Paul Nwabuikwu argues for a balanced assessment of the late Soviet leader
The international (read: western) media has responded to the passing of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on August with the kind of effusive eulogies not seen since the death of Nelson Mandela. In their worshipful estimation, Gorbachev who died at 91 was not only an important global leader of the 20th century who played a leading role in the events that ended the Cold War but the closest thing to a political saint. The summary of the wall-to-wall coverage of Gorbachev’s life and impact goes something like this:
Once upon a time, there was an evil empire called the Soviet Union. Their leaders were brutal thugs who oppressed their people, killed and imprisoned those who dared to challenge the dictatorship. Then, somehow, miraculously, like the apparitions climbing out of graves in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, a younger, open-minded leader emerged from the mire of the evil system. The greatest miracle was that he could smile! He made friends with leaders of the free nations and agreed to stop fighting. And when the oppressed people in far flung parts opted for freedom, he did not stop them. The evil empire proceeded to collapse, and the world, at least the free part of it, lived happily until another evil leader called Vladmir Putin emerged…
Ok I confess to some exaggeration – but not much.
The western media’s rose-tinted analysis of Gorbachev’s legacy and the context of his emergence is, of course, not the full story. While it is true that the defunct Soviet Union, especially under Joseph Stalin who replaced founding leader Vladmir Lenin in 1924, was a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, the inspiration for George Orwell’s dystopian book 1984, the west was far from a pristine land of freedom. Let us consider a few facts.
In 1924, the year Stalin bulldozed his way to power, African Americans in the American South were in the thick of the Jim Crow era of enforced racial segregation which replaced the glorious freedoms won under Lincoln with newly imposed cruelties that lasted nearly a century. It was not until the late 1960s that constitutional equality finally became a reality under Lyndon Johnson.
The two world wars that followed earlier in the century led to America’s dominance of the global economy and rise as the leader of the west and ultimately the rest of the world. But for the majority of the non-Caucasian, non-western world, it was not a glorious tale of freedom. The response of colonizing nations to the efforts of colonized peoples to achieve independence was often harsh as they were put down with force. Brutality was combined with divide and rule policies that sowed disaffection, encouraging resentment and divisions that shredded societies that had lived in peace for centuries. The terrible consequences are still visible in many post-independent nations today. In places like Belgian Congo and Portuguese Angola and Mozambique, inhumanity was institutionalized, codified in laws and practices that subjected human beings to beastly conditions.
The cynical policies of the western nations did not end with independence. Coups were executed by the CIA in alliance with various western governments to remove leaders who did not fall in line or were too friendly with the Soviets. The assassination of such leaders was a favourite component of “foreign policy”. Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Salvador Allende in Chile. Omar Torijos in Panama. Mohammad Mossadegh, the Prime Minister of Iran who was removed in favour of the more pliant Shah of Iran was comparatively luckier. He was allowed to leave with his life. These are just a few examples of leaders removed and/or murdered by the guardians of democracy and freedom for standing up for their nations.
This very short sprint through the 20th century brings us to the period of Gorbachev’s emergence as Russia’s leader in 1985 with the title of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Nelson Mandela was still in prison that year, with six more years to go before his release in 1991 and subsequent election as president following the first multi-racial elections in 1994. Ronald Reagan was in the first year of his second term as US president. His ideological ally, Margaret Thatcher was British prime minister. Both were staunch supporters of the apartheid regime that treated the majority black population as third-class citizens in their own country. Reagan pronounced America the “light on the hill” of freedom and democracy but the illumination was not permitted to lighten the savage gloom of apartheid. Even as the racist politics seared the conscience of the world, Thatcher was the enthusiastic protective nanny of the perpetrators.
The implication of the above is that the narrow western media analysis of Gorbachev’s legacy in the wake of his death needs to be balanced with a wider, more nuanced perspective that includes the rest of the world. Gorbachev is a hero to the west because the changes that he unleashed helped them to win the Cold War without the nightmare scenario of mutually assured destruction. I’m a firm believer that Africa must think for itself and act for itself. And that’s why we must interrogate what his legacy means for Africa.
Gorbachev’s emergence did have some significant impact on Africa. But it was mostly indirect because perestroika and glasnost had no place for Africa because he was focused on saving his country by salvaging the crumbling Soviet economy. That was why he ended the Soviet Union’s support of leftist governments and liberation movements in southern Africa which he deemed unaffordable. As Maxim Matusevich, Professor and Director, Russian and East European Studies Program, Seton Hall University put it: “Under the weight of its own economic troubles the Soviet Union cut down dramatically on foreign aid and withdrew from the continent.”
Some good came out of it. Some corrupt regimes – notably Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia and Mobutu Sese Seko – collapsed as a result. Gorbachev’s rapprochement with the west removed the incentive for the Soviets and the west to support unviable client states in the new climate of peace. But there were some negatives too. Some experts believe that the instability precipitated by Gorbachev’s pullback contributed much later to the events that led to the Rwandan genocide and the state failure in Somalia. Overall, that without the balance provided by Soviet ideological, military and economic rivalry, western African policy became less sensitive and more exploitative.
Therefore, the slant of the reporting and analysis of Gorbachev’s legacy should be a reminder that Africa must learn to tell its own story from the perspective of its own history and defined interests rather than parrot the opinion of the “international media” which is not always as international as advertised.
Nwabuikwu is a member of THISDAY Editorial Board
