Grateful to Gorbachev

By Adam Lebor

    I recently interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev for The Times (of London) and it was quite a buzz to share an hour with the man who helped bring down the tottering house of cards that was Communism in the 1980s.

    We met in Venice, at one of those power-schmooze seminars that attract the world's great and good to discuss Important Issues of Our Time. (The world of the rolling international seminar circus was brilliantly captured by Malcolm Bradbury in his novel Dr Criminale- which I highly recommend and which even features a Hungarian temptress called, of course, Ildikó.)

    Gorbachev was Soviet leader from 1985 until Dec 1991, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed.

    Or, as more cynical observers might note, reverted to Greater Russia. He is not involved in party politics in Russia, but remains influential behind the scenes, and has the ear of President Putin.

    But Gorbachev is active in civil society issues, especially environmental questions, and media freedom. So I expected him to be at least guardedly critical of Russia under President Putin, which slides ever further into authoritarianism, where the army conducts a scorched-earth campaign in Chechnya with impunity and the legal system is both arbitrary and corrupt.

    These are all issues that are likely to be raised at G8 summit in St Petersburg this month. But not too loudly, as Russia has lots of oil and gas.

    Instead Gorbachev growled at the west to stop interfering in Russia. "Please put this in The Times," Gorbachev instructed me. "Russia is not anyone's domain. Russia will work these things out - together with our partners and friends.

    "The Presidents and Prime Ministers at the G8 can raise whatever they want. But the more it is seen that the west is putting pressure on, the more it will strengthen President Putin, because in essence his position is very close to the aspirations of the people."

    Any internal interference in Russian affairs would only backfire, he proclaimed: "Why should foreign organizations be involved in the Russian political process?

    The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was mostly of domestic origin, because people were upset about corruption and angry over the Kuchma regime.

    "But there is another factor, that the US Embassy was heavily involved, and of course America has great experience in interfering in the affairs of other countries. Had this same thing been happening in America, I am sure that they would have put an end to outside interference." Never mind Russia's own interference in Ukraine itself, or Georgia, or the ring of "Stans" along its southern flank, of course.

    I also asked him about the collapse of Communism in Hungary.

    Gorbachev knew János Kádár, Hungary's leader from 1956 until 1988, quite well, he told me, recounting that the first time they had met, Kádár asked him plaintively, 'Why didn't you come 10 years earlier?', for Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika were part of a reform path first set out by Kádár's liberalizations.

    But while Gorbachev eventually realized that Communism could not be tinkered with to make it work, but had to be brought down, Kádár still kept faith in Marxism.
    The gradual liberalizations of the 1980s alarmed Nicolae Ceausescu, the hated dictator of Romania, most of all, Gorbachev recalled. Romania was Europe's most totalitarian regime, apart perhaps from Albania.

    An increasingly alarmed Ceausescu called for armed intervention, to save Socialism, and tried to persuade the Soviets to send in the Red Army, as they had done in Czechoslovakia in 1968, to crush the reformers. He laughed: "But I told him, 'Comrade Ceausescu, Romania did not take part in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968!'"

    Even Ceausescu's political skills could not save him. Eventually the soldiers did arrive - but Romanian, not Russian troops. They arrested Ceausescu and his wife Elena, and shot them both dead after a cursory trial. 

    Nowadays politics in eastern Europe (apart from former Yugoslavia) is decided by the ballot box, not the bullet, and for that, we should still be grateful to Mikhail Gorbachev.

    Adam LeBor (http://www.adamlebor.com/) is the Central Europe Correspondent of The Times and contributes to The Economist, Literary Review, The Nation and the Jewish Chronicle.

    He is the author of five books - his latest, City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa, is published by Bloomsbury. He can be contacted at adamant@bpsun.hu.

By Adam Lebor, The Budapest Sun, July13, 2006