Yesterday saw the passing of one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. His name might not be familiar with most of the younger generation today, but those who lived through the Cold War and the political uncertainty of the early 1990s would be familiar with former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev.
By then the Soviet Union had already become too large and too unwieldy to govern. While the typical Soviet leader would have sought extend the life of the Soviet Union --as well as his hold on power-- for as long as he could and by any means necessary, Gorbachev was going in a totally different direction, that of dissolution and ending hostility with the West.
If not anything, he seemed to understand that there was no future in maintaining such a huge political bloc with too many enemies, too many economic problems, and one finger perennially poised on a nuclear launch button.
He became known for his policies of glasnost (openness) where he encouraged free speech and enhanced the role of the press, as well as perestroika (restructuring) where he let more people become involved in decision making. Both ideas would be totally foreign or even blasphemous to Soviet strongmen.
He also decided to end the nuclear arms race with the US, easing the threat of nuclear war that had always been in the political background since the 1950s.
However, political observers hail his helping unify Germany’s Communist East and Democratic West into one nation again as his best achievement. It was this act that ended the Cold War and won him the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.
In short, he was the man who almost single-handedly took down the Soviet Union, a political bloc he realized was no longer necessary, a superpower that would have just gone on to gobble up more territory and add to political instability and nuclear tension had it been allowed to survive.
Of course he was not perfect, just like any other world leader, and many Soviet and Communist stalwarts decry his policies, but given how much he understood about how the world and politics could and should change with the times he can be considered as one of the best forward-looking leaders a country could ever have.
Right now, with Russia seemingly embracing its authoritarian past with Vladimir Putin unwilling to let go of his power and indisposed to deviate from the destructive path he has embarked on, Russia could use another leader like Gorbachev.