Tribute to Gorbachev, the most praised Russian politician in the West and least appreciated in Russia

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR and one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century, died on 30 August in Moscow. He was, however, a controversial figure who has been praised throughout the free world and fiercely criticised in Russia, where the most radicals - including Vladimir Putin - consider him a traitor to the Russian homeland for being responsible for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As Ambassador José Cuenca has observed in his book "From Suárez to Gorbachev", Gorbachev produced enthusiasm outside Russia and repudiation at home.

Historian Kristina Spohr has described him in her book "After the Wall" as a pivotal figure who ushered in a new era. He changed the course of history by reforming the USSR and bringing it closer to Europe, set in motion a process of modernisation of the country and adopted a peaceful attitude towards the United States so that the two great powers cooperated peacefully. He peacefully managed the transformation and dissolution of the USSR, the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification and "was instrumental in leading the world from the Cold War period to the post-Cold War era".

Although closely interconnected, Gorbachev's domestic and foreign policies produced very different results. The Russian leader was not a sudden convert to St. Paul-style liberal democracy, for he was - and remained - a Marxist-Leninist, who sought to end the criminal abuses of Iosif Stalin and convert the Communist Party to "socialism with a human face". It was mission impossible, because the stagnant CPSU was unrecoverable unless the country's political, economic and social structures were substantially modified, and Gorbachev lacked the time to do a job worthy of Hercules. 

According to Juan Pablo Fusi, Gorbachev was a paradigmatic case of a man who made history but did not control it. He was aware that the USSR could not continue as a closed system without freedoms or political representation, and he attempted a prudent reform that did not liquidate the Soviet Union, but rather reaffirmed it, while making it compatible with the international order. He lacked the necessary cooperation within the CPSU and was overwhelmed by the process he had unleashed, which led to the dissolution of the Union, which was neither part of his convictions nor part of his political project.

For José Manuel Núñez Seixas, the only way for the USSR to survive was to correct its many dysfunctions. The state-run economy produced numerous bottlenecks that prevented economic and social development. The war in Afghanistan and the existing repressive regime contributed to the growing discontent of the population. Gorbachev thought he could regenerate the system from the top down, trying to save primordial ideals such as social emancipation and equality, with a less repressive regime and a mixed functioning of the economy with individual incentives, especially in agriculture. The new policy generated tensions that the leader was unable to manage, his project was dynamited and ultimately led to the dissolution of the USSR. According to William Taubman in his book "Gorbachev, Life and Times", "the Soviet Union collapsed when Gorbachev weakened the state in an attempt to strengthen the individual".

Born in 1931 in the Stávropol region of modest origin, Gorbachev joined the communist youth movement at the age of 14 and a few years later joined the CPSU. In 1955 he graduated from Moscow State University with a law degree, and two years earlier he married philosophy student Raisa Titarenko, who became his most loyal adviser. From the time of his graduation until 1962, he held various positions in the Party and in the government of the Stavropol region, where he adopted an open attitude towards freedom of speech and religion, which he later extended to the whole country when he came to power.

A protégé of Fyodor Kulakov and Yuri Andropov, he became a member of the CPSU Central Committee in 1971 and of the Politburo in 1980. He was Andropov's right-hand man during his term as President of the USSR, and even then he adopted measures to open up the economy. In 1985 he became General Secretary of the CPSU and in 1990 President of the Union. Gorbachev was a Marxist-Leninist with an open-minded attitude, who considered Stalin to be mainly responsible for the disastrous political and economic situation the nation was going through, due to his policy of terror and state control of the economy. Hence, he intensified the policy of "de-Stalinisation" - which had been initiated by Khrushchev - and the fight against excessive state control of the economy, bureaucratisation and corruption. His policy was symbolised by the two magic words "perestroika" - economic restructuring - and "glasnost" - transparency. He launched the former in 1986 and with it began a profound change in the social and economic structures of the USSR towards a market economy, which was complemented in 1988 by the Law on Cooperatives, which opened the way for private ownership in service enterprises, manufacturing industry and certain sectors of agriculture and foreign trade. In the same year he proclaimed "glasnost", which opened the way for freedom of speech, press and worship.

He was confronted with two serious problems: the tragic consequences of the nuclear accident at the Chernobyl plant and the war in Afghanistan in which the demoralised Soviet army was bogged down. The obscurantism of the CPSU apparatus at first prevented him from reporting what had happened, but - two weeks later - he made information available, even if only partially. He solved the second problem by ordering the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and ensured that the army licked its wounds and recovered from the catastrophic adventure.

