I.

Introduction

Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich (1931- ), leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1985 to 1991, the last leader of that country and the key figure in the liberalization and subsequent disintegration of Soviet and Eastern European Communism. Gorbachev set out to reinvigorate the Soviet system but inadvertently destroyed it. His policies aimed at relaxing tensions with the West, particularly the United States, made a crucial contribution to the end of the Cold War, which had divided the world since the late 1940s.

II.

Early Years

Gorbachev was born to peasant parents in the village of Privolnoye, in the agrarian Stavropol Territory in south-western Russia. As a child he lived through many of the horrors of Soviet life under dictator Joseph Stalin: one third of the residents of Privolnoye perished during the famine of the early 1930s, caused by the rapid collectivization of Soviet agriculture; both of Gorbachev’s grandfathers were arrested arbitrarily and later released by Stalin’s secret police; and Gorbachev’s home region was occupied by the German army from 1942 to 1943, during World War II, then reoccupied by Soviet forces. Despite this, the young Gorbachev kept faith in the Soviet system. A model schoolboy, Gorbachev joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1946, and two years later he won a state medal for his work bringing in the grain harvest.

Gorbachev was admitted to law school at Moscow State University in 1950, partly because of his ability and hard work and partly because of his humble origins and his status as a probationary member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), a rarity for one so young. He became a full member of the party in 1952. In 1951 Gorbachev met Raisa Titarenko, a philosophy student from Siberia; the two were married in 1953. On graduating in 1955, the couple moved to Stavropol, the main city of Gorbachev’s native region, with all their possessions in a pair of suitcases. Their daughter Irina was born several years later.

III.

Building a Career

Gorbachev began his political career in the Komsomol, the traditional training ground for Soviet party officials. In 1956 he became first secretary of the Komsomol organization for the city of Stavropol. In 1958 he accepted a position in the propaganda department of the Komsomol committee for Stavropol Territory. Thriving in the political environment, Gorbachev rose swiftly, becoming first secretary of the Komsomol regional committee by 1961. In 1962 he transferred into the Stavropol branch of the CPSU, specializing in the farm sector and winning the trust of the regional first secretary, Fyodor Kulakov. In 1966 Gorbachev was promoted to first secretary of the Stavropol city committee of the CPSU and in 1968 to second secretary of the party committee of Stavropol Territory.

In April 1970, having been recommended to CPSU general secretary Leonid Brezhnev by Kulakov (then a member of the Soviet leadership), Gorbachev became first secretary of the Stavropol Territory CPSU committee, the youngest regional first secretary in the Soviet Union. The following year he was granted a seat on the CPSU Central Committee. As party chief of Stavropol Territory, Gorbachev experimented with techniques for encouraging agricultural workers and farm managers to improve productivity. He worked to improve the living conditions of workers in the region and to allow farming collectives to play a greater role in planning.

Gorbachev owed his political advancement to his vigorous performance in office and also to personal connections. In addition to Fyodor Kulakov, Gorbachev enjoyed the confidence of Mikhail Suslov, who served as senior secretary for ideology of the CPSU, and of Yuri Andropov, the chairman of the KGB, the Soviet secret police. Suslov had served as first secretary of the Stavropol Territory committee of the CPSU in the 1940s; Andropov was a native of the area and often took holidays there.

In November 1978, shortly after Kulakov’s death, Gorbachev moved to Moscow to succeed Kulakov as Central Committee secretary responsible for Soviet agriculture. In 1979 he also became a candidate (non-voting) member of the CPSU’s Politburo, its top policy-making body. In October 1980, at the age of 49, Gorbachev was made a full member of the Politburo, thus becoming the youngest member of the Communist Party’s inner circle.

IV.

Soviet Leader

Gorbachev climbed to the top of the Communist hierarchy in an atmosphere of political intrigue and growing anxiety among the Soviet elite, who were concerned that the country’s economic and other problems were becoming more grave. Brezhnev, who died in November 1982, was briefly succeeded by Yuri Andropov and then by Konstantin Chernenko. Andropov, the more dynamic of the two, made Gorbachev his second-in-command, and Gorbachev took on an increasingly active role within the Politburo. Although Andropov saw Gorbachev as his heir apparent, the Soviet leader was unable to move Chernenko out of the line of succession before his health gave out in February 1984. Chernenko replaced Andropov as Soviet leader, but he too died little more than one year after taking office. Following Chernenko’s death, Gorbachev quickly won the endorsement of the Politburo and Central Committee and was appointed general secretary of the CPSU—and thus the new leader of the Soviet Union—on March 11, 1985.

V.

