Mikhail Gorbachev is a man with a serious reputation. Many Western politicians regard him as one of the great heroes of the twentieth century, as the man who ended the Cold War. Politicians from left to right jostle for photo opportunities, hoping that Gorbachev’s shining eminence will reflect on them. In his native Russia on the other hand, his position is less positive. There, he is widely blamed for the traumatic collapse of the Soviet Union. His 1996 presidential bid saw him losing rather unimpressively with less than one percent of the vote. His subsequent attempts to found new political parties have all been ill-fated.

But reputations are strange things. More often than not, a person doesn't get to choose his own. Gorbachev is no exception. Little did he know when he took power that he would one day be regarded as the man who helped dismantle the Soviet bloc. It may have seemed even less likely that a lifestyle magazine like ours would one day proclaim him a Top European. But nonetheless, whether he liked it or not, the circumstances forced him to become just that: our Top-European, willy-nilly!

Both of Gorbachev's reputations, negative and positive, are based on the period between 1985 and 1991 when he was leader of the Soviet Union. He entered office convinced that the Soviet Union needed radical reform. He saw that the Soviet economy would only stand a chance at surviving if the political and social structure of the Communist system underwent perestroika – restructuring. On the geopolitical stage Gorbachev was likewise trapped by circumstances. The war in Afghanistan had painfully proven the weaknesses of the Soviet military position. Military expenses were a heavy burden on the Soviet economy. The Soviet Union could simply no longer afford to uphold its empire.

Photo: David Valdez / US National Archives

Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush meeting in December 1989 on a ship in the harbour of Malta to discuss the rapid changes Europe was experiencing.

The Sinatra doctrine

In an attempt to save the position of his country on the world stage, Gorbachev chose to leap into the dark uncertainty of détente, easing relations to the United States in an attempt to stop the costly arms race. He initiated negotiations over nuclear arms reduction, and publicly declared the Soviet Union's unwillingness to intervene further in the internal matters of the satellite states of Eastern Europe. This inaugurated a new policy that was jokingly dubbed the Sinatra doctrine (after the song 'I did it my way'). Every socialist country would from now on be free to find its own way to socialism. Sooner than anyone had expected, the new doctrine would be put to the test. From the summer of 1989 a wave of revolutions flooded the countries of the former Eastern Block. Gorbachev kept his promise: he didn't intervene. He allowed East Germany to merge with its Western neighbour and thus enter NATO. Finally, in 1991, against massive resistance from conservatives in his own country, he opposed the use of force when several Soviet Republics decided to leave the Union.

Gorbachev interlaced his détente policies with rhetoric about 'Europe'. While loosening the reins on Eastern Europe, he spoke of creating a 'common European home' for East and West, where all European countries could peacefully live in their adjacent rooms. Because he saw that the Soviet Union couldn't stop the national partitioning of the big ballroom in Eastern Europe, he hoped to influence the construction of the new house covering all of Europe. The calculation was that his moral authority as a reformer would bring him and his country increasing influence in Western Europe, in exchange for the loss of influence in the East. Wouldn't the common European house have to be guarded by a Soviet caretaker?

Integration as the only option

The myth of Gorbachev as a champion of all-European co-operation is based on these considerations of Realpolitik. Gorbachev wasn't actively seeking the fall of communism, nor the collapse of his country, nor the construction of a united Europe. He let himself be led by the necessities prescribed by the deplorable state in which he found his country. In the years of his rule he could only try to direct the disintegration of the Soviet bloc along peaceful paths. For this, he can't be praised enough. But it can't obscure the fact that Gorbachev was a 'European' by force of circumstances. He chose Europe simply because the Soviet Union in its classic form was no longer a viable alternative.

So Gorbachev was a European nolens volens. But does that make him unworthy of being a Top European? Isn't 'whether we like it or not' one of the most powerful arguments for becoming a European in heart and soul? The realisation that European integration, co-operation and harmonisation are simply unavoidable, that present-day issues can't be overcome by national states, should make us all Europeans! Gorbachev has shown the way, which makes him this issue’s Top European, albeit willy-nilly.

Photo: Ronald Reagan Library, US National Archives

A page from the speaking copy that Reagan used in Berlin, showing the "tear down this wall" line. When this finally happened, it was not because "Mr. Gorbachev" gave way to external prompts demanding freedom, but due to the Soviet Union's internal struggles.