Gorbatchev

                                                                                                                        B-H

Mikhail Gorbachev has many merits, but one stands out for me: if not for my desire to write a hesped (eulogy) for him, many of my other essays would have been left forgotten in the folder of my computer, never to be shared.

The last time I wrote a hesped for a political figure was for Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il, who passed away in the same week. That was years ago. I have no illusions now; I don’t think anyone is waiting for my essays, nor are people particularly curious about what Matys Weiser thinks about current events. There was a time, maybe ten years ago, when I was more active—not just on this blog, but in various arenas. Today, I write occasionally, but many of my pieces age unread in the folders of my computer for months or even years.

So, when Gorbachev passed, I felt an unexpected impulse to reflect on a significant period of my life. This led me back to my blog, where I found that there was much more to say, even beyond what I intended to share in this essay. And I believe those reflections are far more important than what I’m about to present. But for now, please enjoy the following.

I grew up in Communist Poland during the '70s and '80s.

For the first decade of my life, the world around me seemed stagnant. At age four, I was unaware of the political events unfolding in the Polish dockyards—events that saw 41 people killed and over 1,000 injured during strikes against the government. The Polish government, under Party Leader Władysław Gomułka, collapsed as a result of those riots and strikes. This marked the end of Gomułka’s regime and the start of Edward Gierek’s rule, which lasted for another decade.

As I’ve mentioned before, my political awareness began to awaken in 1976, when I was ten years old. That year, another wave of social unrest broke out in Poland. I was old enough to understand that the ruling party might present a united front, but that unity was not for the benefit of the working class. In fact, it was the opposite: the Communist elites had established themselves as the true owners of the means of production, running a system that, as Noam Chomsky would later call it, could be described as “State Capitalism.”

Then, in 1980, Gierek’s government was overthrown by an unprecedented wave of strikes, which led to the formation of the independent workers' union Solidarność (Solidarity). This was a pivotal moment for Poland, but it was short-lived. Just 18 months later, the Polish army was deployed to the streets. A state of war was declared by the Communist government against its own people. The brief moment of freedom was over, and tanks rolled through the streets and forcibly entered the factories where workers were on strike. Many of the Solidarity leaders were arrested, and a few managed to go into hiding, some for years.

I was 15 at the time, and though I didn’t play a major role in these events, I did participate in and even help organize small-scale protests. But as my life continued, I slowly became disillusioned with politics. Eventually, my interest in it faded altogether as my focus shifted elsewhere.

One constant during my formative years, however, was Leonid Brezhnev in the Kremlin.

It’s hard for anyone who grew up in Eastern Europe under Soviet influence not to remember his bushy eyebrows, his slow, methodical speeches, and the numerous microphones that we believed were there to provide him with oxygen, as he could barely stand at the podium in his later years. His age and deteriorating health were frequent subjects of jokes among the population—humor being, after all, one of the strongest defensive weapons for a controlled society.

Brezhnev passed away in 1982 or perhaps was removed from power by the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, who succeeded him as leader. But for the citizens of the Soviet Union, life didn’t change much. Andropov, like Brezhnev, was aging, and his brief tenure maintained the status quo before handing over the reins to the even more decrepit Konstantin Chernenko.

When Chernenko died in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and became, de facto, the leader of the entire country. Gorbachev was seen as a reformist within the Communist Party, but even he could not have predicted that his reforms would, in just a few short years, bring about the end of the Soviet system.

One of the major turning points occurred just a little over a year after Gorbachev’s rise to power, on April 28, 1986. At precisely 21:02, a 20-second announcement was broadcast on the Soviet TV news program Vremya: “There has been an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. One of the nuclear reactors was damaged. The effects of the accident are being remedied. Assistance has been provided for any affected people. An investigative commission has been set up.”

At the time, I was serving a two-year term as a janitor at a military hospital due to my refusal to be drafted into the army. I worked in the pediatric clinic, preparing a mixture of berry juice and iodine to help prevent cancer, as the nuclear cloud from Chernobyl had affected our region too.

I can’t say for sure what influence Tverskys (the Jewish mystics from Chernobyl) had in this world or the next, but cracks were forming in what was one of the most repressive empires in human history. Those cracks, which had first opened in the Polish dockyards, were briefly sealed by force in 1981-82, with tanks on the streets. But the Soviet system could not withstand the impact of the Chernobyl disaster, and its collapse was inevitable.

The Communists initially tried to downplay the true scale of the catastrophe, but the era of Glasnost (openness) soon began. Gorbachev, a reformist, realized that the fallout from Chernobyl—and the ongoing effects of the event—could no longer be concealed.

Perestroika, or restructuring, was another key term that gained prominence during this period. What was initially intended to be little more than a set of cosmetic changes within the Soviet system, spurred on by the aftermath of Chernobyl, Glasnost, and a fresh wave of strikes in Poland, soon escalated into something far more significant. It ultimately led to the total collapse of both the Soviet Union and its system of governance.

In the spring of 1988, workers in Poland went on strike once again. They issued their usual demands for social democratic reforms, but this time they added a crucial call for the release of political prisoners.

By early summer, Polish Communists reached out to opposition leaders, with the mediation of the Catholic Church. Later that year, the Round Table talks were convened, and by the early spring of the following year, the negotiations culminated in a partial return to democracy and the introduction of a free-market economy.

This time, neither the Polish opposition nor the Communist Party feared the possibility of “brotherly” intervention from the Soviet Union, as had occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. On June 4, 1989, the first partially free elections took place in the Communist bloc, and Solidarity members filled all the available seats in the Polish parliament.

The Communists, by now, had come to understand that they no longer held the legitimacy to represent not just the Polish people but those across the Soviet sphere of influence. This was a pivotal moment in the unraveling of the Communist system, and it was largely due to Gorbachev’s willingness to step back and allow nations to forge their own paths.

Gorbachev, once a reformist within the Communist Party, had by then become the supervisor of an empire’s dismantling—an empire that had taken tens of millions of lives over its seven decades of existence.

The day of the Polish elections also saw a tragic contrast: in China, the Communist Party chose to crush protests in Tiananmen Square, using flame throwers to burn many of the demonstrators alive. The image of the lone protester standing before a tank in Beijing has become iconic worldwide, even in the United States.

One might have wondered: Would Gorbachev have followed the Chinese path of defending the system through violence?

Historically, Communist regimes had shown no hesitation in invading neighboring countries or even carpet-bombing their own villages to maintain control. The starvation of millions of Ukrainians during the 1930s was a brutal example of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” that Marxist ideologues endorsed. But Gorbachev chose a different path.

Instead of using force, he allowed each country and republic to take its own path to the future. And it wasn’t just the result of the Soviet Union’s crumbling economy. Empires in such a state are far more dangerous to their populations. In fact, I can’t think of a single instance in which an empire disbanded without a significant loss of life through civil wars, wars of independence, or the collapse of central authority.

As a young man living under Communist rule, like all citizens of my country, I never expected the system to end in my lifetime. I certainly never imagined that it would collapse without the kind of widespread bloodshed typically associated with the fall of empires. But against all odds, it ended—almost peacefully.

Mikhail Gorbachev is despised by many Russians today. We are witnessing an attempt to partially restore the Russian Empire. Yet, for the nations that were once conquered and controlled by the Tsar or the First Secretary of the Party, Gorbachev will remain a hero.

May Hashem bring more rulers like him, leaders who act with wisdom and compassion, in the path toward the ultimate redemption—the coming of Mashiach Tzidkenu.