MOSCOW: A few months after the politburo chose him as Soviet supremo in early 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev halted his cortege in downtown Leningrad for an impromptu walkabout that signalled change was in the air.

Emerging from his government limousine, the then 54-year-old Communist party boss from southern Russia strode over to talk to a crowd of shocked passers-by — shattering protocol that kept Kremlin bigwigs away from average people.

But Gorbachev was doing more than just distancing himself from his older and more aloof predecessors — he was gearing up to launch a process of change that would, unintentionally, open the floodgates that led to the collapse of the USSR.

“Comrades, it seems that we really do need reforms,” Gorbachev told the crowd that day.

“Are you going to be closer to the people?” one woman asked.

“How much closer can I get?” Gorbachev replied to laughter.

Very soon the slogans of “perestroika” (restructuring) and “glasnost”(openness) were on the lips of people across the vast empire.

Perestroika was a programme of reforms aimed at fixing the malfunctioning Soviet system, while glasnost was aimed at creating a new atmosphere of openness.

“Glasnost was one of the main factors that shook the foundations of the Soviet empire and caused its demise,” said independent analyst Masha Lipman.

Winds of change

The change breathed life into civil society: freedom of expression slowly expanded, hundreds of political prisoners and dissidents were freed, and the crimes of the Stalin era were made public for all to see.

The results outstripped Gorbachev’s original intention to shore up the Soviet Union by introducing a more humane form of socialism, and by the end of the 1980s the atmosphere in the USSR had changed radically.

As censorship softened, new media mushroomed, putting pressure on staid state outlets such as leading dailies Pravda and Izvestiya.

Even though they received funding from the state, the new publications delved into topics previously considered off limits, including poverty and food shortages.

The weekly Argumenty i Fakty (Arguments and Facts) entered the Guinness Book of Records with a circulation of more than 33 million copies.

Fresh debates continued to spiral as people argued in the street, on public transport and in food queues.

In May 1988, the monthly magazine Novy Mir revealed that it was Lenin, until then the untouchable idol of the Soviet Union, who had initiated the system of prison camps for opponents that would later swell into the infamous Gulag.

The Soviet regime also stopped blocking foreign radio broadcasts and some 40 million people tuned in, according to estimates from the KGB secret police, as the pace of change meant there was less and less to hide.

Transparency also crept into the working of the state as the formulaic speeches of party bosses were swapped for debates between new deputies that became more popular on television than films or concerts.

By June 1990, society was abuzz with the changes and a new liberal media law was adopted.

Eighteen months later, after a failed coup against Gorbachev attempted to turn back the tide, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

Legacy of disapproval

Now, 30 years after the start of the reforms, attitudes to Gorbachev and his programme of change are deeply divided in Russia. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia plunged into economic and political chaos that led many to yearn for the stability of the past and curse those who had sparked the upheaval.

In a recent opinion poll conducted by the independent Levada centre 55 per cent of respondents said they disapproved of Gorbachev’s reforms.

“We were wrong at the time to just concentrate on the fact that the old regime was being denounced. We idealised Gorbachev too much,” said Leonid Nikitinsky, a journalist from independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “Perestroika quickly exhausted itself.”

For some, however, the lessons of the period are relevant for modern Russia under the firm grip of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

Putin — who has lamented the chaos caused by the collapse of the USSR — has been accused of curbing the freedoms that glasnost began and reinstating the sort of control, especially over the media, that was seen during Soviet times.

“We are not talking about Soviet-style censorship, since certain media keeps an independent voice,” said analyst Lipman, pointing to the independent outlets like Novaya Gazeta, business daily Vedomosti and Dozhd TV.

These few remaining independent voices are seen by many as the remnants of the openness that perestroika and glasnost engendered and are tolerated by the authorities.

“They serve as a pressure valve for the Kremlin to release the anger felt by the critical sections of Russian society,” Lipman said.—AFP

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2015

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