Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (1931—2022) was a momentous figure of the 20th century. Yet there is no broad consensus on his legacy worldwide. How can we assess — and should assess, if possible — his legacy at universities that are as diverse and globalist as NYU Abu Dhabi?

Barack Obama & Joe Biden with Mikhail Gorbachev. Official White House Photo, 2009

In 1986, one of the first protests against the Kremlin dictatorship happened in Almaty (Alma — Ata), within the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The event was followed by similar protests and riots in many other national republics of the Soviet Union in Osh, Tbilisi, Dushanbe, Minsk and other cities. Virtually every protest in the late 1980s in the USSR involved massive violence with a brutal response from Moscow. In Azerbaijan alone, a state of emergency was declared in 1990 — known as “Black January” — due to the unceasing protests, which led to the death of 146 civilians with 800 more injured. The USSR’s use of violence towards its own citizens ramped up as the regime became increasingly unstable politically. Following these events, the brutal crackdowns by the Soviet troops in Lithuania and Latvia demonstrated Gorbachev's will to deal harshly with nationalist movements.

Why did this brutality happen and how can we reconcile this aggression with Gorbachev’s portrait of a liberator in the West?

The short answer is that he wanted to keep the Union to reform it afterwards.

At the same time, he did not want — perhaps he could not even afford — to defend the socialist regimes outside of the USSR. This is, in fact, one of the main reasons why he was, and still is, heavily criticized in many post-Soviet countries by people who still dream of the great Soviet Empire. He addressed these people in 2020: “In Russia, I am still accused of having ‘given away’ Eastern Europe. My response to this is: Who did I give it away to? Poland to the Poles, Hungary to the Hungarians, Czechoslovakia to the Czechs and Slovaks!”

Together with withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and tearing down the Berlin Wall, he has established himself as a liberator around the world.

Regardless of / Aside from his personal qualities and opinions, there was a rationality behind these decisions. The Soviet regime was doing much worse than ever with oil prices plummeting, political instability (there were three different General Secretaries in three consecutive years since 1982), and Gorbachev’s assured statement in the nation’s economic incapabilities compared to capitalist countries, especially in the wake of Reagan’s “Star Wars” project and alike. In fact, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Eduard Shevardnadze, confessed that the impossibility of competing with the American nuclear program had convinced Gorbachev to start his famous programs of reforms: Perestroika (“Rebuilding,” in Russian) and Glasnost (“Openness and transparency,” in Russian).

By the time Gorbachev became the ruler of the USSR, the Soviet Union was in dire need of reforms: Khrushchev had told the people in 1961 that the Soviet Union would build a “mainly communist” society in 20 years. By 1981, the long lines in the shops, lack of commodities that were in abundance in many developed capitalist countries and poor quality of some basic products made it clear that communism was impossible in practice.

He came to the right conclusion that the Union urgently needed reforms, but he was wrong about the ways to achieve it, which lead to its demise This is starkly evident in contrast with the mostly successful paradigm shift in China, based on the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. After meeting Gorbachev, Deng said: "This man may look smart but in fact is stupid."

Indeed, Gorbachev showed incredible incompetence in many of his strategic plans. For example, he tried to perform a shock therapy on the economy, with a “500 days” of market oriented reform program, but failed to deliver. He also failed in his dire attempt to minimize the alcohol consumption by the prohibition law.

The reason for these continuous economic and policy failures was also his constant maneuvering between the hardliner communists and liberal reformists, while he tried to uphold the beliefs of his reform programs. It proved to be impossible for Gorbachev to do so, and he lost his power. With Gorbachev’s failure to contain power in his hands, the Union dissolved rapidly, and many countries were cast into decades of dictatorships, civil wars and economic catastrophes.

By this point, it sounds as if Gorbachev was a total failure responsible for all the disasters of his rule, a villain in history. However, this would be too quick of a conclusion. What is equally important is that the West was expecting solely net positive effects from the collapse of the Union and did not bother to be consistent and strategic about it. They quickly switched from supporting Gorbachev to Yeltsin, forgot about the promises they gave to Gorbachev personally, and failed to support and protect the newly emerged nation states. Here, it should be kept in mind that both the U.K. and the U.S. provided security assurances to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine after signing the Budapest Memorandum in 1994.

Therefore, whenever discussing Gorbachev’s legacy, we should understand that we are not only discussing his personal qualities, but qualities of the many people that helped to shape him as a figure: the Soviet nomenclature and apparatus, the opposition and victims of his mistakes and many other particular faces such as Reagan, Bush and Thatcher. These are integral about any and all discussions revolving around Gorbachev, even though we all have different preconceived biases. Consensus might be possible, but that should come only after recognizing and adjusting the origins of our own opinions.