The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, graduated as a communist, incorporated liberal ideologies and died, this Tuesday (30), as a social democrat, in the opinion of César Albuquerque, a researcher at USP and author of a study – still in progress—about the career of the politician.
According to him, Gorbachev’s political personality and economic actions were less calculated than is usually analyzed in the West.
His more liberal ideas were already widespread when he began to gain prominence in the Communist Party in the 1970s, at a time when the backstage began to discuss the need for a greater degree of economic dynamism. Gorbachev was invited to the Politburo in 1978, and seven years later, after the deaths of other leaders, he was appointed secretary-general and thus leader of the USSR.
“When he took office, Gorbachev did not have a deep departure from the official ideology of the regime. He defended acceleration and economic opening, but for him more democracy meant more socialism”, says Albuquerque.
The problem is that the new leader lacked a government plan. “He knew it was necessary to boost the economy and reduce censorship, but his proposals were vague. Measures were taken based on the context of each moment.”
Still, the Soviet leader tried to go further than perhaps his political support would allow. By trying to open up the economy, reduce the power of the state in tenders and create self-management mechanisms, he annoyed important figures in the Soviet bureaucracy.
Gorbachev tried to surround himself with more liberal figures — among them, Boris Yeltsin, who would soon become one of his biggest opponents — while trying to satisfy the party’s old guard. In 1991, he was the target of a coup attempt while vacationing on the shores of the Black Sea. Under Yeltsin’s leadership and amid a succession of back-and-forths, the movement ended up thwarted. “But Gorbachev’s authority has been reduced to practically zero,” says Albuquerque.
Four months later, when the Soviet leader resigned, he decreed the end of the USSR and opened space for Yeltsin to be inaugurated as Russia’s first president. In 1996 he would try to return to the scene as a candidate for the presidency, but the campaign ended with only 0.5% of the votes.
“Throughout the perestroika Gorbachev approached European social democracy, already broken with the revolutionary perspective of rebuilding a communist regime. It was with this ideology that he ran in 1996.”
This explains the fact that the historic leader has a recognition in the West quite different from that in his country. In recent years, after supporting the election of Vladimir Putin, Gorbachev has become more critical of the president’s domestic politics — but his arguments have had little space in the local Kremlin-linked media.
“United Russia [legenda de Putin] is a party of bureaucrats, the worst version of the CPSU [Partido Comunista Soviético]. I cannot say that our Parliament is independent and that our Judiciary fully complies with the provisions of the Constitution”, he said, in an interview with the American agency Associated Press in 2009.
But aspects of the current president’s foreign policy had some support, albeit dubious, from Gorbachev. “He did not defend a hostile stance, but he believed that Russia should be responsive. That was the case with the intervention in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the role of Russian troops in Syria”, says Albuquerque.
In 2020, he signaled support for pro-democracy acts in Belarus and called for an internal solution, without foreign interference. Then, already with health problems and 91 years old, the former Soviet leader would not comment on the tensions that led to the War in Ukraine. In February, two days after the Russian invasion, the foundation named after him called for a ceasefire.
