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The Great Leader Series No. 22 - Mikhail Gorbachev
In 1985, when the first rumblings of this month’s Great leader’s thunder were first heard, people on the street heard that the new leader would rule for seven years. Those who listened also heard that he was ‘foretold in the Bible’ ‘that he was an apocalyptic figure: he had a mark on his forehead’. The latter comment will tell you that our Great Leader this month is Mikhail Gorbachev, instigator of the breakdown of the USSR.
Mikhail Gorbachev was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 to1991. He was also the last head of state of the USSR and he was the only Soviet Leader to be born after the October Revolution of 1917.
But what were his beginnings? Where did he come from?
He was born in the village of Privolnoye in southern Russia to a peasant family. His childhood was very hard because of the totalitarian leadership of Joseph Stalin: his paternal grandfather was sentenced to nine years in the Gulag for withholding grain from the collective’s harvest.
The Germans invaded the Soviet Union when he was ten and Nazi troops occupied the territory of Stavrapol, the area where Gorbachev lived, until 1943. Even after their departure the effects of the occupation continued to make life hard and made a lasting impression on the young Gorbachev.
For four years, in the summers, he worked as at collective farms and was rewarded with honours from the establishment for his hard work. He was later to champion peasant labour pointing out how hard the work was because enforced state quotas and taxes.
In 1950 he left his school after being awarded a silver medal and moved on the Moscow State University where he studied law. He graduated five years later. He also, in 1966, received a correspondence degree as an agronomist-economist. It was during the years of study that he joined Communist Party of the Soviet Union, taking part in social and political causes. It was also during these years he met Raisa Titarenko who he married in 1953.
All this leads to the start of his political career, he had already learnt that hard work in all areas of his life made for a better life and had already started to develop his skills in leadership.
As a hardworking member o the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Gorbachev slowly moved up the ranks of the communist party, being elected to the position Deputy to the Supreme Soviet in 1970, keeping the position until 1990 he was also elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1971. In 1978 he was appointed CCCP Secretary of Agriculture serving until 1985. During that time he became a full member of the Politburo. From 1984 to 1985 he served as Chairman at the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Soviet Union.
During all this time he was learning his leadership and management skills. These skills, as we all know, are important. How much more difficult must it be to acquire them and keep everyone happy in the electoral system as it existed in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s and 1980s, whilst still moving in the higher echelons of the Communist Party, Gorbachev had the chance to lead delegations to Canada, West Germany and to England to meet Margaret Thatcher. His travels abroad had a profound effect on his political and social views. 
On 11 March 1985, upon the death of Konstatin Chernenkov, he was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party which he tried to reform along with the State economy. He introduced glasnost [openness], perestroika [restructuring] and uskorenie [acceleration; of economic development] at the 27th Congress of the CPSU in February 1986.
Gorbachev hoped his economic reforms would improve living standards and worker productivity. The reforms brought about by the Law on Cooperatives in May 1987 were thought to the most radical since Lenin’s New Economic Policy. For the first time the law allowed private ownership in the services and manufacturing. High taxes were introduced but were removed when they were seen to be discouraging private sector activity.
The introduction of glasnost gave the Russian people a new freedom of speech. The press were less controlled and many political prisoners and dissidents were released.
A call for democratisation was made by Gorbachev in January 1987. He wanted to introduce some democratic elements in to the Soviet political process. One idea was multi candidate elections.
A change in international affairs was sought by Gorbachev. He wanted to improve relations and trade opportunities. His meeting with Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, October 1986 led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty in 1987 and the removal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1988.
1988 also saw the abandonment of the Brezhenev Doctrine which allowed the Eastern bloc nations to determine their own internal affairs. This led to revolutions in the eastern bloc countries throughout 1989, which in turn led to the collapse of the communist system. All these revolutions were peaceful except in Romania. The money held by the Soviet Union was spread throughout Eastern Europe effectively ending the Cold War. For this, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on 15 October 1990.
This spread of money and the end of the cold war took away power from both the CPSU and Gorbachev’s relaxation of censorship and more transparency in government had awoken nationalist and anti Soviet feelings in the soviet republics, especially the Baltic Republics. A force had accidentally been released; a force that would destroy the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev’s popularity began to wane. The Conservatives in the soviet leadership launched a coup in August 1991. During this time he spent three days under house arrest at a dacha in the Crimea. When he returned, restored to power, he found that support had swung away from him to his nationalist rival, Boris Yeltsin. Gorbachev was then forced to fire large numbers of his politburo. Some of those he was forced to arrest were “the gang of eight” who led the coup.
On 25 December 1991 Gorbachev resigned as the USSR was officially dissolved.
So why was Gorbachev such a good leader?
He was the first USSR leader to be born after the October revolution of 1917. He was, therefore, the first leader not to grow up during the early revolutionists but he did learn the dictates of Joseph Stalin and discovered at a very early age how painful it could be. It seems that Gorbachev had the best interests of the people of the USSR at heart, wanting to ease the poverty and restrictions upon one’s private thought. He spent many years at the very heart of the establishment working within the strictures of communist regime to lessen the harshness of peasants’ lives.
His travels abroad gave him chance to observe the outside world and how it worked and, probably, the way the everyday people of these countries went about their day to day lives. He felt that some changes were necessary in his home country and tried to ease in change, slowly and carefully.
“Without glasnost there is not, and there cannot be, democratism, the political creativity of the masses and their participation in management”
This quote from Gorbachev shows where he was leading the USSR: what his beliefs and actions were.
Sadly his plans were scuppered by the enthusiasm for change from the people wanting to move too fast and the opposition to the change by the more conservative members of the government who felt they were losing too much power.
Thus the great leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev was lost to his country.
But the world has not lost him completely. In 1992 he founded the Gorbachev Foundation, 1993 the Green Cross International, 2001 he founded the Social Democratic Party of Russia. In 2005 along with former West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl and former US President Bush Snr., he was awarded the Point Alpha Prize for promoting German reunification.
Story By: Anne Walker
Date : 03-06-2009
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