General Secretary Who Smiled – Weekend – Kommersant

The first and last president of the USSR turned out to be the only Soviet leader who voluntarily relinquished power in order to remain human. He was often accused of weakness and naivety, but this weak politician managed to change history in the most decisive way, and his naive ideals, which could not withstand a collision with reality, left a long mark and, perhaps, will one day be in demand. He gave people in different parts of the world new hopes, and in the days of farewell to him, we remember not their downfall – but that they were once possible.

Text: Yuri Saprykin

May 1985, the program “Time”, a story about the visit of the new Secretary General to Leningrad. In the frame – a ritual verified to the millimeter: a gray line at the gangway, laying wreaths, meeting with labor collectives. Behind the scenes – Brezhnev’s wood-chip creek (“the workers expressed support for the foreign and domestic policy of the party”). And then suddenly a slight glitch – either the general secretary is gesticulating too vividly, or the people around him do not have enough lean faces, and someone is already shouting from the crowd: “Be closer to the people!”, And he replied: “Where can nearer!” And throws up his hands and smiles broadly.

Each of the Soviet leaders has a recognizable portrait feature, a flourish that makes it easy to draw the rest: squint, mustache, baldness, eyebrows. About Gorbachev, no matter how much the portraits of “members of the Politburo of the Central Committee” were retouched, it was immediately clear that this was a birthmark on his bald head. It was it that earned him the nickname Marked in certain circles, more radical authors even wrote about the “seal of the beast” (perestroika generally updated the prophecies from the Revelation of John the Theologian; about the explosion in Chernobyl, for example, it immediately became clear that this was the Wormwood star, which fell on a third of rivers and water sources). And Gorbachev, they say, will go down in history with a stain on his forehead.

Thirty years later, no one remembers the mole – but the smile remains.

Now I can’t explain what a shock it was. Here is a man, one of the cloth cohort of the Central Committee, besides, at the very top of the Soviet pyramid, and he smiles. It’s like in Wim Wenders’ film Sky Over Berlin – for two hours everything is black and white, and you already get used to it being black and white and cannot be anything else, and then the main character-angel becomes a man – and everything is done in color. There was something disarming in this smile – and contrary to all arms races: before any memorandums on the results of negotiations in Geneva and Reykjavik, it read a call to forget grievances and bury the hatchet. This was the second Russian in the entire 20th century who smiled so much at the whole world – by the way, Gagarin was three years younger than Gorbachev, they could even see each other at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, a promising young apparatchik and number one world star. Gagarin, however, arrived at the congress shortly and late, shortly before that he smashed his face by jumping out of the window of the Tesseli dacha in Foros – almost in the same place where, in thirty years, the most dramatic events in Gorbachev’s biography would unfold.

He, too, will become the world’s number one star, and even before that, for a short time, he will receive in his homeland such a credit of love and trust, which, perhaps, has never been in the entire Russian history. Now many people remember that Gorbachev released political prisoners and returned them from exile. Academician Sakharov– but his coming to power was a holiday not only for the Moscow dissident circle, they rather treated him critically. What are the last years of the pre-Gorbachev era? Hopeless “carriage races”, an endless struggle with parasites, flyers, non-workers and unearned incomes, inescapable “sausage trains” and queues for imported boots, an illusory fear of nuclear war. Even from the point of view of an ordinary person, far from the human rights movement, the basic sensations from this time are controlled poverty without any prospects, alienation from one’s own work, power, life, a dreary reality that one wanted to get rid of at any cost; the real alternative to Gorbachev was the eternal Chernenko, and not the “heavenly USSR”, which is now so easy to fantasize about. The smile of the new general secretary gave promises that the “working people” did not even have time to ask for: the opportunity to earn honestly for a decent life, not to be afraid of the collective West, but to use its achievements, to be yourself – and not part of the crowd, line, cohort. It was not even a promise of freedom, but of dignity. It opened the floodgates through which, with all the hydraulic power accumulated over 70 years, hope poured.

The unprecedented scale of hopes, the brightest flash of historical optimism, were combined with the complete blurring of their subject. Perestroika is the time of an unspoken all-Union competition for projects of the future: economists become something like rock stars, young KVN captains sing the song “Transfer me to self-support.” Gorbachev has a scattering of the most daring plans on his desk, and out of habit they expect clear instructions from him, but he seems to step back, watches with satisfaction how the “process has begun,” but does not direct him to any goal. The public is at a loss: at the Congress of People’s Deputies (summer 1989, confusion had already thickened noticeably), writer Yuri Bondarev compares perestroika with an airplane that was lifted into the air, not knowing if there was a landing site at the destination. The only clear (sometimes painfully felt) intention at the start is to make sobriety the norm; frankly, not the most populist step. In his almost Buddhist non-action, Gorbachev was somewhat similar to Kutuzov in War and Peace – if instead of a lapidary manner of expressing himself, he would use the verbiage of the model of the Higher Party School: it seems that with all the differences in style and result, both preferred to allow things accomplish on their own.

