Mikhail Gorbachev is dead

At the age of 91, Mikhail Gorbachev has died in Moscow Central Hospital after a long and serious illness.

The son of a Russian father and a Ukrainian mother took over the leadership of the largest country in the world as General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985. At that time, the Soviet Union was a giant with feet of clay: militarily strong, economically on the way to a deep depression.

With the then 54-year-old, a fresh wind blew through the troubled empire for the first time, which was so strong on the outside. I also owed a lot to Mikhail Gorbachev. His policy of opening up (glasnost) and restructuring (perestrojka) made me travel to the Soviet Union early on, first to Moscow, Kyiv and Tbilisi in 1983 and then again and again, including study visits to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and the Crimea.

Because Gorbachev gave meaning to learning the Russian language.

In fact, under his leadership, the signs turned towards reconciliation, international understanding, and ultimately towards unity for Germany. Gorbachev earned the gratitude of the Germans forever. And many of his compatriots were also grateful to him that they were allowed to leave the former Soviet Union prison for the first time.

In the USSR itself, a phase of thawing began after the communist ice age: Stalin’s crimes were dealt with, the persecuted were rehabilitated, oppressed population groups were freed – including the deported Volga Germans. Free trade and entrepreneurship were allowed, albeit hesitantly at first, instead of being punished with imprisonment.

How Gorbachev brought freedom to his country

The dissident Andrei Sakharov was released. The underground newspapers and books known as “samizdat” were allowed to appear legally, and the press flourished. Discussion clubs sprang up everywhere, where until then the communist barracks yard tone had prevailed, or propaganda about supposedly blooming landscapes where in reality the shelves were empty. Gorbachev allowed the first free elections. He brought the defeated Soviet troops home from Afghanistan after nine years of war. Gorbachev gave millions of people the air to breathe. In just six years he turned the world upside down.

But early on this freedom was also abused by nationalists and the conflicts staunchly suppressed by Stalin were revived: bloody battles broke out over Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan, within Georgia and elsewhere. Gorbachev wanted to stop peaceful calls for self-determination of the peoples – as in the three Baltic republics incorporated by Stalin – with tanks in Vilnius. It was one of his fatal mistakes.

There were quite a few of them in Gorbachev’s eventful life. He did negotiate far-reaching disarmament treaties with US President Ronald Reagan, thus ending the Cold War. And he wrote the unforgettable sentence in the register of the GDR state leadership: “He who comes too late will be punished by life.”

But Gorbachev, who from March 1990 to December 1991, in addition to his role as General Secretary of the CPSU, was also the first and last President of the Soviet Union, could not get the process of disintegration in his own country under control. His promise of glasnost was first broken when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster shook the world on April 16, 1986 and the Soviet leadership tried to cover up the devastating extent.

The economic situation also became increasingly devastating. In the end, for example, the coal miners in the Kuzbass district didn’t even have soap to wash themselves after the shift. The US had urged Saudi Arabia to ramp up oil production, causing oil prices to plummet. Gorbachev’s state was financially drained, he himself lacked the courage to open up the economy and to take bold steps towards a market economy.

Gorbachev’s great adversary, Boris Yeltsin, who allied himself with the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus and declared the republics independent of the USSR, took advantage of this promise. That was the end of the Soviet Union. Previously, in the summer of 1991, communist hardliners from the party’s central committee had declared Gorbachev, who was vacationing in Crimea, to be deposed in a coup d’état.

While Gorbachev was under house arrest, Yeltsin successfully fought the putschists’ tanks in Moscow. Gorbachev survived politically, but Yeltsin became even more popular. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev sat alone in the Kremlin and gave his last televised address to his people, who had long since dispersed to the 15 successor states. Gorbachev, the procrastinator, had failed because he wanted to reform the Soviet Union but not destroy it.

Anyone who met Gorbachev afterwards experienced a broken man, a hopeful old politician who wanted to try something again. He was broken when he remembered his arch-rival Yeltsin and his relentless ousting. He, who agreed German unity in the Caucasus with Helmut Kohl in cardigans, was bitter about many politicians in the West: His hand in building the “common house of Europe” he had planned had been refused.

Following the news of his death, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen emphasized Gorbachev’s importance for Europe. “He played a crucial role in ending the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain,” von der Leyen wrote on Twitter Tuesday night. She described Gorbachev as a leader who was reliable and respected. “He paved the way for a free Europe. We will never forget this legacy.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote on Twitter: “I have always admired the courage and integrity he showed in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end.” He also contrasted Gorbachev with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “At a time of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, his relentless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to all of us,” Johnson wrote.

Emmanuel Macron, French President, praised Gorbachev as a “man of peace”. Macron wrote on Twitter that his decision opened “a path to freedom” for the Russians. UN Secretary-General António Guterres described Gorbachev as a “unique statesman” who changed the course of history. The statement by the Nobel Peace Prize winner that peace is not unity in similarity, but unity in diversity, was put into practice with his policy.

Gorbachev himself has had a rather divided relationship with Western politicians. Gorbachev said that he had no true partners in the West who even remotely understood the risk he was taking with his policy of glasnost and perestroika.

Instead of reforming himself after the Cold War and creating common structures and ways of thinking, the reformer of the century complained that a “pure winner’s mentality” had prevailed in the West. And this paved the way for a “power man” like Putin.

Years before his death, Gorbachev, the unfinished, tried to defy Putin. Politically unsuccessful in elections with small social democratic parties, the man they called “Gorbi” has used his world fame and fortune to keep opposition newspapers like Novaya Gazeta afloat.

After Putin’s attack on Ukraine, which no one in Russia is allowed to freely report on, it was over. And so, on the anniversary of Gorbachev’s death, the world is back where it was when he took office in 1985: during a phase of the Cold War. At that time Gorbachev ended it, now Putin is building on the new confrontation.

With agency material.

More: “Putin wants to revive the Russian Empire” – historian sees little chance of peace