Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev was the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union. He served as General Secretary of the USSR from 1985 to 1991 when he officially ended the cold war and the Soviet Union split apart. He was without question one of the most important figures in the 20th century and his policies and actions as General Secretary shaped the world we have today.
How did a man with his reformist views become the leader of the Soviet Union? Every Soviet General Secretary before him kept an iron grip over their own power and, although Khrushchev did retract some of Stalin’s most extreme policies, generally did not allow the free flow of ideas that they found subversive. Gorbachev on the other hand was a reformer who would be the proponent for Glasnost and Perestroika the economic and social reforms that would open up the Soviet Union to the rest of the world.
Early life and Education:
To understand Gorbachev’s actions as general secretary it’s important to understand the context behind his life. He was born in the tiny Russian town of Privolnoye in 1931 while the Soviet Union was a one-party state controlled by Stalin. As a young child he experienced the famines which killed several of his relatives. This was followed by Stalin’s purges in which his grandfather was captured and tortured for 14 months before finally being spared from execution. Stories that he heard about his grandfather’s time with the secret police would influence his opinions and actions for years to come. His father, Sergei, was drafted into the Red Army when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1945. He was wrongly declared dead, but he ended up returning home after the war only injured. (Jonathan Steele)
At the time this was the typical childhood experience many poor soviets could expect as they grew up. Gorbachev handled this rough childhood about as well as could be expected. When the war was over, he went back to school where he excelled highly. When he was 19, he was accepted to the Moscow State University, the most prestigious university in the USSR at the time, without even having to take the entrance exam. This partly had to do with his humble worker-peasant background and because at 17 he became a recipient for the Order of the Red Banner for Labor. He was awarded this at a much younger age than most anyone else, because in the summer of 1948 he and 5 others managed to produce a harvest on the collective farm 5 times the expected yield. This award would not only propel him into university, but it would also be a brand of honor that he was able to use to command respect outside of his modest origins. (Taubman W, Page 15)
He would spend 5 years at university in which he would study law and graduate with distinction. In 1952 he would join the communist party as a full member and he was tasked with listening to his fellow students to report any subversion, however according to his fellow students he would do this only minimally and could be trusted to keep confidential secrets from the authorities. (Taubman, Page 45) There he would meet several figures that would influence him well into the future. The first was a friend he made by the name of Zdeněk Mlynář, who would later be one of the ideological leaders of the Prague spring. We actually learned much about his political ideology at the time from interviews of Mlynář. He claims Gorbachev was a Stalinist like everyone else at the time, but that unlike many other students he did not view Marxism as a series of axioms to be memorized. According to Biographers Dodder and Branson, after Stalin died in 1952 he would remain a believer in the Marxism, but it was never again a dogmatic belief in the Marxist system. (Dodder and Branson, Page 11)
Gorbachev: General Secretary
Regan and the Soviet Economy
Just as it was important to understand the context behind Mikhail Gorbachev’s life in order to understand his decisions, its vital to understand the state of the Soviet Union and its place in the world in the years leading up to Gorbachev taking power. In 1980 Ronald Reagan took over as president of the United States and began ramping up nuclear and military spending. He did this for two reasons, first his hardline stance on communism (which would later be set aside in talks with Gorbachev), and second because of the breakdown of SALT II, or the strategic arms limitations talks, that would have drastically cut down the military spending of both countries. Carter refused to sign the agreement in 1979 and that marked the end of the last detent of the cold war. Regan’s election along with the soviet invasion of Afghanistan officially ramped up tensions in the cold war against and got both nations spending heavily again on their militaries.
Regan had this crazy idea to build these huge satellites in space that would be able to shoot down any nuclear missile that the soviets launched. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was nicknamed Star Wars and it scared the hell out of the Soviets. In reality it was a bogus idea that couldn’t work but finding that out cost the United States billions of dollars (Atomic Heritage Foundation). Brezhnev began building his own missile defense system and pouring huge amounts of money into it as well. There was a fundamental difference between these two programs however: the US had money to burn while the USSR definitely did not.
