Gorbachev the man of century

Winston Churchill famously called Russia “a riddle, in a mystery, wrapped in an enigma.”

Mikhaail Gorbachev was famously known to win the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Cold War. Nicknamed as Man of Year and Man of the Decade, Gorbachev is well known for ‘risking his power … to save his reforms’.

When Gorbachev came to power, he inherited major domestic problems and an escalated Cold War. To overcome these issues, he first started with implementing reforms that he hopes would improve the living standards and workers productivity of his people. He hoped that through democratic reformation, he could encourage glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructure) to take place. His close alliances with the West allowed an open channel communications when he worked closely with Reagan to end the Cold War while developing a closer warmer relationship with the US. Here, he has shown himself to be a great communicator and visionary in addressing problems at home and abroad. Admittedly, he didn’t’ handle the Chernobyl incident smoothly to the point his commitment of glasnost is consistently questioned especially when he failed to apologize in his long-overdue address on the subject matter.

His ‘new thinking’ approach in world affairs has certainly ‘complicated and made more difficult the situations of those have seen the Soviet Union as an alternative to the power of the United States and to a Western model of development, one which emphasizes market economies and trade dominated by multination corporations.” While the concept has certainly generated optimism that ‘peaceful coexistence’ between superpowers can be achieved, Gorbachev at the same time managed to brand himself as a rational actor in the political affairs arena...

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...dly, he missed the mark within his own people who wanted change fast and too much flexibility and ‘trust’ allowed room for the opposition to jump on the wagon to take over. The idea of his own administration and opposition party felt they were losing power prompted them to see Gorbachev’s weakness of trusting too much is pretty sad. Man with great potential leadership skill was lost because the general secretary’s campaign for glasnost (openness) instead prompted criticism of all kinds of abuses and inefficiencies.

“Without glasnost there is not, and there cannot be, democratism, the political creativity of the masses and their participation in management”

This quote from Gorbachev shows where he was leading the USSR: what his beliefs and actions were.

Works Cited

Armageddon Averted, Stephen Kotkin

Soviet reform in International Perspective, Deborah Miner