The liberalizer’s sad smile

Mikhail Gorbachev’s death will be met with an outpouring of tributes — outside Russia. Within Russia, I would guess, it will be much more guarded. For years, opinion polls have shown Gorbachev to be among the most disliked figures in modern Russian history; a Levada survey in 2017 found that 30 percent reported feeling “anger, distaste” toward him, and 13 percent “disgust, hate”. Only 7 percent said they felt respect, and 1 percent admiration. Far greater esteem and affection were shown toward the earlier leaders whose legacies Gorbachev tried to overcome (Leonid Brezhnev and Joseph Stalin) or claimed to be faithful to (Vladimir Lenin).

Gorbachev’s fate was that of a certain political type, the liberalizer. This is someone who rises through the ranks, by all appearances a loyal and true believer in the system — because he is — and then uses that power to launch a vaguely defined reform intended to revive the cause. Everything about liberalizers is contradictory. They have a reputation for personal decency and scruple, but scramble to the top in a system that you assume would destroy all but the most Machiavellian opportunists. They then show undeniable skill at easing out rivals and promoting allies, and even adding to the authority of their own office, but without seeming power-hungry. Their arrival immediately heralds meaningful change, but they describe that change in vaguely familiar slogans, like “glasnost” and “perestroika”, words already lurking in the official lexicon and not entirely clear in terms of boundaries and goals. They preside over an outburst of freedom, but it’s not clear if that was their intent and whether they welcome its consequences. They have a common touch and can converse on the street without a script, yet seem utterly at a loss when confronted with demands couched in unfamiliar terms (such as nationalism). They are middle-aged but mistaken for youthful. They smile a lot, but it is a smile tinged with sad unease.

At some point, the contradictions catch up with the liberalizer. People at first so pleased by the new mood and overdue response to festering problems begin to expect more. The logic of reform dictates that at some point the changes have to go beyond what Boris Yel’tsin — someone Gorbachev promoted, demoted and then lost out to — derided as “half-measures”. Hardliners who never wanted any change feel vindicated when the liberalizer begins to lose control of what he has set in motion. The greatest danger of all comes from people the liberalizer has surrounded himself with, thinking that even a team of rivals can be made to work as long as they all owe their jobs to him.

The outcome of Gorbachev’s liberalization will be a part of every obituary: struggling with a failing economy and federation, Gorbachev gave up on transforming the Communist Party and retreated to the life raft of a strong presidency, a terrible legacy that most post-Soviet countries have made only worse in their constitutions. Trapped in a Crimean mansion by his own protégés in August 1991, he meant little to those of us on barricades in Moscow, and his remarks on being freed were those of a man who did not realize how far things had moved in just three days. By the end of that year Gorbachev no longer had a country to preside over.

To other liberalizers, history was similarly harsh. Alexander Dubček in Czechoslovakia attempted much of what Gorbachev would try, only he did it in 1968 and was interrupted by the invading forces of Warsaw Pact allies in cahoots with local Communists whom Dubček himself had installed. The invasion-coup at first failed and Dubček remained in office for another eight months, but eventually was ousted by a crisis-fatigued Party elite. After two decades in obscurity, he briefly returned to politics with the 1989 revolution that Gorbachev, to his great credit, did not try to prevent, but very soon Dubček discovered, like Gorbachev would in August 1991, that he was no longer the man for the times.

In another revolutionary regime, Iran’s Islamic Republic, Mohammad Khatami rose to power in 1997 at the same age Gorbachev did in 1985 (both were 54), and served out two full terms as president, but suffered much the same fate. He came into office with a landslide electoral mandate to pursue a program of stronger rule of law, greater freedom of speech and economic activity, and better diplomatic relations (much as Gorbachev offered his “New Thinking” on foreign policy). Owing to the nature of the Iranian system, Khatami could be neutralized by opponents without having to be overthrown, and he showed his own limitations when urged by restless students to be bolder. Like Dubček after 1969, he has languished since 2009 as a non-person.

The stories of men like Gorbachev, Dubček and Khatami stand as cautionary tales for autocrats in China, Cuba and especially Russia, confronted with the growing need for change yet fearful of how to manage it.