While spending on SDI produced nothing tangible for the United States, it also did not lead to the widespread starvation and breakdown of society like it did in the Soviet Union. While a closely guarded secret, one American estimate was that the Soviet Union was spending between 15 and 20% of its whole economic output for its military. Gorbachev would call this time the age of stagnation when he took power in order to refer to the stagnation of food production and the USSR’s ability to self-sustain itself. Moscow was no longer able to produce enough food to feed its population and so they had to start importing grain from the United States. This reached record high levels by the early 1980’s and it marked a new and deep economic tie between the two countries. Boris Yeltsen famously visited an American grocery store in the 1989 and was amazed by how much there was. Soviets often had to wait in line for hours in order to get basic necessities such as bread. As he was leaving, he said that if the soviet people saw the conditions of American supermarkets that there would be a revolution. (Craig Hlavaty) Indeed, there was a revolution, one that ended the Soviet Union not two years after Yeltsen said those words, but it needed something more dramatic than a lack of food to trigger.
Glasnost and Perestroika
Glasnost and Perestroika were the economic and social reforms brought about by Gorbachev that opened up the Soviet Union both economically and socially. Glasnost is a term that has existed in Russian for a few centuries, but its modern significance is that of increased openness and transparency in government institutions. Glasnost allowed the soviet population to examine different ideas that were previously banned by the communist party and publicly discuss problems and solutions as well as criticize current governmental policies.
This was initially met with suspicion especially among intellectuals who had been suppressed and imprisoned for so long. Many were afraid to out themselves as subversives in case this glasnost thing was a ruse to find more political prisoners. This was a very valid fear as opinionated intellectuals that disagreed with the party line had been considered to be enemies of the state for decades. Many of these people who could have improved the Soviet economy were either imprisoned and tortured in gulags or were afraid to speak out because they had friends who were imprisoned.
Gorbachev for the reformer he was, still spoke in Marxist Leninist terms when discussing glasnost and perestroika. He did not shift totally away from his communist ideals; however, he recognized the stagnation that was occurring in the Soviet Union and he decided he needed a little bit of that capitalist money if he was going to keep his country together. Perestroika was originally proposed by Brezhnev to mean increased automation and labor efficiency, but when Gorbachev took over that came to mean a shift away from a planned centralized state economy and greater awareness of global markets. (Library of congress)
The world watched in stunned disbelief as the USSR shifted away from the totalitarian state that had existed for the better part of the 20th century to a more open government that allowed the spread of new ideas. It was now economically intertwined with the global market and the soviet people were starting to learn about how nice things were outside their country. This drastic improvement of living conditions in the USSR would in the end prove to be the unintended reason for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Chernobyl Disaster:
Just one year after taking office Gorbachev was faced with one of the worst nuclear disasters in human history. The failed cover up of the Chernobyl disaster is often credited for being one of the foremost reasons that Glasnost began in the first place. It would put a spotlight on the Soviet Union and showed the hypocrisy of the USSR’s new supposedly reformist leader.
The explosion of the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl released 10 times more radiation into the surrounding environment than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It’s almost impossible to know how many people were affected or died from the explosion because of the long-term effects of radiation as well as the attempted cover up by the soviet government, but estimates put the death count between 4000 and 16000 people. (Mary Mycio)
The Soviet Union and the KGB were experts at cover ups, they had been doing it for years and had perfected it to a science. Had the Chernobyl disaster been smaller it’s entirely possible that we would not know about it to this day, but its effects were felt around the world and not even the KGB could hide it. Sweden and Berlin reported high levels of radiation in the days following the disaster and were seeking answers from the soviet government. The USSR had all of its ambassadors around the world tell their respective countries scripted story in which there had been a small accident in the Ukraine that was currently completely under control and that the radiation levels at the site were only slightly above safe limits. In order to keep this façade up they rejected any foreign aid for the problem and downplayed the severity of the disaster at every opportunity.
