"Gorbachev Failed. That's Why He Was Showered with Honors."

A good article today by Jeff Jacoby, about Gorbachev's complex life and legacy; not terribly new to those who followed the last years of the Soviet Union, but still well put. An excerpt:

Even if he could never bring himself to acknowledge the inherent evil of communism, it was to Gorbachev's lasting credit that when Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria chose to exit the Soviet orbit, he did not send in the tanks. That was the reason for all those prizes and awards, the reason he was so immensely popular in the West, the reason obituaries this past week have referred to him as a "liberator."

But he wasn't a liberator…. [C]hoosing not to commit mass murder or perpetuate slavery is not the same thing as choosing to save lives or free the enslaved.

And when it came to the former Soviet republics, Gorbachev's attitude was far less enlightened…. Gorbachev was not prepared to send tanks and troops to subdue Warsaw and Prague, but he had no such qualms—at least at first—closer to home [in the USSR's constituent "republics"].

"As early as 1986, nationalist protests in Almaty, Kazakhstan, were put down with a massive show of force," recalled Leonid Bershidsky in a Bloomberg essay. "In April 1991, the Soviet military killed 21 protesters and wounded hundreds more in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi…. People were killed as they protested in Dushanbe, Baku, and Riga," the capitals, respectively, of Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Latvia. In Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers moved directly into crowds of civilians demonstrating for freedom. Hundreds of protesters were wounded and at least 14 people — two of them teenagers — were killed.

Fortunately for the former Soviet republics, Gorbachev's tolerance for slaughter was low. He was too decent to successfully rule an evil empire.

For those who know Russian, here's a young Andrey Makarevich's "Give Lithuania Back to the Lithuanians," from 1991, which addresses Gorbachev directly; Makarevich is now a leading critic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (see, e.g., here, though there are many other songs from him on this as well); here's a loose translation:

Onto the empty pages of Russian Imperial history
Sometimes in ash, sometimes in gold, are written our years
So give Lithuania back to the Lithuanians, Mikhail Sergeevich [i.e., Gorbachev]
We can't force you to be kind, alas, but blood isn't water.

That would be beautiful, worthy, it would be right
To say, by the highest decree we give you freedom
Give all the riot police a medal with the portrait of Nevzorov]
Treat them to a nice dinner, and then let them ho home.

There'll be new skirmishes—trust me, they'll find some reason,
And again the guy from Ryazan' will have a steady hand [presumably a reference to some then-current incident].
Free the Lithuanians—it will be credited and recorded for you
In any event they're as useful to us now, pardon, as trying to get milk from a billy goat.

We'll soon run out of bagel holes, forget even about the bagels!
Distrust of words is born of distrust of deeds.
Better a friendly neighbor than an enemy in the form of a "fraternal republic"
Free the Lithuanians—what have they ever done to you?

Questioned by their eyes you can only stoop
Perhaps we really are a big big family
But somehow the family can't live without tanks in the streets
Without having to pay for the air they breathe, without sentences to hard labor, and without lies.

I'd give a lot to see how all of this ends.
Free them with our blessing, and not later, but now,
Let them smile in return—how I would like that!
And then their smiles will make us happier.

Well, Gorbachev ultimately did do as Makarevich asked. And in a cruel century, in a cruel corner of a cruel world, that counts for a lot.

Comments

[AmosArch]

I used to wonder why he had a tattoo of the soviet union on his head.

[DaivdBehar]

Eugene refuses to admit the lawyer profession is in utter failure except for the collection of the rent, a $trillion take with no benefit returned.

[Bored Lawyer]

So we should cheer him because he was not a monster like his predecessors.
Talk about grading on a curve.

[Eugene Volokh]

Bored Lawyer: I think Jeff Jacoby's point is precisely that this isn't something to cheer as great moral virtue, though something to appreciate (indeed, given the low bar that his predecessors set). And that's my point, too.

[Bored Lawyer]

That's yours and Jacoby's point. He also points out that Gorbachev got many cheers among the West, which were repeated after his recent demise. That's who I am criticizing.

[Ridgeway]

You are being a bit unfair to Gorby in understating the pressure he was under to send in the tanks and crush those anti-Soviet protestors and rebels.

He could not snap his fingers and "make it so" one way or the other. He had to negotiate that den of vipers they called the Politburo. And he almost failed. In the August Coup, he was arrested by the KGB. That Boris Yeltsin was the "savior" shows ho close history came to being very different.

[David Nieporent]

That's true. But another reason Gorbachev got such plaudits in the West was because the more credit he got, the less Reagan would get.

[Ridgeway]

That is true as well.

[Dan Schiavetta]

No militia. An unarmed populace. They got their freedom without firing a shot or even waving a gun. Explain.

