Changing and Humanizing the USSR

Steven Pifer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, shared on Twitter some of the milestone accomplishments in nuclear arms control that came about during Gorbachev's administration. Having worked extensively in the U.S. Foreign Service and State Department for over 25 years in Ukraine, Warsaw, Moscow, and London, Pifer saw firsthand the impacts of Gorbachev's "glasnost’” policy — or the "opening up" of Russian society, government, and media — on the people of Russia and Eastern Europe.

"He gave Central Europeans freedom to make their own choices," Pifer wrote on Twitter. And while acknowledging that the Soviet collapse was not free of violence, Pifer also believes that it was "far more peaceful than it could have been," because of Gorbachev's leadership through such a monumental inflection point in geopolitical history.

Freedom and Honesty for Russia and Eastern Europe

Similarly, eminent political scientist Francis Fukuyama says that a hallmark of Gorbachev's legacy will be his desire for peace and his willingness to set aside the norms of the Soviet Era in order to allow people greater freedom.

"He wasn't willing to use force to hold the old Soviet Union together," Fukuyama told Radio Free Europe in an interview. "That was really critical in allowing the countries of Eastern Europe to become free of Soviet influence and for Soviet republics like Urkaine, Moldova, and Belarus to become independent nations. That is a contribution to freedom that is really unparallelled by any other leader at that time."

While Gorbachev is not a popular figure in Russia today, Fukuyama believes his time in leadership still made an important difference to the long-term development of the country and its former territories.

'History Will Be Kind to Him'

Today, Russia's trajectory looks very different from the path Gorbachev tried to set the country on in the 1990s. Speaking to Leila Fadel on NPR's Morning Edition, FSI Director Michael McFaul highlighted the difference between Gorbachev's ambitions and Putin's regime.

"It's definitely a reversal. It is a return to confrontation. And again, it did not have to be that way," he said. "Russia was a democracy in the 1990s, and Gorbachev helped to introduce those political reforms. That has been completely reversed by Vladimir Putin."

McFaul agrees that Gorbachev is a complex figure, both in Russia and in the West. While the collapse of the Soviet Union was largely bloodless, Gorbachev sent special forces to the Baltic republics in 1991, a decision which resulted in military and civilian casualites.

In light of the brutality of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Gorbachev's early confidence in Vladimir Putin feels like a similar miscalculation, as Professor McFaul discussed with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. Even still, because of his proactive work to move arms control forward and for choosing not to intervene with force against the collapse of the Soviet Union and break away of Eastern Europe, McFaul considers the former president one of the most important figures of the 21st century. 

"On a personal level, Gorbachev and I didn't always agree. We argued," says McFaul. "But he was a very engaging intellectual, and I always learned from every conversation I had with him. I think history will be kind to him."

So many wonderful things have been said of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev in recent days that I am loath simply to repeat them. Instead, I have reached back for my own memories, those that brought home to me his unique place in Russian history. Of course, you would expect that I would sing kudos for his role, together with Ronald Reagan, in halting the nuclear arms race in the 1980s. Their 1986 meeting at Reykjavik was a breakthrough that led within a few years to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and within a few years more to the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

What I recollect from Reykjavik, however, was my astonishment at news reports on the first day that Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev and American President Reagan were considering abolishing ballistic missiles and the nuclear weapons that went on them. At the time a young analyst at RAND, I knew the debates that had been raging in our own system about undertaking reductions in nuclear weapons, never mind abolishing them. “Richard Perle,” I thought, “must be furious over this.”

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With an ugly war of attrition in Ukraine threatening to drag on for months, some fear possible escalation and suggest Washington should start talking to Moscow about a cease-fire and ending the war, or offer proposals to foster diplomatic opportunities.

Ending the fighting may well require talks, but the decision to negotiate should lie with Kyiv.

The Russian army launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on three fronts on February 24. However, by the end of March, it had to abandon its goal of capturing the Ukrainian capital and withdrew from much of northern Ukraine. The Kremlin said its forces would then focus on Donbas, consisting of Ukraine’s easternmost oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk.

By mid-July, Russian soldiers had occupied most of Luhansk. That represented a symbolic victory, but in reality three months of grinding fighting gained little new territory. The Russian army, which has seen roughly 15,000 to 25,000 soldiers killed in action and lost much equipment, appears exhausted.

The Ukrainian military has also taken heavy losses but has been bolstered by flows of new arms from the West. Among other things, Russian war crimes have provoked sharp anger among Ukrainians and strengthened their resolve to resist.

Now hardly seems a propitious time for negotiations.

To begin with, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin show no sign of readiness to talk seriously. Russian officials articulated their war aims for Ukraine early on: denazification (of a government headed by a Jewish president), demilitarization, neutrality, recognition of occupied Crimea as Russian territory, and recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent so-called “people’s republics.”

