Mikhail Gorbachev “is considered the man who had made too many concessions to the West“, affirmed Tuesday August 30 on franceinfo Jean de Gliniasty, former ambassador of France in Russia from 2009 to 2013, after the death at 91 years of the former president of the USSR.
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Mikhail Gorbachev does not represent today “not much” in Russia, believes the former ambassador and now director of research at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris). “He was wrongly blamed for the collapse of the USSR.” Mikhail Gorbachev is considered the man “who had withdrawn the troops from Central Europe without obtaining guarantees on the extension of NATO”.
In Russia, it is attributed “to have blown up the Soviet Union, for which a part of the Russians still kept a kind of nostalgia”. Former Soviet President “was somewhat forgotten”emphasizes Jean de Gliniasty, “in a kind of contempt for the entire Russian population, the vast Russian majority”.
Mikhail Gorbachev will stay despite everything “in history”assures the former ambassador, “because it was he who de facto put an end to the Soviet Union, insofar as he initiated reforms whose course he was unable to control. And he left power to Yeltsin who, , completed the work of dismantling the USSR”.
Outside the USSR, “We recognized that Gorbachev was a man of peace”recalls Jean de Gliniasty: “At first, we didn’t really believe in it. And then finally, it appeared that this man wanted to end the Cold War. It’s still the essential achievement. That’s why he will remain in the ‘story”.
Mikhail Gorbachev is “a man who refused to fire on the crowd. He was someone who did not like blood”. The last Soviet president “tried to organize this smooth transition to a USSR where we kept communism, but a communism soluble in human rights and the rule of law. And that’s what he missed and which led to a massive impoverishment of Russia at the end of the guarantees offered to the population by the Soviet Union”.