Mikhail Gorbachev, The One Who Saved The World. RIP

This image is from the time when giants roamed Earth.

One of the great men of the 20th century has died. From the NYT Obituary Mikhail Gorbachev

Few leaders in the 20th century, indeed in any century, have had such a profound effect on their time. Within six years of tumultuous times, Gorbachev removed the Iron Curtain and changed the political climate around the globe.

He promised greater transparency at home as he began to rebuild the country’s economy and society. Although he did not intend to destroy the Soviet Empire, he presided over its dissolution within five years of his arrival at power. He ended the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan and, in an extraordinary five months in 1989, stood by as the Communist system imploded from the Baltics to the Balkans in countries already weakened by widespread corruption and moribund economies.

I think I know why Russians hate him today, or at the very least what I can understand in emotional logic. He is associated with the fall of the Soviet Union, from a world power to a world-historical disaster. But it was inevitable: A system built on terror and lies could not last forever. Gorbachev was not the only one who could reform Communism. Gorbachev was a tragic figure because he believed he could bring down Communism. It collapsed as soon as people stopped being afraid. Mikhail Gorbachev was not responsible for this. This was not the fault of Mikhail Gorbachev. If you want to get an insight into why the Soviet Union really fell apart, watch the great HBO drama Chernobyl. Russians today might tell themselves that it’s all Gorbachev’s fault that Russia went to hell, but that’s just cope.

I’ll let historians sort Gorbachev’s legacy as an international leader. It is strangely personal to hear of Gorbachev’s death. I was in high school when he came to power in 1985. He was 53 then — two years younger than I am now, as difficult as that is for me to believe. People who have not lived through the Cold War are finding it difficult to understand how terrible it was. For me, the Cold War became real on the day in 1979 or 1980, when I was twelve or thirteen, riding in a Bronco jeep with my dad across a wet and cold field, driving home from the hunting camp, and it occurred to me that wait a minute, it would take a Soviet ICBM nineteen minutes to reach us in Louisiana … so that means that we are at any moment potentially nineteen minutes away from total annihilation.

I asked my father that question. I asked my father about that and he simply replied, “Don’t think about it.” Then I realized. Was there anything else he could have said? This was the Cold War kids.

Gorbachev halted it. As did Reagan. The US didn’t have anyone with whom it could negotiate before Gorbachev. As Margaret Thatcher stated, “with whom can we do business”, the West now has Gorbachev. Gorbachev may have been a communist, but at least he lived more in the real world than his predecessors. He was the one who refused to give the Red Army to the peoples of Eastern Europe and Central Europe that were enslaved. In 1989, he told the Warsaw Pact governments that the Soviet Union would not interfere if they decided to dissolve the socialist state. According to the Guardian, Gorbachev’s death is a reminder that while he is admired and praised in the West, his country is bitter about him. But:

After visiting Gorbachev in hospital on 30 June, the liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg told the armed forces news outlet Zvezda: “He gave us all freedom – but we don’t know what to do with it.”

He would always be seen as the victim of the demise of an evil vision. He will be remembered fondly by history, as well as the God in which he didn’t believe. If Mikhail Gorbachev had not died, all of his failings and sins would have been far more for us and the rest of the world. His memory will live on forever.

Another thing, he was quite humiliated — he probably needed the money — but this demonstrated who won Cold War in symbolic ways that cannot be captured with historical text:

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To bounce off the cultural rubble here’s the Soviet Union’s last leader appearing in an advertisement for Louis Vuitton. He is driving along the Berlin Wall, carrying a luxuriously-priced French bag. This was also the Cold War or its aftermath.