Today marks three years since Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last President of the Soviet Union and a man who played an important role in bringing the Cold War to the end, passed away.
In the spring of 1985 Gorbachev took the top job in the Soviet hierarchy after the three Soviet leaders died in the space of two and a half years. Aged just 54, Gorbachev was a youngster by the Politburo’s standards. Gorbachev inherited a country crippled by falling oil prices and by decades of the Soviet economic mismanagement. He realised that a change was unavoidable, advocating for more openness (‘glasnost’) and for reform (‘perestroika’), with the elements of market economy. By December 1986, Gorbachev returned Andrei Sakharov from exile in Gorki and began a process of releasing political prisoners.
In his few years at the top job Gorbachev and his wife Raisa Maksimovna won hearts of millions around the globe. They were sincere, cordial and committed to one another in a touching and endearing way. Yet, in Russia Putin’s propaganda worked tirelessly on vilifying Gorbachev and spreading rumors about him. The propaganda machine laid blame on Gorbachev for the collapse of the USSR (a sore for their boss, as Putin called it the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe.”) There had been an infinite number of falsehoods circulating about him: claims that he acquired vast riches (Gorbachev was so poor that he famously signed an advertisement contract with Pizza Hut!) or that he left Russia (he never did and spent his last years as a resident patient of a Moscow hospital) or even that he was recruited as a child by the Nazis to bring an end to the USSR by the end of the 20th century! Putin’s zeal in damaging Gorbachev’s reputation is a testament to Gorbachev’s important place in history. At the end of his life Gorbachev, increasingly critical of Putin, said that there would be no Perestroika 2.0: in other words, he saw no grounds for optimism. While it was true for his time horizon, we are certain that Gorbachev will be judged ever more positively by his compatriots. Who knows? Perhaps, Russia will get a second chance with a Perestroika 2.0 and democratic freedoms and human rights for all?