Status: 08/31/2022 4:19 p.m
The legacy of the late former head of state Gorbachev is complex in Russia and the ex-Soviet states, says expert Gurkov: While some are grateful to him for a life of freedom, many others blame him for the hardships of the years that followed.
daily News: When Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the CPSU and later head of state of the Soviet Union, you were not yet 30 years old and were commuting between Russia and Germany; they experienced both perestroika and the fall of the Wall. How do you remember the time?
Andrey Gurkov: It was an exhilarating, grandiose time – perhaps the most exciting time of my life. You could literally feel this wind of change in Moscow. There was a burst of creativity; of business and intellectual opportunities. The feeling of freedom that grew from year to year – also the feeling that the Cold War was over and that a rapprochement with the West, especially with Europe, could finally begin… It was a time that I wouldn’t want to miss in my life. She has given me and my friends many professional and private opportunities. We made use of it – and I will always be grateful to Mikhail Gorbachev for that.
To person
Andrey Gurkov was born in Moscow in 1959 and grew up in Berlin and Bonn. He studied journalism in Moscow and Leipzig and worked for a progressive weekly newspaper during Gorbachev’s tenure. He has been a journalist in the Russian-language editorial department of Deutsche Welle (DW) since 1993.
daily News: In Russia, initial reactions to Gorbachev’s death were rather muted. How do people remember him and his political work there?
Gurkov: First and foremost – and this is sad, but the truth – he is seen as a “loser” and a traitor. One that has broken the imperial greatness of Russia that is now about to be restored in this terrible war. In a way, he’s a very tragic figure. I compare him to Columbus: He also wanted to land on completely different shores, but he earned the gratitude of mankind for his mistake. Gorbachev did not want to let the Soviet Union disintegrate, but to improve socialism. But the result has become different.
The world public primarily sees the end of the Cold War and the end of the division of Europe, while the Russians, as I said, primarily see the loss of imperial greatness and the disintegration of the country.
“The feeling that the Cold War is over”: Andrey Gurkov, Deutsche Welle, on the period of perestroika initiated by Gorbachev in Russia
tagesschau24 3:30 p.m., August 31, 2022
“No coming to terms with the past”
daily News: In Russia and the other ex-Soviet republics, the early 1990s were a time of economic hardship after the collapse. By then Gorbachev had already been deposed. Why do so many Russians still associate this chaotic time with him?
Gurkov: Because there was no coming to terms with the past in Russia and no big discussion about why the absurd communist experiment and the planned economy failed miserably. That is why many people have the idea that the Soviet Union perished, so to speak, because of the “weakling Gorbachev” and the “drunkard Yeltsin”. And this conviction was and still is in the minds of many people, especially the older ones.
daily News: In 1991, many Soviet republics gradually declared their independence. What is the image of Gorbachev like there? Is it different from Russia?
Gurkov: Certainly. If in Russia the intelligentsia looks at Gorbachev’s death with respect and some with sadness, in Lithuania, for example – as I understand it – they don’t have good memories and feelings about him. After all, it was he who drove the tanks to the television tower in Vilnius in 1991 to crush the independence movement. Unsuccessful – but Lithuanians died.
Another example: The Georgians also remember very well that in April 1989 a peaceful demonstration in Tbilisi was brutally dispersed and many people died. I assume that the view of today’s events in the former Soviet republics is: Gorbachev did not give us freedom, but we took our freedom and went our further, independent path.
“Perestroika is destroyed”
daily News: The past ten years have been turbulent times in Russia and the surrounding countries – not least because of Russia: This is the time of the Euromaidan in Kyiv, the fighting in the Donbass, the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia… around Gorbachev, on the other hand it got quiet. What do we know about how he spent the last few years and what he thought about the events?
Gurkov: The death of his wife Raisa Gorbacheva was apparently a heavy blow for him; it’s been pretty quiet around him since then. He had his own foundation which was designed as a think tank but ended up being a job creation scheme for some of his former employees… I had to google myself to recall what Gorbachev has been saying over the last few years – firstly because it was irrelevant, secondly, because there really weren’t any big statements.
Ultimately, he was either tacit or loyal to political power – the power of Putin that was steadily regressing Russia from democratization to an authoritarian and now dictatorial state.
daily News: The books that Gorbachev has published in recent years show that he must have believed in Russia’s path to democracy to the very end. What is his legacy?
Gurkov: We will still have a lot to discuss about his legacy – because it is not yet entirely clear what it will consist of. The perestroika and glasnost of the Soviet Union, which he formed and which lives in the minds of the Germans, has been destroyed. They don’t exist anymore. There is a Russia that is increasingly recognizing the most brutal, ugliest characteristics of the Soviet Union and is waging a major war in Europe that has not been seen since World War II.
So you have to ask yourself: Was it Gorbachev’s mistake that it came to this now? Or was Gorbachev a reformer who changed the world but was unable to change his own country?
The interview was conducted by Jasper Steinlein, tagesschau.de