In the early 1980s, playwright Milan Ode was approached by fellow Brno dissident, Jaroslav Chabata, a man who was excellent at reading between the lines. He waved an article from some Soviet magazine and noted that the author referred to Lenin’s letters from the last period of his life, in which he criticized Stalin and his “disloyal” behavior towards his comrades.
Mikhail Gorbachev speaking in San Francisco in 1990. In the same year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize and became the first president of the Soviet Union. | Photo: David Longstreth | Source: ČTK / AP
Shabata believes that anyone who relies on such arguments is either in a conscious conflict with one of the traditions of Russian Bolshevism, which can be called anti-democratic, or sooner or later will enter into this struggle.
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The author of the text was none other than the youngest member of the Politburo of the then Soviet Communist Party, and later the General Secretary of the Soviet Communists, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev. He rose to the top of the pyramid of power at a time when Prague’s call for the signatories of the Charter of 77 stressed the need to change Europe’s security architecture and, among other things, do something about the division of Germany.
Gorbachev’s policy went undercover with this. He also advocated “glasnost”, that is, openness and realistic freedom of speech. At the same time, he was behind “perestroika”, or the reconstruction of the economic mechanism. Although he used different words, he became a kind of keeper of democracy and the market in the Eastern Bloc.
His inspiration was clear. Later, in 1990, he publicly described the Prague Spring of 1968 as an “acceptable movement for democracy, renewal and humanization of society.” According to him, it was “right then and it is right today”.
He was not burdened with beliefs
Jerry Denstbear, who as Foreign Minister had the opportunity to negotiate with Gorbachev along with Vaclav Havel, noted in his book From Dream to Reality that Gorbachev set himself a miraculous task.
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“Decades of social, national, religious and all unresolved social issues, economic decline, lack of democratic and economic traditions, these and other rocks he tried to roll away like Sisyphus were always rushing back like an avalanche in the valley where the remnants of the original and especially the ruthless communism then The only expendable and the last great colonial empire,” wrote Denstbear.
Gorbachev wanted to reform and democratize the system. Perhaps it isn’t quite dawn that you can’t get rid of stains without damaging the fabric material. However, at the same time, he did not put up a fight with the windmills. He knew that every nation had to choose its own destiny.
When he visited Prague in 1987, the opposition expected more expressive and welcoming gestures from him. However, he offered one main thing: he said that the development in Czechoslovakia was “a matter for the comrades of Czechoslovakia.”
Tell them clearly that they cannot expect help from Moscow. The Brezhnev Doctrine is dead. On October 25, 1989, Gorbachev stated in Helsinki that the Soviet Union “has no right, moral or political, to interfere in the internal affairs of Central and Eastern Europe.”
The tragic communist leaders around Milos Jacques were forced to drink the cup of bitterness at the bottom themselves. Gorbachev did not invent November 17, but he did not try to prevent it.
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A few years later, he agreed to the unification of Germany, the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Czechoslovakia and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. What was of course for us increasingly required the great powers of persuasion from Gorbachev in Moscow.
He seemed to get along better with statesmen like Helmut Kohl or George Bush Sr. than with his comrades back home. He was not burdened with dogmas and could read reality.
He threw our communists into cold water and then watched them drown. However, his administration objectively and correctly dealt with Castle Havel and the government of Alf.
While he remained largely misunderstood at home, we must consider Mikhail Gorbachev a silent companion of the Velvet Revolution. It was also thanks to him that this happened without bloodshed and led to our transition to Western security, political and economic structures.
The author is a political analyst
