Democratic reformer or gravedigger of a great power?
Last leader of the Soviet Union, this Wednesday aroused mixed opinions among the Russians, who have very different memories of their years in power.
While many in Western countries revere Gorbachev, who died in Moscow on Tuesday at the age of 91, for helping to end the Cold War, many Russians see him as a bumbling politician who accidentally destroyed a great country, triggering years of hardship. economic, humiliation and loss of geopolitical weight.
Others inside Russia, notably those who have long criticized what they say has been Putin’s brutal crackdown on dissent and free speech, see Gorbachev as a democrat and someone who tried to do the right thing.
What does the current Russian government say about Gorbachev?
The Kremlin on Wednesday praised the late Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as an extraordinary statesman who helped end the Cold War but had been badly wrong about the prospect of rapprochement with the “bloody” West.
The comments highlighted President Vladimir Putin’s view of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which Gorbachev unwittingly presided over, and which the Kremlin leader has lamented as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century and which he would reverse given the chance.
Putin, who on February 24 began what he called a “special military operation” by Russia against Ukraine, one of the 15 former Soviet republics, has said before that the disappearance of the Soviet Union meant the “disintegration of historical Russia” and of what he had built for 1,000 years.
In a carefully worded telegram to Gorbachev’s relatives, Putin expressed his condolences, describing the late leader as someone who had enormous influence on world history and had tried to reform the USSR.
“He led our country through a period of complex and dramatic changes and huge economic and social foreign policy challenges,” said Putin, who worked in the KGB security service when Gorbachev was in power.
However, Putin, beyond the brief statement, did not offer any assessment of the Gorbachev period between 1985 and 1991.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, was more forceful. He described Gorbachev as an extraordinary statesman who had helped end the Cold War, but whose role in history was controversial.
“I sincerely wanted to believe that the Cold War would end and that it would usher in a period of eternal romance between a new Soviet Union and the world, the West,” Peskov said.
“This romanticism turned out to be wrong. There was no romantic period, no 100-year honeymoon materialized, and the bloodthirsty nature of our adversaries was shown. It is good that we realized it in time and understood it,” he added. Peskov.
Gorbachev suffered from intermittent health problems for years and was rarely seen in public, but he had occasionally made calls for better ties between East and West and tried to encourage more dialogue between Washington and Moscow on nuclear weapons.
Responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union
Upon arrival at the Kremlin in 1985, Gorbachev tried to modernize and democratize the USSR with a series of reforms, which did not prevent its collapse in December 1991. A historical trauma for many Russians.
The fall and dismemberment of the Soviet Union continues to be an open wound for many Russians, especially the older ones, used to living in an all-powerful state.
The 1990s were marked by a difficult transition to the capitalist economy, amid rampant inflation, hardship and crime, under President Boris Yeltsin.
The chaos of those years also explains the virulence of some Russians, who consider Gorbachev responsible for their difficulties.
With the USSR “we were not rich, but at least we had the security of having a job,” laments Tatiana Silaieva, a 67-year-old retiree who says she has a “very negative” opinion of Gorbachev.
For Vladimir Zavkov, a 70-year-old pensioner, Gorbachev was nothing more than “a traitor.”
“He was a kind of illiterate politician, who let a great country collapse. Everything he could do positively was nullified by that,” this Muscovite told AFP.
Beyond the harshness of those years, the end of the USSR left many Russians out of class who had become accustomed to living in the cult of the Soviet superpower, a rival of the United States during the Cold War.
Gorbachev “did the United States a favor by letting our country sink. For us he was a complete traitor,” says Tatiana Silaieva.
Other Russians qualify their opinion of the Soviet leader, considering that his intentions were good, although the results ended with the Soviet Union.
“In the late 1980s, it seemed to us that he was someone who was going to change the Soviet Union in a good way,” Vladimir Kalintsov told Reuters. “However, in the end it turned out to be someone who collapsed the Soviet Union (…) and that led to many wars in the former Soviet republics.”
“He gave us freedom”
Nadejda Aleksina, a web designer, takes a more nuanced view and believes that Gorbachev was a “controversial” figure.
“In Russia I think he was a very important figure. Thanks to him Russia exists (as a country). So it seems to me a great loss for many people,” he says.
In Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second city, Oleg Tikhomirov, an artist, had a more positive opinion.
“It’s a real shame,” he said of her death. “I think he was the kindest and most humane of all our presidents and he gave us freedom, something we don’t have enough of right now.”
Jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny had kind words for the last leader of the Soviet Union, noting that he had ordered the release of political prisoners.
“I am sure that his life and story, which were central to the events of the late 20th century, will be evaluated much more favorably by posterity than by contemporaries,” according to a message from Navalny posted on Twitter by his allies.
Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov, a journalist who edits Novaya Gazeta , a newspaper that Gorbachev helped finance and has often been critical of the authorities, said the late politician despised war and realpolitik.
“He gave the world and his country an unlikely gift: 30 years of peace, without the threat of global or nuclear war. The gift is over and there will be no other,” Muratov wrote.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former member of the Russian parliament and critic of the Kremlin, praised Gorbachev for freeing hundreds of millions of people from tyranny and drastically reducing the number of nuclear warheads.
Gorbachev gave Russia a chance at freedom, he added. “It’s not their fault that we haven’t been able to use it.”
Gorbachev’s legacy is already distant, with the offensive launched by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and the acceleration of repression in Russia.
Svetlana Gannushkina, a defender of human rights in post-Soviet Russia, asks not to forget the democratic reforms undertaken by Gorbachev.
“Those who are aggressive (with Gorbachev) today are people who want to return to the Soviet system. People who were slaves and want to remain slaves,” Gannushkina told AFP.
“And they don’t want to thank who gave them freedom. Because Gorbachev gave us freedom,” he asserts.
With information from AFP and Reuters
