Mikhail Gorbachev
Born March 2, 1931
The rises and falls of the esteem in which Russians have held Mikhail Gorbachev over the years have been dizzying. As for the falls, Alexander Kerensky, head of the 1917 Provisional Government after the February Revolution, may be the only other figure in Russian history to experience a more precipitous plummet from wild adoration to bitter contempt.
The first reaction to Gorbachev was probably surprise. No – that’s too weak a word. In the spring of 1985, the Soviet people were utterly baffled, dumbfounded, and stunned: some were pleasantly amazed; others were absolutely appalled. Before the Politburo elected him to head the Communist Party in March 1985, no one had ever heard of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, or at least no one who didn’t follow the party’s inner workings (a rare breed).
Seemingly out of the blue, there was this youthful (compared to the feeble old men who came before him) new head of the country who actually began to say things that made a modicum of sense. Today, there’s an urge to cry out: “Was he ever a windbag, interminably holding forth at the slightest provocation!” But in fact, in 1985, Gorbachev was doing something extremely important: he was calling things as he saw them. Or at least he was trying. He himself, of course, did not fully appreciate what he was getting himself into and didn’t realize that he was initiating the downfall of a system. He apparently thought that he could just make a few adjustments, fix a few things around the edges, and everything would be fine. But the fact that someone (and not just someone at home in their own kitchen, but standing at an official podium!) could admit that all was not well in the land and even that things were going badly – that was astounding.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454489416.jpg]
My son was born in March of 1985, so in the succeeding months, my husband and I were pretty busy. Still, after the children were put to bed and we finally had a moment to ourselves, we didn’t go to sleep, we didn’t settle down with a book, and we didn’t relax over a cup of tea: we immediately turned on the television and listened to Gorbachev’s latest (and always very long) speech, tearing our eyes away from the screen only long enough to turn to one another and say something like: “Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” Today I can see the naivety of Mikhail Sergeyevich’s promises back then that all the Soviet Union had to do to flourish was “accelerate” and begin using computers. But what an astonishing impression these pronouncements made! On top of that, he suddenly started meeting with our most despised enemies – Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The world was going topsy-turvy!
It took just two years before attitudes toward the general secretary began to change. His speeches began to provoke yawns and his ceaseless foreign trips became a source of irritation. And as soon as the country realized that Gorbachev and Yeltsin were at loggerheads, the situation became even more fraught. For some, they were both traitors to the communist cause, squabbling between themselves. For others, Gorbachev was betraying his own perestroika by attacking Yeltsin, who was seen as fighting for the truth.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454489294.jpg]
Gorbachev was trapped in a contradiction. He wanted to bring the country to renewal but was unable to give up on his beliefs, unable to admit that the old system had to be completely destroyed and replaced. So with every year, more of the ground on which he stood disappeared from beneath his feet: for conservatives, he was too liberal, and for proponents of change, he was too conservative. Communists couldn’t forgive him the changes taking place, which is why, in 1990, Gorbachev had to come up with the position of President of the Soviet Union, since he clearly understood that he could no longer count on support from the party through whose ranks he had risen to the top, and it was traditionally the head of the party who was considered the head of the country. But for supporters of perestroika, he suddenly looked as if he was putting the brakes on reform. He was no longer seen as the man who had released the esteemed physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov from exile, but as the man who had publicly insulted him.
As often happens in Russia, the situation became overheated, the extremes became more extreme, and Gorbachev’s attempts to hold on to some imaginary middle ground – one in which the empire would be preserved, but its various republics would be given greater autonomy; where market forces would be empowered, but socialist principles would be preserved; where democracy would reign, but with the Communist Party in charge – all these attempts were doomed and, alas, destroyed Gorbachev as a politician.
