Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the first and last President of the Soviet Union, died at the age of 91 in Moscow’s Central Hospital on August 30, 2022. Most obituaries have eulogised him for his role in unilaterally ending the Cold War; agreeing to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that began to reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by the Soviet Union and the United States; and initiating the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring) that restored fundamental human rights to millions of Soviet citizens. Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
As General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) between 1985 and 1991, Gorbachev attempted to revitalise the CPSU and the Soviet Union. He failed in his efforts due to his vacillation between the views of the CPSU’s impatient “social democrat” elements and its moderate doctrinaire communist reformers, which allowed hardline CPSU members to resist his initiatives. Consequently, the CPSU proved ineffective in responding to the rapid changes on the ground unleashed by the ideas of glasnost and perestroika.
Gorbachev’s early moves for eradicating alcoholism and corruption as social constraints for perestroika were not popular, providing grist for Soviet political satirists and support for anti-reform CPSU leaders opposing his initiatives. In 1987, Gorbachev proposed to the CPSU to endorse “democratisation” of decision-making in economic enterprises, the introduction of “contracts” to maximise output, especially in the agriculture sector, and competitive pricing to achieve perestroika. These limited measures were strongly resisted on the ground by entrenched interests that controlled these enterprises.
The collapse of the CPSU-controlled economy following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 created a vacuum that was swiftly filled by a new class of politically connected business-oriented trading elites. Large segments of the state-controlled enterprises across the former Soviet Union were “privatised” through these elites (termed “oligarchs” by Western analysts), sharply accentuating growing inequalities.
Gorbachev’s inability to retain the Soviet Union and its communist ideology was accompanied by the emergence of strident nationalism that would dominate post-Soviet politics in varying degrees after his political demise. Individual CPSU leaders of Soviet component republics, who had no alternative political vision to offer, were unable to respond to strident nationalist sentiments taking root on the ground even during Gorbachev’s leadership of the CPSU.
The first signs of this were visible during the December 1986 riots in Almaty in Kazakhstan, the February 1988 outbreak of the Nagorno Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the April 1989 violent demonstrations in Tbilisi in Georgia, and the August 1989 revolutions in the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Assertive nationalism dominated the process of post-Soviet “self-determination”, targeting the composite “Soviet” identity and the politically drawn administrative boundaries created primarily during the Stalinist period of Soviet history. This ongoing process impacted most national minorities, including ethnic Russians, in the countries of the post-Soviet space.
The televised images of Gorbachev handing over the Soviet Union’s nuclear-weapon launch codes to his arch-rival Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin, on December 25, 1991, signified his political fall and marked the emergence of Russia as the successor state of the Soviet Union. Earlier, on December 21, 1991, at Almaty, the leaders of the 11-member Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), including those representing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (the original constituents of the Soviet Union in 1922), had unanimously decided to support Russia’s “continuance of the membership” of the Soviet Union in the United Nations, “including permanent membership of the Security Council”. This was to avoid the need for post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to apply for membership in the UN.
As the leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev (often accompanied by his articulate wife Raisa) provided a stark contrast to the dour and “wooden” style of his immediate predecessors at international summit meetings. His proclivity to speak openly (and at times garrulously) made him popular with his foreign interlocutors, including US President Ronald Reagan, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and later, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
They all used their interaction with him to extract major concessions from Gorbachev aligned with their strategic interests without formally committing themselves to any obligations in return. This ensured the continuation of the NATO military alliance despite the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact; the withdrawal of the massive Soviet armed presence from Europe that symbolised and emanated from the Soviet Union’s bitterly fought military victories in 1945, including the capture of Berlin; the peaceful reunification of Germany catalysing its revival as a major European power; and the positioning of an increasing number of Western political, economic, and legal advisors in key post-Soviet republics, including in Russia, to replace their discarded Soviet constitutions with Western-style legal frameworks for sustaining democracy and free markets in the 1990s.
Gorbachev advocated collective Asian security involving cooperation between the Soviet Union, China, and India. His immediate priority was to extricate Soviet troops from Afghanistan, which he succeeded in doing by February 1989. His official visit to China in mid-May 1989 to normalise Sino-Soviet relations was overshadowed by the Tiananmen Square protests. The Russia-India-China (RIC) consultative platform emerged during Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov’s time in 1998.
Mikhail Gorbachev invariably affirmed his warm friendship with India. His contribution to the bilateral relationship was exemplified by the outcomes of his two high-profile state visits to New Delhi in 1986 (his first as Soviet leader to an Asian country) and 1988.These outcomes created openings for India-Russia relations that continue to be relevant today, especially such as cooperation in the transfer of technologies and construction of nuclear power plants in India.
At a time when the increasing polarisation between states is constantly buffeting international relations, Gorbachev’s lasting legacy and relevance will remain that of leadership in prioritising the peaceful settlement of disputes through dialogue and a willingness to engage in diplomacy to achieve this objective.
Former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations