Mikhail Gorbachev, a Russian and Soviet politician known for being the last leader of the Soviet Union, died at age 91 on Tuesday after a period of illness, according to a Tuesday BBC news article.
Gorbachev came into power in 1985, his policies of “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (rebuilding) were significant in allowing more freedom in speech and economic reform in the former Soviet Union.
Sabrina Pinnell, senior lecturer at San Jose State on post-Soviet politics, expressed how the U.S. loved Gorbachev for his policies and his willingness to open the former Soviet Union up to the West.
“The U.S. loved him, but the U.S. was also mostly unaware of what was going on in the USSR due to the limits on the press and communications,” Pinnell said in an email.
In Germany, he is viewed endearingly as his policies led to the reunification of the country, which led to the fall of the Berlin wall that eventually culminated with the official reunification of East and West Berlin in 1990.
President Joe Biden praised Gorbachev in aTuesday statement, acknowledging his openness to democratic change.
“After decades of brutal political repression, he embraced democratic reforms. He believed in glasnost and perestroika – openness and restructuring – not as mere slogans, but as the path forward for the people of the Soviet Union after so many years of isolation and deprivation,” Biden said, according to a Tuesday Associated Press article.
Gorbachev was widely praised in the West for his efforts in implementing democratic reforms in the Soviet Union, according to the Associated Press article. However, in his home country he was considered a pariah in what many see as the implosion of the Soviet Union and diminution as a superpower.
Political liberalization implemented by the former leader in the mid-1980s allowed for the formation of political parties which were never tolerated in the country, according to “Russia’s Unfinished Revolution” by Michael McFaul, a book detailing the history of political change from Gorbachev to current President Vladimir Putin.
That led to various Eastern Bloc countries abandoning Marxist-Leninst governance in 1989-90 and internally growing nationalist sentiment that threatened to break up the Soviet Union, against his own wishes.
Those events, along with the unsuccessful August coup to try to remove Gorbachev as leader, led to its formal dissolution on Dec. 26, 1991.
“The West had no idea that what he was doing was undermining the cohesion of the USSR, that there would be a coup attempt in August 1991, and final dissolution without any action by him in December 1991.” Pinnell said.
The coup attempt Pinnell is referring to is the August Coup, where Soviet leaders attempted to remove Gorbachev from power, but failed, according to the same book “Russia’s Unfinished Revolution.”
Gorbachev won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1990, prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union for his work in ending Cold War tensions with the U.S., a proxy war between the two countries from 1947-91, according to the Nobel Prize 1990 webpage.
Pinnell said after the dissolution of his country, Gorbachev continued to vocalize his opinions on the future of the Russian federation, but was widely seen as irrelevant in his home country.
“Gorbachev was hated by many at the end of his leadership, and still by Russian nationalists today,” Pinnell said. “His later attempts to influence politics were seen as largely irrelevant to people in the Former Soviet Union.”
He was a staunch critic of the first president of the Russian republic, Boris Yeltsin, and current Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Tuesday Washington Post article.
Putin offered his condolences and called the leader “a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of world history,” in contrast to his policies in the past, where he called the break of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (twentieth) century,” according to a Tuesday New York Times article.
Gorbachev leaves behind a complicated legacy, praised and reviled for changing the dynamics of world history, according to the Associated Press news article.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Gorbachev was an “extraordinary” statesman, “who will always remain in the country’s history,” he said. He also noted Gorbachev’s idealism towards the West. “Gorbachev gave an impulse for ending the Cold War and he sincerely wanted to believe that it would be over and an eternal romance would start between the renewed Soviet Union and the collective West.”
Pinnell spoke about how Gorbachev’s swiftness in implementing reforms led to more problems than solutions.
“Gorbachev assisted with the destruction of the USSR by trying to do economic reforms too late, political reforms too soon and allowing criticism of the state when things did not work out,” Pinnell said. “He was President rather late in his term as leader – being General Secretary of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) was what enabled him to do these things.”
