When East Germans defied Soviet domination with the Leipzig march in 1989, they were chanting an unlikely slogan. “Gorbi, Gorbi!” they shouted in a celebratory tone, referring to then-Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev.
The brave demonstrators were hungry for democracy and freedom. Yet they chose to voice their ideals using the name of the very person leading the Soviet Union. Even more profoundly, East Germans’ fervent wishes could be aptly conveyed with two other words — perestroika (reform) and glasnost (openness). These were Gorbachev’s two iconic political reform projects. The former leader died recently at the age of 91.
Throughout his tenure as the only president of the Soviet Union, the personable Gorbachev enabled a generation of young people across the globe to dare to aspire to a different world. He set an example that a more democratic social condition, despite entrenched institutional obstacles, was achievable. Gorbachev’s use of the power of possibility to set people free, physically and intellectually, should be his most enduring legacy.
Gorbachev inherited a country in deep crisis. By the late 1980s, the Soviet economy was collapsing: People saw empty shelves in store after store and feared food shortages. Meanwhile, state security agents enforced an official ideology that most people found hard to believe. The new leader had a choice to make: Maintain the status quo, which would perpetuate people’s suffering, or push for fundamental reforms that would anger traditionalist party leaders but had a chance at reviving the country.
His decision was the latter, and he knew the potential personal costs. After all, there were lessons from Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet leader during the Cuban missile crisis, who was deposed by a meeting of his own party subordinates after his policies dissatisfied them. In a political system dangerously resistant to change, Gorbachev introduced democratic elections, even for the highest office of Soviet president, fundamentally disrupting the opaque nature of leadership selection in Moscow. He also lifted the censorship on publications, allowing unprecedented public criticism of the government.
In political science, there is an established theory predicting leaders’ actions by considering their self-interest. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a senior fellow at Stanford University, clarifies this theory in the book “The Logic of Political Survival” that political leaders usually have one cardinal focus of self-interest in keeping their job. But Gorbachev chose reforms at risk of losing his power. Allowing democratic elections created uncertainty about his own power, and instituting a free press weakened his party’s grip on public sentiment. When leaders are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good, as Gorbachev did, they deserve our respect for their moral courage.
For moral leaders, there comes a time when you deem it necessary to reflect on past decisions and prevent their repetition, even in the face of stiff resistance. 1989 was that time for Gorbachev. In January, when pro-independence forces tried to take hold of Lithuania, the Soviet Union used force that caused the deaths of 14 civilians. Later that year, Gorbachev allowed the Berlin Wall to fall and prevented any Soviet military crackdowns.
It would have been easier for the Soviet leader to maintain the course of action that his country had employed since the Prague Spring and seek to prevent any independence efforts through violence. Instead, Gorbachev chose the harder but just path. In the end, Gorbachev’s decision avoided bloodshed in Berlin and allowed numerous families to reunite with the fall of the Iron Curtain. But he suffered great personal costs: The collapse of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe was quickly met with the August coup attempt in which eight senior level hardliners detained Gorbachev for two days in 1991 and precipitated the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev was far from perfect, and we all should welcome criticisms of him. After all, he publicly admitted five mistakes he could have avoided to save his country and prevent the rise of oligarchs in post-Soviet Russia. From his initial hesitation to delegate power to his ill-timed vacation that made it ripe for the August coup, the former Soviet leader was honest rather than evasive.
His misjudgments do not outweigh the example of the power of possibility that he set for the world. And he would want the world to evaluate his mistakes and ensure that future leaders never repeat them.
When I read the news that Gorbachev had died, I felt sorrow — and gratitude. His devotion to political reform inspired my parents’ generation, which fought for democracy. Gorbachev will remain a source of strength for countless young advocates of democracy from across the globe, especially in those places where hope seems bleak, in the years and decades to come.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Bincheng Mao is an agenda contributor at the World Economic Forum. He writes on human rights and economic justice.
