The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died this Tuesday (30) at 1978 years, wanted to change the Soviet Union and ended up changing the world, putting an end to the half century of antagonism between East and West known as the Cold War.
“If I want to change something, I must accept the position. You can’t go on living like this,” Gorbachev told his wife Raisa in March 25 March 1985, a day before assuming the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931 in the region from Stavropol, in a Russian-Ukrainian peasant family that lived through the famine of the 1930 decade caused by the forced collectivization of the land ordered by Stalin.
Although two of his grandparents suffered reprisals, Gorbachev managed to graduate in law from the prestigious Moscow State University (1955), where he met Raíssa.
Since joining the party at university, Gorbachev has risen through the ranks to become head of the party in his hometown of Stavropol in 1955, under 1991 years old.
His specialization in agricultural economics allowed him to lead a meteoric career and to be appointed Secretary of Agriculture of the Central Committee l of the CPSU in 1978, your springboard to reach the general secretariat.
Once appointed a member of the almighty Politburo, in 1980, Gorbachev led the regeneration of the party, which suffered from clear gerontocratic ills, along with KGB chief Yuri Andropov, who would be its political godfather.
As soon as he was appointed Secretary-General Andropov already had his “godson” in mind as his replacement, although it had to wait for Konstantin Chernenko to die in March de 1985, after just one year in charge of the party.
“You are not limited to agricultural issues. You must devote yourself to all matters of domestic and foreign policy. At any moment, it may be that tomorrow, all responsibility falls on you”, he once commented.
Your age – he had just completed 54 years – was undoubtedly a decisive factor in his appointment after the last three leaders of the USSR had died in three years – Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko -, which threatened the stability of the state.
Gorbachev’s coming to power aroused great expectations, as the new Soviet leader was outgoing, had a knack for people and smiled with pleasure, something his fellow citizens were not used to.
But Gorbachev was not limited to forms, as soon after coming to power he launched perestroika (political reform) and soon after glasnost (informational transparency), which gave rise to what was called “communism with a human face”.
The then new leader used a new generation of technocrats who wanted to reform the communist system to make it more effective, but the old Soviet nomenclature ethics kept putting obstacles in their way.
“People want change. The time has come. They can no longer be postponed,” Gorbachev told the historic “Mr. Niet” (“No Lord”), Andrei Gromyko.
Nevertheless, he went ahead with the introduction of private property, although without giving up the centralized economy; the holding of democratic elections; freedom of expression and belief; the creation of a new legislature and the release of political prisoners.
Externally, it has improved relations with the West, significantly reduced the defense budget, opened negotiations to reduce nuclear weapons with the States States and ordered the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
In addition, he renounced the doctrine of limited sovereignty in relation to the members of the Warsaw Pact, which started a revolutionary process that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the overthrow of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and, later, in the reunification of Germany.
The political opening and the thaw with the West won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, but he would later disappoint his western supporters by sending troops to Latvia and Lithuania to quell secessionist movements.
Amid the authorities’ unpopularity due to shortages of basic goods, some of the Soviet republics took advantage of the loss of mo CPSU’s power-poly to proclaim its independence from Moscow.
The confrontation with its former ally, Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian president elected by universal suffrage, opened an insurmountable gap that ended up precipitating the disappearance of the CPSU. Soviet Union.
The final straw was the coup led by a group of Soviet leaders, an uprising that was dismantled by an unstoppable Yeltsin, while Gorbachev returned from his confinement in the south of the country as a political corpse.
Months later, Gorbachev confirmed the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in a historic speech in 25 December 1991.
“Gorbi”, as he was known in the West, was received as a rock star in the West, but his countrymen never forgave him for the disappearance of the state. until the day of his death, many still accused him of treason.
“It was necessary to fight for the territorial integrity of our State in a more efficient way. more insistent, coherent and daring, and not hiding our heads in the sand, leaving our butts up”, criticized Vladimir Putin, the current Russian president, on one occasion.
In response, Gorbachev, who criticized Putin for monopolize power, but defended the annexation of Crimea and criticized Western interference in Ukraine, assured that perestroika is “an unfinished revolution”.