Domestic Policies

After taking office, Gorbachev promptly moved young, energetic politicians into key positions, including Nikolay Ryzhkov as prime minister, Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign minister, and Aleksandr Yakovlev as coordinator of ideological affairs for the Central Committee. Gorbachev also carried out numerous changes at lower levels of the power structure. Along with the personnel changes, Gorbachev pursued a crackdown on corruption and incompetence within the Communist Party organization (an effort begun by his mentor Yuri Andropov), announced a campaign against alcohol consumption, and undertook a review of the USSR’s declining economic situation.

Then in 1986 Gorbachev’s policies took a radical turn. Gorbachev was frustrated by bureaucratic resistance to the measures he had introduced, by popular apathy, and by the poor quality of the information he and the rest of the Soviet leadership were receiving—dramatically illustrated by the belated official reaction to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in April of that year (see Chernobyl Accident). He recast his reform programme as one of comprehensive perestroika (restructuring) of society and economy and declared that glasnost (candour or openness) had to be fostered in the mass media and in governmental and party organizations. In January 1987 Gorbachev came out in favour of demokratizatsiia (democratization) of the Soviet regime, a process that took on an increasingly sweeping character with the passage of time. In October 1987 Gorbachev had a dispute with Boris Yeltsin, CPSU leader for the city of Moscow, who was pushing for an acceleration of reform. The dispute had a chilling effect on Gorbachev for several months; however, in 1988 he renewed his efforts, initiating a critical re-evaluation of Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian rule and pushing for further liberalization of major Soviet institutions. These changes were approved by a national conference of the CPSU, held in June and July of that year.

In September 1988 Gorbachev became chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet (national legislature), a post equivalent to head of state. Despite his success in consolidating his power, Gorbachev felt his efforts to reform the Soviet system were being obstructed by the Communist Party organization. Under his leadership, the Soviet constitution was amended to provide for the election of a new 2,250-member Congress of People’s Deputies to replace the Supreme Soviet. Elections to the congress were held throughout the Soviet Union in March and April 1989—the first competitive elections held in the USSR since its founding in 1922. After taking office, the Congress of People’s Deputies elected from its ranks a new Supreme Soviet, which, unlike its predecessor, had real and substantial legislative powers. The Supreme Soviet elected Gorbachev to be its chairman in May.

Considerably more democratic elections were held in 1990 in the 15 constituent republics of the USSR and in the regions and localities within them. The elections greatly diluted the power of the CPSU apparatus, and the party lost the right to issue binding directives to departments in the government apparatus. Meanwhile, Gorbachev implemented various other political reforms, including eliminating censorship of the press, lifting the prohibition on independent organizations and associations, and easing restrictions on foreign travel and emigration. Numerous opposition parties sprang into existence in the USSR, although they were not at first recognized by the Soviet authorities. In March 1990, at Gorbachev’s insistence, the Congress of People’s Deputies amended the Soviet constitution to allow non-Communist parties to register. Believing that he needed more authority to keep the country together, Gorbachev also persuaded the congress to pass a constitutional amendment separating the executive branch from the legislative branch and to elect him as president, making him the first—and, it would turn out, the only—president of the USSR.

Gorbachev’s economic reforms lagged far behind his political reforms. In 1987 the CPSU Central Committee voted to move gradually towards a market economy, but little progress was made on this front. The most significant change was the committee’s decision in 1988 to allow for small private businesses and cooperatives, which could exist either inside state enterprises or separate from them. However, disagreement among the Soviet leaders and their economic advisers, and between Russia and the other Soviet republics, prevented the adoption of a realistic reform programme for the Soviet economy as a whole. This deadlock, as well as the drift of control away from state planners, led to a severe economic crisis by 1990. The effects of this crisis included declining production, growing inflation, pervasive shortages of consumer goods, labour unrest, and, most importantly, a widespread loss of confidence in Gorbachev’s ability to handle economic issues.

VI.

Foreign Relations

Gorbachev was convinced that internal reform could not proceed without a major shift in Soviet foreign policy. Relations with the West had been sorely strained in the early 1980s, owing largely to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan (to prop up an unpopular Communist regime) and its possession of medium-range nuclear missiles aimed at Western Europe. Soviet ties with China and Japan were also poor, while in Eastern Europe and much of the developing world the USSR had accumulated more military commitments than it could afford.

In 1985 Gorbachev installed the reform-minded Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign minister and held his first summit meeting with US president Ronald Reagan. In all, Gorbachev held nine summits with US presidents Reagan and George Bush, and also established relationships with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, and other Western leaders. In 1987 Gorbachev called for “new thinking” in the Soviet Union regarding international relations, and in many ways he put the fresh ideas that came to the fore into effect. That year he and President Reagan signed an agreement calling for both countries’ elimination of all their land-based nuclear missiles of intermediate and shorter range. In July 1991 he and President Bush signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), committing the two countries to sharp reductions in their nuclear arsenals. Gorbachev’s government withdrew all forces from Afghanistan between May 1988 and early 1989 and cut its support for revolutionary movements and anti-Western governments in Africa. In the Middle East, the Soviet government improved relations with Israel and cooperated in the American-led effort to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, during the Gulf War.

