It is difficult to summarize what Gorbachev meant to the Western public in the 1980s, one of the most dangerous periods of East-West conflict. After generations of austere, hostile and hard-line older Kremlin leaders, he was young, modern, fresh, visionary and reformer.
Gorbachev inspired a sudden hope that the nuclear war that plagued the world in the late 20th century would not destroy civilization. US President Ronald Reagan and his British soulmate Margaret Thatcher were the most hawkish Cold War warriors. But to their honor, they delivered on the promised moment. As the British Prime Minister said of the Soviet leader, “Together we can do business”.
Everyone remembers the day Reagan went to Berlin, marred by the ugly and inhumane concrete barrier that separated East and West, with the Brandenburg Gate in the background. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” This is his one of the most iconic moments in modern U.S. history. At the time, few people thought it was possible. In fact, some White House aides considered the comments overly provocative and tried to persuade Reagan not to speak. We virtually demolished the wall.
Gorbachev became a hero of the West. But what led to the liberation of Eastern Europe, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the end of the Cold War, and the reunification of Europe was the 1989 outbreak of popular uprisings against communist regimes in the Warsaw Pact countries, when military power became the norm. It was his decision not to intervene. Germany.
This explosion of freedom brought 30 years of relative peace to Europe.
Lionized in the West, an outcast at home
But while Gorbachev was adored in the West, he came to be seen as an outcast at home. It is now often forgotten that his goal was not necessarily to dismantle the communist Soviet Union. His hand was forced by the exhausting effects of the nuclear arms race.
However, in an attempt to save the system, he emanated the power to destroy it. Far from ushering in the then-often called “the end of history,” his influence had consequences that could still be felt the day he died, with Moscow and the West once again in a Cold War-style chill. were in conflict.
At home, Gorbachev had two key ideas. glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring). The rapid collapse of the Soviet Union, which perestroika caused the schism, brought extreme economic conditions, turmoil, and a blow to national pride. All of this has ultimately led to a situation that makes strongmen like Putin attractive to many Russians.
The moment Gorbachev refused to send the Red Army to Eastern Europe to save the communist bloc, Putin was stationed in the KGB in East Germany and felt the pain of Moscow’s desertion. I’m starting to see it. Once Putin took power, he set out to restore Russia’s damaged national prestige.
Now the world has a Kremlin leader who, unlike Gorbachev, is ready to remake the map of Europe by force…in a democratic and free society.
Gorbachev’s rule was not without its flaws from a Western perspective. He sent tanks to Lithuania in his 1991, months before leaving his government, to crush the independence hopes of the Baltic states. He was also banned from entering Ukraine for five years after saying he supported Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
But until the end of his life, Gorbachev traveled the world denouncing Putin’s excesses and warning of the danger of collapsing relations between the world’s two major nuclear powers. That he is remembered in the West as a giant and at home as a pariah speaks to the abyss of understanding and his experiences that again sour East-West relations.
Gorbachev never stopped mourning his beloved wife, Raisa, who died of leukemia in 1999. Now he’s Reagan, Thatcher, George H. — to the grave.
