3 September 2022

Today the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan, attended former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, former USSR President, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev’s funeral in Moscow’s House of Unions. The building is located between the Bolshoi Theater and the Duma, the Russian lower house of parliament. Given the current state of world affairs, this is an opportune moment to reflect on what made the relationship between President Gorbachev and the United States so different from previous General Secretaries of the Soviet Union and from later Presidents of Russia. Gorbachev alongside Ronald Reagan and to a smaller extent George H. W. Bush are credited with navigating the USSR and the United States away from falling into the Thucydides Trap and thereby preventing Mutually Assured Destruction. This was the culmination of decades of the changing of tides as Ronald Reagan illustrates in his 12 June 1987 Brandenburg Gate Address (audio can be found to the right or by clicking on YouTube and going to minute mark 9:25, but many of the videos on YouTube unfortunately have fallen prey to Chinese Communist sensors who have cut about 30 seconds of the speech, this link still has the full audio intact for now with the text below.):

“In the 1950s -- In the 1950s Khrushchev predicted: ‘We will bury you.’

But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind -- too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now -- now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty -- the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.

There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev -- Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

While this changing of world power was a perilous time, Reagan could see what the world could not. Reagan saw a Gorbachev looking to find a way to move his country toward greater prosperity. Reagan refused to listen to his own advisors and the US State Department and took this moment to appeal directly to Gorbachev. To tell Gorbachev what he was seeing, but more importantly to let Gorbachev know where he stood, and that was with Gorbachev as long as that meant greater liberty for the people of the USSR and for the world. While many authoritarian leaders over time turn to the tried-and-true circle the wagons technique that looks to paint an external peer as the embodiment of all evil to ensure that they are able to sustain power through times like Gorbachev encountered. As we will explore, Gorbachev’s upbringing and nature enabled him to see past this lie toward the inevitable, and allowed for the changing of world power to occur seemingly overnight, without Mutually Assured Destruction which would have brought about the loss of potentially billions of lives needlessly. For this, today is a day that the I will take a moment to remember the life of a man who could have sought to grasp the remaining power that the USSR had, inflict billions of casualties in the process, and potentially maintained the status quo of the USSR; power and poverty. Instead we remember a man, Gorbachev, who rejected this. Gorbachev sought out more for the USSR, for Russia, for the Eastern Bloc, and yes for the West, or as it was called then 'the Free World.' Gorbachev sought Prosperity and Peace through transformation (perestroika), transparency and openness (glasnost). In so doing, Gorbachev became the villain of his own country and became the symbol for failed policies and economic hardship in Russia. Gorbachev established peace, transparency, and openness, but never found prosperity for Russia which was plagued by low global energy prices for most of the 1990s, a Russian export staple for their economy.

As found in Wikipedia, Mikhail Gorbachev was born in rural locality in Stavropol Krai about 100 miles north of the country Georgia. Gorbachev was selected to attend law school at Moscow State University where he attended from 1950-55 during which he became the head of his schools All-Union Leninist Young Communist League and was fully admitted into the communist party. At school he was known for being a fair mediator. Also, during this period he met and married his wife Raisa in 1953. After law school he returned to Stavropol and pulled some strings to get reassigned to the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, this is where he had his daughter Irina and completed a second degree in agriculture. During this time in Stavropol, Raisa also completed her PhD. These years provided the foundation that enabled Gorbachev to rise and to eventually become the Central committee’s Secretariat for Agriculture. This position given him access to the standing committee which opened the door for him to later become the General Secretary.

Gorbachev’s willingness to transform the USSR economy by going back to the future by using portions of Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy is telling. This is the same model that has enabled China’s economy to flourish, China’s policy was implemented by Deng Xiaoping who studied in Moscow from 1924-26 and would have known Lenin’s New Economic Policy well, as Lenin passed away in 1924. While Gorbachev could not have foreseen the impact that glasnost and perestroika would have on the USSR. Was it Gorbachev’s policies, or was the USSR already past the point of no return? Either way, it was under Gorbachev that the dissolution of the USSR took place. What followed was a great leader thrown back into the same obscurity that he had originated from. A leader who saw Western liberty not as a threat but as a worthy pursuit. Gorbachev saw the iron curtain start to crumble in 1989, two years after Reagan’s address. True to Gorbachev’s nature, he allowed for the curtain to fall instead of snuffing out innocent life. This paved the way for Germany, a country divided for 28 years, to once again be unified, a story also worthy of review. It ushered a mostly peaceful transition from a bipolar world order to a unipolar world order without major incident. While any further analysis would take more than my mornings reflection time allots, it is sufficient to say that for a man who was an admit supporter of Communalism and Marxism which entails the disillusionment of family, Gorbachev is to be buried in the cemetery of Novodevichy Convent next to his wife Raisa, which for a former USSR leader is as unordinary as he was.

If you liked this content or would like to give feedback, please click the follow button below .