The Soviet revolutionary

What cannot be denied, in spite of which side you fall, is that that Mikhail Gorbachev was a man whose statesmanship fundamentally changed the world in which we live. Taubman’s biography helps us understand the man who spent a lifetime being misunderstood. For that, this biography, as historian Archie Brown suggests, “is destined to remain the fullest and most authoritative account of Gorbachev’s life for years to come”.

Uncensored account

In this 693-page book, Taubman makes it clear that he is an admirer of his protagonist. Yet it is also clear that the author trusts the reader. Rather than skipping unsightly anecdotes that do not fit the idealised image of Gorbachev that so many in the West hold, Taubman’s account gives insight into Gorbachev the human being. Gorbachev the saint, the caricature, or the devil for that matter, are archetypal descriptions Taubman avoids. From depictions of Gorbachev’s curse-filled explosions of rage towards his colleagues, the air of arrogant superiority he all too often held himself with to the episodes of melancholy, self-doubt and depression which haunted his time in office, Taubman’s uncensored account of Gorbachev’s life sets it apart from other works of similar nature. Overall he finds the perfect balance – something many political biographers struggle with – between expressing his personal interpretation of events and letting the events themselves carry the narrative.   

Gorbachev is a figure who seldom needs an introduction. As leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 till its dissolution in 1991 he is credited, along with Ronald Reagan, as the man who ended the Cold War, liberated Eastern Europe from decades of Soviet subordination and freeing Soviet citizens from the institutionalised state tyranny so typical of the Stalin and Brezhnev eras. Gorbachev, however, did not just reform the political institutions of the Eastern bloc, he transformed them. Yet, many cite his fundamental inability to hold the Soviet Union together, leading to its eventual collapse in December 1991. The staunchest of conservative critics in Russia see this as a total betrayal, while other more liberal critics see him as merely having the lack of political foresight.  Taubman, however, in his closing remarks, takes a more measured and sympathetic approach: “The Soviet Union fell apart when Gorbachev weakened the state in an attempt to strengthen the individual.”

Gorbachev, like all great politicians, knew he had to play the system to ultimately change it. As a man with strong moral convictions, Gorbachev secretly despised the authoritarianism of Brezhnev but publically paid lip-service for the necessity of the crackdowns during the Prague Spring in 1968 and the state sponsored aggression overseen by his predecessor, Yuri Andropov. Despite being a bit player, a mere cog in the big bureaucratic machine, Gorbachev quickly learnt the ropes in the world of one-party politics. Having been appointed the regional party boss of Stavropol in 1969, he was promoted to the frontline of politics – the Central Committee – in Moscow in 1978.

He won the trust of Andropov (Brezhnev’s successor), an authoritarian through and through whose views and moral bearings radically differed from the young Gorbachev. His ability to conform certainly accelerated his progress. His relative youth, at a time when the Soviet politburo members were leaning into their mid-80s, helped convince Konstantin Chernenko that giving the General Secretaryship to Gorbachev on his deathbed in 1985 was a safe move. Gorbachev refused to settle with the status quo and decided to radically transform the Soviet Union, both domestically and internationally. Taubman’s reference to the Churchillian aphorism, “the politician focusses on the next election, the statesman focusses on the next generation,” introduces us to the motifs behind Gorbachev’s leadership. Unlike most of his predecessors, Gorbachev’s intentions transcended a mere desire to perpetuate and preserve his personal power.

Fundamental changes

One does not have to have studied Mikhail Gorbachev in any depth to be familiar with the terms glasnost and perestroika. Both are the few Russian words featured in the Oxford English Dictionary. The former denotes openness, the latter translates into something close to the term “rebuilding”. An introduction of these reforms in late 1986 led to fundamental changes within the socially oppressive and economically inefficient Soviet system. Gorbachev encouraged public demonstrations of free expression and a plurality of opinion for the first time in the history of the Soviet Union. This was galvanised by free elections for Communist Party officials throughout the USSR (while still maintaining the one-party system). Intellectuals were now encouraged to speak freely and the Kremlin’s censorship decreased dramatically. Previously banned books, such as George Orwell’s 1984, became legally available and western radio stations and television channels were unblocked, opening up the world to the Soviet People. Ironically, the liberal academics whose voices Gorbachev freed ventilated some of the greatest challenges to his leadership. Many figures, such as scientist-turned activist Andrei Sakharov, lost patience with the general secretary, claiming his reforms were not radical enough. 

