For a whole generation, he will remain the one who tried to transform the communist dictatorship into a democracy. Last president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev therefore died on Tuesday August 30 at the age of 91. But not much of his legacy remains in today’s Russia.
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“He also lived long enough to see everything he had tried to put in place crumble… Of his reforms – political or economic – nothing remains, zero, ashes“. This is how the British daily The Guardian summarizes Wednesday, August 31 morning the abyss that separates the Russia of Gorbachev from that of Vladimir Putin.
Guardian front page, 31 August 2022: Hunger fears as food banks warn stock may run out, plus Mikhail Gorbachev dies aged 91 pic.twitter.com/KEDtYzdueB
—Guardiannews (@guardiannews) August 30, 2022
The last leader of the Soviet empire dreamed of transforming his country, of modernizing it. At the antipodes of glasnost (‘transparency’) and perestroika (‘reconstruction’), the current head of state has revived an authoritarian power obsessed with extending its sphere of influence and restoring its power. In the west, Gorbachev’s Russia inspired respect, Putin’s arouses fear.
A man of peace against a man of war? This is what all the tributes that have been paid since Tuesday, August 30 to the former leader draw in hollow. Mikhail Gorbachev is the man of a historic moment, his determination to get out of the arms race, to put an end to the cold war without, above all, spilling the slightest drop of blood, earned him very strong praise from the West and taking particular relief six months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“He was a rare leader who made the world safer”, said US President Joe Biden. The emotion of the reactions in the West contrasts sharply with the sobriety of the current Russian president who is content with a telegram of condolences sent to the family and friends of the former leader. Remember that for Putin, the breakup of the USSR is “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 21st century.”
Despite his historic role, Mikhail Gorbachev is not very popular in Russia. A good part of public opinion, which retains a certain nostalgia for the Soviet period, considers that it made too many concessions to the West. It was obvious in the 90s, when the communists were an important political force, it is still true in 2022. Sovietism survived Mikhail Gorbachev, lucid, celebrating his 90th birthday last year drawing up this observation: in Russia, “We are (still) only halfway between the totalitarian regime and democracy”…