Analysis: Why Gorbachev is remembered as a giant in the West and a pariah at home

The tragedy of Mikhail Gorbachev is that he survived beyond the end of the Cold War between Moscow and the United States, after doing more than anyone else for that goal.

The last leader of the Soviet Union died on Tuesday at the age of 91, with Washington and the Kremlin on opposite sides of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hot war in Ukraine, launched in part to avenge the government’s precipitated Soviet collapse. of Gorbachev.

It is difficult to summarize what Gorbachev meant to Western audiences in the 1980s, after one of the most dangerous periods of the East-West standoff. After generations of stern, hostile, radical and elderly Kremlin leaders, he was young, modern and new — a visionary and reformer.

Gorbachev inspired a sudden hope that the nuclear confrontation that haunted the world in the second half of the 20th century would not end up destroying civilization. Then-President of the United States Ronald Reagan and his British soul mate Margaret Thatcher were the fiercest warriors of the Cold War. But to their credit, they held a moment of promise – as the British prime minister said of the Soviet leader: “we can do business together”.

Everyone remembers the day Reagan went to Berlin and, against the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate – which had been marred by the ugly and inhuman concrete barrier between East and West – he said: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” .

It was one of the most iconic moments in modern US history. At the time, few people thought this was possible. In fact, some White House aides found the comments overly provocative and tried to persuade Reagan not to say them. But in the end, in an act of great humanity, Gorbachev effectively tore down that wall.

After a heady series of talks on reducing nuclear weapons control and meetings with Western leaders, Gorbachev became a hero in the West. But it was his decision not to intervene with military force when popular rebellions broke out against communist regimes in the Warsaw Pact nations in 1989 that led to the liberation of Eastern Europe, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the end of the Cold War and to the reunification of Germany.

This explosion of freedom left 30 years of relative peace in Europe as a legacy.

Idolized in the West, an outcast at home

But while he was idolized in the West, Gorbachev came to be seen as an outcast at home. It is often forgotten that his aim was not necessarily to dismantle the communist Soviet Union. In many ways, his hand has been strained by decades of economic decay in the communist system and the crippling impact of a nuclear arms race with the West.

But in trying to save the system, he unleashed forces that destroyed it. Far from heralding the “end of history” as it was called at the time, his influence had consequences that could still be felt on the day of his death, with Moscow and the West once again at odds in a Cold War-style chill.

At home, Gorbachev had two overarching ideas: glasnost (opening up) and perestroika (restructuring). The rapid collapse of the Soviet Union, fragmented by perestroika, brought extreme economic conditions, disorder and a blow to national pride. All this added to the circumstances that eventually made a strong man like Putin attractive to many Russians.

By the time Gorbachev refused to send the Red Army into Eastern Europe to save the communist bloc, Putin was stationed with the KGB in East Germany and felt the pain of Moscow’s defection. He came to see the end of the Soviet Empire as a disaster of history; and once Putin gained power, he set about restoring wounded Russian national prestige.