GORBACHOV - a savior or a Noah?

The title is maybe a little misleading.
I wanted to hear your opinions on this man, Gorbi.

I remember that when I saw him first, after Andropov and Chernenko, I liked him at once. Russians tend not to like him at all. There is even a Russian superstition about a man with a dark sign on forehead who is going to ruin Russia....

Was Gorbis policies, the end of Cold War, the Wall out, inevitable?
Was USSR really so weakened that it had to fall anyways?

How come that a geriatric congress chooses a man like him in 1986 (or was it 85?).

Could he have done better - and if so - how? Worse, maybe?

Was he chosen to carry some communist through an inevitable disaster of USSR into market economy, with full pockets - a kinda Noah of our times?

 

gorbi

the fall was coming and i don't think it could have been stopped. what gorbi did [ and he should be thanked] is to allow it to be peaceful instead of fighting to the bitter end.

he is not a noah, he was overwhelmed and went with the flow

the whole system was corrupt, bankrupt, unworkable, and was being wrecked by both internal and external forces beyond anybodies control. i think the pivotal moment was when it was decided to loosen controls covering outside contacts and personal freedoms. [ie. soldarity] in retrospect actions meant to forstall the fall hastened it.

 

Gorbachev wanted to reform communism, not do away with it, and he had plenty of ideas on how to do it. And he was young, by far the youngest member of the Politburo. This is why he was chosen. His policies ultimately enabled the system to come crashing down; if Gorbachev had been an old hard-liner like Breznjev who would have fought any reform movement with violence, the communist system would have lasted much longer, not because it worked but because the government didn't allow change and didn't mind enforcing that.

Thus I think (and my mind is largely shaped by the American historian Palmer and the Dutch historian Kern on this, since they make up the universitary stuff we have to learn about Gorbachev) that he really did contribute greatly to the fall of communism and that without him we might still be waiting for it.

 

Don't know much about this, but I have the feeling that Gorbatchev is very popular in the west, but not very popular in the former USSR.(at least in Russia....)

 

Correct, Castelot. Russians don´t like him. Maybe partly, because USSR ceased to have a status of "equal" superpower. But also because he, in fact, due to the smooth transition, acted - like Noah: very many communists who enjoyed considerable advantages from their positions (in fact, their life style was much like western millionaires´) had time and opportunity to acquire "privatize" for themselves enormous riches. Their lifestyle survived in Gorbachov´s Ark.

 

Gorbechov is the best thing that could have happened to russia

 

It actually happened....

You mean - at this point of time and "development". We never know, but he was certainly one of the better things. The problem is a little like in Germany 1917.
Neither Soviet press nor any drastic economic problems prepared the population for "surrender". Patriotic Russians are angry because millions of ethnic and /or cultural Russians now live in foreign countries, often tyrannies, like Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan etc, often persecuted.
Even in Latvia, where aboriginal population, as far as I know the country, is less educated, even seems to be less prepared to change it´s mentality for "market economy", where most professional engineers, doctors, architects, businessmen are Russian, the Russian minority is almost invited to leave. And Latvia has a good reputation and a EU and NATO membership.

Russia became within a few years a country of deep economic contrasts: most people living humbly, evidently worse than during the last years of USSR and a very thin stratum of "biznesmen" have extremely high living standard. There are several multi-billionaires, mostly in oil or other raw materials´business.

There is a sense of betrayal: Who is to blame for our poverty, for our surrender and dismemberment?
Who in germany of 1917 understood the situation? So in Russia today. I feel, whenever I visit my favorite city - Leningrad, that people yearn after a come back of a good and just ruler. Presently, they put their hopes in Putin. Not an easy job for this low ranking former KGB officer without any significant successes in his KGB career (the toppunkt being his placement in a minor town in DDR).

 

We can say that now because we've seen it happen (well, you have, I was 3 at the time). I highly doubt Gorbachev himself saw it that way, though. Another thing is that there is much tanks can do about popular uprising, armed or not; see Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968.

 

...or Moscow in 1991.