By 1991, Gorbachev had lost most of his popularity. The country – hungry and angry, ravaged by ethnic conflict and plagued by shortages resulting in hours-long lines for food – no longer wanted to listen to him. When the August 1991 coup attempt failed and Gorbachev returned from his three-day house arrest in the Crimean resort town of Foros (where he had been vacationing), his return was rejoiced, but nobody really felt a need for him anymore. By then, the primary emotion he provoked was contempt, both from his enemies and his former admirers. The humiliation he suffered in December 1991, when he found himself leading a collapsing country, aroused little sympathy. People had their own problems to worry about.
Gorbachev’s subsequent attempts to adapt to his new life are telling. In 1997, when the entire country was frantically trying to find a way to support themselves, the former general secretary and president appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial, clearly oblivious to the damage this would do to his reputation. Then again, did he still have a reputation to protect? His pathetic 1996 presidential campaign (after he had been out of office for five years) ended in humiliating defeat. Gorbachev was no longer relevant.
As the funny and wise Igor Irtenyev wrote:
And so our Gorby left the stage,
The pedestal departed.
Not seeing him on our front page
Left no one broken-hearted.
Still, giving him a plain thank you,
Some kindness to be courteous,
Might have been the least to do.
But that’s not how they raised us.
Так и сошел со сцены Горби,
Так и покинул пьедестал.
Предметом всенародной скорби
Его уход отнюдь не стал.
И все ж сказать ему спасибо,
Хотя б подать ему пальто
Вполне мы, думаю, могли бы.
Да воспитание не то.
But here is what is surprising. Decades later, people feel much greater sympathy for Gorbachev than they did a quarter century ago. Of course, he doesn’t command as much attention as he deserves, and neither does perestroika. But the outright rejection and disdain are no longer there. The death of his wife, to whom he was extremely attached, earned him some sympathy, even though, in the past, Raisa Maximovna had been quite an irritant to sexist Soviet society – both to men and women. Why did he take her everywhere he went? It wasn’t “done” for general secretaries to parade their wives all over the place! But he just loved her and respected her, just as he respected the ordinary rules of international etiquette.
All sorts of despicable comments were made about Raisa Gorbacheva, but after she died there was an abrupt change in tone. Today, the oncology center that Gorbachev founded in her memory is saving thousands of lives.
Now that he is older, stouter, feebler, Gorbachev evokes respect and a desire to listen to what he has to say.
Alas, his time has passed. Although, who knows? When Russia is again ready to let go of its authoritarian system, perhaps we’ll remember Gorbachev and try not to repeat his mistakes.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454543335.jpg]
Chernobyl Disaster
26 April 1986
In an odd way, it was only after watching the HBO miniseries Chernobyl that I fully appreciated just how great a catastrophe threatened mankind on that April day in 1986. Of course, back then, thirty-five years ago, it was also terrifying – at first confusing, and then alarming. At that point, we started calling relatives in Kiev to suggest that it might be a good idea for them to come to Moscow. They gamely insisted that everything was just fine. Soon, it became less fine. The situation became so frightening that both our Kiev relatives and our friends from Zhitomir asked if they could come stay with us in Moscow for a while, since something really horrific had happened.
Soon the country started hearing Soviet – and European – experts assuring us on television that nothing terrible had happened. But long experience had taught the Soviet people: if they say prices won’t be increased, you’d better run to the store and stock up; if they say that everything is fine, brace yourself for rough times ahead; and if they tell you there’s no danger – then you’re really in trouble! Meanwhile, the Western “voices,” which were still banned in 1986 – the BBC, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle – were all talking about a radioactive cloud heading for Europe. Rumors started spreading about some people going to Chernobyl voluntarily and others being forced. A grim new term came into usage to describe those working to remediate this disaster: “liquidators.”
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454574424.jpg]
But this was a point in time when life was changing so quickly and so many strange and unexpected events were taking place – both good and bad – that Chernobyl rather quickly receded into the background. Perestroika was moving full steam ahead, store shelves were growing increasingly bare, there were reports of a sort we were not accustomed to hearing about ethnic conflicts in various corners of the Soviet Union, and generally, we had enough to worry about without Chernobyl. The social and political eruptions rocking the country made it hard to focus on the actual explosion of the No. 4 reactor.
