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By:
Enver Robelli
- August 31, 2022 11:45
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Mihail Gorbachev, who died yesterday, visited Yugoslavia in 1988. On that occasion, he showed more interest in the Slovenian model of socialism than in the concrete heads of Serbian communism. In 1991 Slobodan Milosevic and his generals supported the coup of the old communists against Gorbachev. An action that Gorbachev and Russian President Boris Yeltsin did not forget the Serbian leader. In the 90s, Russia supported Serbia more with words than with deeds. Unwittingly for the Russians, this suited Kosovo in 1999, when NATO intervened: Moscow was angry, but did not move from the country.
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to head the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was a politician a little different from bureaucrats with old thoughts. He wanted to save the Soviet Union, but he knew that changes were inevitable. Two words remain associated with his name: Perestroika and Glasnosti, restructuring and opening.
Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, committed himself against the arms race (aware that the Soviet Union could not continue the race with the West), and among his first decisions was: banning vodka. More work and less vodka – that was his motto. Russians did not take well to the ban on vodka.
Gorbachev changed the world, but he failed to change his country. Building democracy in the Soviet Union was mission impossible. But at least it didn't prevent the fall of the Berlin Wall. It did not intervene even when the Eastern European countries chose the path of democracy and fled the Soviet hemisphere. "I believe that dangers await only those who do not react to life." With this sentence, Gorbachev made it clear to the communist leaders of Eastern Europe that they cannot expect decisive help from Moscow. In 1953 Moscow had intervened in (communist) East Germany to suppress protests against the communist regime. In 1956 he suppressed the reform movement in Hungary, in 1968 in Czechoslovakia.
Mikhail Gorbachev came to head the Soviet Communist Party after his predecessors died one after the other. Yuri Anropov, a cadre from the KGB secret service, became the head of the Soviet superpower after Leonid Brezhnev. Seriously ill since taking office, he died in 1984. Konstantin Chernenko was elected after him. He also fought against death. He died 13 months later. The group of old communists wanted someone from their own ranks again, but in the end the conviction that the Soviet Union needed a younger leader prevailed. Mikhail Gorbachev was in his early fifties. Not only much younger than the salon of communist elders, but also a functionary with his own ideas, a man full of self-confidence.
In the West, Gorbachev was initially viewed with scepticism. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in an interview with Newsweek, compared Gorbachev to Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda: "He is a modern communist leader who learns from public relations. Goebbels, one of those responsible for the crimes of Hitler's era, was also an expert in public relations. After the strained relations between Bonn and Moscow, Kohli's government specified that the chancellor had not made a comparison between the two figures.
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The good Gorbachev, the bad Gorbachev, or the leader who changed the world
Mikhail Gorbachev would later be the key leader of the Soviet Union who accepted the unification of Germany. He established a relationship of trust with Helmut Kohlin. A new era was heralded by Gorbachev not only with his reform ideas, but also with the beginning of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1988. In 1979, thousands of Soviet soldiers intervened in Afghanistan.
On March 14, 1988, Gorbachev visited the then Yugoslavia. It lasted five days. He was more interested in Slovenia than Serbia. At that time the per capita income in Slovenia was 5000 dollars. This example "must be followed", said Gorbachev. He also spoke about the friendship between Serbs and Russians.
But aggressive and hegemonic Serbian politicians like Slobodan Milosevic viewed Gorbachev with distrust. Borisav Joviqi, one of Milosevic's most reliable officials, wrote in his diary for February 13, 1991: "After today's meeting of the presidency (RSFJ) in which the presidents of the republics and provinces participated (the topic was Kosovo) Velko (Kadijevic), Pera Gracanin, Sloba Milosevic, Dragutin Zellenovic and I stayed in my office. Informal and no-obligation chat.
Slobo begins:
- There will be a war for God...
Velko (at the end) says: 'Gorbachev is to blame for everything. He sold the idea of socialism and communism very cheaply. It collapsed the Warsaw Pact, destroyed socialism in Eastern Europe, destabilized the USSR, and for us the worst is that it disrupted the balance of power in Europe and put all the communists in the dock. Now we have to defend ourselves, even though we died in defense of the country and its construction". Velko Kadijevici was the head of the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) and Minister of Defense in the last moments of Yugoslavia. Communist and pro-Soviet, probably very close to the KGB. After the overthrow of Milosevic, he fled to Moscow in 2001. From 2005 he lived there as a refugee, in 2008 he received Russian citizenship. Died in Moscow in 2014.
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The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, died at the age of 91
Between August 19 and 21, 1991, a group of nostalgic Soviet functionaries tried to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power with a coup. While the world was horrified, Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian Socialists and generals like Velko Kadijevic hailed the coup attempt in Moscow. This was not forgotten by Milosevic, nor by Gorbachev (who soon lost power), nor by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who stood up to the putschists. Moscow gave reserved support to Serbia in the 90s, but never risked confrontation with the West over Milosevic. In 1999, he opposed with words but not with deeds the intervention of NATO against Serbia because of the terror in Kosovo. When the Hague Tribunal indicted Milosevic, Gorbachev welcomed the decision. Gorbachev later criticized NATO's intervention and said that the Hague Tribunal should have allowed Milosevic to be treated in Moscow before he died. These were the statements of an old and frustrated politician.
Gorbachev tried to return to politics several times. Without success. When he was once asked during an interview why no one likes him in Russia, he answered with a question: "Do you know any reformers who are liked?" Gorbachev wittingly or unwittingly did two epochal and good things: he buried the Soviet Union and helped freedom and democracy triumph in Eastern Europe.
