Mihail Gorbachev, ante

Mihail Gorbachev –

— from Marco Rosichini

The circle of the short century has closed. The death of Mihail Gorbachev it symbolizes the end of a historical cycle that laid the foundations, for better or for worse, of today’s world. Cold War, mutual annihilation, nuclear deterrence. Many things have changed since in 1985 a young Gorbachev, succeeding Cernenko, in defiance of the Soviet gerontocracy, became leader of the CPSU.

Broad consensus

In the beginning, the scope of his mandate had a broad consensus among the population and public opinion. Animated by two words that have become famous in their icasticity, perestrojca (reconstruction) e glasnost (transparency), Gorbachev tried to deeply reform the CPSU and the USSR, opening up to the international community with the end of the Cold War and trying to make democracy flourish in a country where political pluralism had never had a reason for being.

In some respects the attempt was similar to that of the “liberal communist” Enrico Berlinguer (ironically died a year before the “new thinking”) to reform Marxism by purifying it of the most reactionary and gloomy tendencies to open it to the democratic world. Gorbachev’s will did not consist in the liquidation, as so many detractors accuse him, of the communist world but in its profound revitalization to contrast it more vigorously with the capitalist system tout court. Of course, historical contingencies in a certain sense forced the orientation of the Soviet maximo leader.

A new strategy of action

The structural economic crisis, widespread corruption and the growing malaise of the satellite countries required a new strategy of action to save the socialist ideology from itself by projecting it into the future without however renouncing its founding principles. Despite his good intentions, his attempt to graft dynamism into a dramatically backward society was unsuccessful, for multiple reasons. Primarily for considerations relating to geopolitical balances.

The European Common Home

The reluctance of European leaders (the United Kingdom and Germany in particular) in not accepting the project of “Common European House” it was significant, despite Gorbachev being supported by a visceral anticommunist like John Paul II. The common belonging to European Christianity understood in the broad sense was in fact an element of great cultural convergence which, with hindsight, would have avoided the climate of tension that characterizes relations between Russia and the European institutions today. The spiritual dimension, so dear to Gorbachev (“What is man without spirituality?”he said in a private conversation with the Italian premier of the time Ciriaco De Mita), would then have allowed the realization, on the economic level, of a social market economy with a present but not collectivizing state.

The attempt at moral and economic liberalization failed dramatically: the forced importation of capitalism, which then materialized with Yeltsin, it was not transformed into a vehicle of social emancipation but crystallized new relations of force based on the oligarchic domination of the many over the few. The leaders of the G8, despite Gorbachev’s declarations of intent, rejected the new course of Russia as a social democratic state with a pluralist character, establishing the conditions for its social and economic backwardness.

The globalization

Capitalist globalization, on the other hand, was emerging on the world stage and the opening for a free and peaceful world envisaged by Gorbachev was interpreted as the end of history that heralded the hegemonic domination of the liberal democratic era. In short, a real promise betrayed by European leaders who could have opened up to Gorbachev to save themselves from the distortions that, shortly afterwards, financial capitalism would have engaged.

Coupled with this motivation, which had its rationale in international economic relations, it is necessary to recall the political competition that Gorbachev had with Boris Yeltsin, motivated to transform Russia into a capitalist state in the image of the United States. The internal party war, the attempted coup, the aforementioned mistrust of the international community and the centrifugal forces of the satellite countries brought down the house of cards of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Final remarks

In conclusion, one cannot give a solely positive judgment on Gorbachev. The Manichean vision does not belong to men who, as endowed with free will, are proponents of right and wrong choices. Gorbachev was the bearer of a reformist idea of ​​socialism capable of coexisting with democratic procedures and counterbalancing the excesses of the capitalist system. The non-realization of Gorbachev’s plan marked the failure to democratize and normalize Russia and, paradoxically, the failure to evolve capitalism, the only economic system that has historically proved feasible, towards criteria of greater equity and responsibility.

In the death of Mihail Gorbachev, a sui generis Marxist and profound reformist with a human face.

Mihail Gorbachev, ante-litteram reformist. Perestrojca (reconstruction) and glasnost (transparency)