Gorbachev: the farewell of an era

The historical greatness of the figure of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev gave my generation three decades with the spectre of another world war tucked away in the back of the wardrobe. Putin has brought it out again. 

Gorbachev, who recently died at the age of 91, is currently - due to the news of his death - the subject of much debate in the West about "Gorbi's" true intentions towards the defunct USSR. And there are all kinds of lucubrations, from those that indicate that the political reforms (Glasnost) and economic reforms (Perestroika) got out of hand to such an extent that they caused the collapse of the Slavic giant. Something he never intended. 

We will never know what Gorbachev really had in mind, but the signs of the times speak for themselves: the 1980s were a particularly difficult decade globally as a result of the oil shocks of the previous decade. For the industrialised countries, inflation, lower economic dynamism and heavy pressure on public finances marked years of low productivity and rising unemployment. These were the times of Thatcher's and Reagan's economic orthodoxy while Latin America experienced the bitter pill of a lost decade.

The USSR arrived at that decade transformed into a gigantic web of corruption, from the top of the pyramid with the Politburo orchestrating the payment of favours, bribes, eavesdropping and privileges that went all the way down to the citizens' committees themselves. 

The economy had become a mass of idlers with worryingly low productivity and low supply, because the state monopolies controlled everything: the what, the how, the how much and for whom. 

The Politburo's hands had to be taken out of the economy, and this had to be done by modernising the Communist Party; on page 23 of the book "Perestroika", 1987 edition written by Gorbachev himself, the then Soviet dignitary wrote: "An impartial and honest approach led us to the logical conclusion that the country was on the verge of crisis. That conclusion was announced in April 1985, at the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee".

It was not an ideological process, it was not a cultural revolution like Mao's in China, it never spoke of touching or upsetting scientific socialism, one of the essences of the defunct USSR.

It was these reforms not only inward, but fundamentally outward, that created a maelstrom of transformations: on 9 November 1989 the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of Germany; the dismantling of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and a consequent disintegration of the USSR.

In 1991, several parts of Soviet territory declared their independence: "Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Days earlier Latvia, Ukraine and Moldova had done so. Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan followed. It was the beginning of the end of the USSR, a federation of republics founded in 1922 after the Russian Revolution".

The meeting between Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II was the corollary of an incredible summum.  The world watched as the Cold War antagonist to the United States fell to its knees without a single bullet, without a single missile, without any threat of pressing the nuclear button. The USSR had been defeated by its own corruption and its huge internal economic problems with citizens punished by rationing and constant shortages. 

Gorbachev was the father of all these profound and far-reaching changes that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. His negotiating profile made it possible, together with the United States, to implement the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which from 1987 eliminated nuclear or conventional ballistic and cruise missiles with a range capability of 500 to 5,500 kilometres. 

As a result, in 1991, the US destroyed 846 missiles and the USSR (before disintegrating) destroyed 1,846 missiles. A brake was put on the arms race between the two military powers and that has given us years with the spectre of a major nuclear war contained until the then US President Donald Trump abandoned it on 1 February 2019 and was consequently followed by Russia the next day.

Gorbachev has died just at a sensitive time with Russia under the Vladimir Putin era trying to regain the territories lost in 1991, when in the heat of the new times they announced their independence from the USSR. 

He died with the INF faded and both Russia and the United States testing nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles.  The dialectic with its spiral has returned with Putin attempting a return to the past, whereas Gorbachev was convinced that peace also brought progress.  Requiescat in pace.