In early July, Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev restated basically the same goals. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on July 20 said that Russia had broadened its military aims and would seek to seize territory beyond Donbas. He later added that Moscow sought to end the “unacceptable regime” in Kyiv.

The Kremlin’s goals remain unchanged — Ukraine’s almost total capitulation — despite the fact that Russia’s performance on the battlefield has fallen well short of expectations and could deteriorate as the Ukrainians take military actions such as systematically destroying Russian ammunition dumps. Do those who urge talks see space for any compromise that would not leave Ukraine in a substantially worse position than before the most recent invasion began in February?

Even a cease-fire presents peril for the Ukrainian side. It would leave Russian troops occupying large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, with no guarantee they would leave. The Ukrainians have learned from bitter experience. Cease-fires agreed in September 2014 and February 2015, supposedly to end the fighting in Donbas, left Russian and Russian proxy forces in control of territory that they never relinquished and did not fully stop the shooting. Moreover, the Russian military might use a cease-fire to regroup, rearm, and launch new attacks on Ukraine.

This is not to say that a cease-fire or negotiation should be ruled out. But, given the risks inherent in either course for Ukraine, the decision to engage in talks on a cease-fire or broader negotiations should be left to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government.

If Ukraine’s leadership were now to conclude that it should seek a settlement, Moscow’s unyielding negotiating demands would require that Kyiv consider concessions. They would be painful for the Ukrainian side and would almost certainly encounter stiff public opposition: A July poll showed that 84% of Ukrainians opposed any territorial concessions. That included 77% in Ukraine’s east and 82% in the south, the two areas where most fighting now occurs.

Any negotiation thus would be fraught with risk for Zelenskyy and his team. Only they can decide when — or if — it is time to talk. Battlefield developments and future military realities may affect the calculation in Kyiv. If Ukraine’s leaders choose to begin negotiations, the West should not hinder them, but the West also should not press them to negotiate before they see a net benefit in doing so. Western officials should be leery of opening any channel to Moscow that the Russians would seek to turn into a negotiation over the heads of the Ukrainians.

To be clear, this war has an aggressor, and it has a victim. Those who advocate that Washington talk to Moscow fear that, if the war continues, Russia might consider launching attacks on targets in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states. One should not wholly exclude that possibility, but the Russian military has its hands full with Ukraine. It likely does not want to take on NATO directly as well.

The United States and NATO certainly have a major interest in avoiding direct military conflict with Russia. However, in order to minimize that risk, is it right to ask the Ukrainian government to make concessions to the aggressor, concessions that could reduce the size and economic viability of the Ukrainian state, that would provoke a sharp domestic backlash in the country, and that might not end the Russian threat to Ukraine?

One last point to weigh. If the West pressed Kyiv to accept such an outcome, what lesson would Putin draw should his stated desire to “return” Russia’s historic lands extend beyond Ukraine?

Published on Brookings.edu

Let’s start with a broad look at opposition movements and their place in modern Russia. What role have opposition movements played in Russian society since the end of the Soviet Era in the late 1980s and early 1990s?

After the attempt by the Communist Party of Russia to forcibly seize political control in the 1991 August Coup, the course towards democratic reforms was supported by the majority of the Russian population. However, the democratic politicians were divided, and they had little to no experience with public political activity or organizing participation in elections. They failed to offer a clear, intelligible  plan for reforming the country and get it across to voters.                     

With the exception of certain leaders like Foreign Minister A. Kozyrev, human rights ombudsman S. Kovalev, and Deputy Prime Minister B. Nemtsov, truly democratic politicians were not widely represented in power at this time, and did not have a significant influence on state policy. Many of the politicians in power used pro-democracy ideals and the language of human rights as a mask to further their own, more selfish interests. Then with the economic crash in 1998, radical rhetoric and a revitalized communist party began to regain support.

Ultimately, a strong democratic party never emerged in Russia and deeply rooted democratic institutions were not built. The corruption and false promises corroded trust in democracy and undermined many Russian’s belief in liberalism. When Putin came to power in the late 90s, he took advantage of the chaos and further crushed many of the structures of the state. By the 2000s, he had tightened control over the legislature and elections and removed almost all competition from within the power system.

Today, few opposition forces survive. The leading figure is Alexei Navalny, and the goal of his movement has been to promote the idea of democratic change and the change of Putin's regime as essential prerequisite for other structural reforms in Russia. His followers were refused the right to register as an official political party under false, far-fetched pretexts, and the organization was declared by the state as an extremist organization and subjected to countless, baseless criminal charges. Like most opposition politicians, Navalny is now in prison. But these attacks only show how in the last 10 years, he has truly become a viable competitor that Vladimir Putin’s regime fears.

