Reassessing Gorbachev

IF 0.2 4区 历史学 Q2 HISTORY RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE Pub Date : 2023-04-28 DOI:10.30965/18763316-12340053
William Taubman
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Abstract

Comments from around the world following Gorbachev’s death revealed yet again how polarized views of him are. Most Westerners still see him as a man who changed his country and the world for the better. Most Russians condemn him for having intentionally or unintentionally destroyed the USSR. This essay attempts to reassess his record – to ask what a leader like him was to do when he had noble aims for his country and the world and possessed the power potentially to achieve them, but confronted huge obstacles to doing so. Should he have pursued them at the risk not only of failure, but of making things worse? Should he have settled for presiding over the status quo and preserving his own power? To address such questions, I pose others: What were Gorbachev’s goals and how did he come by them? Were they so ambitious as to be unrealistic? Did he have sufficient power as Soviet leader possibly to achieve them? What obstacles did he face? Did he foresee them? How effectively did he cope with them? Were there alternatives that were preferable to his approach? I conclude that Gorbachev was right to make the attempt.
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重新评价戈尔巴乔夫
戈尔巴乔夫去世后,世界各地的评论再次表明,人们对他的看法是多么两极分化。大多数西方人仍然认为他是一个让自己的国家和世界变得更好的人。大多数俄罗斯人谴责他有意无意地摧毁了苏联。这篇文章试图重新评估他的记录——问一个像他这样的领导人,当他对他的国家和世界有崇高的目标,并且拥有实现这些目标的潜在力量,但在实现这些目标的过程中面临巨大障碍时,他会怎么做。他是否应该冒着不仅失败,而且使事情变得更糟的风险去追求这些目标呢?他是否应该满足于维持现状并保持自己的权力?为了回答这些问题,我提出了其他问题:戈尔巴乔夫的目标是什么?他是如何实现这些目标的?他们是否雄心勃勃到不切实际?作为苏联领导人,他有足够的权力来实现这些目标吗?他遇到了什么障碍?他预见到了吗?他是如何有效地对付他们的?有没有比他的方法更好的选择?我的结论是戈尔巴乔夫的尝试是正确的。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
50.00%
发文量
24
期刊介绍: Russian History’s mission is the publication of original articles on the history of Russia through the centuries, in the assumption that all past experiences are inter-related. Russian History seeks to discover, analyze, and understand the most interesting experiences and relationships and elucidate their causes and consequences. Contributors to the journal take their stand from different perspectives: intellectual, economic and military history, domestic, social and class relations, relations with non-Russian peoples, nutrition and health, all possible events that had an influence on Russia. Russian History is the international platform for the presentation of such findings.
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