Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who changed the world

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died this Tuesday at the age of 91, set out to change the USSR and ultimately changed the world when he ended a half-century of antagonism between East and West known as the Cold War.

“If I want to change something, I have to accept the position. You can’t live like this,” Gorbachev told his wife Raísa on March 10, 1985, a day before he took over the General Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. . Union (CPSU).

Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931 in the southern region of Stavropol into a Russian-Ukrainian peasant family that went through the famine of the 1930s as a result of the forced collectivization of the land ordered by Stalin.

Despite the fact that two of his grandparents were reprisal, Gorbachev was able to graduate in law from the prestigious Moscow State University (1955), where he met his wife Raísa.

Since he college partyGorbachev rose through the ranks until he became party leader in his native Stavropol in 1970 at the age of less than 40.

His specialization in agricultural economics ensured that this “apparatchik” (as the men who devoted themselves to the feast were called) got the leading role in a fast career and was mentioned in 1978 Minister of Agriculture in the Central Committee of the CPSU, his springboard to the General Secretariat.

Once appointed to the all-powerful Politburo (1980), Gorbachev led the party’s regeneration along with the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, who would be his political godfather. By the time he was appointed secretary general, Andropov already had his dauphin in mind as his replacement, although it wasn’t until Konstantin Chernenko died on March 10, 1985, after only a year at the helm of the party.

“You don’t limit yourself to agricultural matters. You have to devote yourself to all matters of domestic and foreign policy. It could be any moment that tomorrow all the responsibility rests on you,” Andropov once told Gorbachev.

His age – he had just turned 54 – was undoubtedly a decisive factor in his appointment after the last three leaders of the USSR – Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko – died within three years, threatening the stability of the Condition.

Promoter of Perestroika

The arrival of Gorbachev to the power of raised high expectationssince the new Soviet leader was outgoing, knowledgeable and smiled with pleasure, something his fellow citizens were not used to.

But Gorbachev did not limit himself to forms, because shortly after he came to power he launched the perestroika (political reform) and shortly after the Glasnost (informational transparency), giving way to what has been called “communism with a human face”.

He used a new generation of technocrats who wanted to reform the communist system to make it more effective, but the old Soviet nomenclature kept getting in the way. “The people want changes. The time has come. They can no longer be postponed,” Gorbachev told the historic “Mr. Not”, Andrei Gromyko.

Still, he continued to introduce private property, albeit without giving up the centralized economy; holding democratic elections; freedom of expression and belief; the creation of a new legislature and the release of political prisoners.

Externally, he improved relations with the West, significantly reduced the defense budget, opened nuclear weapons reduction negotiations with the United States and ordered the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

In addition, he renounced the doctrine of limited sovereignty over the members of the Warsaw Pactwhich started a revolutionary process that culminated in the the fall of the Berlin Wallthe overthrow of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and later the reunification of Germany.

Hero abroad, traitor at home

The political openness and the thaw with the West gave him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990but he would disappoint his Western supporters by sending troops to Latvia and Lithuania to suppress separatist movements.

Amid the unpopularity of the authorities due to shortages of basic goods, some Soviet republics took advantage of the loss of the CPSU’s monopoly of power to declare their independence from Moscow.

Confronting his former ally, Boris Yeltsinthe first Russian president to be elected by universal suffrage opened an insurmountable chasm that ultimately hastened the disappearance of the Soviet Union.

The final straw was the coup led by a group of Soviet leaders, a coup that was disarmed by an unstoppable Yeltsin, as Gorbachev returned from confinement in the south of the country as a political corpse.

Months later, Gorbachev confirmed the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in a landmark speech on December 25, 1991.

“Gorbi”, as he was known in the West, was received in the West as a rock star, but his compatriots never forgave him for the disappearance of the Soviet state and until the day he died many still accused him of treason.

“We had to fight for the territorial integrity of our state in a more incisive, coherent and daring way, and not bury our heads in the sand and let our ass hang in the air,” criticized Vladimir Putin, the current Russian president.

In response, Gorbachev, who had criticized Putin for monopolizing power but championed the annexation of Crimea and criticized Western interference in Ukraine, said Perestroika is “an unfinished revolution.”