The last Soviet leader

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 6th of September, 2022.

This is The World and Everything in It and we thank you for joining us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up on The World and Everything in It: First up, the legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Many of us know Gorbachev as the Soviet leader to whom Ronald Reagan addressed this challenge back in 1987:

REAGAN: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

But “Mr. Gorbachev” had a hand in more than just the tearing down that wall—he played a key role in the tearing down of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War.

REICHARD: In recent years, however, Russia’s new leader, Vladimir Putin, has worked to regain power over former Soviet states. And he’s rekindling Russia’s Cold War rivalry with the West. Here’s WORLD reporter Josh Schumacher.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Mikhail Gorbachev died on August 30, 2022, about 31 years after he told the world he would resign as the leader of the Soviet Union. It was Christmas Day 1991.

GORBACHEV: [Speaking in Russian]

The last year of Gorbachev’s rule was tumultuous. He witnessed one coup against his power. And he watched several of the Soviet Union’s satellite nations move toward independence.

Up to his resignation, Gorbachev had sought to preserve the Soviet Union, but reform it.

William Inboden is the executive director for the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin.

INBODEN: He always was a dedicated communist. Okay, so when he became the Soviet Union's leader in 1919 85, he was very committed to preserving Soviet communism. But he also realized that Soviet communism was in desperate need of reform. And so his goal was to reform the system while still preserving it.

Inboden explains that Gorbachev saw two main threats to the Soviet system. The first was the internal threat of repression, corruption, and a decrepit economy.

The second was the aggressive policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

INBODEN: And so Gorbachev set out to try to address both of those, and for the first part, the question of the Soviet Union's own internal corruption and decrepitude. He came up with two policies of glasnost and perestroika, which mean essentially reform and openness.

A problem quickly arose from this strategy. Gorbachev was trying to open up a system that depended on being closed to offer freedom to a system that depended on being controlling.

The result? The system started to spiral out of control.

KOPPEL: Military leaders and the Soviet secret police have taken control of the government and vice president Gennady Yanayev is now sitting in the president’s seat…

Still, Inboden explains that Gorbachev did manage to do one thing before the Soviet union began to fall apart:

INBODEN: He did succeed, at least in ending the Cold War peacefully, so that there was no longer the threat of the United States and Soviet Union blowing up the world in a nuclear exchange.

Gorbachev would win a Nobel Peace Prize for that accomplishment in 1990, even as his home country reviled him for it.

But Gorbachev’s legacy wasn’t all rose-colored in the eyes of the West. Early in his tenure, he carried on the “Brezhnev doctrine,” sending in the tanks anytime an uprising occurred in one of the U.S.S.R.’s vassal states.

INBODEN: And then a couple of times in Georgia and a couple of the Baltics, he did he did send to the troops and a half hearted way, there was some violence, they did kill some peaceful protesters, and that is a more on his legacy, to be sure.

Still, Inboden says he didn’t respond violently to the extent that his predecessors would have.

Or, it seems, as one of his successors would have. Britain’s Channel 4 news.

REPORTER: It was a sudden as it was brutal and relentless Ukrainians woke up to find themselves plunged into the midst of war as Russia launched a full scale invasion on multiple fronts and the early hours of this morning...

William Inboden points out that Vladimir Putin, especially with his recent invasion of Ukraine, has proved himself to be very much the opposite of Gorbachev.

INBODEN: Gorbachev, every time he was faced with the choice of do I use force do I try to extend the control of the Soviet empire, he would choose the more peaceful path of allowing the Soviet satellites to go their own way. Whereas Putin's goal has been to recreate the borders of the old Soviet empire. So this is why he invaded Georgia in 2008. That's why he annexed Crimea in 2014. That's why, of course, he invaded Ukraine earlier this year.

And this lends an odd sort of symbolism to the timing of Gorbachev’s death.

INBODEN: Putin and Gorbachev represent two very different visions of, of Russia of, of the Kremlin of its relationship with his people of its relationship with its with its neighbors. [11:35] There's a very poignant symbolism to this.

Gorbachev has passed away at the same time as the Kremlin decided to kill his legacy as well.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

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