Author: lukewarm source: official account: lukewarm studio has been authorized to reprint
Gorbachev died the night before yesterday at the age of 91.
For this important political figure who personally ended the behemoth of the Soviet Union, the key terminator of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, its historical significance is extremely great and its influence is extremely far-reaching. It is the destruction of the Soviet Union that shaped the general pattern of the world today, extending the war chaos in West Asia and the war between Russia and Ukraine today, Crimea in 2014, the war between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, and the confrontation between North Korea and South Korea in 2022, It is the end of the Soviet Union’s failure to clean up that is buzzing.
Out of the simple emotional cognition of “eating the food of one’s own country, but smashing the pot of one’s own country”, most Chinese people dislike Gorbachev very much and think that he is a traitor and a traitor. However, Gorbachev cannot be blamed for the destruction of the Soviet Union alone.
The Soviet Union is an unprecedented political system in human history. It has a certain experimental nature, and mistakes are inevitable. It has also been bumping along the way of growth. From Stalin’s unscrupulous promotion of industrialization to Khrushchev’s comprehensive overthrow of Stalin, which damaged the ruling system, to the bureaucratic rigidity and hegemony of Brezhnev’s period, which gradually broke the hearts of allies and small partners, In the end, the United States, which had survived the Vietnam War and the oil crisis, led the team to attack the Soviet Union from inside and outside, causing the Soviet Union’s financial collapse. It happened that the speaker was old and weak. When it was handed to Gorbachev, it was already a mess that could not recover. The people could not eat enough, and their spiritual beliefs disappeared. It was impossible for you to call Gorbachev to stabilize the Soviet Union at this time.
Generally speaking, we call the three major culprits of the disintegration of the Soviet Union: Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev. Gorbachev should not bear all the responsibility for the crimes, but the disintegration of the Soviet Union was so fast and so cruel that he did have inevitable responsibilities.
If only the crime of disintegration is counted, I think Khrushchev and Brezhnev have a bigger crime. Gorbachev’s fault is that he pushed the process too fast, so that the Soviet countries were not ready to accept the impact, and the people suffered a lot.
During Khrushchev’s period, the Soviet Union severed its alliance with China, which was the most important step towards the demise of the Soviet Union. As a student of American industrialization, the Soviet Union controlled a certain distance from the United States in terms of population, natural resources and science and technology. After exhausting all its resources, it was difficult to compete with the European and American world. If we can mobilize China’s huge population and resources at that time, feed back China’s industrial upgrading, and grow together with China, This is the pattern that strategists should have. However, the Soviet Union’s betrayal of the alliance not only led it to a dead end, but also made the Chinese people endure 18 years of life hardship. It was a lose lose choice.
In order to please the bureaucratic class, Brezhnev started the bureaucratic rigid operation, which made the Soviet bureaucrats separate from the masses and become the privileged class. The people gradually deviated from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union was in bad luck financially. The oil exploitation increased from 31 million tons in 1970 to 312 million tons in 1980, the natural gas increased from 9.1 billion cubic meters to 156 billion cubic meters, and the Soviet Union’s financial dependence on energy soared from 15% to 53%, At the same time, the Soviet Union made a lot of money from the oil crisis. The surplus wealth made the Soviet Union dizzy. It did not notice that the political and economic stagnation occurred at the same time, but rushed into Afghanistan, funded Vietnam to dominate, and exhausted the country.
When China and the United States established diplomatic relations in 1979, the Soviet Union lost its last chance to save itself. The United States suppressed oil prices, lowered the US exchange rate, China bashed Vietnam and Afghanistan, dragged the Soviet Union, and made the Soviet Union’s finances roar. When the finances were good, all problems were not problems. When the finances were bad, all problems would be magnified tenfold. When special agent Putin returned to Moscow from Eastern Europe in the 1980s, Everyone had to wait in line for a few hours to buy meat.
After several old men died in succession, Gorbachev finally came to power. After the ravages of the previous terms, the nation had long since split, the economy had long collapsed, the officials had long enjoyed privileges, and the people had long been hungry and cold. All that awaited him was the question of when the Soviet Union would die, not whether it would die.
Gorbachev’s mistake was that he let the Soviet Union die too hard and too quickly. The whole country did not give any buffer time from ideology to economic reform, nor did it need special zones to carry out experiments first, and then sum up experience and lessons. It was spread across the country directly. As a result, the Soviet people suffered an unforgettable economic avalanche, and the wealth of the Soviet Union fell into the hands of British and American stooges and local oligarchs. It was not enough for the powerful Soviet Union to scatter its wealth, NATO also intended to dismember Russia, which eventually forced Putin’s power rule.
Gorbachev’s vision of “moving towards a more secure, just and humane future” has never happened. Gorbachev must bear the responsibility for the misery of the people’s lives when the Soviet Union disintegrated, which made them miserable to the point of no dignity.
However, this responsibility can not be said to belong to Gorbachev alone. It belongs to the entire Soviet Bureaucratic group. Seeing that it could not hold up, they were eager to divide up state-owned assets. They were also eager to overthrow the Soviet Union and change from the general manager of state-owned enterprises to the chairman of private enterprises.
From the 2000s to the 2010s, there was often a term on the Chinese Internet to whitewash the pain of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which was called “the pain of democracy”. Russia, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan experienced endless pain instead of pain in the past few decades.