In general, there was something very Russian in Gorbachev – softness, gentleness, a certain roundness, as in the “image of Platon Karataev” from a school textbook. Some kind of even kolobkovnost – the ability to quietly slip away from everything that is oppressive, dangerous and difficult. In vain that he always aroused wild anger among that part of the patriots that believes: Russian good should be with fists, in boots and with a whip. Some idealistic daydreaming and impracticality are also part of Tolstoy’s ethical code. Gorbachev seemed to believe that all people are good by nature, and once they are given the opportunity to be themselves, everything will take care of itself. Why make new rockets or try to separate from the Union there, if you can live in a “single human community” held together by “universal human values”? It is generally accepted (especially after the fact) that such Kot-Leopoldian approaches are inexcusable naivety for the ruler of an empire historically based on strength and fear; Gorbachev’s partners and counterparties smiled at him in response, while they themselves shared territories, resources and power in their minds. “Realpolitik”, proceeding from the fact that everyone around is plotting (or theoretically may plot) evil, seems to have confirmed its correctness in practice – as opposed to Gorbachev’s idealism. The processes went wrong.

Late perestroika is a time from which everyone is no less tired than from late stagnation. Live broadcast of the Congress of People’s Deputies, Solzhenitsyn in Novy Mir, Sounds of Mu on the first TV button – it was, of course, exciting, but the reality given in the sensations pricked more and more painfully. Sugar coupons, miners’ strikes, sinking ships and exploding trains. Karabakh, Ferghana, Baku, Osh, Tbilisi, Vilnius. Gorbachev’s optimism found itself increasingly out of phase with the oppressive informational (and simply everyday) background – his rhetoric was not just stylistically inappropriate, it wafted with deceived hopes. Democrats (the word “liberals” has not yet come into use) reproached him for slowness, patriots – as now, in collapse and betrayal, in lines retell insulting ditties to each other – “a troika is rushing across Russia: Mishka, Rayka, perestroika”, and it was not yet visible the geopolitical results of his reign, which eventually became the most painful topic – however, the word “geopolitics” did not exist then either. Returning from Foros in August 1991, no one needed him. He left as a loser, voluntarily surrendered – not daring or not wanting to act as the leader of the empire, the same one, with fists and boots. What he subsequently repeatedly recalled – rather with pride than with regret.

It seems that it was in Gorbachev’s time that it became customary to say that history does not tolerate the subjunctive mood – and it is pointless to talk today about what would have happened if he had behaved differently. Many people are sure that we would now live in a happy friendly country and fly from Baku to Tallinn on brand new Tu-144s. It sincerely seems to me that we would have turned into radioactive ash long ago. But these guessings are empty business, something else is interesting. Were the hopes of that time worthless because they led the wrong way? Which is preferable – to believe in the best, without even knowing in detail what it is, or to be stuck in an eternal today that slowly slides into yesterday? Will you choose, other things being equal, illusory hopes or sober hopelessness? If you are crazy in love, is it important to understand in advance that the object of your passion after so many years will turn into a boring grumbling creature that always grabs its lower back? Would you rather live with those feelings or with this knowledge? Maybe these are generally two phases of the historical cycle, through which it is necessary to pass – both for a person and for a country – and neither of them cancels the other?

Sometimes it seems to me that Gorbachev was three hundred years ahead of his time, that he saw the world as it could be when people overcome class, national and confessional differences and understand that in essence they are all one and the same. That his idealism is of the same nature as that of Tolstoy, Gandhi or Martin Luther King, it is poorly applicable to real politics (especially if its bearer ends up at the head of a large and difficult state formation), but despite everything, it moves humanity forward. That his faith in a good human principle was not enough to save the Union or put an end to the confrontation with the West, but perhaps at the next historical turn some new human unity will be born from the memory of it. One should not be deceived by its apparent obkom simplicity: history often works through the simple-hearted, neglecting the cunning. Somewhere out there, in the world of transcendental ideas and images, his smile will remain – an unfulfilled, but still a dream.

Gorbachev managed to star in the sequel to the same Wenders film about angels – the film “So Far, So Close.” Black and white picture: he is sitting at the table, sorting through papers and quoting Tyutchev: “” Unity, – proclaimed the oracle of our days, – / Perhaps soldered only by iron and blood …” / But we will try to solder it with love, – / A we’ll see what’s stronger.” An angel embraces him, and the sky over Berlin becomes colored for a second.

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