But Europe and the West had readings that were telling a very different story, and the press from around the world pressured the Soviet government to allow them to visit the site. What they saw was low quality standards, no safety equipment, no evacuation of public citizens, and complete silence from the kremlin. This was a disaster of two parts, the first the environmental and economic disaster that would cost the USSR billions and the second was the political disaster that resulted from the failed cover up. The cover up cost Gorbachev his reputation as a reformer of the people and put into question the legitimacy of Glasnost. (Levrier-Jones)
The End of the Soviet Union
Historians either blame or credit the end of the Soviet Union the actions of two individuals: Gorbachev and Reagan. While it is undeniable that Reagans actions pushed the Soviet Union over the economic edge, I would argue that the United States had much less to do with the end of the cold war than did the actions of Gorbachev. This is because the United States had much less ability to reform and change. The United States was limited by the democratic process, meaning that the president was forced to take actions that would please the population, and because of the Red Scare it was very politically damaging to presidents to appease the USSR. Reagan certainly didn’t appease the USSR, but even his relatively minor shift away from his deep ideological and dogmatic anti-communist mentality is today seen as the driving force for the end of the Soviet Union by orthodox historians such as McGwire and Schlesinger. Instead I believe there were 4 main reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union. The reasons are economic, ideological, social, and nationalist.
Economically we have already discussed how perestroika opened up the soviet economy to the global market and shifted away from a centrally planned system. This had the intended effect of increasing the wealth of the Soviet Union, more people had access to food and resources. It had the unintended effect of actually making the USSR more unstable. There is an interesting phenomenon that happens when a very poor population suddenly become wealthier. One would expect that people would see things improving and be happier with the current system. However, time and time again throughout the world (Peru, Zimbabwe, and South Africa for example) when people no longer have to spend every waking moment worrying about not starving they often use that time and energy to realize that the political system is broken and to fight against it. This is what happened in the Soviet Union, as the country became wealthier and exposed to western ideas many decided that the system no longer worked, and many nationalist and anti-communist revolutionaries began appearing up with the goal of ending the Soviet Union and liberating their countries.
This was especially prevalent in eastern Europe when Gorbachev ended the Brezhnev doctrine which stated that the USSR would use force in order to keep their eastern European satellite states in line. Societally the soviet people had lost faith in the communist system. The promises that Stalin had made at the beginning had not come true and normal people were beginning to realize that. The end came when communist regimes began falling all over eastern Europe. Revolutions in Hungry, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Romania and Poland would have all been crushed by force by the Soviet Union under any other leader than Gorbachev, and indeed his advisors begged him to reestablish control over the region, but Gorbachev refused. These communist governments fell and so did their allegiance to the Soviet Union. This led to countries within the Soviet Union wanting their independence as well. The Soviet Union was no longer a cohesive centrally controlled state, and in 1991 Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist.
Works Cited
1. Steele, J. (2001, August 18). The Guardian Profile: Mikhail Gorbachev. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/aug/18/highereducation.books.
2. Levrier-Jones, G. (2017, August 21). Why did the USSR Collapse? Chernobyl, Gorbachev and Glasnost - History is Now Magazine, Podcasts, Blog and Books: Modern International and American history. Retrieved from http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2017/8/21/the-reason-the-ussr-collapsed-chernobyl-gorbachev-and-glasnost#.XcSEhOdKhQI=.
3. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). (2018, July 18). Retrieved from https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/strategic-defense-initiative-sdi.
4. Revelations from Russian Archives. (2016, August 31). PERESTROIKA. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/pere.html.
5. Mycio, M. (2013, April 26). How Many People Have Been Killed by Chernobyl? Retrieved from https://slate.com/technology/2013/04/chernobyl-death-toll-how-many-cancer-cases-are-caused-by-low-level-radiation.html.
6. Hlavaty, C. (2018, January 31). When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake. Retrieved from https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php#item-85307-tbla-5.
7. Taubman, W. (2018). Gorbachev: his life and times. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
8. Doder, D., & Branson, L. (1991). Gorbachev: heretic in the Kremlin. New York: Viking Penguin.