Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on August 31, 2022, was born in the North Caucasus in 1931 and worked as a machine operator on a collective farm before studying law at Moscow University. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1952. He became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 and president of the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1990. Following the August putsch by communist hardliners, he resigned first as general secretary of the CPSU and then as president of the Soviet Union, on the eve of its dissolution on December 26, 1991.
Gorbachev’s historical significance lies in his attempts to reverse the path of terminal decline that his predecessors had put the USSR on. After the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, the Soviet Union slowly descended into a non-functioning nation. Its invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was a disaster, military and economic. From then on, it was downhill all the way.
Between 1982 and 1985, the USSR had two leaders (or general secretaries of the Communist Party). Yuri Andropov died in 1984 and his successor, Konstantin Chernenko, lasted only one year. Rajiv Gandhi, who was India’s prime minister at the time, attended his funeral in Moscow in March 1985. Gorbachev and Rajiv Gandhi met in the Kremlin after the funeral. I also shook his hand. I could not but notice that he spoke at a very rapid pace. He seemed like a man in a great hurry.
Gorbachev was an admirer of Jawaharlal Nehru, who had gone on a state visit to Moscow in 1955. He had insisted on travelling in an open-hooded carriage. This was unprecedented. The KGB was extremely nervous. In his memoirs, Gorbachev writes:
“Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit to Moscow in June 1955 served as a stimulus to me… I attended the meeting with the teachers and students at the university assembly hall on Lenin Hills. This amazing man, his noble bearing, his intelligent, keen eyes, and warm and disarming smile, made a deep impression on me. I recall his kind words for our alma mater and the hope he expressed that the university would educate young men and women ‘great in mind and of heart’ who would become the ‘bearers of peace and good-will’.”
The Soviet Union and India, of course, had established very close relations over the decades. Rajiv and Gorbachev were keen to take it to a higher level. Gorbachev wrote in his memoirs, “I established a warm personal rapport with Rajiv Gandhi.” They met at least five times. Gorbachev continued:
“I was deeply impressed by the way he organically combined the profound philosophical tradition of India and the East with a perfect knowledge and comprehension of European culture. He had great personal charm and was endowed with many human virtues. Rajiv was devoted to the cause of his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, and mother, Indira Gandhi. His life’s aim was the renaissance of India.”
Gorbachev’s 1986 visit to India was a spectacular success. The famous Delhi Declaration on the Principles of a Nuclear Weapon Free and Non-Violent World was signed on November 27. (I had some part in the choice of words, along with Ronen Sen. I was also in daily touch with P.N. Haksar, who attached the greatest importance to the declaration.) Let me quote from it:
“In the nuclear age making must develop a new political thinking and a new concept of the world which provides sound guarantees for the survival of mankind.”
“The world we have inherited belongs to present and future generations alike – hence we must give priority to universal human values… human life must be acknowledged as a supreme value. Non-violence must become the basis of human coexistence… the right of every state to political and economic independence must be acknowledged and respected. The balance of fear must be replaced by a global system of international security.”
Apart from the arms control treaties he negotiated with the United States – driven by the precept that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought’ – was his passion for implementing perestroika and glasnost – economic reform, or restructuring, and openness. This the people around him did not take kindly to. The old guard hit back. Worse still, perestroika and glasnost did not solve the economic and political problems of the USSR.
By 1991, the regime that had been one of the main engines of global politics for nearly three-quarters of a century came crashing down. The man who helmed such a momentous moment in human history was soon forgotten. For the remaining three decades of his life, he remained, essentially, a person the world forgot about.