Sergei Markedonov. First and last

First and last
For the birthday of M.S. Gorbachev

Sergey Markedonov

Publication date: March 2, 2004

It is difficult to write about the first and last president of the Soviet Union objectively and impartially. Perhaps, it is unlikely to find a character among modern politicians who would simultaneously receive such different assessments - from the highest praise to derogatory blasphemy. At the same time, rarely does anyone write about Gorbachev in a calm “objectivist” vein. Meanwhile, since the head of state turned into the head of a foundation in his own name, and the time has come for a more balanced assessment of this undoubtedly extraordinary political figure. twelve years have passed

What is the historical role of Gorbachev in Russian and world history? Which of his political steps is more important and valuable: “new thinking” and democratization or the hasty, “fire order” withdrawal of the Soviet army from Germany and Central Europe, the elimination of the monopoly of the CPSU or the collapse of the state (no matter under what flag it existed)? It is still premature to sum up the results and make final “diagnoses,” but Mikhail Sergeevich’s birthday is a good reason to develop a more adequate (not “black and white”) view of this tragic figure in its own way.

Gorbachev's project, which went down in history under the name "perestroika", ended in defeat. A tragic and irreversible defeat. “Perestroika is not a new building,” once proclaimed one of the people close to Gorbachev, the first-rank party ideologist Vadim Medvedev, . Conceived as the second edition of the “Thaw,” Gorby’s plan to slightly reshape socialism and give the “most just system” a human face failed. In 1991, socialism, the CPSU led by Mikhail Sergeevich, and the world’s first socialist state, the USSR, headed by him, ceased to exist. There are no real prerequisites for their revival today.

The fact that today’s most important political force acting under the red banner, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation , although with numerous reservations, has recognized private property, parliamentarism, and a multi-party system, says a lot. However, it would be wrong to talk about “perestroika” as an ineffective and exclusively failed project. Without the political liberalization that began under Gorbachev and the destruction of the monopoly of the CPSU, there would have been neither August 1991, nor market reforms, nor the end of the Cold War. But the whole problem is that Mikhail Sergeevich himself, who was repeatedly awarded the laurels of the “godfather” of freedom and democracy, did absolutely nothing for the triumph of those very values, the defender of which he is still portrayed by European and American political scientists (former Sovietologists and Kremlinologists) .

There is a special scale for assessing the effectiveness of political activity, which is very different from the system for assessing scientific or creative work. A politician can be considered effective if he anticipates developments, skillfully develops his plan to neutralize opponents and achieve the desired results, and, in the end, achieves these results. If a politician plays the role of always catching up, passively following events rather than trying to direct them, his actions cannot be considered effective. Did Gorbachev have a vision for reforming the Soviet economy and political system when he came to power?

Such a question will sound rhetorical. The materials of the April Plenum or the 27th Congress of the CPSU do not give any reason to talk about the existence of a holistic program of reforms. To set reform goals, it was first necessary to identify crisis phenomena, determine their root causes and indicate possible ways to eliminate them. Alas, party documents of the mid-1980s are still the same Marxist-Leninist phraseology, the same dogmatism. Having taken the helm in conditions of political gerontocracy and an impending crisis, Mikhail Sergeevich spent the first two years of his reign doing the usual thing for the Secretary General - personnel changes, campaigning (what is the anti-alcohol campaign alone worth!) and the fight against the old “Brezhnevites”. It would be at least strange to see genuine reformist intentions in the slogans proclaimed by Gorbachev (if not in the European style, but at least in the Chinese style). The Secretary General almost simultaneously proclaimed the strategy of “acceleration” and the course towards “perestroika,” which was essentially tantamount to a struggle to obtain wooden iron or hot ice: “acceleration” assumed that the Soviet system had huge reserves for growth, and “perestroika” set the stage for more pessimistic and demanded structural reforms.

Starting from the January and June Plenums of the CPSU Central Committee in 1987, which were repeatedly called historical and turning points, new features began to be detected in Gorbachev’s actions: greater courage in assessments, a desire to expand the scope of freedom for Soviet citizens. But the trouble is that even after 1987, Gorbachev did not fully understand what reforms were needed, what their pace should be, and around what idea an already reformed society could be consolidated. Instead of switching to situational management, the Secretary General sought to compare his every step with “Lenin’s”. Lenin believed that the NEP was great - it means “you give cooperatives”, the leader advocated for the Soviets as the highest form of democracy - Gorbachev returned to the congresses of the Soviets.

In the absence of goal-setting for reforms, there was and could not be any internal logic in these steps. Gorbachev spoke about the market not because he was planning large-scale transformations, but because he was forced to do so by crisis phenomena in the socialist economy; called for democracy not because he was an ardent supporter of parliamentarism and a multi-party system (it would be ridiculous to expect this from the General Secretary of the CPSU), but because the authoritarian government, due to its closed nature, could not adequately assess its own steps in the economy and politics. Mikhail Sergeevich was an honest, but at the same time a very dogmatic Marxist, and therefore considered the problems of interethnic and interfaith relations to be a secondary matter. The result of this methodological error is obvious to everyone today.

Mikhail Sergeevich gained his greatest fame in the international arena. worth What are the Nobel laurels ? But if we analyze this area of ​​his activity in more detail, it will become obvious that the “new thinking” was by no means a brilliant insight of the Secretary General, but a recognition that the Soviet military machine was not able to compete on equal terms with the American one. Gorbachev’s foreign policy doctrine itself was not initially defeatist, as national-patriotic publicists say it is. Conceived as a kind of “realpolitik” instead of the ideologized Soviet doctrine, the “new thinking” failed for the same reasons as the domestic political innovations of the last secretary general.

Gorbachev, both within the country and at the external level, turned out to be unprepared to deal with new “challenges”. And this is also a consequence of the fact that Gorby only rushed after events, without at least a short-term plan to create new foreign policy relations. The concept of “national interests” was not understood by the Nobel laureate, and therefore the good deed of ending the nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers turned into the unconditional surrender of one of them.

Gorbachev found himself at the helm of the party and state in the most difficult conditions of political and socio-economic transformations. The actions of the last General Secretary of the CPSU contributed to the death of both the party itself and socialism, becoming the starting point of market modernization . The whole tragedy lay in the fact that Gorbachev committed all his actions involuntarily, in permanent attempts to catch up with history and not entirely successfully responding to the “challenges” of the time. To paraphrase the classic, the following words could be applied to Gorbachev: “You, reformer, are unworthy of yourself . ” At the head of the reforms, with the ultimate goal of destroying the Soviet model, stood a deeply Soviet man who did not at all want its tragic end. Hence the half-hearted nature of all the “reform” initiatives of the Secretary General and their incompleteness. But, unwillingly, Gorbachev completed an important historical task - he stopped the communist experiment, which had cost our country and all of Europe too much. The reformer general secretary did not have enough strength for more. New tasks to return Russia to the path of normal socio-economic and political development were undertaken by other people in a different era and in another state .