Nej Roel. I got the feeling thqt their days are counted, ca. in 1978-9. Then came Solidarity and martial law in Poland. The genecs were getting older, less nad less viable and Politbureau - was more like a dept. of geriatry.
Then - Gorbachov springs out. Shock. Nice, smiling, Western in his stle. Then - the compromitation in Chernobyl. Maybe this more than anything showed that nothing is really under control in this "bardak" as Russians call brothel or mismanagement. Gorbachov was very liked in the west, but he semed not to understand the basics of market economy.
But- as I said, the population was shocked by the suddennes of the changes. It was more a struggle at the top and disintegration of the Union than a popular movement. Russians were simply not mentally ready for this.

I´l never forget that evening when I came to the conclusion that changes are inevitable withi a few years. Maybe it was my first, longer stay in Poland in 1979, that inspired me thus. It was a few months after the election of Wojtyla. When I looked at thede smart, sly eyes of him, I knew he´d do anything to hunt communists outa there. That seemed so improbable then to all.

 

chaos theory

what was happening just before the fall was not a revolt but rather a demostration of the chaos theory applied to government. everything was failing. by the late 70s the cracks were there and within a few years the whole structure was falling apart. gorbi's actions in effect got the people out of the building before it fell instead of keeping everyone inside trying to hold it up and dooming them when it fell. his thinking is open to debate but in the end it was his actions that kept the whole mess from turning to a deadly last stand. it was also a lesson to other tyrants about the dangers of a little freedom. as a long time horseman i can tell you its a lot easier to keep a horse from running away before he starts than it is to stop him once he gets the bit in his teeth and gets going.

 

Very true.....
I am just puzzled: how that bunch of geriaric nursing home inhabitants found out that that he was the man for the job, and what did they expect to get out of it? How did he convince them, in other words? Cheated them?

Maybe they all understood, it was time to go and needed a man for the job: let HIM build the Ark for us and our children. And he did. Didn´t he?

 

A few questions:

What post did Gorbachov hold before he ruled?

Did the doddering old men see in him a young, active man who would revitalise the CCCCP, much better than the well-preserved but half-dead fossils who had preceeded him?

 

AFAIR he was 1st secretary of a regional Party organization (in Stavropol) and member of Cental Commitee, but not Politburo, but I am not sure about the last thing. Have to check. Anyways, they knew him at least from Central Commitee meetings.

 

This was why he was chosen. I pointed it out in my previous post. Izaak must have overlooked it.

This topic is good practice for my Contemporary History test next week...

 

I did overlook it, Roel.
He didn´t have a good start. Chernobyl was not exactly a good pr for glasnost´. His problem was also, if it´s true, what he is saying, that he actually believed in Lenin´s ideas. He wanted back to the roots. But to what roots? It was from the beginning a gangster state. How blind can one be?

What ideas of his were possible and viable, if the goal is to keep the system in place? I dont see any. The whole rotten system had to be thrown away or to be defended, hitler-style: not a step back. Remember Jeltsyn´s derogatory tone at (was it Party Congress?). The old guys realized this and tried to get back to the past.
I feel a need of a good book about the end of communism. I still remember many of the events, but lack an overall picture.
Any suggestions?

 

Isaac, I believe Chornobyl was a very good time for implementation of glasnost, it was essentially the first time that the Soviet government had been totally honest to their people and to the west...Such was the nature of the disaster that people were informed of the threat and evacuated within hours; for the first time the USSR was telling people the truth, and not trying to hide their failures. Not only that but the USSR requested help from and gave all relevant information to the UN within days... Not what you'd expect from the typically secretive and uncooperative soviet government... Chornobyl demonstrated unprecendented openness between the people and the state and you can be sure that had it been someone else, a hard liner like Brezhnev and not Gorbachev as premier, then Chornobyl would have instead been covered up by the governmen; resources would not have been committed (Gorbachov specified that no cost would be too great to irradiate Pripyat - despite the fact that Russia could not afford it) and tens of thousands, maybe more would die... and the government would simlpy deny it

Chornobyl is an excellent example of what made Mikhail Gorbachev different to prior soviet premiers... When faced with a problem, he tried to fix it... Others just tried to cover it up...

 

what is russia like today ..last i heard it was like america in the 1880s heyday of the robber barons ...jp morgan ,getty ,standerd oil...only without the rule of law......is there any outside investment anymore?......without rule of law free enterprise and democracy are not really workable..what is life like for ordinary russians in the cities? ,in the countryside?