Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday, was without doubt one of the most influential political figures of the 20th century.
Gorbachev introduced radical political and economic reforms in the Soviet Union, helped end the Cold War, signed landmark nuclear treaties with the United States, allowed Eastern European countries to break free from Soviet control and domination, and ultimately presided (unintentionally) over the the dissolution of the Communist Soviet Union.
When he took power in 1985 – as part of a new generation of Communist Party activists who knew the Soviet system had to be changed – his intention was to revive his country's stagnant economy and overhaul its antiquated political system, and he is well remembered for his flagship glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) policies.
Gorbachev believed, however, that his reforms would somehow modernise the Soviet system, not lead to its collapse, as it did in 1991. He failed to realise that it was impossible to bring about real reform without destroying a centralised communist system.
His policies soon became the catalyst that brought an end to communist rule, not just within the USSR, but also in Eastern Europe, which went its own way and embarked on the road towards democracy and the market economy.
Whatever his shortcomings, Gorbachev ended a totalitarian system and the Cold War, and reduced nuclear weapons, making the world a safer place.
Gorbachev’s main legacy was without doubt his help to end the Cold War and to improve relations with the West. In 1987 he successfully negotiated with US President Ronald Reagan the abolition of a whole class of nuclear weapons through the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. Sadly, first the US, and then Russia withdrew from the treaty in 2019.
In December 1989 Gorbachev met with US President George H. Bush at the historic Malta Summit, just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, During the meeting Bush and Gorbachev declared an end to the Cold War, ushering a new era of friendship between the two sides.
In 1991 Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with US President George H.W. Bush. The treaty limited the number of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and nuclear warheads either country could possess. The treaty led to the removal of about 80 per cent of all strategic nuclear weapons.
Gorbachev also ended the Soviet Union’s ill-advised and humiliating occupation of Afghanistan in 1989, after nine years of conflict. “We finished this grim chapter,” Gorbachev recalled 30 years later. “Everyone agreed: it’s impossible to solve the Afghan problem by military means.”
Gorbachev must also be credited with not standing in the way of German reunification, after 40 years of artificial divsion. The reunification of Germany, Gorbachev said, was an internal German affair.
Gorbachev was rightly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his leading role in the radical changes in East-West relations.
Few question Gorbachev’s politics on the international stage, but domestically he is often associated with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which then led to severe econmic problems in the 1990s as Russia underwent a clumsy transition to a market economy.
Gorbachev survived an attempted coup in August 1991 by the communist old guard but six months later he was out of power and the USSR was no more. He remained unpopular domestically and when he stood for the Russian presidency in 1996 he received less than five per cent of the vote.
Whatever his shortcomings, Gorbachev ended a totalitarian system and the Cold War, and reduced nuclear weapons, making the world a safer place. That is an honourable legacy.