A look at the legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev, final leader of the Soviet Union

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Well, one of the 20th century's most consequential leaders died in Moscow.

  Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union, who sought to usher in an era of openness from behind the Iron Curtain. But just over six years later, the Soviet Union was no more, ending the defining conflict of the postwar era.

  Christmas Day 1991, the hammer and sickle, the red banner of the disintegrating Soviet Union, is lowered for the less time over the Kremlin. The last general-secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, addressed his people.

  Mikhail Gorbachev, Former President of the Soviet Union (through translator): In this situation, which follows the establishment of the commonwealth of independent states, I hereby cease to act as the president of the Soviet Union.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Gorbachev and his dying regime had survived a coup attempt a few months earlier, but the long and cold road that led to that December road was years, decades in the making, 40 years of Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, both with enough weapons to destroy the planet many times over.

  The early 1980s were among the most frigid days of the Cold War, with a new American president, Ronald Reagan, who made his name as an anti-communist. He proposed major defense increases and ratcheted up the denunciations of Moscow. And beginning with the 1982 death of longtime leader Leonid Brezhnev came two more old guard Soviet leaders. Both died in office quickly.

  Into this leadership vacuum stepped 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, unanimously elected party head in March of 1985. He was the youngest member of the Politburo and became the first and only Soviet leader born after the 1917 revolution. He set out to reform an ossified and corrupt system likely beyond reform.

  He had two main platforms, one perestroika, or restructuring.

• Mikhail Gorbachev (through translator):

  We need more enterprise, more democracy for organization and discipline. Then we will be able to bring perestroika up to full speed and give new impetus to developing socialism.

• Amna Nawaz:

  He would meet President Reagan the next year in Iceland for the first of several hugely consequential summits over nuclear weapon matters. The adversaries became allies in this effort, with Reagan's famous motto leading the way, "Trust, but verify."

  All the while, Reagan kept up the pressure, dubbing the Soviets the evil empire, and making this demand in West Berlin in front of the Berlin Wall.

  Ronald Reagan, Former President of the United States: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

  (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

• Amna Nawaz:

  In 1989, the Berlin Wall began to crumble, the death throes of more than 40 years of communist domination that would end with Gorbachev leaving office that cold Christmas night.

  He died today in Moscow. He was 91 years old.

  For more on Mikhail Gorbachev's legacy, we turn to Andrew Weiss. He served in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations at the Pentagon, National Security Council staff and the State Department. He's now vice president for studies at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank.

  Andrew Weiss, welcome back to the "NewsHour." Thanks for being with us.

  It has been said that very few leaders have — in modern history have had the kind of impact that Mikhail Gorbachev did. Do you agree with that? Is that a fair assessment?

  Andrew Weiss, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: It's a very fair assessment.

  When Gorbachev came into power in 1985, the Soviet Union was a formidable multinational empire. It had had — it had an enormous external empire in Eastern Europe. And by the time he left office, the Soviet Union was no more and the countries of Central Europe were independent.

  So, it was a remarkable mixed legacy.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Those policies we mentioned, perestroika and glasnost, what should we understand about those? What was behind Gorbachev's push for those reforms?

• Andrew Weiss:

  So, when Gorbachev took power, the Soviet Union was basically a stagnating society, which, in the eyes of the Soviet leadership, needed to keep up with the West.

  But Gorbachev unleashed these reforms, perestroika, the policy of trying to introduce new, more democratic governance and some form of a market economy, as well as glasnost, to try to open up some of the dark spots in Soviet history. It was his idea that that would somehow humanize or modernize the Soviet system.

  In the end, it proved to be the undoing of the Soviet system. It was an unreformable system, and Gorbachev didn't seem to really understand that at the beginning. He kept improvising. And, as he improvised, things only got worse. And that basically spelled the demise both of Gorbachev's political career, as well as the Soviet system itself.

• Amna Nawaz:

  How was he viewed by the U.S. at the time? How did the Reagan administration view his reforms? With skepticism?

• Andrew Weiss:

  At the outset, the Reagan administration was quite skeptical.

  But then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher helped convinced her counterpart, Ronald Reagan, that Gorbachev was someone you could do business with. And the two leaders did remarkably important work on strategic nuclear arms control. And then, when President Bush, the elder President Bush, came into office, they ensured that the Soviet empire's dismantlement in Central — in Eastern and Central Europe would be peaceful, and that those countries, including Germany, which was allowed to reunify, could go their own way.

  That was a remarkable achievement. But, at the same time, Gorbachev's policies toward the components of the Soviet Union, what were then known as the republics, really tarnished his reputation in the eyes of U.S. officials.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Andrew, a Kremlin spokesperson has since put out a statement saying that President Putin is expressing his deepest condolences on Gorbachev's passing.

  We know that Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. Do we know what the two men thought of each other?

• Andrew Weiss:

  So, Gorbachev toward the end of his life was rather a complicated figure, who didn't, for example, speak out against the war in Ukraine.

  But if you look back at some of the things he said about Putin earlier on, I'm particularly struck by a comment he made in 2011, where he compared Putin, who, at that point, was thinking of coming back into the Kremlin, in 2011, with an African dictator who had held onto power too much — for too long.

  And what Gorbachev said at that point, I think, was very poignant. He said: The only thing that's important in such situations for those leaders and the people around them is holding onto power. I believe that something similar is happening in our country right now.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What about his reputation in Russia? How was he viewed there?

• Andrew Weiss:

  Gorbachev was wildly unpopular in Russia. He was seen as a person who had basically ruined the country, had pulled it apart, had removed its ability to sustain itself. The economy was in shambles by the time he was forced from power.

  And, in many ways, the popularity Gorbachev enjoyed in the West was — is simply not — you can't find people, except for a very small number of Russian liberals, who would speak so warmly about him today.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So many events of enormous consequence during his leadership, Andrew.

  In the few moments we have left, is it — is there any way to kind of sum up what you believe his legacy is today?

• Andrew Weiss:

  I think that Gorbachev ignited seminal reforms inside the Soviet Union, as well as in the — then what was called the Warsaw Pact in the Soviet satellite countries in Central and Eastern Europe. And that is probably the single most important part of his legacy.

  His achievements at home, though, are far more complicated. And I think that we're still dealing, frankly, with the wreckage of the Soviet Union today with the horrible war that's going on in Ukraine.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Andrew Weiss from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the life and legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev.

  Andrew, thank you. Always good to talk to you.

• Andrew Weiss:

  Thank you.

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