Like many Soviet people, we had a dacha with a vegetable garden, to ensure that the carrots and dill our children ate would be fresh. Now, whenever dark clouds began to gather overhead, the whole family would rush to cover up the rows of vegetables with tarps to protect against radioactive rain. It was all treated as a bit of a joke, a weird game: Hurry up! Rain! Radiation! The kids thought it was fun. There was a lot of dark humor going around back then (“When you leave Chernobyl, don’t forget to bring home some dust for your motherin-law”). Very funny.
Eventually, the political and economic upheavals became so overwhelming we totally forgot about Chernobyl, although people were still hesitant to buy anything from Ukraine in the markets (today we know that it was actually Belarus, especially Gomel Oblast, that suffered the worst contamination, along with some parts of southern Russia). Soon, food shortages became so bad that people had no choice. Then, suddenly, Ukraine was a separate country.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454574306.jpg]
After Svetlana Alexievich’s earth-shattering Voices from Chernobyl and the amazing miniseries Chernobyl, people suddenly started to realize just what a dark shadow the disaster had cast over our lives all those years – all the elderly people who had stayed in the thirty-kilometer exclusion zone because they had nowhere else to go; the young daredevils who made illegal excursions (and continue to do so to this day) to the zone to explore the historic site and bring home souvenirs; the liquidators, many of whom are no longer with us; and those living in the contaminated areas, the proud recipients of free train fare and higher pensions, but also a greater risk of cancer.
Today when I think about Chernobyl, I envision the grim sarcophagus erected over the No. 4 reactor, still humming with radioactivity, a sort of Tolkienian Mount Orodruin that will forever be with us. At times it seems to me that, although the radiation has been entombed, the reactor still emanates a different sort of contamination – one that continues to poison life in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
How many other hastily designed plants have been built since Chernobyl? The Winter Cherry, a shopping mall and entertainment center, was no power plant and far from Chernobyl, in the Siberian industrial town of Kemerovo, but it has a symbolic link to Chernobyl. The disaster that struck that complex had fewer victims, “just” sixty, of whom thirty-seven were children. They died in a fire because the alarm system had been turned off and the fire exits were blocked. Why adhere to safety regulations when it’s easier to just bribe your way out of compliance? One can’t help but think both disasters were symptoms of the same disease.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454603518.jpg]
After Chernobyl, how many people came down with cancer and went untreated? And what about retired Admiral Vyacheslav Apanasenko, who shot himself because the hospital where he was being treated for the cancer that ravaged his body did not give him painkillers? He had no direct link to Chernobyl (though he did take part in US-Soviet strategic nuclear disarmament negotiations), but it strikes me that he and other patients whose desperate pleas for help go unanswered because doctors are afraid of going to prison if they prescribe painkillers are also tied to Chernobyl’s legacy.
A government that hides oncoming disasters from people, preferring to report that everything is just fine instead of making an effort to save and evacuate; subordinates more afraid of their bosses than of the potential for catastrophe; bosses who turn a blind eye to problems but then blame their subordinates for inevitable disasters – Heavens! How many times has this scenario played out in our country? More to the point, how many times will it play out in the future?
In 1986, Chernobyl looked like the embodiment of a decrepit Soviet system that was receding into the past, of a dismal, stagnant, ineffectual regime where nobody put in much effort and nothing worked, where inept bureaucrats approved flawed power plant designs and other inept bureaucrats told us how good we had it.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454603625.jpg]
Now, thirty-five years later, where is that regime? Where are those bureaucrats? They’re still there, or at least their children and grandchildren are. The only difference is that now they’re not talking about the advantages of Marxism-Leninism, but of Russia’s superiority over the rest of the world. The most fortunate among them live in gilded palaces.
It appe...