On the political front, Gorbachev began his term in office by releasing the scientist Andrei Sakharov and 600 other prisoners of conscience. He ended the monopoly of the CPSU through a constitutional reform that opened the way to a multi-party system, promoted free elections, established a presidential republic, and ended the era of terror and oppression imposed by his predecessors. He did not seek to do away with the communist system, but rather to reform it, but the major transformations he introduced dismantled the country's socio-political structure without replacing it with a fully democratic system, leading to contradictions and inefficiencies. These reforms were necessary to bring the Soviet regime into line with European standards, but they had no short-term effect and led to considerable unrest and discontent among the population. Gorbachev found himself caught in the crossfire between the most recalcitrant communists - who opposed any change - and the democratic converts - who found the required transformations too slow in pace - and sought to maintain an equidistant position that convinced neither the Tyrians nor the Trojans.

The main problem he had to face was the structuring of the USSR. The freedoms granted and the renunciation of imposition by terror led to a resurgence of nationalist sentiment. Although Gorbachev initially refused to accede to demands for greater autonomy and even independence, he eventually realised that he could not keep the Baltic countries within the Union and reluctantly agreed to their independence, which was justified politically because they were formerly independent states that were invaded by the USSR during World War II, and legally because - according to Article 72 of the Constitution - "each of the Republics shall retain the right to freely secede from the USSR". Thus, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia regained their independence in 1991.

Gorbachev sought to maintain the rest of the USSR, while granting greater autonomy to the Republics, and to this end he drew up a Union Treaty, preceded by a referendum on 17 March, in which 76% of the people voted in favour of preserving the Union as a renewed federation of sovereign and equal Republics in which the rights and freedoms of the peoples of all nationalities would be respected. The treaty should have been signed on 20 August, but a day earlier there was an attempted coup d'état by the more radical elements of the CPSU and the KGB, which - although unsuccessful - left Gorbachev in a very precarious position and strengthened the position of Boris Yeltsin, who had left the Party and been elected President of the Russian Federation. Russia and Belarus refused to sign the Treaty and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk did not even attend the meeting. Behind Gorbachev's back, Presidents Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich signed the Belovesh Agreement on 8 December, which abrogated the 1977 Constitution in the territories of the USSR and declared its disappearance as a subject of international law. It was also decided to create a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was adopted a few days later by all the republics except the Baltic States and Georgia in the Alma-Ata Protocol.

On 25 December, Gorbachev gave a brief televised address to the nation in which he tendered his resignation as President of the defunct Soviet Union. With great dignity he stated that, given the situation created by the formation of the CIS, he was ceasing his activities as President of the Union, a decision he was taking for reasons of principle, given that the dismemberment of the country and the disunity of the state had been imposed, which he could not accept. "Today I agree with the historical reason for the changes initiated in 1985. We have ended the Cold War, stopped the arms race and the demilitarisation of the country, which had deformed our economy, our social conscience and our morals. We have opened up to the world, which has responded with trust, solidarity and respect". He stated that Russian society had achieved its most cherished goal - freedom - the totalitarian system had been liquidated, and democratic transformations were irreversible and human rights respected.

It is not fair to hold Gorbachev exclusively responsible for the disintegration of the USSR, although he did bear his share of the blame. As he told George Bush, he had not come to power to pilot the break-up of the USSR, but to reform and democratise it. The main culprits were Kravchuk, Shushkevich and - above all - Yeltsin, who put his lust for power before the interests of the Union, and promoted its disintegration to replace Gorbachev at the head of the Russian Federation, thinking that - through control of the CIS - he could reconstitute a USSR to suit himself, but - after independence - the members of the Community refused to bow to Yeltsin's wishes. On his death, journalist Pilar Bonet headlined her obituary in El País as follows: "Boris Yeltsin dies, the destroyer of the last empire".

Gorbachev's most prominent role was in foreign policy, bringing the USSR out of isolation, bringing it closer to the Western world, abolishing the Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty and refusing to impose his dictates by force on the republics that were part of the Union and the communist states associated in the Warsaw Pact. As soon as he came to power, Gorbachev warned his communist colleagues not to count on the Red Army to subdue any revolts and protests in their territories, as had happened in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Gorbachev - an avowed atheist - met with Pope John Paul II and urged General Jaruzelski to negotiate with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity trade union. The most relevant case was that of the German Democratic Republic, as he refused to support Eric Honecker's repressive policies and Honecker had to resign, paving the way for the removal of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two Germanies in 1989. This opened a crack in the military infrastructure of the socialist countries, led to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and influenced the disintegration of the USSR. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier publicly praised Gorbachev's performance when he told him: "We will never forget that the miracle of the peaceful reunification of my country and the end of the division of Europe would not have been possible without the courageous and humane decisions you personally took".

