Gorbachev has always said that he wanted to reform the communist party not end its power. He would relinquish some of its power but it was supposed to stay in charge. Yeltsin and others had different ideas once the party had given enough freedom to the people for them to actually push democracy. Unfortunately its still a very flawed democracy (and a very flawed market system as well) but at least the communist party's monopoly on power has ended.
"By 1990, Gorbachev's perestroika was more uncomfortable balancing act than dynamic reform program. He often seemed overwhelmed at the complexity of the task he had taken on. Reform had been premised on the assumption that dismantling the repressive apparatus of the state, admitting to the horrors of the past and trying to rectify them would strengthen the legitimacy of Gorbachev and his brand of modernized socialism. It did the opposite. The masses turned against the system and Gorbachev himself, whom they labeled a "boltun," a wind-bag."
time.com
"Gorbachev defined himself as a communist; he attempted to reform communism; he believed in its legitimacy and future. Yet he was willing to give up a power policy, to grant self-determination to the satellite states in Eastern Europe. Regarding the Baltic Republics, he neither accepted their demand for independence nor used force to suppress the movement toward it. His main policy was to begin a policy of economic reform.
Gorbachev ordered the Soviet troops to withdraw from Afghanistan (1989); he conceded German unification (1990), receiving urgently required credit in the process.
In 1989, in a chain reaction the communist one-party-state governments of Eastern Central Europe fell, replaced by freely elected democratic governments. The once omnipotent communist parties, renamed, entered parliaments as opposition parties.
In 1991 hardline communists staged a coup d'etat in Moscow, while Gorbachev was on summer vacation. The coup failed, the Communist Party being declared a criminal organization by Russia's president BORIS YELTSIN. This, in effect, ended communism in Europe.
zum.de
"Gorbachev, who had wanted to reform communism, may not have anticipated the swift swing toward democracy in Eastern Europe. Nor had he fully foreseen the impact that democracy in Eastern Europe would have on the Soviet Union. By 1990 leaders of several Soviet republics began to demand independence or greater autonomy within the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev had to balance the growing demand for radical political change within the Soviet Union with the demand by Communist hardliners that he contain the new democratic currents and turn back the clock. Faced with dangerous political opposition from the right and the left and with economic failure throughout the Soviet Union, Gorbachev tried to satisfy everyone and in the process satisfied no one. "
gliah.uh.edu
"British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who first identified Gorbachev as a man with which the West "could do business," was jubilant:
"What a fantastic year this has been for freedom! 1989 will be remembered for decades to come as the year when the people of half our Continent began to throw off their chains."
It was a year rich in ironies, too. The biggest one may be that the Communist system was destroyed by a man who meant to save it. Gorbachev, now a private citizen, has said he intended only to reform communism, not sweep it away. "
rferl.org
"It was Gorbachev who made the decision to radically reform communism. He did not come to bury the Soviet system, but to save it. But the result was the same."
prospect.org
"Having lived in Moscow for just over one year now, I have had a unique opportunity to compare what was being said in the West about the former USSR with the reality that I have experienced on the streets each day. Unfortunately, there has often been a huge gap between the two.
...our Western analysis of the former USSR was beset by three broad misconceptions. The first, of course, was an immense overconcentration on the role of Gorbachev and a concomitant overglorification of the man. Much of Western thinking was so centered on Gorbachev that it failed to notice, as Hedrick Smith observes in The New Russians, that by mid-1989, Gorbachev had been overtaken by events and had ceased to be the main propellant for change in this society. It thus failed to appreciate the rise of Boris Yeltsin, noting only his character faults and completely ignoring the fact that on all the bread and butter issues, Yeltsin was clearly a more desirable leader than Gorbachev for both the Russians and the West...
...The third misconception ... was that the Soviet people could do no better than reform communism. "They are just not ready for democracy" or "they should be satisfied with Gorbachev," many of our observers seemed to be saying. I have always found such thinking insulting and all the more so after having lived with the Russians."
intellit.muskingum.edu
"Scholars will debate for decades what role Ronald Reagan played in the end of the Cold War. Many give the primary credit to Gorbachev. I too came to feel that Gorbachev played a major role in ending the Cold War -- he lost it. As Anthony Lewis of the The New York Times told me, "He lost it gracefully, and how lucky we all are that he did." Gorbachev was intelligent enough to realize the need to reform Communism and to reach a new understanding with the West. But he could not control the reforms he initiated. When they spiraled out of control, the Soviet Union disintegrated."
pbs.org
"By the time Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to introduce reforms, his de facto repudiation of the theology of inevitability caused the complete collapse of the intellectual underpinnings of Marxism-Leninism. Even if the reforms were successful in prolonging the life of the Soviet Union, the forecast of a communist future was shattered forever. "
ndu.edu |