For the destruction of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev did not bear the primary responsibility, but he should bear the secondary responsibility. But why has the Russian side been so polite to him for so many years?
Reading Putin’s comments on Gorbachev on various occasions, we can see that some of them are praises, such as “he is a politician who has great influence on Russia and the whole world”, but some are very vague, such as “he has rich life experience”. Such sentences seem to be perfunctory.
My judgment is that because the West has given Gorbachev great praise and honor, he has become a flag of Europe and the United States. When Gorbachev has no real power, Putin tries his best to show his goodwill to Gorbachev in order to leave buffer space for the West. If Gorbachev is really thrown into prison, it means that there is no retreat and negotiation space for the West. In short, for the current interests, There is no need to punish Gorbachev, who is old and frail.
For Europe and the United States, Gorbachev was the one who helped them solve the biggest crisis in the world. He not only solved the crisis, but also helped the European and American world return a wave of blood. The leader of the other side took the lead in accepting surrender and turning Europe and the United States into a happy place. Of course, he needs all kinds of honors.
Any contemporary political figures of other countries who are wildly praised by Europe and the United States, such as Gorbachev, Gandhi and Mandela, are in essence favorable to them, and they should set an example. Any contemporary political figures of other countries who are wildly devalued by Europe and the United States mainly touch the interests of Europe and the United States and safeguard the interests of their own nation, so they naturally hate them to the bone.
For example, Gorbachev, who destroyed his country and destroyed his family, can win the Nobel Peace Prize. The western media hardly mentions China’s great feat of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, let alone winning the prize.
However, all Gorbachev’s deadly acts are also beneficial to China.
In the heyday of the Soviet Union, the threat was not only Europe and the United States, but also China.
In the second half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union was China’s biggest military and political threat, which made China’s financial pressure unbearable. We were forced to spend a lot of cash flow on third line construction and maintain a large-scale army, which seriously delayed the country’s production and construction, and kept the quality of life of the Chinese people very low. Before the reform and opening up, we could even be said to be the poorest country in the world.
Although the Soviet Union has been our teacher for ten years, the oppression of more than 20 years has also exhausted our financial resources, leaving the country in a high-pressure state all the time. The country has no way to obtain financial revenue, industry has not developed, and urban employment has not been guaranteed. It is only this that has led to many disturbances, such as going up to the mountains and down to the countryside.
The most bitter years of new China were the 19 years from 1960 to 1979. The essence of the suffering was the exhaustion of national finance, and a large part of the exhaustion was due to the oppression of the Soviet Union.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union gave us a long sigh of relief. Without the existence of the strong enemy in the north, we could mobilize more resources to invest in production and develop the economy freely.
Emotionally, we hate people with the label of traitors like Gorbachev. Gorbachev himself knows that he is regarded as a traitor to the country in China. He dare not come to Shenzhen several times for fear of being reviled by the Chinese people; In terms of interests, we welcome people like Gorbachev, who have helped us speed up our progress and remove the threat of major disasters in the north, and can be regarded as an old friend of the Chinese people.
As for Gorbachev himself, he did not rush to kill the Soviet Union. His original idea was to introduce western ideas and systems to reform the Soviet Union, but his operation was really crude and naive, which quickly plunged the country into magic chaos.
Gorbachev was also very curious about China’s reform. He didn’t understand why the reform he couldn’t do well was successful in China. In fact, after comparison, it was found that he went too far and was too anxious. China took it step by step, first testing, then summing up and revising, then testing, then summing up, and then promoting it nationwide. It was gradually liberalizing, continuing to do it well, and withdrawing a little if it didn’t work well.
At the time of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, it is appropriate to ease the contradictions first, and then carry out reform slowly. Gorbachev’s drastic operation caused the Soviet Union to vomit blood and die. Gorbachev is actually not a politician. He is a Mongolian doctor.
My friend told me a story. When he traveled to Moscow, he spent $500 to invite a professor of the History Department of Moscow University to dinner. He wanted to ask him about his views on Russia. The professor said that the Russians were easy to get involved in anything. They were in a hurry. After the completion of the two five-year plans for industrialization and marketization, they wished they could be completed in five years. They went to extremes and brought down the country when the Soviet Union disintegrated.
That sounds reasonable.
In the past, I didn’t quite understand why we usually had age regulations for official appointments, and those who were too young could not hold high posts. It was not that we didn’t believe that young people could produce talents, but that in politics, caution was more important than genius.
In a word, Gorbachev is guilty for the Russians. For Europe and the United States, everyone loves him to death. It is a bit complicated for us. The influence of Confucianism makes us hate his national traitor status, but we must also recognize his great help to China from the side.
The Soviet Union is both our teacher and our enemy. Therefore, we have complex feelings for the Soviet Union. Some of the political experience gained by the Soviet Union in exchange for its life is very valuable. We should learn from it: for example, how to rise peacefully, how to deal with small partners, how to strengthen national unity, how to prevent the full penetration of Western ideology, how to maintain the self-renewal of political parties, how to prevent self-corruption How to continue to learn from Europe and the United States.
The Soviet Union has a history of more than 70 years. We should often take it out to expose it, read it, and reflect on the situation today. After all, there is nothing new in the sun, and we should not make mistakes again.