Reassessing Gorbachev

Abstract

Comments from around the world following Gorbachev’s death revealed yet again how polarized views of him are. Most Westerners still see him as a man who changed his country and the world for the better. Most Russians condemn him for having intentionally or unintentionally destroyed the USSR. This essay attempts to reassess his record – to ask what a leader like him was to do when he had noble aims for his country and the world and possessed the power potentially to achieve them, but confronted huge obstacles to doing so. Should he have pursued them at the risk not only of failure, but of making things worse? Should he have settled for presiding over the status quo and preserving his own power? To address such questions, I pose others: What were Gorbachev’s goals and how did he come by them? Were they so ambitious as to be unrealistic? Did he have sufficient power as Soviet leader possibly to achieve them? What obstacles did he face? Did he foresee them? How effectively did he cope with them? Were there alternatives that were preferable to his approach? I conclude that Gorbachev was right to make the attempt.