[Eugene Volokh]

A fortunate circumstance, which sometimes happens but often doesn't. The U.S., of course, got its freedom with considerable shooting. The English got theirs in a largely bloodless Glorious Revolution, but perhaps in part because the bloody English Civil War helped pave the path. Most of Eastern Europe got its freedom bloodlessly in the fall of Communism, but there was a good deal of blood in Romania. Slaves were freed bloodlessly in some American states, with vast blood shed as to others. The world is a complicated place.

[Kleppe]

"The world is a complicated place."

The world is complex. We would be a lot better off were it only complicated.

[gormadoc]

The part named the "Glorious Revolution" was a coup backed by an invasion of 40000 soldiers on 460 ships with the express purpose of overturning James' decrees on tolerance for Catholics, delaying emancipation by 150 years. "Freedom" was for Anglicans. And while the new government was installed quickly, the fighting continued through the immediate war in Ireland and Jacobite uprisings.

[SRG]

The argument within the Bill of Rights was not that James decreed tolerance for Catholics but that he was intolerant of Protestants.

For example:
By causing several good subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to law

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asphttps://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp

[AmosArch]

No freedom of expression. Death penalty for sodomy. But the gay scene still flourishes in some aspects in Saudi Arabia. Explain.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-kingdom-in-the-closet/305774/

[gormadoc]

Who are "they?" Romania certainly shot people. They tried and executed both Ceaușescus in the span of a few days!

[Dan Schiavetta]

Romania was not under Soviet control.

[AmosArch]

You still haven't answered my question. Since we don't need gun rights because there are a couple examples of peaceful revolutions why do we need gay rights if even countries like Saudi Arabia can have thriving gay communities?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Their economy collapsed because communism/socialism doesn’t work. Trying to support a huge nuclear military and keep control over multiple large satellites that didn’t want it became unsustainable.

[Dan Schiavetta]

You can't say something that lasted 70 years, for most of that time with the most powerful countries on the planet attacking and undermining it, "didn't work". It did work for a long time. The command economy certainly impressed American conservatives. It created an entity, both cultural and military, which frightened them for decades. They kept warning us that the Communists were outdoing us in multiple ways, and were in danger of creating a "domino effect" throughout Asia, as well as seducing our youth.

[SRG]

OK, was considerably less effective than competing economic systems...

Alternatively, where a country manages to keep going for 70 years under an economic system that doesn't seem to be able to get them out of second gear, that system was not a success. Even under communism there may be enough unskilled labour and production to keep a country going at a low level for decades.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Russia was a backward country in 1917. Capitalism had barely gotten started. They even had serfs until 1861!

Whether Stalin’s draconian methods were necessary to turn Russia into an advanced power by the 1950’s, with a nuclear arsenal and a leg up in the space race, is a matter of debate. But he did get it done.

[Ridgeway]

Watching Soviet apologists in action is always amusing.

Regarding Stalin's "methods", take Japan in the late 19th Century. They embarked on a crash course in industrialization and succeeded quite well, despite a notable lack of natural resources. South Korea did the same thing after the Korean War in the early 1950s. Neither of those countries was what one would call a thriving democracy, but neither did they embark on a campaign of terror and murder against their own people.

[Gandydancer]

"The command economy certainly impressed American conservatives."

The "missile gap" was Kennedy's allegation. Or is he the 1960 representative of "conservatism" now?

[Gunstar1]

"But he wasn't a liberator…. [C]hoosing not to commit mass murder or perpetuate slavery is not the same thing as choosing to save lives or free the enslaved."

This is a bad argument. Being a liberator does not require a singular focused overt action. Passive, secondary, or even accidental can suffice.

[Ed Grinberg]

he could never bring himself to acknowledge the inherent evil of communism

I'm pretty sure that if you were to poll recent U.S. high-school & college graduates, you'd get more of them to agree with the proposition that free-market capitalism is inherent evil (than those who'd agree that communism is inherently evil, which it is). We're so screwed...

[Ed Grinberg]

a cruel corner of a cruel world

We (the United States) are becoming more & more cruel. The government ignores violent attacks (Antifa activity, BLM riots, the ongoing violent crime "epidemic"). And it (along with the media and the education system) is working hard to recreate "the climate of 'eliminationist anti-Semitism' that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular" (source) -- except that the targets are conservatives rather than Jews.
Gina Carano was onto something.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Sure you can say that. They survived because of debt. Your drug addicted cousin with no job and a gambling problem could survive that long if someone would loan him money for that long.

Condemning doesn’t matter. They were attacked once.

And you’re ignoring the fact that their citizens suffered the entire time.

Nope, it was an abject failure.

[Gandydancer]

"...when it came to the former Soviet republics, Gorbachev's attitude was far less enlightened…. Gorbachev was not prepared to send tanks and troops to subdue Warsaw and Prague, but he had no such qualms—at least at first—closer to home [in the USSR's constituent "republics"]."

"Makarevich is now a leading critic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine..."

And Kyiv sent tanks and troops to subdue the breakaway Donbas oblasts after the 2014 coup. Oblast instead of "republic" is different how?