You work with the Anti-Corruption Foundation (Фонд борьбы с коррупцией), which was founded by Alexei Navalny in 2011. What has your network’s approach been to combatting corruption and systemic issues in Russia?

Our team investigates corruption crimes and collects legal evidence that we send to various law enforcement agencies as part of our efforts to bring those responsible to justice. At the same time, we focus public attention on these problems, demonstrating the negative impact that corruption and criminal activity has on all spheres of life. It’s important for people to understand that corruption is a foundational element of the system Vladimir Putin and his cronies built. Without removing him and his supporters from power, it will not be possible for serious reforms or deep democratization of state mechanisms to take place.

We’ve actively worked to propose anti-corruption bills and support those who are trying to ratify international standards like article 20 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), which criminalizes illicit enrichment. Representatives of our team have participated in elections and conducted dozens of election campaigns throughout the country at all levels of government, from municipal and regional to the presidential elections in the Russian Federation. Our team also worked with authoritative Russian economists and experts such as Sergei Guriev and Sergei Aleksashenko to develop projects for economic and political reforms.

We’ve won several elections in both city and regional parliaments, and have also developed and successfully applied the Smart Voting project to help coordinate voting in support of promising opponents of Putin's United Russia party. But all this being said, we’ve faced strong opposition from the authorities, the police, and the FSB with each victory.
 

How have you and other activists had to adapt since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the further crackdowns in Russia against opposition voices and protests?

Repressions against our team began even before the attack on Ukraine. In the fall of 2020, the FSB tried to kill Alexei Navalny by poisoning him with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok. After an investigation into this poisoning and his return to Russia, he was imprisoned. Our group, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FKB) was declared an extremist group and a foreign agent by the Kremlin and liquidated. In practice, this means we are banned from participating in political work like elections and protests. This has essentially created a ban on any political opposition activity in Russia.

Under such conditions, most of our team has evacuated to neighboring countries and continues to work from exile. We still influence the minds and moods in Russia through our internet media resources, which have an audience of millions. Conducting one-time protests is currently impossible in the country due to the introduction of repressive laws, but we continue to encourage our supporters to participate in elections under the Smart Voting strategy. We stand up for increasing the number of our supporters and for the trust of the people, while increasing the political costs for Putin, reducing his personal rating, and diminishing the standing of the United Russia party.

What can supporters of democracy across the world do to help the work you and other activists from Russia are doing?

After the attack on Ukraine, the best thing the rest of the world can do is to help Ukraine to get everything it needs to win this war. Ukraine's victory is Putin's loss.

The war unleashed by Putin is criminal not only in relation to Ukraine and Ukrainians, but also to Russia. It contradicts Russia’s national interests and literally destroys its future. Putin and his regime are a common enemy for Russians, Ukrainians, and the entire democratic world.

But the war is not only on the battlefields and in the Ukrainian cities. This war has an economic front, and Western countries need to intensify their efforts to deprive the Kremlin of its resources to continue the war. There also needs to be much tougher personal sanctions against Putin’s officials and propagandists.
 

Despite what the propaganda tries to portray, Russia is not homogenous and support for Putin is far from being ironclad. Putin has not won the entire information war for Russian’s attitudes. That’s why we at FKB consider it our duty to continue countering false information and tell Russians the truth about the war and Putin’s crimes.

We want the democratic community to understand how important this work is for victory in the war and the post-war reconstruction of Russia. While the physical fighting might be localized to Eastern Europe, the war will have far-reaching consequences across the globe. Its outcome will determine the vector of development for the entire world: either towards democracy or to totalitarianism. That’s why victory on the side of justice and rights in this war is important not only for the people of Ukraine and Russia, but for everyone, everywhere.
 

Just days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Dmitri Medvedev, the former president and prime minister of Russia, took to social media to post a chilling message. He raged against Western sanctions on his country and suggested darkly that Russia could rip up some of its most important agreements with the West. He mentioned the New START treaty, the nuclear arms reduction agreement signed with the United States over a decade ago, but the threat was broader still: the sundering of all diplomatic ties with Western countries. “It’s time to hang huge padlocks on the embassies,” he wrote.

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This war between Russia and Ukraine shows why the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato) is the most successful of the international bodies created in the wake of the second world war. As Russian forces built up along Ukraine’s borders in the final months of 2021, the nato alliance was watchful and active, continuing its exercises and policing the sea and airspace near Russia and Belarus. This was despite the insurrectionist riot at the US Capitol in January, the shambolic withdrawal of alliance forces from Afghanistan in August, and the ravages of the Delta and Omicron variants across Europe and North America. Somehow, nato kept going quietly about its business.

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