The Gorbachev Factor

Citation

Ross Schroeder, J. (1998), "The Gorbachev Factor", European Business Review, Vol. 98 No. 2, pp. 135-136. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.1998.98.2.135.2

Many of us did not like to see Mikhail Gorbachev as an interim figure, occupying the highest Soviet office merely to do the spade work for a less attractive personality like Boris Yeltsin. But his role did indeed turn out to be an introductory one because in the end he was forced to submit to the type of traumatic economic and social reforms that would drive him from office.

Professor Archie Brown’s book, is at its core about the USSR chairman as sacrificial lamb. The nucleus of this work is his seven years at the summit of Soviet power. It carefully details the painful preliminary stages that Russia first had to undergo in order to have any hope at all of ultimately achieving relative economic parity with Western nations.

Of course, this arduous process is not by any means finished. Yeltsin himself may just be a part of the first stages and beginning steps. Only time will tell if the current Kremlin administration will bring any substantial economic and societal daylight to the post‐Soviet Union and present Russian scene.

Brown’s book also shows that even instituting relatively minor political (and to some extent economic) freedoms quickly opened the floodgates of wild and rapid nationalistic change, leading to the breakup of the USSR itself. Once unleashed, these long‐repressed forces proved beyond the pale of rational control. After all the Soviet Union had been sitting on 70 years of political and economic repression.

Archie Brown’s chief literary shortcoming lies in the lack of a truly defining and significant trunk‐of‐the‐tree summary statement that would help the reader keep their bearings in this mass of well‐documented detail. Likewise it would have helped if this summary theme had permeated the entire volume. His book is clearly designed for enthusiastic supporters of Gorbachev ‐ and serious scholars of contemporary Russian and Soviet history.

This new work is, however, very sympathetic to Gorbachev both as a person and a statesman. It generally interprets his contribution to these benchmark changes (from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s) in a favourable light. Enough suitable information is given about his earlier life and background to help the reader properly understand why he could play such a critical role in Russian history.

Professor Brown also shows that Gorbachev was a child of the old communist system, his political career advancing under its auspices. So the fact that he became such a serious reformer makes both the originality of his approach to change (Perestroika) and his courageous actions in the face of establishment intransigence all the more remarkable. In truth, he faced powerful political forces from both left and right with both courage and dignity.

Hopefully history will see Mikhail Gorbachev as a great Russian leader who took those courageous first steps in leading his nation out of the economic and political wilderness into a new world of economic prosperity and social stability. The verdict depends on what happens to Russia and its former satellite countries in future.

(Footnote: Archie Brown is Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and Sub‐Warden of St Antony’s College where he has been a Fellow since 1971.)