Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who changed the world 1:39
(CNN Spanish) --
For a man who for six years directed the destiny of the Soviet Union, it is striking that his legacy, influence and status have been consolidated especially on the other side of the Iron Curtain and in the capitalist West.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who died at the age of 91, took office as general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, the highest position in the Soviet political system, in March 1985, and from that moment on he undertook a policy of openness and modernization that unleashed —involuntarily— the collapse of the entire bloc.
ANALYSIS |
Why Gorbachev is remembered as a giant in the West and an outcast at home
On December 25, 1991, the USSR dissolved, giving way to the Russian Federation and more than a dozen new independent republics, including Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
At the center of this process were the policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) pursued by Gorbachev.
What exactly were they and what were their consequences?
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This was Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union 2:55
a difficult context
When Gorbachev assumed leadership of the USSR, he inherited a difficult situation.
The country's economy had been stagnant for almost a decade, the war in Afghanistan was going badly (Soviet troops would only leave in 1989) and the United States, its main global rival in the midst of the Cold War, was going through a period of growth and boom after its own turmoil in the 1970s, and exercising greater assertiveness precisely against the USSR.
Gorbachev, who had made a name for himself as an enemy of corruption and inefficiency, two problems that always afflicted the USSR, decided to undertake a process of economic reform and political opening to get out of the crisis, while building bridges with the United States. and its president, Ronald Reagan.
During the 27th Communist Party Congress in early 1986, Gorbachev first mentioned the words perestroika and glasnost, along with uskoreniye (acceleration), another concept associated with this period, during his speech outlining the future of the USSR.
“I started these reforms and my guiding stars were freedom and democracy, without bloodshed.
Thus the town would cease to be a flock led by a shepherd.
They would become citizens,” he said later in his life.
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perestroika
The perestroika policy was based on the decentralization of economic controls and the promotion of self-financing of state companies, and within this framework it envisaged delegating power from the central authority to local authorities.
Such restructuring and redistribution of power was strongly resisted, however, by the very bureaucracy of the Soviet State and the real scope of perestroika is disputed.
For the English historian Eric Hobsbawm, the perestroika reforms were barely outlined during the Gorbachev government and were based on two limited measures: legalizing small private companies and letting state companies with permanent losses go bankrupt.
No progress was made, however, in a general reform of the Soviet communist system.
Glasnost
With glasnost, Gorbachev tried to alleviate internal political tensions and open the doors to democratization: criticism of government officials and greater freedom to disseminate information were allowed, and power was taken away from the Communist Party, the only legal party within the Soviet system.
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This policy had a much greater impact than perestroika, in that it was much more specific in its attempt to introduce a democratic state based on law and with guaranteed civil liberties, that is, diametrically opposed to the Soviet state, Hobsbawm points out.
Thus, it shook the USSR to its core, according to historian Eric Hobsbawm: "The only thing that made the Soviet system work, and could conceivably transform it, was the state command structure inherited from the Stalinist era. But the structure of the party-state was, at the same time, the biggest obstacle to transforming the system that had created it, to which it had been adjusted, in which it had many vested interests".
And one of its unintended consequences was to boost nationalism where the USSR: glasnost created ever louder calls for independence for the Baltic states and other Soviet republics in the late 1980s.
Consequences in the USSR and beyond
While these policies included in the term perestroika were being implemented, Gorbachev held several meetings with Reagan, cementing his image of openness to the world: in 1987 both leaders signed the Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) for the control and reduction of nuclear weapons , and in 1989 the Soviet leader announced the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
Gorbachev, last president of the Soviet Union, dies at 91 1:36
This greater political openness in both foreign and domestic policy was taken advantage of in the first instance by the countries of Eastern Europe that did not belong to the USSR but were within its sphere of influence and control.
In 1988 Hungary opened its borders with Austria, the first fissure in the Iron Curtain, and Eastern Europeans began to cross it.
In 1989 the Germans from East and West tore down the Berlin Wall, beginning the process of reunification.
Communism or not, these countries had been seeking greater independence from Moscow for decades, and the subsequent chain reaction led to the disintegration of the USSR.
And although in many cases the independence process took place peacefully, in others, especially in those countries that were part of the USSR, it took place with violence: Gorbachev sent the army to crush attempts at secession in Lithuania and Azerbaijan, among others.
The internal tension was such that in August 1991 members of the army and the Communist Party who rejected perestroika and glasnost organized a revolt, which was put down.
On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR, and Boris Yeltsin took over as the first president of the Russian Federation.
With information from Stephen Collinson, Tim Lister, Susannah Cullinane, Laura Smith-Spark
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