Born March 2, 1931
The rises and falls of the esteem in which Russians have held Mikhail Gorbachev over the years have been dizzying. As for the falls, Alexander Kerensky, head of the 1917 Provisional Government after the February Revolution, may be the only other figure in Russian history to experience a more precipitous plummet from wild adoration to bitter contempt.
The first reaction to Gorbachev was probably surprise. No – that’s too weak a word. In the spring of 1985, the Soviet people were utterly baffled, dumbfounded, and stunned: some were pleasantly amazed; others were absolutely appalled. Before the Politburo elected him to head the Communist Party in March 1985, no one had ever heard of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, or at least no one who didn’t follow the party’s inner workings (a rare breed).
Seemingly out of the blue, there was this youthful (compared to the feeble old men who came before him) new head of the country who actually began to say things that made a modicum of sense. Today, there’s an urge to cry out: “Was he ever a windbag, interminably holding forth at the slightest provocation!” But in fact, in 1985, Gorbachev was doing something extremely important: he was calling things as he saw them. Or at least he was trying. He himself, of course, did not fully appreciate what he was getting himself into and didn’t realize that he was initiating the downfall of a system. He apparently thought that he could just make a few adjustments, fix a few things around the edges, and everything would be fine. But the fact that someone (and not just someone at home in their own kitchen, but standing at an official podium!) could admit that all was not well in the land and even that things were going badly – that was astounding.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454489416.jpg]
My son was born in March of 1985, so in the succeeding months, my husband and I were pretty busy. Still, after the children were put to bed and we finally had a moment to ourselves, we didn’t go to sleep, we didn’t settle down with a book, and we didn’t relax over a cup of tea: we immediately turned on the television and listened to Gorbachev’s latest (and always very long) speech, tearing our eyes away from the screen only long enough to turn to one another and say something like: “Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” Today I can see the naivety of Mikhail Sergeyevich’s promises back then that all the Soviet Union had to do to flourish was “accelerate” and begin using computers. But what an astonishing impression these pronouncements made! On top of that, he suddenly started meeting with our most despised enemies – Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The world was going topsy-turvy!
It took just two years before attitudes toward the general secretary began to change. His speeches began to provoke yawns and his ceaseless foreign trips became a source of irritation. And as soon as the country realized that Gorbachev and Yeltsin were at loggerheads, the situation became even more fraught. For some, they were both traitors to the communist cause, squabbling between themselves. For others, Gorbachev was betraying his own perestroika by attacking Yeltsin, who was seen as fighting for the truth.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454489294.jpg]
Gorbachev was trapped in a contradiction. He wanted to bring the country to renewal but was unable to give up on his beliefs, unable to admit that the old system had to be completely destroyed and replaced. So with every year, more of the ground on which he stood disappeared from beneath his feet: for conservatives, he was too liberal, and for proponents of change, he was too conservative. Communists couldn’t forgive him the changes taking place, which is why, in 1990, Gorbachev had to come up with the position of President of the Soviet Union, since he clearly understood that he could no longer count on support from the party through whose ranks he had risen to the top, and it was traditionally the head of the party who was considered the head of the country. But for supporters of perestroika, he suddenly looked as if he was putting the brakes on reform. He was no longer seen as the man who had released the esteemed physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov from exile, but as the man who had publicly insulted him.
As often happens in Russia, the situation became overheated, the extremes became more extreme, and Gorbachev’s attempts to hold on to some imaginary middle ground – one in which the empire would be preserved, but its various republics would be given greater autonomy; where market forces would be empowered, but socialist principles would be preserved; where democracy would reign, but with the Communist Party in charge – all these attempts were doomed and, alas, destroyed Gorbachev as a politician.
