A recent visit to St. Petersburg stimulated my recollections of the six or so encounters I’ve had with the evil empire and its minions over the years.  Yes, I know, a few visits over 30 years does not an expert make, but it does allow me to have an opinion.  I previously shared my observations of one early encounter in a blog titled “The People I Think I Know” in August, 2011.  It didn’t involve my own personal interaction with something Russian, it described an encounter of Margaret Thatcher’s (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) which she related to me at an engagement party for her son Mark.  To get to the point, she spent what seemed to me like a very, very long time describing her recent meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, wherein he was stressing the importance of “glasnost” and “perestroika.”

At the time, I’m sure the blank look on my face reflected my ignorance.  As far as I knew, perestroika was a trendy brand of flavored vodka and glasnost was that vile tasting garlic-infused sausage that Russians seem to like.  Little did I know then that those two words, the concepts they implied, and the actions ultimately taken by the Russian body politic would likely change the course of history.  Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but it certainly changed the course of Russian history.  This led to the unbundling of the USSR, which paved the way for an oligarchy of immense proportions and oligarchs of immense wealth, greased the skids for Gorby to enjoy an early retirement, which cleared the way for Putin to ultimately step in and buddy up to the Trumpster.  Yep.  That’s a mouthful.

Let me explain why.  Gorbachev, as you know was the eighth and last leader of the old Soviet Union.  It’s lost on me why the Politburo picked him.  Maybe it was the unique birthmark high on his balding pate, maybe he had the goods on all the other guys, but pick him they did.  And he got off to a good start.  He was considered a rising star in the mysterious politics of Russia, and was even something of a darling to the people in the West who cared about what happened in the Kremlin.  The aftermath of his initiatives proved, among other things, that the pathway to hell is, indeed, paved with good intentions.  His goal was nothing short of a renovation of the Soviet body politic and society.  He wanted to create a framework for the creation of cooperative business and to reduce the restrictions on foreign trade and foreign ownership of business entities inside Russia.  And most importantly he wanted to reduce centralized government control of the economy, including privatization of many industries owned by the government.  

Not surprisingly, it didn’t work.  In fact, it led to soaring government spending, uber inflation, and massive deficits. Nobody was happy.  Well, maybe except for a few old Russia hands in the US State Department, where the prevailing attitude of the foreign policy wonks on the Russia Desk was, more or less, “We’ve got ’em down, now we should be able to finish ’em off.”  Okay, a bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but not by much.  From another, perhaps more enlightened, corner of the foreign policy establishment came the radical  idea of a “Marshall Plan” for Russia.  Wow, could we have done for Russia what we did for Post WWII Europe?  Could we have made Russia into an ally rather than an implacable enemy?  It’s a tantalizing thought, but I think not, and so did Reagan, Bush and all those that followed.  

There was, of course, a potpourri of events that obfuscated and complicated our vision of a New Russia. We all remember the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the move towards reunification in Germany.  Some of us may even remember the secession of the Baltic states from the USSR that foretold the end of Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe, which had been in place since the end of WWII. Three things that you may not remember were the tragedy of the Russian adventure in Afghanistan (sound familiar?), which finally ended in 1988; the collapse of Soviet state ownership of food production, which led to near starvation conditions throughout much of the remaining parts of the Soviet Republics; and the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Gorby in 1988. The foregoing is the answer to the monkish (and not polite) question, “What do Gorbachev and Obama have in common?”  Answer: A Nobel Peace Prize they did not deserve.  Oh, one other thing. Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to a dramatic step down in their respective nuclear arsenals in 1987 when they signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Agreement which substantially reduced the nuclear firepower of both countries.  This agreement is considered by most to be the gold standard for approaches to nuclear disarmament.  Of course, you know our current Prez Trump has said that agreement is old hat, that the Russians are taking advantage of us, and that we are going to pull the plug on it.   When asked about Trump’s threat to unilaterally withdraw from the agreement, Gorby is reported to have said, “This is not the work of a great mind.”  Subtle but to the point.  Makes me like old Gorby even more.

Let me play a little “what if” with you.  Imagine, if you can, the time when Russia and Gorbachev were at bottom…  socially, economically, and politically.  Kind of like Germany in the period after WWII.  Well, maybe not that bad, but they were in deep caca.  What if some enlightened, pointy-headed policy type on the Russia Desk in the State Department saw the situation as an opportunity for us to turn an implacable enemy in to a strategic ally.  And what if this policy wonk got the message to the powers that be, and they scratched their head and said, “Probably a really dumb idea, but let’s run it up the flagpole… Let’s create a Russian Marshall plan and an environment where they’ll need us so much that they’ll knock off the Kruschevian ‘We-will-bury-you’ chatter.”  Needless to say, that didn’t happen. The Reaganites were buoyed by his long remembered and oft quoted comment at the Berlin Wall: ” Mr. Gorbachev, if you seek  peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  They really wanted the kill.  However, time ran out on Reagan’s term, but George the Elder, followed suit.  Now was the time to put the dirty commies down for all time.  

Of course, it didn’t turn out exactly the way they wanted.  And who’s to say where the “road not taken” might have led. I’m pretty certain, however, no one would have forecast that thirty years later we’d have proof positive that Gorbachev’s successor had engineered a massive program to tilt the U.S. presidential elections in a way favorable to them, and that a sitting U.S. President and his cohorts would be investigated for collusion with the Russians in these efforts.  Go figure.  I have no idea how it’s all going to turn out, but I do know that I wish we had given the Russian Marshall Plan idea a try.  We couldn’t be worse off than we are today.