I don't know if Germany forgot, but the United States seemed to have forgotten when - despite promises to Gorbachev - it pushed NATO's area of operation towards Russia's borders, admitted former Warsaw Pact member states and the Baltic states into the Alliance, and invited Georgia and Ukraine to join the Organisation, causing relations between Russia and NATO to deteriorate. There was no written commitment and, when Putin was questioned by a journalist, he replied that he should ask Gorbachev, but commented that, "as a saying of our people goes; they fooled the fool with four fists. Everything has to be written down on paper".

According to Felipe Sahagún, between 1985 and 1991, Gorbachev's foreign policy led to the end of the bipolar system and made possible German unification and the democratisation of Central and Eastern Europe, and made it possible to eliminate land-based Euromissiles and reduce conventional arsenals. The USSR was technologically and financially overtaken by Donald Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative and - whether out of conviction or out of necessity - Gorbachev became a champion of disarmament and concluded international agreements with the United States, such as the Intermediate Nuclear Forces and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START).

For these reasons, Gorbachev was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, with the proceeds of which he co-founded the liberal newspaper "Novaya Gazeta", which has ceased publication under pressure from Putin's censorship. Its editor, fellow Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov, has claimed that Gorbachev gave Russia 30 years of peace. He despised war and "realpolitik", and stopped the nuclear arms race. As he confessed, he had refused to press the nuclear attack button, even in tests. For Pilar Bonet, the actions of Putin's Russia in recent months have destroyed Gorbachev's life's work, but not his message to mankind, and - according to Andrei Kolesnikov - Gorbachev died symbolically when Putin destroyed his life's work: freedom.

Indeed, Putin considers the dissolution of the USSR to have been the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 21st century, and he despises his predecessor, whom he considers a weakling and a traitor. That is why he refused to hold a state funeral for him and did not attend his burial. The sad fact is that this view is shared by a large part of the Russian people. Proof of this is that when he ran for president in 1996, he barely won 2% of the vote.

Gorbachev was a great friend and admirer of Spain, which he visited on several occasions, both officially and privately. In 1989 he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Cooperation. When I took up my post in Moscow, I found the diploma certifying this appointment at the Embassy and decided to present it to him. I consulted with the Deputy Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, about whether he thought it would be appropriate for me to host a reception to present him with the title, and he suggested that I should present it at a private event. I contacted Gorbachev, invited him to a lunch at my residence to present him with the title and asked him to provide me with a list of guests. After agreeing on the date, my wife informed the cook that we had invited Gorbachev, his wife Raisa and some friends and that we wanted to offer them paella. The next day the cook informed my wife that she was leaving the service at the Embassy. Fortunately, among the policemen assigned to the mission there was a Valencian who offered to cook the paella.

After establishing a cordial relationship, I used to visit Gorbachev from time to time in his Foundation and we had interesting discussions about the situation in Russia and in the world, and about Spanish-Russian relations. In 1999 Raisa passed away and Gorbachev was deeply affected as he was very close to his partner. He called me one day to come and see him and told me that he was grief-stricken and would like to go to Spain to recuperate. I contacted the Ministry and the Community of the Balearic Islands, which kindly invited him and his daughter Irina to spend some time on the islands. At the end of that year I suffered a heart attack and had to return to Madrid, and I had no further contact with Gorbachev. 

According to Ambassador Cuenca, Gorbachev tried to break out of the infernal circle of the transition from a dictatorship led by an autocratic tsar to the dictatorship of the CPSU, and to try to transform the outdated and sclerotic Stalinist universe into a world of freedom. He wanted to do it from within the CPSU and there he was wrong, because from within the Party he could destroy it, but not reform it, because, between the hermetic communist world from which he came and the open and humane model to which he aspired, there was no possible compromise. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, Gorbachev was swept away by his transformative wave that washed over the stiffened Soviet society, and was unable to control it.

I agree with novelist Viktor Yerofeyev's assertion that Gorbachev "led Russia to its historic destiny: he has entered the Pantheon of Russian history and will gradually come to be regarded as a great figure: but it will not be soon. The Russian people are an ungrateful people". I would therefore like to pay a modest personal tribute to his memory. Despite his ideology - which I do not share - and the mistakes he made - what politician has not made them? -He was a person of integrity and admiration, who did a commendable job for international peace and security. I trust that he will serve as an inspiration to the Spanish political class, which is clearly capable of improvement.