Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

This is an article written by my 9th standard student, Pradeep Shenoy, in January 1992 when I was handling my first teaching job at East West School as English and Social Studies teacher.

 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

 

Mikhail Gorbachev, whose popularity at one time had soared to the high heavens, has now been forced into retirement, with his entire career – along with all that he stood for – totally disillusioned and tarnished, and he has left nothing but a broken Soviet Union and unending criticism in his wake.

Gorbachev, born in 1931 to a peasant family of Kravagol near the Caucasus Mountains, was brought up in the atmosphere of Stalin’s murderous campaigns against independent peasantry. He had lost many of his kith and kin to these selfsame campaigns. Though filled with hate for Stalinism, he still did not give up his faith in Communism. Instead, like Kruschev before him, he began to dream of a humane, socialist Soviet.

Whatever his principles, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by its Central Committee, replacing Mr. Konstantin Chernenko. When he came to power, the Soviet economy was in a shambles. The USSR was left far behind by its counterparts in Science and Technology, and Socialism was fast losing acclaim all over the Union.

On ascending the Presidentship, Gorbachev promised a better Soviet Union through change in the existing Socialist policies, hard-hitting economic reforms, and a peaceful Soviet. However, what he ultimately achieved was totally different.

To Mr. Gorbachev’s conviction that hardline Communism would soon be extinct was added its proof – the fall of the Communist empire all over Eastern Europe. The countries of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania had shaken off  the old order and had replaced it with multiparty democracies. It was then that Gorbachev’s popularity rose, for by merely refusing to intervene and reinstall Communism in these countries by b force, Gorbachev had proved his willingness to abolish the old Stalinist principles.

Ending the Cold War was relatively more difficult. Mr. Gorbachev tried his best to show to the West that all he wanted was peace, but the progress was slow. Finally he signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Ronald Reagan in Washington as a sign of more to come. He entered into many other pacts with the United States for the reduction of nuclear weapons, army strength, and conventional weaponry.

Then there were the political reforms at home in the Soviet Union. Mr. Gorbachev had decided to enforce his idea of “Communism with a human face”, and created many policies to that end.

The first of these was Glasnost – openness. This meant openness or freedom to the Press and the public from censorship. It ultimately turned out to be a trick that backfired, for it allowed criticism of the government, and, sure enough, there was an unprecedented boom in criticism that ultimately swept him aside.

Another policy was that of Perestroika (restructuring), which was a clear example of the indecisiveness and weakness of this man. At first he spoke vaguely of economic reforms, allowing small private businesses to operate, letting the prices free, and so on. However, he achieved precious little. This was because of Gorbachev’s strength and weakness – compromise. Agreed, it was what had saved the Soviet Union on many an occasion from a return to hardline Communism, but, by refusing to make a decisive break with the past, he had lost the chance to introduce meaningful economic reforms.

All this time the economy had been slowly sinking. The Soviet Union’s resources of oil and gold were what had kept the economy alive so long, and had allowed the postponement of hard-hitting reforms. But when the oil and gold stocks came crashing down, it put an irreparable hole in the economy. Gorbachev had ignored the Marxist principle that politics boils down to economics, and had busied himself with political reforms, and had paid its consequences. The budget had a three-percent deficit when Gorbachev came, and now, after he left, it had shot up to an unbelievable 50%. The external debt had quadrupled to almost $67 billion.

Thus were shown two effects very clearly. One was that Gorbachev, though desiring more freedom for his subjects and more kind reforms, had unfortunately refused to once and for all break with the past and overhaul the dying Soviet machinery.

The other was that these economic reforms had created dissent in the public, and Gorbachev had grown more and more unpopular.

Besides, after being brought so close to democracy, and then seeing it being withheld, the Soviets were bound to fight to cover up that gap to total democracy.

Thus it was inevitable that the Soviet Union was to be ruined. Also inevitable was Gorbachev’s resignation as President if a nonexistent Soviet Union. But there is a praise in this for Gorbachev, for he could well have created yet another Tiananmen square, thus prolonging his rule.

There is but one thing left to say, and that is that the hardline Communists of the Soviet had decided that they had to stop Gorbachev from going too far (not knowing that he had already done so), and they made a feeble attempt at a coup. But the society was already too free to be caged again, and the coup was thus thwarted with ease. The only thing that this senseless move – led by Gonnady Yanayev – achieved was the speeding up of the Soviet Union’s demise.

As far as Mr. Gorbachev’s personal career was concerned, his reforms overtook him. They were the Frankenstein’s monster that gobbled the whole Soviet Union with him.

But not everything is over yet. What is to become of the new republics that the Soviet Union has left in its wake? The present situation of a turbulent economy might just lead to the violent reinstallation of a totalitarian government. Then what will we get – 14 hardline Communist countries to replace one softy? Then all the people in the world lamenting over their mistake and saying that Gorbachev was right will bring back neither the Soviet nor another Gorbachev.

(Gorbachev has not retired from politics; so maybe there is still hope of the resurrection of the Soviet Union.)