Table of Contents
About Mikhail Gorbachev and His Legacy
- Mikhail Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its collapse in 1991.
- Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel peace prize for negotiating a historic nuclear arms pact with the then United States President Ronald Reagan.
- Mikhail Gorbachev ambition to pull the USSR out of economic and social stagnation not only led to the collapse of the USSR but also ended the cold war.
- After Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, he initiated talks about
- Glasnost: Meaning “openness,” particularly openness of information. Glasnost was supposed to translate into a loosening of state censorship of the media.
- Perestroika, meaning a “restructuring,” specifically of the Communist economy and political system.
- Perestroika was supposed to translate into the incorporation of some features of a market economy into the Soviet economy, by loosening price controls, encouraging more entrepreneurism and limited private businesses, and by making imported consumer goods easier to purchase
- The terms went hand-in-hand because, together, the reforms made by these concepts aimed at making the Soviet Union more democratic and incorporate some features of capitalism to revitalize the economy.
- Mikhail Gorbachev outreach to countries like India as well as his efforts to thaw relations with the US, pulling troops out of Afghanistan, and working to improve relations with all neighbours, were a marked a shift in Soviet foreign and military policy.
- Working to defuse US-Soviet nuclear tensions in the 1980s and bringing Eastern Europe out from behind the Iron Curtain were some of his lasting legacies.
- With Gorbachev, there emerged a new thinking, especially on Afghanistan as evident in the changed tone of Gorbachev’s reference to Afghanistan as a krovotochashchaia rana (bleeding wound)”
- Between May 1988 and February 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev had pulled the Red Army out of Afghanistan.
India’s Relations with Russia/USSA During Mikhail Gorbachev Tenure
- Mikhail Gorbachev visited India in 1986 as well as in 1988.
- He was a strong supporter of India and offered India some state-of-the-art military technology even before providing it to Moscow’s Warsaw Pact allies.
- India received MiG-23 fighter and MiG-29 interceptor aircraft from the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev.
- India also received some T-72 tanks, even before some of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact allies, and India entered into a co-production scheme for this system.
- India was also the first “Third World” country to lease nuclear submarines from the Soviet Union.
- Visit of 1986: In 1986, on his first visit to an Asian country, Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in India to sign the Delhi Declaration with Rajiv Gandhi.
- The agreement focused on complete nuclear disarmament and for the Indian side, echoed the concept of non-violence as practised by Mahatma Gandhi.
- Visit of 1988: Mikhail Gorbachev visited India in 1988 to implement the principles of the Delhi Declaration.
- This visit strengthened Soviet-Indian relations in trade, economy, science, technology, and culture, and entailed the signing of many inter-governmental agreements such as for the construction of a nuclear power plant in India, cooperation in the exploration and peaceful use of space, and more.
- On this trip Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development.
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