Mikhail S. Gorbachev

From Philosopedia

Gorbachev, Mikhail S. [President of the USSR] (2 March 1931— )

Gorbachev, was born to a peasant family of Russian Orthodox believers in the village of Privolnoye, near Stavropol. He studied law at Moscow State University, where he met his wife-to-be, Raisa. He married her in 1955, the same year he graduated. Their daughter, Irina, was born in 1956.

Gorbachev had joined the Communist Party in 1952, and embarked on a political career. He became the youngest member of the Politburo in 1980 and General Secretary of the Community Party in 1985. He was elected Executive President of the Soviet Union by the new parliament in 1989.

Gorbachev introduced "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring), opening religious freedom. He signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. He permitted the Eastern bloc nations self-determination, ending the Cold War as the Soviet Union collapsed. He resigned in 1991.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, and today heads a think-tank. His books include Memoirs (1996). In the 1980s, Christian rightwingers insisted his port wine facial birthmark was a "mark of the beast," while many freethinkers observed his striking resemblance to historic freethinker Robert Green Ingersoll.

When President of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev was asked by Peter Jennings of ABC News (6 September 1991) about his personal religious beliefs. He responded,

• I am an atheist. But I (and I’ve never concealed this) I respect the feelings and the religious beliefs of each citizen, of each person. This is a question of personal sovereignty, and we have done a good deal so as to, in a legislative sense, guarantee each person the right to call himself what he wants, to allow each person to select his own religion. And I wanted - but I did feel it necessary to add that I personally am an atheist.

(In the same interview, Boris Yeltsin said personally he is superstitious and sometimes goes to church services “because during the service there’s a kind of internal feeling of moral cleansing, as it were.”)

According to Svetozar Stojanovic, a Yugoslavian professor who is in the International Academy of Humanism, Gorbachev inadvertently became the great liquidator of communism.

• He didn’t want nor did he plan it. . . . He tried only to reform communism but at the decisive moments he didn’t want to try to save it by force.

Stojanovic terms Gorbachev, whose mother was Christian, a Marxist humanist. Inasmuch as Gorbachev once wrote a foreword for a Siloist publication, secular humanists muse as to whether he knew about Siloism or whether he approved of that group’s interest in “green” and “humanism.” The concensus within the secular humanist organization is that he did not.

In Free Inquiry (Winter 1997 - 1998), Gorbachev wrote about humanism:

• I believe strongly that the humanistic worldview of regarding humanity as one’s main reference point, main goal, and highest value is inherent in human nature. On the other hand, we have to admit that human nature is not one-dimensional. Coupled with the good, the humane, is the opposite. We have all come across ideas and acts that are very remote from humanism. It is conditions and social relations in which humans find themselves that are partly responsible for that. But in spite of that, we could say that antihumanism contradicts the essence of Homo sapiens. . . . The experience of perestroika was multifacted, and here I would like to single out two aspects. One is that humanistic reforms are possible even in a society that is affected, even deeply, by totalitarianism. Such reforms are recognized and supported by society and people. If we consistently abide by humanistic principles, if we do not deviate from the moral approach, we can achieve very much. And perestroika achieved very much indeed—above all, the liquidation of totalitarianism and the establishment of democratic principles in our country. Naturally, it was impossible to achieve everything we expected and strived for. The second aspect of the perestroika experience is that the authentic humanistic, democratic transformation of society is not a simple task. One collides with the forces of the past. Moreover, Russian society does not have a tradition favoring such a transformation. Then there are the complexities of the reform itself. All this holds true especially for our own experiment, and in a country that had lived many years under an antihumanistic regime. But I believe that establishing authentic humanistic values even in democratic societies is not an easy task—the deficit of humanism is felt everywhere. . . .Humanism cannot be reduced to ideas and declarations of values. Above all else humanism means activism. In the name of humanity. This is my conviction.

Some question if Gorbachev has changed his thinking. At the end of a November 1996 interview on CSPAN’s “Booknotes,” he said, “I don’t know how many years God will be giving me [or] what his plans are.” Others say he was simply “speaking down” to hoi polloi.

Raisa Gorbachev (1932-1999), his wife who died of leukemia, like her husband was a freethinker. The daughter of a railway engineer, she attended the University of Moscow and met her husband while studying philosophy. Her doctoral disseration was entitled The Emergence of New Characteristics in the Daily Life of Collective Farm Peasantry. Until her husband became General Secretary of the Communist Party, she taught philosophy at Moscow University.

{CA; E; Free Inquiry, Summer 1996}