I followed the career and the person of Gorbachev from the beginning, when he first appeared in the international media and had a lifelong interest in his achievements and proposals. I had since the Seventies also a great interest in Russia, Russian history and all related to it, as the history of the Soviet Union. Learning the Russian language in evening school, I went (because it was much more cheaper than normal journeys ) to Russia in 1979 with the "Belgian association of Belgian-Soviet Friendship. (Belgian Communist-Soviet based) and as said by all this interested in the career of Gorbachev from the beginning)
I read also a book written by Gorbachev about his views as for instance glasnost and perestroika. And there I learned that although his as liberal views seen by the West and his truly attempts to end the Cold War his political views were still "communism", but perhaps with a "human" and "democratic" approach and that within the Soviet USSR: union of socialist (communist) soviet republics.
And he was right in my opinion, as it could be an alternative for some greedy capitalist asocial western countries as for instance the US, a Socialist USSR, a bit in the way of the "Swedish" model.
But he failed as, despite the US goodwill, there was still the spectre as before of the geopolitical power struggle in the world, and in the Soviet Union the "hawks" would never allowed a subordinate position as in the US, the hawks too and en plus would never allowed it that the USSR would stay outside their greedy capitalistic system and defy it. The US for the rich and the remains of the table for the poor, the big gap between rich and poor. Rich not always because of their merits and poor many times because they had not a chance to show their merits.
And yes, Gorbachev had also underestimated the power of "nationalism", that inclination inherited from the prehistory of the "tribe" cohesion against another "tribe" and so the suppressed "national" feelings came immediatly to the surface as in the later "Yugoslavia" and were one of the main causes of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
I liked Gorbachev last words in the interview, as to want on his gravestone: "We tried" just before the poem.
The story of Mikhail Gorbachev and that of his parents was a complex one. It was closely linked to collectivised farming and also to the dual Russian/Ukrainean identity which so many people in the Ukraine, in southern Russia and also in Siberia have.
The Soviet famine of the early 1930s, for instance, is often characterised as being one in which centralised misrule from Moscow resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Ukraineans during those years. And this was in effect the case. For Gorbachev, however, the famine struck his family in the far south of Russia adjacent to the Ukraine and it were members of his paternal Russian family who perished there while his maternal Ukrainean grandfather (as chairman of the local collective farm) emerged relatively unscathed. Even so, his maternal grandfather was not immune from the oppression of the Stalinist state but was later arrested and tortured by members of OGPU the secret police.
It's quite remarkable, therefore, that someone from such humble origins should have made it to the top and become ruler of the Soviet empire. One can only guess at how this complicated background influenced his public career and political decisions. Even towards the end of his term in office Gorbachev was still grappling with the absurd inefficiencies of the kolkhoz (collective farming) system. This article entitled Who Is to Blame for The Russian Famine? doesn’t come from the 1920s or the 1930s but is from January 1991 when yet again famine was somehow threatening a country with over a hundred million hectares of some of the most fertile, deep black soil anywhere on earth. Seven months after that article was written, the August coup attempt would derail Gorbachev’s administration and hasten the end of the Soviet Union.
Tim of Aclea Triumviratus Rei Publicae Constituendae
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) to Russia in 1979 with the "Belgian association of Belgian-Soviet Friendship. (Belgian Communist-Soviet based)
