silver-plated dustbin

A friend brought me a bit of the Berlin Wall back just after it was broken up and just before grateful Ossies harvested it all to flog to tourists in exchange for oats or freedom certificates or whatever. I gave it to my mum; and when she died I couldn’t find it. Either she’d used it to hold something down in the shed or it got taken by the house clearers, no doubt wondering why a lady in her sixties had a lump of rock in her living room with the Iris Murdoch paperbacks, the Charles Trenet CDs, the empty packets of Superkings and the half empty bottle of Smirnoff Blue (though come to think of it, I liberated that before they got there).

Kind of poignant, that, but mainly pointless, and brought to mind by this account of the Gorbypalooza on the occasion of the man’s 80th birthday. It’s fascinating in a way; a kind of last hurrah of obsolescent celebrity, a silver plated dustbin of history. Even Bono couldn’t make it, though he sent a video greeting.

I’m not knocking Gorby. He was, in the end, a man of sense and we were lucky to have him. But next year the Chinese leadership does its big decade ending switcheroo, and I just know we’re going to get those 2000 word chinstrokers about prospects for reform and will there ever be a Chinese Gorbachev? Given recent events, I suspect that the authors will conclude, after a lot of waffle, that the answer is probably no. But what the piece makes clear is that the question could always have been answered by another: are you fucking kidding?

Comments

[Igor Belanov]

Gorbachev was clearly well-intentioned and quite a humane man, but also pretty incompetent as well. It has to be remembered that the prime motive for his reforms was to reinvigorate the Soviet state and economy, not to 'free the serfs', and whether the Soviet Union was terminally declining or not, his measures certainly hastened its demise.

I think that in terms of state power the Chinese have the advantage over Gorbachev in that they are much more machiavellian and the idea of maintaining a strong nation-state has long since taken over from any hopes of establishing socialism. Thus, from the Chinese elite's point of view, there is very little need for Glasnost to accompany the Perestroika that has already firmly taken hold.

[Myles]

has long since taken over from any hopes of establishing socialism.

This assumes that the vast majority of the Chinese Communist Party was ever socialist in the first place. They weren't.

[Myles]

The best way, in fact, to think of the personal politics of a lot of the founding cadre of the People's Republic is "confused and ambiguous." I think a lot of them would have happily signed up for fascism, corporativist nationalism, whatever, as long as it seemed like a way out of the chaos China was under during the early 20th century.

To recount a story I know in quite some detail: one Communist who later became a regimental commander was originally a starving youth in the Chinese interior. His chief goal was to get enough to eat. One day, an army passes through the village; he joins as a way of getting enough to eat, and he later finds out that it stands for Communism, so he becomes a Communist. If the army had been Nationalist, he would have just as easily become Nationalist. Even in officially permitted histories penned by the Chinese press, the authors never shy away from mentioning that the communism of most Communist leaders was pure chance.

[CharlieMcmenamin]

Gorbachev is the man who reveals the limitations - the cliché-ness if you like - of the cliché, " all political careers end in failure".

His certainly did: the system he was trying to save through reform and democratisation - indeed the entire moral and intellectual heritage of 1917 and the very country where he was born - collapsed under his leadership. Failures don't come much bigger.

& yet, and yet...

1. The forces of Sweetness, Decency, Light and Market Forces want to remember him fondly because, at the end of the day, he lost gracefully, and didn't follow the logic of his Cold War position by sending the Red Army into the former Soviet Bloc in 1989. Hence the ritzy,bad taste(a Spice Girl FFS?) celebrations you link too. I suppose any non occurrence of nuclear war is probably worth celebration, despite this.

2. But those of us coming from a different place may also have some casue to recall him as an icon. Even though the tradition of 1917 is certainly dead it is the historic presence of occasional folk like Dubcek and Gorby in that tradition which keeps alive the idea of a 'socialism with a human face' in the historical narrative. This idea may want - to put it mildly - any obvious coherence at the moment, but it hasn't quite descended to the historical obscurity of the demands of the Fifth Monarchy Men.

[john b]

It has to be remembered that the prime motive for his reforms was to reinvigorate the Soviet state and economy, not to 'free the serfs'

Serious question: pre-Deng, had any totalitarian ruler with the nominal intention of "reinvigorating the state and economy" managed to actually do so without accidentally having a bloody great revolution explode on them (ideally freeing the serfs, but at least significantly replacing the masters)?

Certainly, international relations theory circa 2000 seemed to assume that any attempt to go from crazy tyranny to tryranny with basic human rights would actually turn into a massive revolution; the only factor worth controlling was the number of dead civilians.

[Igor Belanov]

Well, the USSR clearly went from crazy tyranny to less evil tyranny after Stalin's death. Ditto Hungary under Kadar a few years after the 1956 revolt. Do you really mean 'totalitarian' or merely any non-democratic regime?

[jamie]

Gaetulio Vargas staged a coup in Brazil in 1930, had himself ratified as president in free elections, imposed a dictatorship (the estado novo), then apparently got bored with that and reinstituted democracy; at which point he was voted into office again. Dig that, political scientists.

[Barry Freed]

Gaetulio Vargas staged a coup in Brazil in 1930, had himself ratified as president in free elections, imposed a dictatorship (the estado novo), then apparently got bored with that and reinstituted democracy; at which point he was voted into office again. Dig that, political scientists.

It’s comments like that that make me sit back and think how I love this blog, and all you fellow schlachtbummelers too; now if d2 ever gets it together and makes "Blood and Treasure Comments: The Movie" I’ll definitely buy a ticket (BTW, I probably comment too infrequently and insubstantially to warrant casting but just in case: John Barrowman-just sayin')

[john b]

Brazil is a good place for that kind of thing. I've always liked the (possibly apocryphal) quote from Joao Figueiredo, on his introduction of democracy: "those who are against the reforms, I will jail, I will crush"

[Tom Scudder]

Gorby was pretty much screwed regardless once the Saudis decided to fuck their fellow OPEC nations over.

[Tom Scudder]

But good on him for not blowing up the world and all that.

[ajay]

I wonder if Vargas is the role model that Chavez is trying to emulate? Their careers seem slightly similar.