By 1991, Gorbachev had lost most of his popularity. The country – hungry and angry, ravaged by ethnic conflict and plagued by shortages resulting in hours-long lines for food – no longer wanted to listen to him. When the August 1991 coup attempt failed and Gorbachev returned from his three-day house arrest in the Crimean resort town of Foros (where he had been vacationing), his return was rejoiced, but nobody really felt a need for him anymore. By then, the primary emotion he provoked was contempt, both from his enemies and his former admirers. The humiliation he suffered in December 1991, when he found himself leading a collapsing country, aroused little sympathy. People had their own problems to worry about.
Gorbachev’s subsequent attempts to adapt to his new life are telling. In 1997, when the entire country was frantically trying to find a way to support themselves, the former general secretary and president appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial, clearly oblivious to the damage this would do to his reputation. Then again, did he still have a reputation to protect? His pathetic 1996 presidential campaign (after he had been out of office for five years) ended in humiliating defeat. Gorbachev was no longer relevant.
As the funny and wise Igor Irtenyev wrote:
And so our Gorby left the stage,
The pedestal departed.
Not seeing him on our front page
Left no one broken-hearted.
Still, giving him a plain thank you,
Some kindness to be courteous,
Might have been the least to do.
But that’s not how they raised us.
Так и сошел со сцены Горби,
Так и покинул пьедестал.
Предметом всенародной скорби
Его уход отнюдь не стал.
И все ж сказать ему спасибо,
Хотя б подать ему пальто
Вполне мы, думаю, могли бы.
Да воспитание не то.
But here is what is surprising. Decades later, people feel much greater sympathy for Gorbachev than they did a quarter century ago. Of course, he doesn’t command as much attention as he deserves, and neither does perestroika. But the outright rejection and disdain are no longer there. The death of his wife, to whom he was extremely attached, earned him some sympathy, even though, in the past, Raisa Maximovna had been quite an irritant to sexist Soviet society – both to men and women. Why did he take her everywhere he went? It wasn’t “done” for general secretaries to parade their wives all over the place! But he just loved her and respected her, just as he respected the ordinary rules of international etiquette.
All sorts of despicable comments were made about Raisa Gorbacheva, but after she died there was an abrupt change in tone. Today, the oncology center that Gorbachev founded in her memory is saving thousands of lives.
Now that he is older, stouter, feebler, Gorbachev evokes respect and a desire to listen to what he has to say.
Alas, his time has passed. Although, who knows? When Russia is again ready to let go of its authoritarian system, perhaps we’ll remember Gorbachev and try not to repeat his mistakes.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454543335.jpg]
Chernobyl Disaster
26 April 1986
In an odd way, it was only after watching the HBO miniseries Chernobyl that I fully appreciated just how great a catastrophe threatened mankind on that April day in 1986. Of course, back then, thirty-five years ago, it was also terrifying – at first confusing, and then alarming. At that point, we started calling relatives in Kiev to suggest that it might be a good idea for them to come to Moscow. They gamely insisted that everything was just fine. Soon, it became less fine. The situation became so frightening that both our Kiev relatives and our friends from Zhitomir asked if they could come stay with us in Moscow for a while, since something really horrific had happened.
Soon the country started hearing Soviet – and European – experts assuring us on television that nothing terrible had happened. But long experience had taught the Soviet people: if they say prices won’t be increased, you’d better run to the store and stock up; if they say that everything is fine, brace yourself for rough times ahead; and if they tell you there’s no danger – then you’re really in trouble! Meanwhile, the Western “voices,” which were still banned in 1986 – the BBC, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle – were all talking about a radioactive cloud heading for Europe. Rumors started spreading about some people going to Chernobyl voluntarily and others being forced. A grim new term came into usage to describe those working to remediate this disaster: “liquidators.”
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454574424.jpg]
But this was a point in time when life was changing so quickly and so many strange and unexpected events were taking place – both good and bad – that Chernobyl rather quickly receded into the background. Perestroika was moving full steam ahead, store shelves were growing increasingly bare, there were reports of a sort we were not accustomed to hearing about ethnic conflicts in various corners of the Soviet Union, and generally, we had enough to worry about without Chernobyl. The social and political eruptions rocking the country made it hard to focus on the actual explosion of the No. 4 reactor.
