In remembrance of Mikhail Gorbachev

On the evening of August 30 this year, Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last President of the Soviet Union passed away. It marked the end of an era and the demise of a man of great integrity.

Gorbachev was said to have been suffering from a long and serious illness. In June, international media reported that he had been admitted to hospital after suffering from a kidney ailment, though the cause of his death has not been announced as yet.

His health had been deteriorating since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and had been in and out of hospital in recent years.

Mikhail Gorbachev, was born in 1931 into a peasant family in southern Russia. In his teens, young Gorbachev operated combine harvesters on collective farms. His political career began during the days where he was student while studying law at the Moscow University. He became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, making him the highest ranking official in the USSR.

A divisive figure in Russia, Gorby, as he was sometimes referred to, aimed at re-energizing the stalled Soviet economy, which was riddled with inefficiency, overblown defence spending and expanding corruption. He called for urgent reorganization and modernization.

He introduced the concept of ‘perestroika’ an attempt to restructure and give more independence to ministries and large state-owned enterprises. He also introduced some concepts of free market-style reforms. In 1988, Gorbachev permitted the establishment of private enterprises in the country. A break from the policies introduced by Vladimir Lenin at time of the Russian revolution. 

At the time Gorbachev led the USSR, the world was polarized between country groupings which supported the US and the NATO bloc in the West and the Marxist/Communist bloc led by Russia - the era commonly referred to as the ‘Cold War’ period. The two groupings were completely at logger-heads with each other and proxy wars between the groups were waged in the Asian and African countries. It was a time when these proxy wars were in danger of boiling over into battles of direct confrontation between the two power-blocs. It is to the former Soviet leader’s eternal credit, those differences did not spill over into direct confrontation. 

Gorbechev’s foreign policy, marked a period of an improvement of relations between the Soviet Union and Western countries, replacing the era of Cold War hostilities. His re-engagement with the West paved the way for several key disarmament treaties being signed. Moscow and Washington agreed to dismantle their intermediate-range conventional and nuclear missiles. Under Gorbachev, Moscow unilaterally stopped all nuclear tests.Moscow’s relations with the Eastern Bloc countries also underwent a radical change. Whereas formerly Soviet troops ‘ended’ disputes/differences within the USSR countries, Gorbachev’s liberalization included the right of self-determination. Countries were allowed to determine their own internal policies.

The reunification of Germany is also largely credited to Gorbachev who was known for have played a key role in the fall of the ‘Berlin Wall’ which divided Germany into West Germany and East Germany. 

In 1986, he announced plans to withdraw the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The Soviet Union’s armed involvement in Afghanistan cost the Soviet Union at least 15,000 casualties, and filled the country with veterans suffering from combat stress disorders.It was under Gorbachev’s leadership, Moscow unilaterally stopped all nuclear tests which led the way for re-integration with the West and paved the way for several key disarmament treaties which were subsequently signed. It was also during Gorbachev’s term, Moscow and Washington agreed to dismantle their intermediate-range conventional and nuclear missiles.

In 1991, Gorbachev oversaw the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The partial democratization of Soviet society under him led to a number of countries in the former Soviet bloc opting out of the bloc. Gorbachev attempted to draft a new union treaty. However, a group of hardline top officials attempted to stage a coup and to remove him from power to prevent the signing of the new union treaty.

The coup failed, but it prompted Gorbachev to dissolve the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and to resign as the party’s General Secretary.

By the time Gorbachev stepped down at the end of 1991, the NATO-Soviet frontier was no longer a flashpoint. NATO pulled all, but a few thousand troops back from the eastern flank, and the terrors of the cold war seemed consigned to history books and museums.Mikhail Gorbechev is best remembered for his disarmament initiatives, the unification of Germany, ending the Cold War, as well as for granting Eastern European countries the right to self-determination.