The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died this Tuesday at the age of 91wanted to change the USSR and ended up changing the world, as he put an end to half a century of antagonism between East and West known as the Cold War.
(In context: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, died in Moscow)
“If I want to change something, I must accept the position. You cannot continue living like this,” Gorbachev told his wife Raísa on March 10, 1985, one day before assuming the general secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). .
(See here: The reactions to the death of Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR)
Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931 in the southern region of Stavropol into a Russian-Ukrainian peasant family that lived through the famine of the 1930s caused by the forced collectivization of the land ordered by Stalin.
Despite the fact that two of his grandparents were reprisals, Gorbachev was able to graduate in law from the prestigious Moscow State University (1955), where he met his wife, Raísa.
Ever since he joined the party in college, Gorbachev rose through the ranks until he became head of his Stavropol party in 1970. native with less than 40 years.
His specialization in agricultural economics allowed this “apparatchik” to star in a meteoric career and be appointed Secretary of Agriculture in the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1978, his springboard to reach the General Secretariat.
Once appointed a member of the almighty Politburo (1980), Gorbachev directed the regeneration of the party, which suffered from clear ailments of gerontocracy, together with the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, who would be his political godfather.
Mikhail Gorbachev passed away on Tuesday, August 30.
Sergey Guneev / Private archive
Once he was appointed general secretary, Andropov already had his dauphin in mind as his replacement, although it was not until Konstantin Chernenko died on March 10, 1985 after just one year at the helm of the party.
“You do not limit yourself to agricultural matters. You must dedicate yourself to all matters of domestic and foreign policy. At any moment, it may be that tomorrow, all the responsibility falls on you,” he once commented.
His age, he had just turned 54, was undoubtedly a decisive factor for his appointment after the last three leaders of the USSR died within three years -Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko-, which threatened the stability of the State .
Gorbachev’s arrival in power aroused great expectationssince the new Soviet leader was extroverted, had people skills and smiled with delight, something his fellow citizens were not used to.
But Gorbachev did not limit himself to forms, since shortly after coming to power he launched Perestroika (political reform) and shortly after Glasnost (informative transparency), which gave way to what was called “Communism with a human face”. “.
He used a new generation of technocrats who wanted to reform the communist system to make it more effective, but the old Soviet nomenclature kept putting obstacles in his way.
“The people want changes. The time has come. They cannot be postponed any longer,” Gorbachev told the historical “Mr. Niet,” Andrei Gromyko.
Even so, he went ahead with the introduction of private property, although without giving up the centralized economy; holding democratic elections; freedom of expression and belief; the creation of a new legislature and the release of political prisoners.
Externally, he improved relations with the West, significantly reduced the defense budget, opened nuclear arms reduction negotiations with the United States, and ordered the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
If I want to change something, I must accept the charge. You can’t go on living like this
In addition, he renounced the doctrine of limited sovereignty in relation to the members of the Warsaw Pact, which began a revolutionary process that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the overthrow of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and later the reunification of Germany.
Political openness and a thaw with the West earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, but he would disappoint his Western supporters by sending troops to Latvia and Lithuania to suppress secessionist movements.
Amid the unpopularity of the authorities due to the scarcity of basic goods, some of the Soviet republics took advantage of the loss of the CPSU’s monopoly of power to proclaim their independence from Moscow.
The confrontation with his old ally, Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian president elected by universal suffrage, opened an insurmountable gap that ended up precipitating the disappearance of the Soviet Union.
The last straw was the coup led by a group of Soviet leaders, a coup that was disarmed by an unstoppable Yeltsin, while Gorbachev returned from his confinement in the south of the country as a political corpse.
Months later, Gorbachev confirmed the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in a historic speech on December 25, 1991.
“Gorbi”, as he was known in the West, was received as a rock star in the West, but his compatriots never forgave him for the disappearance of the Soviet State and to the day of his death many still accused him of treason.
“We had to fight for the territorial integrity of our state in a more insistent, coherent and daring way, and not hide our heads in the sand, leaving our asses in the air,” Vladimir Putin, the current Russian president, criticized him.
In response, Gorbachev, who has criticized Putin for monopolizing power but has defended the annexation of Crimea and criticized Western interference in Ukraine, said that Perestroika is “an unfinished revolution.”
EFE
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