Gorbachev, world changer, turns 80 (Feature)

By Ulf Mauder Feb 25, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Moscow - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev secured his place in history 20 years ago by releasing Eastern Europe from Soviet domination and acceding to German reunification.

But as he approaches his 80th birthday on March 2, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, celebrated in the West as a man who changed the world for the better, is worried about where his Russian homeland is headed.

Speaking at a recent press conference in Moscow, Gorbachev ripped the 'high-handed' and 'undemocratic' leadership of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his protege, President Dmitry Medvedev. He urged a revival of his 1980s policies of 'glasnost' (openness) and 'perestroika' (restructuring), which sounded the death knell of the communist superpower USSR.

The new line taken by Moscow at that time, among whose most ardent supporters were citizens of communist East Germany, began a breakthrough towards freedom and democracy, the end of the Cold War between East and West, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Gorbachev is also unforgotten for his initiatives on nuclear disarmament with then US president Ronald Reagan.

In the eyes of his countrymen, however, Gorbachev's image remains that of a weak leader with no instinct for power whose serious political errors plunged the country into chaos, hunger and poverty.

Notwithstanding Gorbachev's rejection by the Russian people, he has stayed true to his ideals. Supported by aides as he entered the hall, he went on to tell the gathered journalists that the ruling United Russia party, of which Putin is chairman, was a 'bad copy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.'

Russia's constitution, courts and parliament are all merely 'decorations' and an 'imitation of democracy,' he said, accusing Putin and Medvedev of cementing their monopoly on power and leaving other political forces no air to breathe.

'Gorby,' as he is fondly called by many Europeans, speaks with a southern Russian accent and likes to talk a lot. But it is often difficult to make out a clear-cut line of thought in what he says, which invariably revolves around making the world a better, more peaceful place.

'We need democracy. There will be no modernization without it,' he said.

This is the kind of Russia advocated by The Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow, which houses a permanent exhibit titled 'Mikhail Gorbachev: Life and Reforms,' as well as by Novaya Gazeta, Russia's leading opposition newspaper and co-owned by Gorbachev.

Novaya Gazeta's commentators see Gorbachev as a prophet who counts for nothing in his own country, who is alone and not understood. The fact that he 'destroyed the Soviet citizen in himself,' dismantled a totalitarian system and simultaneously began to build a democracy, is an invaluable historic achievement, wrote Lilia Shevtsova, a well-known Russian political scientist, in the newspaper.

Before Gorbachev was named general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on March 11, 1985, and before he and his wife Raisa put a human face on Moscow's policies, Kremlin rulers had always clung to power until they died.

Gorbachev did not.

The then leader of the world's largest country also let the Eastern Bloc states, which had been locked in a forced alliance with the Soviet Union, go their separate ways without bloodshed.

In 1991, following an abortive coup in Moscow, disintegration of the 15-republic USSR and a power grab by Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev resigned.

'Gorbachev had no luck with us, but we had luck with him. This is a truth we still have to learn,' Shevtsova wrote.

Gorbachev plans to celebrate his 80th birthday in the West, where he is revered as a hero of freedom. At a gala concert on March 30 in London's Royal Albert Hall, an award dedicated to him will be given to people who have 'changed our world for the better.'

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