Mikhail Gorbachev failed at everything he tried as the Soviet Union’s last leader. The state he led could only change the world for the better by failing – and it did. But, alas, not for long.
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, didn’t just fail as an autocrat, squandering the near-unlimited power handed to him as party boss; he also failed as a politician, despite his penchant for unscripted speeches and mixing with people in public squares. When he tried to run for president of Russia in 1996, he won 0.51 percent of the vote. Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images/TNS
I will never forget the moment in August 1991 when – at 19 years old, slightly stoned and very much in love – I watched the statue of KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky tumble in Moscow. This was on Gorbachev’s watch. Many of my German neighbors know exactly where they were when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, also on Gorbachev’s watch. But I have never felt any kind of debt to the fumbling last emperor of the doomed Soviet empire. It was we – we Russians and Germans and Lithuanians and Ukrainians and Poles and Georgians and many others – who created those inspiring moments out of our utter misery.
Our generation across much of Europe and Asia were lucky he lacked Vladimir Putin’s evil efficiency. I still believe we would have prevailed even if he did.
However, the fact that we couldn’t hold on to what we won is our responsibility, too. We have wasted Gorbachev’s legacy of beneficial failure.
Gorbachev’s entire record atop the Soviet hierarchy was that of a flailing, clueless loser, always one step behind the times. He started out as Communist Party leader in 1985 with a campaign to eradicate drunkenness, which created endless lines for vodka and ruined winemaking in Moldova for decades to come because vines were mowed down. Russians only drank more and more as the Soviet economy collapsed.
Gorbachev launched an economic “acceleration” drive that sank like a lead balloon because it stopped well short of embracing capitalism. He thought he was bringing communism closer to the people rather than dismantling it.
Shortages were atrocious. I remember a year without toilet paper in Moscow, the capital. Store shelves emptied of everything but three-liter jars of sweetened birch sap. Nothing worked. Amid the economic mismanagement, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up in 1986 and Gorbachev waited 18 days to address the nation about it, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to be exposed to the fallout.
Gorbachev permitted more media freedom. As a result, the whole country was soon reading and hearing on TV about previous crimes of a regime that refused to prosecute the perpetrators, many of whom were still alive as honored retirees.
When people in the former Soviet republics began rebelling and demanding independence, he – to put it generously – did little to prevent bloody crackdowns, even if there’s no clear evidence that he ordered them himself.
In 1990, Gorbachev, apparently alarmed by what he had unleashed, began rolling back the media liberalization. He appointed hardliners to key positions, from TV chief to interior minister. Gorbachev would fail to hold on to power. He finally witnessed the Soviet Union’s demise.
He didn’t just fail as an autocrat, squandering the near-unlimited power handed to him as party boss; he also failed as a politician, despite his penchant for unscripted speeches and mixing with people in public squares. When he tried to run for president of Russia in 1996, he won 0.51 percent of the vote.
Gorbachev won praise in the West as a highly pliable negotiator on international affairs. He will be forever remembered as the man who played the biggest role in making German reunification possible. But he failed to secure anything for the Soviet Union besides paltry economic aid. The dying colossus burned through those funds in a matter of months. That’s contributed to the nationalist resentment at the heart of Russia’s current imperialist resurgence.
Gorbachev’s declining health prevented him from speaking publicly in recent months: There are no direct Gorbachev remarks on Putin’s Ukraine invasion. A longtime Gorbachev friend, Alexei Venediktov, has said the last Soviet leader was “disappointed.” But in 2015, he defended the annexation of Crimea. He remained confused about the meaning of his own legacy.
Putin has learned from Gorbachev’s mistakes. His rollback of Russia’s freedoms and his return to imperialist aspirations was gradual, almost stealthy, and quietly consistent. He never dropped the ball where Gorbachev couldn’t help fumbling it. Gorbachev used to argue that a new, freer generation has grown up since the Soviet Union’s end; but, for all the hopes invested in it, this generation has been unable to put up anything like the unyielding resistance I was a part of in the Gorbachev era.
There is one thing I will miss about Gorbachev. He was so bad at leading an evil empire because he was too obviously human. He was carelessly emotional, incapable of keeping a poker face and – amazingly for a career party functionary – blind to intrigue. Breaking with a long tradition, he didn’t hide his love and admiration for his wife, Raisa, and later his grief at her death.
Most contemporary leaders lack this natural humanity, not just Putin. It’s a hindrance to political efficiency, of course. But it is perhaps why Gorbachev’s attempt to hold together a malevolent enterprise failed.
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