‘We can’t go on living like this,’ was Gorbachev’s considered summary of life in 1980s Soviet Union. The economy lagged behind that of the West, the people lived in poverty and without hope. The cost of being a superpower was crippling – the commitment to conventional and nuclear arms, the funding of communist regimes elsewhere in the world, and the costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan were all taking their toll on the economy and the everyday lives of the Soviet citizens.
Gorbachev introduced the words perestroika and glasnost into the international arena. The former meaning reconstruction (of the Soviet economy and as a nation) and the latter meaning openness (a move away from the traditional Soviet model of a closed society with its secret industrial cities and ‘cloak and dagger’ governance). Gorbachev toured the country, met its workers and crucially, as no Soviet leader had done before, listened. The international community welcomed the appointment of the new man in the Kremlin. Margaret Thatcher, who acted as the go-between between the superpowers, said of him, ‘I like Mr Gorbachev, we can do business together.’ Part of the process was to mend the Soviet Union’s fractious relationship with the USA. However, what Gorbachev did not want to do was to destroy the Communist Party or the Soviet Union.
Reagan and Gorbachev, November 1985
Gorbachev and Reagan met several times, the first being at Geneva in November 1985 (pictured above), and despite their ideological and cultural differences, the two men built a rapport that was to have a real and lasting effect on the thawing of the Cold War.
During the course of their meetings, the two leaders talked of the necessity to abandon the arms race, Gorbachev even going so far to propose an elimination of all nuclear weapons by the year 2000. For Gorbachev this was a necessity the arms race was costing the Soviet Union dear, money that could be better spent on improving the economic conditions at home. Despite their advances, obstacles remained – Reagan wouldn’t budge on his Star Wars programme, the SDI. The war in Afghanistan continued, with the USA still supplying arms to the rebels, and at home Gorbachev faced criticism from communist hardliners who felt threatened by his friendship with the American president.
It was Chernobyl that convinced Gorbachev that he was doing the right thing. On 26 April 1986, the nuclear power plant near Kiev in the Ukraine was destroyed by an internal explosion. The radioactive fallout was greater than that caused by the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The effects were felt as far away as Ireland. The authorities, more concerned with poor publicity than the safety of the local population, took several days to evacuate the area. The health effects, including radiation-related illnesses, are still in evidence today. Chernobyl highlighted the need for reform within the Soviet system and it was a lesson not wasted on Gorbachev.
In June 1987, Reagan visited West Berlin and, like Kennedy a quarter of a century before, inspected the Berlin Wall. ‘Mr Gorbachev,’ he demanded in a televised speech, ‘tear down this wall!’
Finally, after almost nine years, the ‘Soviet Vietnam’ came to an end. With mounting casualty rates and growing opposition to the war at home, Gorbachev knew that the conflict had become, like Vietnam, unwinnable. Despite the Soviet-Afghanistan ceasefire, both the Soviet Union and the USA continued supplying arms to their factions, ensuring a protracted civil war in Afghanistan. But the expense of maintaining pro-Soviet regimes across the world, including within the Eastern Bloc, and the tremendous cost of the arms race were still crippling the Soviet Union.
On 7 December 1988, Gorbachev delivered a speech to the UN that acted as the starting pistol for tumultuous change in eastern Europe. He talked of nations having the right to a ‘freedom of choice’ and renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine: ‘the threat of force cannot be and should not be an instrument of foreign policy’. As a backup to his words, he promised the withdrawal of troops from the Soviet satellites. But where, the Warsaw Pact leaders wondered, did that leave them, without the Soviet Union to back them up?