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The Tragedy of Mikhail Gorbachev
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18551 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1991 |
2,082 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
Mikhail Gorbachev has now become one of history's tragic figures. The man who inspired so many hopes both abroad and inside Russia is reduced to the support of the most reactionary figures in the Soviet Union. I am greatly embarrassed that during my visit to Russia last year I argued with so many intellectuals who opposed President Gorbachev and told them that he was the hope of Russia.
Gorbachev, who provided hope to the world that democracy would take root in the Soviet Union, has made a series of cumulative mistakes that raises questions about the seriousness of his commitment to genuine reform. Instead of pursuing perestroika, he attempted to succeed by allowing restricted political competition and glasnost. Instead of seeking popular election as president and a legitimate mandate for change, he was elected by a Soviet parliament in which a plurality of members were appointed by organs closely connected to the dictatorship of the Communist Party (CPSU). Instead of resigning from the party, which is hated by a majority of Russians, he attempted to be a plebiscitarian dictator and the head of the CPSU simultaneously. Instead of instituting genuine economic reform, he decided to assuage the apparatchiks and to make do with assistance from the West. Instead of permitting the farmer to own land and to sell his product--the surest way the world has ever known to increase farm production and eventually to reduce prices--he has stubbornly resisted reform.
Most recently Gorbachev has denounced reformers, especially in Lithuania, as bourgeois, but I find it difficult to imagine anything more bourgeois than the Soviet apparatchik with his Italian suit and fancy dacha. However, does this type of attack indicate a dedication to socialism, whatever that means in a contemporary context, even if that requires dictatorship? Does it really make any sense to appeal to a rhetoric that is inconsistent with the type of market reforms that alone eventually will permit the Soviet system to recover from its disastrous state?
Gorbachev has been losing popularity steadily. This might have been worthwhile if he had bequeathed to the nation genuine reform. He might have been able to recoup if he still had credibility. But he has squandered that also. The kindest thing one can say about his recent decree sequestering the "excess" funds of individuals is that it was an incompetent as well as an unpopular attempt to deal with a real problem that has been produced in part by his own temporizing policies.
On February 12, Soviet Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov
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