Like many Soviet people, we had a dacha with a vegetable garden, to ensure that the carrots and dill our children ate would be fresh. Now, whenever dark clouds began to gather overhead, the whole family would rush to cover up the rows of vegetables with tarps to protect against radioactive rain. It was all treated as a bit of a joke, a weird game: Hurry up! Rain! Radiation! The kids thought it was fun. There was a lot of dark humor going around back then (“When you leave Chernobyl, don’t forget to bring home some dust for your motherin-law”). Very funny.
Eventually, the political and economic upheavals became so overwhelming we totally forgot about Chernobyl, although people were still hesitant to buy anything from Ukraine in the markets (today we know that it was actually Belarus, especially Gomel Oblast, that suffered the worst contamination, along with some parts of southern Russia). Soon, food shortages became so bad that people had no choice. Then, suddenly, Ukraine was a separate country.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454574306.jpg]
After Svetlana Alexievich’s earth-shattering Voices from Chernobyl and the amazing miniseries Chernobyl, people suddenly started to realize just what a dark shadow the disaster had cast over our lives all those years – all the elderly people who had stayed in the thirty-kilometer exclusion zone because they had nowhere else to go; the young daredevils who made illegal excursions (and continue to do so to this day) to the zone to explore the historic site and bring home souvenirs; the liquidators, many of whom are no longer with us; and those living in the contaminated areas, the proud recipients of free train fare and higher pensions, but also a greater risk of cancer.
Today when I think about Chernobyl, I envision the grim sarcophagus erected over the No. 4 reactor, still humming with radioactivity, a sort of Tolkienian Mount Orodruin that will forever be with us. At times it seems to me that, although the radiation has been entombed, the reactor still emanates a different sort of contamination – one that continues to poison life in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
How many other hastily designed plants have been built since Chernobyl? The Winter Cherry, a shopping mall and entertainment center, was no power plant and far from Chernobyl, in the Siberian industrial town of Kemerovo, but it has a symbolic link to Chernobyl. The disaster that struck that complex had fewer victims, “just” sixty, of whom thirty-seven were children. They died in a fire because the alarm system had been turned off and the fire exits were blocked. Why adhere to safety regulations when it’s easier to just bribe your way out of compliance? One can’t help but think both disasters were symptoms of the same disease.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454603518.jpg]
After Chernobyl, how many people came down with cancer and went untreated? And what about retired Admiral Vyacheslav Apanasenko, who shot himself because the hospital where he was being treated for the cancer that ravaged his body did not give him painkillers? He had no direct link to Chernobyl (though he did take part in US-Soviet strategic nuclear disarmament negotiations), but it strikes me that he and other patients whose desperate pleas for help go unanswered because doctors are afraid of going to prison if they prescribe painkillers are also tied to Chernobyl’s legacy.
A government that hides oncoming disasters from people, preferring to report that everything is just fine instead of making an effort to save and evacuate; subordinates more afraid of their bosses than of the potential for catastrophe; bosses who turn a blind eye to problems but then blame their subordinates for inevitable disasters – Heavens! How many times has this scenario played out in our country? More to the point, how many times will it play out in the future?
In 1986, Chernobyl looked like the embodiment of a decrepit Soviet system that was receding into the past, of a dismal, stagnant, ineffectual regime where nobody put in much effort and nothing worked, where inept bureaucrats approved flawed power plant designs and other inept bureaucrats told us how good we had it.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/4369/610362/6049e259d56b0/1615454603625.jpg]
Now, thirty-five years later, where is that regime? Where are those bureaucrats? They’re still there, or at least their children and grandchildren are. The only difference is that now they’re not talking about the advantages of Marxism-Leninism, but of Russia’s superiority over the rest of the world. The most fortunate among them live in gilded palaces.
It appe...
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Russian Life (Digital) - 1 Issue, March/April 2021