campaign, PRNewswire, 23 December
1997.Retrieved on 3 August 2007.
- Mikhail Gorbachev returns to Russian
politics
- Лебедев и Горбачев стали совладельцами "Новой
газеты" Grani.ru 7
June 2006
-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090323/pl_afp/usrussiadiplomacyobamagorbachev_20090323215234
Retrieved on 24 March 2009.
- http://www.week.com/news/local/42019457.html Retrieved on 24
March 2009.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/world/europe/10germany.html?_r=1&hp
- Washington Post, June 7, 2009, "We Had Our Perestroika. It's
High Time for Yours" Op-ed piece by Mikhail Gorbachev
- The Nobel Peace Prize 1990
- Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation &
Library
- Honorary Doctorate from Durham
- The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Recipients
List
- Trinity College Honours Mikhail Gorbachev
- Red Herring: Mikhail Gorbachev's Not-Quite
Conversion Christianity Today (Web-only) 4 April 2008,
Vol. 52.
- Gorbachev: Pope was 'example to all of us'
- Record of Conversation between M.S. Gorbachev and
John Paul II
- Gorbachev signed JP II KGB death warrant
- Gorbachev denies ordering Pope's
assassination
- Athenagoras humanitarian award to Nobel peace prize
laureate Mikhail Gorbachev Website of Gorbachev Foundation
Further reading
External links
in Simi Valley, California
.
in Ottawa
,
Canada. He was also given an honorary degree from
The University
of Calgary
in Calgary
, Alberta
, Canada.
in Louisville
, Kentucky
.
.
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