The most far-reaching changes, however, were in Soviet policy towards the other countries of Eastern Europe, which had been under Soviet domination since the 1940s. Gorbachev warned the Communist governments in those countries that the USSR would no longer use force to keep them in power, and he encouraged the East European countries to fend for themselves economically and to embark on internal reforms. In 1989 a tide of political change washed over the region, culminating in the collapse of the Communist regime in East Germany and the opening of the Berlin Wall. In 1990 Gorbachev agreed to the reunification of Germany and the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. In October of that year Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his foreign policy initiatives.

VII.

Breakup of the Soviet Union

Gorbachev’s policies eroded the Communist regime’s authoritarian controls without putting any solid alternative structure in their place. Politically, he was caught between conflicting forces: on the one hand, his reforms went too far for conservative elements in the Soviet Communist Party and government bureaucracy, and on the other hand, they did not go far enough to suit the more radically minded. By late 1990 Gorbachev faced competing pressures from both these camps, and also from secessionists within the 15 republics that comprised the USSR. In the face of these pressures, a weakening Soviet economy, and growing political instability, Gorbachev allied himself temporarily with party conservatives and security organs within the Soviet government.

In theory, the USSR had since its inception been a federation; in reality, however, central government institutions had always held the bulk of power within the Soviet Union. After the Soviet republics held democratic elections in 1990, their new governments one by one adopted resolutions proclaiming their sovereignty. Although the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were the first to challenge the Soviet leadership, the most dangerous threat came from the Russian republic, which contained more than half of the USSR’s population. In May 1990 Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s leading radical critic, was chosen to be chairman of the Russian parliament. In June 1991 Yeltsin was voted president of Russia in a direct public election.

Unwilling to use force to quell his opponents within the constituent republics, Gorbachev tried to draw the republics voluntarily into a new “Union Treaty” of federation, which would update the original treaty that established the USSR in 1922. A preliminary version of such a treaty was to be initialled by a number of the republics on August 20, 1991. That signing never took place, however, for on August 19, a group of Gorbachev’s closest associates—all Communist conservatives at the highest levels of government—attempted a coup against Gorbachev by declaring a national state of emergency. Gorbachev, under guard at his summer home, refused to endorse the plot, which quickly crumbled in the face of street protests in Moscow spearheaded by Russian president Yeltsin—who emerged as the hero of the hour—and other pro-democracy politicians. Gorbachev returned to Moscow, but his leadership had been severely discredited by the crisis. On August 24 Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party. Within several days, party activities had been suspended.

Over the next four months, Gorbachev struggled to salvage a weak federal union, a transitional central government, and some place in it for himself, but he was unable to reach any kind of lasting agreement. By October, all of the Soviet republics except for Russia and Kazakhstan had declared their independence from the USSR. Then, on December 8, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus declared the USSR defunct and announced that they were forming a loose alliance called the Commonwealth of Independent States. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on December 25 in a solemn television address, and the USSR ceased to exist (see Communism, Collapse of).

VIII.

Life as a Private Citizen

After leaving office, Gorbachev remained publicly active, focusing much of his energy on the Foundation for Social, Economic, and Political Research in Moscow (also called the Gorbachev Foundation), which he established in December 1991. He continued to speak in favour of democratic socialism, lecturing frequently outside Russia and taking part in international conferences. His memoirs, Life and Reforms, were published in Russia in 1995. Although many Russian people blamed him for the ills of the post-Soviet era, Gorbachev decided to run in the 1996 Russian presidential elections, portraying himself as an experienced and moderate candidate. In the first round of the election, held in June, Gorbachev won only 386,000 votes, or one half of one per cent of those cast. His nemesis, presidential incumbent Boris Yeltsin, led the polls and was elected to a second term in the runoff election in July.

IX.

Assessment

Gorbachev did not achieve what he set out to do as Soviet leader—that is, to save the country’s existing social and political system by reforming it from within. In some areas, notably economics, he produced few results at all. Nevertheless, Gorbachev’s political and foreign policies made a tremendous difference to the countries of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and in some respects the entire world. The cumulative effect of these policies was to loosen the grip of the Soviet Communist dictatorship, thereby allowing leaders throughout the Communist Eastern bloc to search out new ways of governing. On the international scene, Gorbachev’s policies put an end to the Cold War and the post-World War II division of Europe. Gorbachev is thus one of the most influential statesmen of the 20th century.