“an idealist“who aspired to recover” the initial impulse of the revolution” but who gradually “realized” that his ideas “were not applicable”. An individual who embodied the “utopia of the new Soviet man: hard-working, educated and erudite”, but who at the end of his mandate , for radical irony, ended up “burying the Soviet system”. William Taubman, professor emeritus of Political Sciences in the Amherst College and author of ‘Gorbachev, life and times’, the most detailed biography of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev published to date, describes for EL PERIÓDICO what was probably the most influential political personality of the last century, the architect of political and economic changes that allowed a respite in the arms racethe end of the division of Europeand the start of a political transition in his country, interrupted with the arrival of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin in 1999.
reviled by their fellow citizens by promoting the implosion of the USSRbut cheered in the West as a celebritythe swords are raised with respect to the place that your figure will occupy in history, due to the antagonistic dichotomy between its valuation inside and outside Russia. “The Russians will value Gorbachev when they overcome the loss of empire syndrome, something that in the Spanish case took a century,” he analyzes Pilar Bonetformer correspondent for ‘El País’, who entered into a dispute with the president personal relationship.
Born in Privolnoye, a village in the southern Stavropol region, to a family of poor peasants, Gorbachev was a exception in a social environment precariousness Y Stalinist repressions, where men were destined to work the land and little else. “He grew up in terrible times, collectivization, terror, war…two of his grandparents went to the GULAG,” recalls historian Taubman. However, their balanced family environmentwith a “maternal grandfatherwho loved him very much and empowered him, and a father, who was a good mannot a peasant patriarch and tyrant” endowed him with “great self-confidence” and enormous doses of “optimism” and “confidence” in human beings.
impeccable track record
With a brilliant academic record and one impeccable track record in the communist youth, Gorbachev achieved something within the reach of very few in Stavropol: Study Law on the Moscow State University (MGU)the most prestigious academic institution in the country, where he met the love of his life: a Siberian philosophy student named Raisa Maximovnawhom he married in 1953 and from whom he did not separate until her death, in 1999, due to leukemia.
Already as a university student, the young Gorbachev showed that he lived with difficulty with the rigidity and the routinetwo features of soviet system. On one occasion, in 1952, he challenged a tedious professor whose classes were limited to reading aloud excerpts from Stalin’s latest work, ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the Soviet Union’. Without worrying about your possible consequenceswrote him an anonymous message that read as follows: “this is a university and it usually admits those who have studied for 10 years, that is, those who know how to read”.
The instructor read the note out loud and accused its author of being a enemy of the USSR. The future Soviet president, hearing the invective, identified himself. Their peasant origins they saved him from being expelled, Taubman recalls in a passage in his book.
rise to power
Upon finishing his studies in 1955, Mikhail He returned with Raísa to his small homeland, from where he began his political ascent. They were almost three lustrums in which he worked in the local prosecutor’s office, the youth league and the communist party itself, until returning to Moscow in 1978 as secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the executive of the single party. A year later, with 48 yearsbecame the youngest member of the Politburothe highest authority in decision-making political decisions.
The luck and the cunning allowed him to climb steps keeping integrity intactsomething exceptional in a country where power struggles are waged starkly. He made friends with many Moscow leaders who came to take the waters at the spas in his region, in particular with Yuri Andropov, then director of the KGB. “When I was the first party secretary in Stavropol, every time I talked to Brezhnev, (Soviet leader at the time) he explained it in detail to his colleagues, sending them the message: don’t mess with me, because I’m connected to Brezhnev,” explains Taubman.
No one doubts that Gorbachev’s arrival at the leadership of the communist party in 1985 was a breath of fresh air for a country stagnant Y cardboard, that worshiped a revolution, the Bolshevik, and a system, the communist, in which hardly anyone believed anymore. “It was a total change of style; the press conferences were true press conferences, you asked what you wanted”, recalls Bonet. “The Politburo, until then, was a gerontocracy, but Gorbachev showed common sense, clarity Y dynamismwas a modern character“, continues the journalist. A modernity that, according to Taubman, was reflected in “the exquisite treatment” who gave his wife, very far from that “macho chauvinism“own of the soviet bureaucrats.
End of the cold war and internal crisis
In foreign policy, Gorbachev brought about the end of the arms race, thanks to his understanding with ronald reagan Y George Bush. But beyond the cuts in nuclear warheadsthe last Soviet leader will be remembered for allowing the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe without presenting military resistancesomething that his predecessors never considered, including those of a reformist nature such as Nikita Khrushchev. “He was a conscientious person, and at no time did he think to maintain that by force” (the Warsaw Pact), explains Bonet.
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The home front It gave him serious headaches from the beginning. Instead of propelling the country towards a kind of socialism with a human face, the president released forces long repressed by the soviet totalitarianism (nationalism, freedom of the press) that turned against him, causing him to lurch and accumulate management errors: failed campaign against alcoholism, shortages in stores, obstruction of the conservative sector, rivalry with Boris Yelstinwith greater reformist impetus, which ended up leading to a personal confrontation. “Yeltsin struck a chord with Gorbachev; he was irrational,” Taubman concludes.
The last Soviet president has maintained a cautious attitude during the prolonged presidency of Vladimir Putin, avoiding criticizing him and defending, albeit without emphasis, episodes such as the annexation of crimea. “On paper, relations with Putin are good, but every time Gorbachev expresses himself in a divergent direction (to the current Government), something is wrong with your Foundation: a fire department inspection or whatever…”, confesses Bonet.