Twenty years ago I was your age, and I remember feeling genuine fear when the news came through that hardliners had imprisoned the reforming Mikhail Gorbachev (left). The plot was broadly to overthrow the reformer and restore Communist rule. For a moment it felt like the Cold War was on its way back.
The plot failed, and ironically it actually speeded reform. A good account of it can be found here. It does however reflect a key theme of our course – is reform or reaction the most effective way to rule Russia. In our period the reformers, Khrushchev, Alexander II and perhaps even the Kerensky all lost power. The effective repressors, Stalin and Alexander III faired better. Gorbachev the reformer was greatly weakened by the coup attempt of 1991, and Yeltsin soon replaced him.
In a BBC interview to mark the twentieth anniversary here Gorbachev compares the dominant poltical figure of our century, Putin to Stalin. He claims that Putin has ‘castrated’ democracy in Russia. See what you think. One thing is however clear today Putin – the ex-KGB man is a more popular figure in Russia than Gobachev – the man who ended the Cold War. Draw your own conclusions on that one…
It is interesting that Gorbachev says Putin should not seek re-election when it is clear that Putin is still popular in Russia. He speaks of Putin as being “for stability” which would be a reason why he would be popular as you would think stability would be good for Russia, however Gorbachev says stability “kills development and results in stagnation”. This gives the idea that Gorbachev believes although Putin is not really doing anything wrong he feels that he is creating stability at the expense of development and all that he worked hard to reform, so Russia is beginning to go backwards hence why he wants some one else to be elected. Considering this it is interesting that Gorbachev, who is thought to have ended the Cold War, is less popular than Putin, who is in Gorbachev’s opinion, is dragging Russia backwards. Therefore it seems Russian’s do not share the view that Putin is doing this as he has won “landslide victories” and is thought to be standing again, so is clearly more popular than Gorbachev.