Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who with his reforms thawed the icy walls that divided the world, who embodied the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) founded by Lenin a hundred years ago, who advocated a culture of peace that made him worthy of the Nobel Prize in 1990, turned off his light, but his enormous legacy misunderstood by many, is more important than ever in the present dark moments in which the current Russian leader Putin, does precisely the opposite with his invasion of Ukraine, in an insane attempt to reconstitute the Soviet bloc whose dismemberment he and others in the Kremlin never accepted.
Gorby, as he was affectionately called, had a starring role in one of the most emblematic events in the struggle for freedom and democracy, the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was the icon of the division of the two wings of the world, and The rejection of violence, both in this episode and in relation to the declarations of independence of the former Soviet republics that began in 1990, is widely recognized.
In August 1991, while the last Soviet leader was on vacation at his “dacha” in Crimea, there was a coup against him by the most conservative faction of the communist party, which was rejected by the population and a movement of The resistance led by the then emerging leader Boris Yeltsin forced his release and reinstatement in power, as a result of which not only declarations of independence such as that of Ukraine continued, but also their international recognition.
The territorial disintegration of the once all-powerful USSR forced the dissolution of many Soviet institutions, and on December 31, 1991 the USSR ceased to exist, replacing the red flag with the hammer and sickle with the Russian flag, which marked a before and after. an after for several generations.
Gorbachev was one of the most relevant figures of the 20th century and with his reforms, both the structural “perestroika” that sought to open its economy to the market, and the one that advocated greater transparency in the opaque “glasnost” Soviet regime, changed the perception of his country striving to give a human face, to promote a culture of dialogue and rapprochement that made it common for both him and his wife Raisa to visit the centers of power in the world, and they even struck up an ineffable friendship with the North American leader Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy.
Gorbachev and Putin are two opposite sides of the same earth, while the former, being president of the USSR, refused to use the army to preserve the State-Empire that was collapsing, and preferred to resign rather than provoke a deadly civil war, the latter has fact of this and authoritarianism the main tools of his questioned leadership, which in order to perpetuate himself in power has undermined progress in his country, and has imposed an anti-democratic culture that ignores rights.
As if due to his prolonged illness and advanced age he had no other way to express himself, the physical departure of what many baptized as the “Man who changed the world” reminds us of everything for which he fought and the immense legacy he left, which As much as some have tried to reverse it, they will not be able to erase it. The pages of history have given him the place he deserves for having tried to make his country more democratic and open, allowing those who fought to be free to be free without causing bloodbaths by forcibly opposing these dreams, and sooner or later they will duly judge to those who have not understood that no matter how much earthly power they accumulate, it is ephemeral, and the only eternal thing is the judgment of history.
