In early 1990, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to liberalize Soviet life were in full flower, I was on a journalistic exchange with a Russian newspaper — Moscow News — at the apex of the glasnost (“openness”) campaign.
When the news broke of Gorbachev’s death, my mind flashed back to the excitement of those days in 1990, and to the lost dreams of my Moscow News colleagues, who had hoped for a “normal” country. Instead, most of those journalists — who became editors, anchormen, and reporting stars in the 1990s — have now been silenced by Vladimir Putin’s media crackdowns, or fled the country after his invasion of Ukraine.
Gorbachev’s death and Putin’s refusal to attend his funeral illuminate a frightening reality: The Russian leader wants the world to know he is the anti-Gorbi.
Not only has Putin restored repression at home, but he seeks control over the countries that were the former Soviet empire. And unlike Gorbachev, who rejected the use of force to hold the empire together, Putin is willing to invade his neighbors and use nuclear threats to intimidate them — and the world.
So rather than enumerate Gorbachev’s failures, it is important to focus on his achievements — and how Putin seeks to reverse them.
Of course, one major achievement was Gorbachev’s opening up of information access to the Russian people. Before glasnost, restless Russian journalists were confined to using so-called Aesopian language, ambiguous terms that hinted of criticism but were designed to avoid censorship. At every newspaper, a government KGB intelligence officer sat in a special office — at Moscow News, right next to the room I worked in — and reviewed all the copy.
But by the time I arrived at Moscow News, they had more freedom, so every issue was an adventure, trying to unmask topics that journalists had never been able to cover, from scandalous conditions in government-run maternity hospitals, to revelations about the KGB, to debates on privatizing the economy.
In 1993, Gorbachev even helped found a leading independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, with part of his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize money. This newspaper paid a huge prize for its independence. Since Putin became president in 2000, six of its journalists and contributors have been murdered, including top investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya. They are among the many journalists and opposition figures killed, poisoned, or jailed under Putin.
Novaya Gazeta suspended publication after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, along with virtually all independent media outlets inside Russia.
Russian news now consists mainly of vitriolic state propaganda that convinces the public that Ukraine is run by Nazis who want to destroy Russia with the help of NATO. The public appears to buy the propaganda (which ignores Russian losses and blames Kyiv for Russian murder of civilians).
This enables Putin to continue his brutal, imperial war.
Contrast that with one of Gorbachev’s greatest achievements: He didn’t believe in using force to maintain an empire.
Although he intended only to restructure the Soviet Union, turning it into a federation of equally sovereign states, he unintentionally triggered the transformation of 15 Soviet republics into independent states. Yet the Soviet leader seemed to recognize that reluctant republics could no longer be ruled by Moscow’s armies or diktat.
Gorbachev also refused to use force when the Berlin Wall fell to maintain control of East Germany and keep Warsaw Pact countries under Moscow’s domination. “He was convinced that the time to resolve issues of the world order by force had passed,” wrote Dmitry Muratov, editor of Novaya Gazeta (and himself a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner), in a tribute.
Putin, on the other hand, has famously called the Soviet breakup the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” Referring to that collapse on the day he invaded Ukraine, he declared: “We lost confidence for only one moment, but it was enough to disrupt the balance of forces in the world.”
Putin’s attempt to seize and/or destroy Ukraine is an effort to restore that “balance of forces” — by military might.
Imagine how different the 20th century might have been had Putin been ruling in 1989.
Muratov also cited perhaps Gorbachev’s greatest achievement. “He gave both the country and the world an incredible gift — he gave us thirty years of peace without the threat of global and nuclear war.”
Gorbachev worked successfully with Ronald Reagan on nuclear arms control, effectively ending the Cold War. “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” both men proclaimed in 1985 in a joint statement at a Geneva summit.
Putin, on the other hand, uses the nuclear threat as blackmail. He and Kremlin mouthpieces have repeatedly raised the threat of nuclear war to deter the United States and NATO from helping Ukraine.
Russian troops have been using captured Ukrainian nuclear reactors to raise the specter of an atomic disaster. They have finally permitted U.N. inspectors to reach the endangered plant in Zaporizhzhia but may not allow them to do their vital work there.
Gorbachev’s death reminds us that Putin is indeed his polar opposite when it comes to world peace and nuclear safety. The West should be under no illusions that catering to Putin’s demands on Ukraine will change the behavior of this dangerous man.
