The Greatest Individual

Mikhail Gorbachev is one of the most influential leaders in human history. There can be no doubt that his policies and reforms in Communist Russia in the late twentieth century changed the fate of the world and may have saved millions of lives from nuclear devastation. In my opinion, Mikhail Gorbachev is the greatest individual in human history. This is not because of his views or his leadership qualities, but because of the miracle that he accomplished by ending the Soviet Union and the Cold War after one of the most globally terrifying periods ever recorded.

Gorbachev was born in 1931 after the Communist Revolution to an agricultural mechanic on a collective farm. His political views were greatly influenced by his communist grandfather and so he joined the Communist Youth Party while he was still studying law at Moscow University. Gorbachev moved quickly through the ranks of the Party, working his way to the top and soon became a member of the Communist Party Central Committee. As he climbed the ranks, he struggled to make the lives of the peasants working on the collective farms better, increasing their land allotments, improving living conditions and giving them more voice in structuring their communities.

After Chernenko’s death in 1985, Gorbachev was appointed the General Secretary of the Communist Party, and began introducing reforms and replacing older, more conservative members with younger, more liberal ones.

As the ruler of the USSR, Gorbachev began his campaign of perestroika, restructuring, creating social, economic and political changes that made the Soviet Union more efficient. He outlawed alcohol, encouraged private ownership and other democratic ideas with his demockratizatsiya (democratization) plan and accelerated economic development. Under Gorbachev’s influence, government companies that monopolized a market such as the air plane company Aeroflot broke into individual corporations and began a more capitalist economy with connections abroad. He instigated the first free elections in Russia in decades, the elections for the Congress of People’s Deputies, and was popularly reelected in 1990. Non-party members were allowed to run, and some were elected. More freedoms of free speech and press under the program of glasnost meant that Gorbachev was more openly criticized for his reforms than any other Russian communist dictator, and this may have led to the overthrow staged in 1991 that effectively ended Gorbachev’s power.

Gorbachev made a treaty with President Reagan, the Immediate Nuclear Forces treaty, as well as withdrawing the Red Army from around Europe and the Middle-East and most notably from the Soviet satellite states, when he refused to intervene in during the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reuniting of Germany.

Gorbachev ended Soviet interference in Eastern European countries, especially communist political influence. For his efforts, he won the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold in 1989 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. As the Soviet Union crumpled around him and countries staged coups against imposed communist governments, Gorbachev lost popularity in his own country, putting down a rebellion of conservatives and abolishing the Communist Central Committee and officially resigned his position as General Secretary a few years later on December 25, 1995.

Since then, Gorbachev has not been idle. He is still involved with private ownership in market economies, and he founded the Gorbachev Foundation, which is dedicated to conducting socio-economic and political research and improving the international market. Gorbachev is currently a member of the Union of Social-Democrats Party in Russia.

As a leader, Gorbachev brought the world back from the brink of destruction through willingness to engage in peace talks and sign arms reduction treaties. He suggested many of them in order to realize peace between the superpowers of the world, and formed close relationships with the leaders of capitalist countries, easing the tension that fear of nuclear war instilled. Gorbachev’s forward thinking and compromises profoundly affected the lives of people around the world, more than ever previously could have been affected by a single decision or war. He risked his position and went against the party that brought him to power in order to fulfill his dream of making the world safer and friendlier, actually undermining his authority and, in the end, willingly gave up his rule for what he felt was the common good.

I believe that Mikhail Gorbachev is the Greatest Individual in human history because he prevented massive destructions that would have resulted if the tensions between the United States and the USSR had developed into outright war. By slowly dismantling the Soviet Union and allowing its satellite countries to choose their own leaders and political alignments, by introducing peace talks with other superpowers, by advocating the dismantling of nuclear weapons, Gorbachev saved lives and directly affected people who are still alive because of him.

Sources

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDgorbachev.htm

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gor0bio-1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev