Gorbachev at 80

In January a photo exhibition opened to honor the 80th birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev, which falls  on March 2: “Mikhail Gorbachev. Perestroika.” Almost simultaneously, on the other side of Moscow, another exhibition, “Boris Yeltsin and His Times,” opened to honor Yeltsin, who would have turned 80 February 1. Clearly the two “first presidents” will forever be bound together by history.

“I never thought that I would get to celebrate my 80th,” Gorbachev said at the opening of his exhibit. “Raisa and I told each other that it would be nice to live to 2000. And I have nothing to brag about; I cannot say that I am a peppy old man. I have started visiting hospitals more often, even checking in, yet I feel that I have to hold on. I am very glad that this exhibition is taking place here. As to the subject of the 80 years of my life, in those 80 years I have lived not one life, but several, perhaps. There were many great joys and terrible losses. Yet my perspective is unchanged: I am a person for whom it is very important in this life to do everything Fate allows to keep people from harm, to give them joy.”

And of course this is the problem so many Russians have with Gorbachev, why he is so unpopular: he inflicted harm with reforms that are widely seen to have been hasty and unrealistic, casting many into poverty. Yes, he opened the floodgates to free expression and free travel, but he also allowed ethnic tensions to explode and let the Union fall apart.

Gorbachev rightly deflects that Russia (i.e. Yeltsin) did not allow him to complete his mass experiment. “Of course, I regret plenty,” Gorbachev said. “Some serious mistakes were made. Perestroika was not allowed to run its full course.” Whether in fact things would have been better or worse, had perestroika run its course, is something for historians to debate.

Gorbachev examined the photo exhibits, Express Gazeta observed, “as if they were pieces of jewelry, or works of art in the Louvre… I wonder, were these merely pictures at an exhibition to Mikhail Sergeyevich, or something more… Of course, he never stood in line for shoes, nor bribed a vendor to get Polish furniture. Even now, he arrived with armed guards in a car with a blinking blue light.”

Few observers were so spiteful. But gazeta.ru probably had a point when it said “It [perestroika] was too recent for one to pretend at objectivity or impartiality.” Film director Karen Shakhnazarov, who was at the opening (along with many leading lights of the intelligentsia) agreed: “It would not be appropriate for me to make a political evaluation. There are just too many different ways to assess the events of those years. Only our children will be able to grasp the meaning of these events. But there is no doubt that these events were grandiose and that Mikhail Sergeyevich’s role was central.”

Interestingly, while there may be celebrations for Mikhail Sergeyevich in Russia, the big birthday bash will be held toward the end of March, in London. Perhaps the 80th will allow some Russians to reconcile with him, to gain at least a grudging acceptance for what he brought.

“No matter how you assess this period,” Afisha wrote, “it is impossible not to recognize that these 15 years altered our country and its inhabitants to the point of unrecognizability.” Indeed, for both good and ill. As it turns out, the exhibit dedicated to Mikhail Gorbachev opened on January 24, the same day as the deadly suicide bombing at Domodedovo Airport.