Audio Files: Evaluating Gorbachev 30 Years Later

Summary:

Professor Brown said that Mikhail Gorbachev was always a reformer.  He was determined to reform the political system (for Gorbachev, political reform took precedence over economic reform).  He was also determined to end the Cold War.  He became a systemic reformer in 1987, and in 1988 he was forced to radicalise his reform programme in the face of opposition from the conservative elite.

Professor Brown argued that Boris Yeltsin played a larger role in the breakup of the Soviet Union than Gorbachev did.  Professor Brown doubted whether it had been in Russia’s true interests to declare independence from the USSR, as Yeltsin did in 1991, when he declared that Russian law took precedence over Soviet law.  Yeltsin was not the “father of democracy” as he has often been depicted.  Gorbachev wanted to hold the Soviet Union together.  But he was not prepared to use violence to suppress popular demands (though violence was used in Georgia and Armenia) and the result was the collapse of the USSR.

Professor Kuvaldin recalled that Gorbachev launched economic reforms in summer 1987.  They failed “because they were going in the wrong direction.  We tried,” he said, “to reform the Soviet economic system, which was an impossible task.  We should instead have tried to mend the existing system by building up private property and encouraging entrepreneurship in small communities.”  Professor Kuvaldin also expressed doubts about political reform.  Gorbachev tried to deliver it to people who had no experience of democracy.  What happened then was that there were people who took advantage of the reforms for their own good, not for the greater good of society.  “We should have been much more cautious.  We overestimated the capacity of our country to cope with such a huge storm,” Professor Kuvaldin concluded.

Professor Brown noted that many of the changes for the better introduced to the USSR by Gorbachev survive today, such as freedom of religion, of the press, and to travel.  Professor Kuvaldin agreed that Russia is a free country today, “although we have difficulty establishing democratic institutions.”  “For this reason,” he said, “I don’t think perestroika failed.”

Professor Kuvaldin closed his remarks by saying, “I believe the system established in Russia in 1991 is now exhausted.  People are beginning to talk about a second perestroika.  But of course, this could go in different directions, either becoming more free or going back to the Stalinist model.”

Professor Brown rounded up by saying that Gorbachev had an optimistic view about the ability of Russians to exercise freedom and democracy.  So far, this has not been realised and Russia has not yet built democratic institutions.  Even so, Professor Brown was optimistic that this may happen in the future.