My tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev

 Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, died yesterday.

Like many of his contemporaries behind the former Iron Curtain, Mr Gorbachev grew up in humble surroundings, his parents working on collective farms in rural Russia. He rose through the ranks of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) to reach the Politburo in 1980, just five years before he became Secretary-General (de facto leader of the USSR). He was expected to succeed Yuri Andropov upon Mr Andropov's death in 1984, but Konstantin Chernenko was selected instead. Mr Chernenko died the following year and Mikhail Gorbachev finally achieved the position he needed to implement his reform programme, under the terms glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring").

Ironically, in trying to modernise the USSR with those reforms, he brought about its demise. Not only were Russians increasingly tired of the whole planned economic system, but leaders in other Iron Curtain countries (especially East Germany and Romania) were unwilling to change or adapt. Janos Kadar in Hungary had started doing so earlier, but its initial success was fading fast. Democratic reforms paved the way for radical reformers like Boris Yeltsin, who succeeded Mr Gorbachev as leader of Russia after the USSR's demise, and greater (if limited) economic freedoms ultimately saw demands for an end to the centralised economic system, spurred on by revolutions across nations behind the Iron Curtain, starting with the success of Solidarity in Poland under Lech Walesa and ending with the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. During that same time period (1989-1991), African countries that had adopted socialist systems with planned economies abandoned them, and many communist parties elsewhere in the world disbanded. Also, via negotiations with Ronald Reagan and later George H. Bush, he brought about the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact, paving the way for lasting peace at long last. 

Ultimately, his reforms were too little, too late, and the USSR finally dissolved on 25 December 1991.

In causing the demise of the Soviet Union, Mr Gorbachev effectively brought true democracy to Russia for the first time, although not without a few hiccups to say the least. It was not to last, though-Mr Yeltsin proved ineffective as a Russian President and ever since Vladimir Putin took office in 2000, Russia has slipped back into autocracy and authoritarianism, with its elections being widely regarded as neither free nor fair by any standards, even those of the 1991 and 1996 Russian Presidential elections which were marred by irregularities. Mr Gorbachev's attempt at a political comeback failed disastrously; he polled just 0.5% of the vote in 1996, and made no further attempts to return to Russian politics other than as a critic of President Putin's regime.

So farewell, Mr Gorbachev. Even though the freedoms in Russia you wanted to bring about ultimately did not last there even if the failed centralised economic system never returned, the world has become a freer and more peaceful place overall in the long-term due to your efforts.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, born 2 March 1931, departed this life on 30 August 2022, aged 91 years.