Gorbachev ‘Gave Russians a Chance,’ Shevtsova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 2 – Writing on Mikhail Gorbachev’s 89^th birthday, Russian commentator Liliya Shevtsova says that “today it is hard to believe that there were ever Gorbachev times in our lives,” given how hard his successors have worked to turn the clock back to before he came on the scene.

            Gorbachev’s glasnost, his rejection of confrontation nuclear and otherwise with the West, and his voluntary departure from office are all things that make him “the antithesis of the current powers that be,” she says. Indeed, “any memory about his times must be a nightmare for the Kremlin of today” (echo.msk.ru/blog/shevtsova/2597576-echo/).

            “Gorbachev radically changed the trajectory the 20^th century,” Shevtsova continues. “He buried world communism. He ended the cold war. He gave freedom to Eastern Europe. He rejected the use of force as the chief means of policy both within the country and beyond its borders.”

            The first and last Soviet president released the energies of the populatin “having given us the chance to become free people. He offered us the opportunity not to love the powers that be and to oppose them without fear. He rejected the traditions of rule based on force, subordination and denigration.”

            Gorbachev destroyed the system of autocracy and imperialism. He even “destroyed in himself the Soviet genes. He undermined the sacredness of the powers, by making society a political subject. [And] he gave us the chance to decide our own fate.” And he capped all this by leaving office voluntarily.

            Had he been the Soviet man many expected him t be, he might still have been in ffice today.  But as he said, he did not seek power for power’s sake and “did not try to impose his will regardless of the cost. For Russia, this was unbelievable! We have never had leaders who weakened themselves in order to give freedom to others.”

            “Gorbachev suffered defeat if his activity is rated from the point of view of the survival of autocracy,” Shevtsova says. But “he won a moral victory,” however much his successors have reversed much of what he did.  Moreover, “he became a challenge for the West which lost the USSR as a consolidating force and cannot now find a new basis for unity.”

            More important perhaps, “he became a challenge for us, who, having been given freedom did not know how to use it and ran off in search of a new autocracy,” the Russian commentator says.   “Perhaps he came on the scene too early. We were not able to deal with being freed. We passionately wanted to return to our cells.”

            “Today,” she continues, “Gorbachev stands above in complete isolation. He has no equals.” But he has nothing too be ashamed of. He has been open about what he has done and he hasn’t run off to some foreign sanctuary. 

            “Sooner or later we will have to begin from the beginning once again. But Gorbachev helped us by showing what must be done and what must not. He and his times were the brightest period in our history. This was a period of freeing others and along with them ourselves! This period says that we aren’t hopeless,” that we can have a future different than what we have now.