Twenty years ago, on December the 25th 1991, without any violence and bloodshed, Mikhail Gorbachev, who was then the president of the Soviet Union and the General Secretary of the Communist Party, resigned from all his positions. When he was on holiday he was arrested and imprisoned and soon after the fall of the Soviet Union was announced!
When Gorbachev returned to Moscow, Yeltsin was head of the reformists. The Soviet communist government, which had come to power with a bloody revolution, was over without any bloodshed and was just another part of history. At the same time Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from power, the Russian soldiers raised the blue, white and red flag of the pre-communist 1917 revolution of Russia at Kremlin palace. The Soviet Union no longer existed.
A few days earlier, on December the 21st 1991, the leaders of the eleven republics of the Soviet Union, in a meeting which was held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, announced the end of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin as the president of the Russian Federation was in charge of the greatest republic of the former Soviet Union republics.
In 1999, on the anniversary of the death of Imam Khomeini’s demise, in an interview with the IRIB News Agency in Moscow, Gorbachev regretted ignoring the Imam’s warnings three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union and said: “I think Imam Khomeini’s message addressed all the ages throughout history.” He also added: “When I received this message, I felt the person who wrote it was thoughtful and cared about the situation of the world. By studying the letter, I realized that he was someone who was worried about the world and wanted me to understand more about the Islamic revolution.”
Gorbachev then described the economic and political turmoil in Russia, and stated: “If at that time we took Ayatollah Khomeini’s predictions seriously, we would not be in this situation today.”
In his interview, Gorbachev mentioned the relations between Russia and the West, and further added: “Russia’s economy was collapsing from the beginning and we couldn’t compete with the West. We withdrew from the cold war and started to have relations with other countries, but the Westerners came out victorious from this war.”
Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, had started introducing reforms and changes in the communist ideology of the Soviet Union. Political analysts and Western leaders never thought that these developments would lead to the collapse of the 70 year old communist atheist ideology. The most that was expected in those days was that the Kremlin leaders would create a new order in the communist camp with limited Soviet leadership. During those very days, on January the 3rd 1989, Imam Khomeini wrote a letter to Gorbachev, where he predicted: “It is clear to everyone that from now on communism will only be found in the world’s political history museums.”
In the same letter Imam Khomeini clearly warned the Russians about their interest in Western capitalism and being deceived by the Americans. Also by talking of deep philosophical and mystical issues he urged Gorbachev to turn towards God and religion instead of turning to Western materialism.
After listening to the message of the Imam, Gorbachev said: “I am thankful for the Imam’s letter. I will respond when the situation is suitable.” He replied to the letter and said: “We will deliver its contents to the Soviet's clergymen. We are approving the law of religious freedom. I have said before that although we have different ideologies we can still have a peaceful relationship.”
After that Gorbachev said: “In our international policies we follow one basic principle and that is respecting the freedom of choice for each person and nation. As a result, our country and our entire nation have welcomed your great revolution. The oppressive monarchy in Iran had exploited the people and used barbaric methods and had disgraced the honor of its people in order to satisfy the foreign forces. Your revolution was your nation’s choice and we do and will support their decision.”
Gorbachev also wrote in his letter: “Our nation has made their decision too and that was in 1917. There have been major problems on our way, and also great success has been achieved and serious mistakes have been made. Furthermore human rights have been violated, which we condemn and will try to deal with. Despite our problems, we have defended our achievements, because our people’s choice was correct. I wanted to inform you that the issue of freedom of choice is also a daily concern of today’s world. Great developments have happened in the recent world, I think we could say that we are entering a new economic and political era. There is a want to demolish chemical weapons and also to prevent countries from raging wars. But this is not a gift from the imperialists; this is the will of the nations and our time. There is no other way because the weapon race will cause human disaster. In different parts of the world, bloody conflicts are being ended.”
On March the 3rd 1989, this letter was delivered to the Imam, at Husseiniah Jamaran, by Eduard Shevardnadze, the ex-Soviet foreign minister. The Imam then replied: “Tell him that I wanted to provide you more space for maneuver. I wanted to open a door to a greater world. By this I mean the world after death, which is an eternal world for Mr. Gorbachev, and my main message in that letter was this. I hope that he’ll try again and accept this issue.”
Gorbachev wasn’t serious about the Imam’s message and the result of this ignorance was, as was written in the Imam’s letter, his fall. All the communist governments collapsed. Gorbachev faced the problems he had caused by his own reforms. The Soviet Union faced indefinite changes.
Gorbachev the man who caused the collapse of Stalin and Lenin’s heritage, was born in a small village named Privolnoye in the south of the Russian federation in 1931. His grandfather tried hard to run his farm. When in 1950, five years after World War II, he moved to Moscow for education he saw that “everything was ruined”. He studied law at Moscow State University, and there he made his way into Stalin’s cult. In 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of its state. He attracted the main supporters of the communist party to himself and in 1978 he met Leonid Brezhnev (communist party leader) and shorter than a month after, it was decided to use him as one of the main characters in the party. Andropov didn’t last long in office as the General Secretary, and after his death in 1984, Politburo elected 72 year old Konstantin Chernenko as the General Secretary of the party. Over these years Chernenko was mostly ill and so Gorbachev (his deputy) had the political power to rule the country. In March 1985, he was officially elected as the General Secretary of the Communist Party. After a while the Soviet Union used the two basic principles of Gorbachev, which were Glasnost (“Openness”) and Perestroika (“Restructuring”). Glasnost for the first time emphasized the freedom of speech for the people and the press. The second principle, however, was very difficult in practice. At first Gorbachev thought he could create a new structure by changing incompetent officials with efficient replacements, paying higher salaries for those with more efficiency and reducing the consumption of alcoholic drinks. Two years later he figured out that the problems were deeper than what they seemed. Gorbachev was completely successful in his relations with Eastern Europe. For a long time the rulers of these lands thought that the violence of their older brothers in Moscow had replaced the Leninist and political legitimacy, but suddenly the number one man of Kremlin palace announced that he would not support them anymore and these regimes should find a way to connect to their people by themselves. This gave rise to popular uprisings in Eastern Europe throughout 1989. This also caused the separation of communist governments in this region such as Hungry, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, one after the other.