Nationalists, too, posed their resistance to Gorbachev’s leadership using their right of free speech to express their disdain with the Moscow bureaucracy and demanded independence. While this may not have been a new occurrence in the history of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev, unlike Brezhnev in 1968 Czechoslovakia or Khrushchev in 1956 in Hungary, under no circumstances ever contemplated using military force to crush protests and restore order. Driven out of an idealised worldview that it was possible to create what the slain Czechoslovak martyr Aleksander Dubček described as “socialism with a human face”, Gorbachev stubbornly pursued this end, ignoring anyone – friend or foe – who challenged what ultimately proved to be unrealistic. In spite of his best intentions, Gorbachev failed to foresee that it was simply impossible to hold the old empire together without force. This alarmed the conservatives in the Kremlin who felt Gorbachev was destroying the Soviet Union and eroding their monopoly on power.

On the international stage, Gorbachev was willing to push beyond the boundaries set by previous Soviet leaders. His visit to the United Kingdom in 1984 led Margaret Thatcher to declare Gorbachev a “man we can do business with”. The Reagan administration initially treated Gorbachev’s calls for disarmaments with suspicion. Was this a ploy to lure the West into a false sense of security? Were glasnost and perestroika mere “token gestures” – as Reagan declared in his 1987 Brandenburg Gate speech? Lest we forget, it was Reagan himself who coined the term “Evil Empire” to describe the Soviet bloc.

At first, negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev were frosty. However, on a personal level the two men connected. Taubman speculates that this may be due to the fact that both men were actors in their youth. Both had a natural charisma and a sense of charm. Most importantly, both men shared the view that “under no circumstances, whatsoever, should nuclear weapons be used in warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union”. Taubman manages to fantastically capture the tense atmosphere in the negotiating chambers over the issues of nuclear disarmament, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the future of Europe. The summits in Geneva, Reykjavik, Moscow and Washington are recreated through referrals to thousands of pieces of primary source material. It is clear that while both men disagreed on many issues, they collectively forged a bridge of trust between the East and West, nullifying the prospects of nuclear war. By 1988, the Cold War, in the traditional sense, was well and truly over. This was Gorbachev’s most remarkable achievement. Due to this, “Gorby-Mania” swept the world. Gorbachev became a cult hero in the West.

Bold visionary

Taubman concludes that “despite his flaws and noble ambitions, Gorbachev was a tragic hero worthy of our understanding and admiration”. It is true that Gorbachev was not trusted to take on the role as helmsman to lead the USSR into the new post-Cold War era. Power was transferred to a populist figurehead who was trusted instead – Boris Yeltsin, with the whole subcontinent arguably paying the price for this. Yet as the New York Times put it, “Mikhail Gorbachev brought democracy to Russia, and was despised for it”. To many people in the West, it is frankly a baffling observation that Gorbachev has substantially lower contemporary approval ratings than Joseph Stalin.

Therefore, rather than focusing on twisted public sentiments, it is worth focusing on the achievements of the man himself. Gorbachev, unlike his predecessors or successors, was not primarily driven by a desire to consolidate power alone (although he was exceptional at this aspect in his own right). Gorbachev was a visionary who had the boldness to try and bring the normative into the descriptive. It would be naïve to deem him a failure for failing to achieve his aims – the democratisation and economic liberalisation of the USSR. He planted the seeds that the subsequent political elite were unwilling to cultivate, preferring to descend to the baser allures of power politics and corruption. The impatience of the liberal left led to them being swept away by the sweet lies of Yeltsin and the cynicism of the political right forced Gorbachev to temper the pace of reforms (deteriorating his trust from the left). If Gorbachev was trusted by the very people whose lives he wished to transform, would Russia have reverted to Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism after the nine disastrous years of oligarchy under Yeltsin?

To truly appreciate Gorbachev one must understand the magnanimity of what he achieved (rather than ponder on what he intended to achieve): ending the Cold War and tempering tensions with the West. He had freed the Soviet people from a system of authoritarianism that had perpetuated for over eight decades and arguably – and most significantly – oversaw the dissolution of the Eastern bloc with little bloodshed. One only has to look at the bloody end to the former Yugoslavia, a microcosm of the Soviet Empire, to comprehend the skill of Gorbachev’s diplomacy. History has aptly judged Gorbachev. From the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, to the Point Alpha Prize in 2005, Gorbachev has been showered in accolades from across the globe. Yet all these titles seem rather menial when compared against the millions of lives (both home and abroad) he changed for the better. 

Gorbachev was a revolutionary, but one who did not require the shedding of blood to achieve such status. For that reason, he has earned his place in history as a man who truly changed the world.

Matt Andersen is a history student and Oxford University offer holder.

Book review, Gorbachev