Mikhail Gorbachev

Archie BROWN

pp. 216-235

in: Steven Casey, Jonathan Wright (eds), Mental maps in the era of détente and the end of the Cold War 1968–91, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

Mikhail Gorbachev was not a leader whose political outlook was formed and fixed at an early age. Although some of his basic beliefs, values and political instincts can be traced back to his childhood, he had an unusually flexible and open mind by any standards, and especially for someone who made his career climbing every step of the ladder to the top of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). His way of looking at the world — his mental map — was still changing even while he occupied the highest post in the land as party General Secretary and, subsequently, as the first and last executive president of the USSR. Before Gorbachev reached the Olympian heights of the Kremlin, however, he underwent life-altering experiences along the way, some of them harsh and harrowing, that played distinctive roles in moulding his outlook. The evolution of his mental map can be understood only by contextualizing it in these decisively important events of his childhood, youth and subsequent life, each of which contributed enormously to the making of a radically reformist — and remarkably pacific — Communist leader.

Cited authors

Gorbačev Michajl