Gorbachev, Mikhail
Gorbachev, Mikhail 1931-
Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until that country’s demise in 1991, has gone down in history for peacefully dismantling the seventy-year-old repressive Communist system and for initiating the cold war’s nonviolent end after four decades of international tension. For this, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and is regarded by many, particularly outside Russia, as one of the twentieth century’s greatest leaders. Inside Russia, Gorbachev is more often blamed for the collapse of the Soviet Union, a breakup most Russians regret. Whether Gorbachev should be held directly responsible for that collapse is contested by many scholars who cite complex reasons for that country’s disintegration.
Born into a peasant family, Gorbachev grew up in the important agricultural region of Stavropol, in southern Russia. Highly intelligent and winning awards for both academic achievement and agricultural work, Gorbachev was accepted to the prestigious law faculty of Moscow State University in 1950. There, Gorbachev met educated, urban students from the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, one of whom, the Czech intellectual Zden\k Mlynár (1930–1997)—later a prominent 1968 Prague Spring reformer—became Gorbachev’s lifelong friend.
Returning to Stavropol in 1955, Gorbachev advanced to the top of the regional party hierarchy, and by 1978, he reached Moscow as the secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in charge of agriculture. By 1980 this young, energetic agricultural expert was elected as full member of the fourteen-strong Soviet Politburo (the highest Soviet decision-making body, stocked with octogenarians). Once the CPSU general secretary Leonid Brezhnev died in November 1982, Yuri Andropov emerged victorious from the leadership struggle, only to die fifteen months later and be replaced by the ailing Konstantin Chernenko, who survived for only thirteen months. Gorbachev became general secretary, and thus Soviet leader, in March 1985.
With skillful use of his new powers, Gorbachev pushed aside the old guard and reassigned top posts to like-minded anti-Stalinists such as Eduard Shevardnadze (b. 1928) and radical reformers, notably Aleksandr Yakovlev (1923–2005). He then embarked on diplomatic campaigns abroad that, over five years, grew into a foreign policy revolution featuring massive, asymmetrical cuts in Soviet weapons arsenals, acceptance of the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe, and finally, a radical push to join Europe as a democracy.
At home, Gorbachev managed—despite incessant opposition—to introduce increasingly important political reforms, dubbed perestroika (political and economic restructuring) and glasnost (openness in media and society). Though always predisposed toward reform, Gorbachev did not stress democratization until 1987, when his powers had grown strong enough and his own views consolidated. In 1988 he established competitive elections and a genuine legislative body. He worked to implement checks and balances, a law-governed state, political and religious freedoms, and genuine federalism. Radical economic reform proved far harder, because liberalizing prices risked social upheaval. The economy stagnated as the command economy unraveled, while market institutions remained unborn. The combination of political freedoms, high expectations, and economic decline exacerbated tensions between the fifteen republics and the Soviet state. Striving to keep the U.S.S.R. together, Gorbachev embarked on a new federal framework; but politics at home undercut him. An attempted coup in August 1991 left him critically weakened. In December Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007), president of the Russian Republic, dealt the final blow to Gorbachev—and to the U.S.S.R.—by withdrawing Russia from the Soviet Union. Gorbachev resigned, leaving a great legacy. He brought freedom to Russia and played the most decisive part in ending the cold war.
SEE ALSO Cold War; Democracy; Democratization; Economies, Transitional; Glasnost; Russian Federation; Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Yeltsin, Boris
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Archie. 1996. The Gorbachev Factor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
English, Robert. 2000. Russia and the Idea of the West. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mlynář, Zdeněk, and Mikhail Gorbachev. 2002. Conversations with Gorbachev. Trans. George Shriver. New York: Columbia University Press.
Julie M. Newton