One of the 20th century's most consequential leaders died this evening
in Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union
who sought to usher in an era of openness from behind the Iron Curtain.
But just over six years later, the Soviet Union was no more ending
the defining conflict of the post war era.
Christmas Day 1991 the hammer and sickle. The red banner of the disintegrating
Soviet Union is lowered for the last time over the Kremlin. The last
general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev,
addressed his people
situation which follows the establishment of the Commonwealth of
Independent States.
I hereby cease to act as the president of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev and his dying regime had survived a coup attempt just a
few months earlier. But the long and cold road that led to that December
day was years decades in the making 40 years of cold War between
the US and Russia, both with enough weapons to destroy the planet
many times over.
Early 19 eighties were among the most frigid days of that cold war
with the new American president Ronald Reagan, who made his name
as an anti communist. He proposed major defense increases and ratcheted
up the denunciations of Moscow and beginning with the 1982 death
of long time leader Leonid Brezhnev came to more old guard Soviet
leaders.
Both died in office quickly into this leadership Vacuum stepped 54
year old Mikhail Gorbachev unanimously elected party head in March
of 1985. He was the youngest member of the Politburo and became the
first and only Soviet leader. Born after the 1917 revolution, he
set out to reform an ossified and corrupt system likely beyond reform.
He had two main platforms, one pair historica or restructuring,
We need more enterprise, more democracy, more organization and discipline.
Then we will be able to bring perestroika up to full speed and give
new impetus to developing socialism would meet President Reagan the
next year in Iceland for the first of several hugely consequential
summit over nuclear weapon matters.
The adversaries became allies in this effort, with Reagan's famous
motto leading the Way Trust but verify.
All the while Reagan kept up the pressure, dubbing the Soviets the
evil empire and making this demand in West Berlin in front of the
Berlin Wall, Mr Gorbachev
Tear down this wall.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall began to crumble the death throes of more
than 40 years of communist domination that would end with Gorbachev
leaving office that cold Christmas night. He died today in Moscow.
He was 91 years old.
For more on Mikhail Gorbachev's legacy. We turn to Andrew Weiss,
he served in the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations at
the Pentagon, National Security Council staff and the State Department.
He's now vice president for studies at Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. A think tank Andrew Weiss. Welcome back to the news hour.
Thanks for being with us. It has been said that very few leaders
have in modern history have had the kind of impact that Mikhail Gorbachev
did.
Do you agree with that? Is that a fair assessment?
It's a very fair assessment. When Gorbachev came into power in 1985,
the Soviet Union was a formidable multinational empire, and it had
it had an enormous external empire in Eastern Europe, and by the
time he left office, the Soviet Union was no more and the countries
of Central Europe were independent. So it was a remarkable mixed
legacy policies. We mentioned perestroika and glasnost. What should
be understand about those what was behind Gorbachev's push for
Those reforms.
So when Gorbachev took power, the Soviet Union was basically a stagnating
society, which in the eyes of the Soviet leadership needed to keep
up with the West. But Gorbachev unleashed these reforms. Paris troika
the policy of trying to introduce new, more democratic governance
and some form of a market economy, as well as glass nose to try to
open up some of the dark spots in Soviet history.
It was his idea that that would somehow humanize or modernize the
Soviet system. In the end, it proved to be the undoing of the Soviet
system. It was an unreformed able system, and Gorbachev didn't seem
to really understand that. At the beginning, he kept improvising.
And as the improvised things only got worse, and that basically spelled
the demise both of Gorbachev's political career as well as the Soviet
system itself.
How is he viewed by the US at the time? How did the Reagan administration
view his reforms with skepticism?
At the end at the outset, the Greg an administration was quite skeptical.
But then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher helped convinced
her counterpart Ronald Reagan. The Gorbachev was someone you could
do business with, and the two leaders did remarkably important work
on strategic nuclear arms control. And then when President Bush,
the elder president, Bush came into office
They ensured that the Soviet empires, dismantlement and central and
Eastern and central Europe would be peaceful and that those countries,
including Germany, which was allowed to reunify could go their own
way. That was a remarkable achievement. But at the same time, Gorbachev's,
uh, policies toward the components of the Soviet Union what were
then known as the Republic's really tarnished his reputation in the
eyes of US officials.
Andrew, A Kremlin spokesperson has since put out a statement saying
that President Putin is expressing his deepest condolences on Gorbachev's
passing. We know that Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
Do we know what the two men thought of each other?
So Gorbachev towards the end of his life was rather, Harris is a
complicated figure who didn't uh, for example, speak out against
the war in Ukraine. But But if you look back at some of the things,
he said about Putin earlier on, and particularly struck by a comedy
made in 2011, where he compared Putin, who at that point was thinking
of coming back in the Kremlin in 2011, with an African dictator who
had held onto power too much for too long and what Gorbachev said
at that point, I think was very poignant.
He said. The only thing that's important in such situations for those
leaders and the people around them is holding onto power. I believe
that something similar is happening in our country right now.
What about his reputation in Russia? How is he viewed there?
Gorbachev was wildly unpopular. And in Russia, he was seen as a person
who had basically ruined the country had pulled it apart had removed
its, uh, its ability to sustain itself. The economy was in shambles.
By the time he was forced from power, and in many ways the popularity
Gorbachev enjoyed in the West was simply not. You can't find people
it except for a very small number of Russian liberals. Who would
who would speak so warmly about him today?
So many events of enormous consequence during his leadership, Andrew
in the In the few moments we have left, is it Is there any way to
kind of sum up what you believe his legacy is today?
I think that Gorbachev ignited seminal reforms inside the Soviet
Union, as well as in the event. What was called the Warsaw Pact the
Soviet satellite countries in central and Eastern Europe. And that
is probably the single most important part of his legacy is his achievements
at home, though, are far more complicated, and I think that we're
still dealing frankly, with the wreckage of the Soviet Union today,
with the horrible war that's going on in Ukraine.
Andrew Weiss from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
on the Life and Legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev. Andrew Thank You always
good to talk to you.