I am not an expert, but it seems to me that what Gorbachev intended was something similar to Czechoslovakia’s failed attempt at “socialism with human face” in 1986.
That is: a socialism, but with more freedom of speech, more economical accountability of state-owned enterprises, letting people grow more vegetables in their gardens, more freedom of what clothes to wear and what books to read and what songs to sing (as long as they are not outright subversive). But still socialism.
What Gorbachev underestimated was how huge was the preference falsification. He probably suffered from the “typical mind fallacy”; he believed that socialism was fundamentally okay and Soviet Union was fundamentally okay, and so he assumed that most people believe the same thing. When he gave them freedom of speech, it turned out that lots of people, in some places the majority, hated the system with a passion. And now it was common knowledge, and there was no way to reverse that.
Some republics wanted to separate from the Soviet Union, so Gorbachev sent an army to suppress them, but then he couldn’t also send the army to suppress the anti-communist revolutions outside of Soviet Union, so he let the former satellites go.
(And then Yeltsin figured out that he could replace Gorbachev as a leader of the Russian empire by using a simple trick: officially dismantling the Soviet Union, then rebuilding it again as Russian Federation under a different leadership. As a part of that process some former soviet republics got away; it was a price Yeltsin was willing to pay.)
We should credit Gorbachev for his naive attempt to increase freedom of speech within the communist system. Not for trying to dismantle it. That was a fully unintended consequence.
I am not an expert, but it seems to me that what Gorbachev intended was something similar to Czechoslovakia’s failed attempt at “socialism with human face” in 1986.
That is: a socialism, but with more freedom of speech, more economical accountability of state-owned enterprises, letting people grow more vegetables in their gardens, more freedom of what clothes to wear and what books to read and what songs to sing (as long as they are not outright subversive). But still socialism.
What Gorbachev underestimated was how huge was the preference falsification. He probably suffered from the “typical mind fallacy”; he believed that socialism was fundamentally okay and Soviet Union was fundamentally okay, and so he assumed that most people believe the same thing. When he gave them freedom of speech, it turned out that lots of people, in some places the majority, hated the system with a passion. And now it was common knowledge, and there was no way to reverse that.
Some republics wanted to separate from the Soviet Union, so Gorbachev sent an army to suppress them, but then he couldn’t also send the army to suppress the anti-communist revolutions outside of Soviet Union, so he let the former satellites go.
(And then Yeltsin figured out that he could replace Gorbachev as a leader of the Russian empire by using a simple trick: officially dismantling the Soviet Union, then rebuilding it again as Russian Federation under a different leadership. As a part of that process some former soviet republics got away; it was a price Yeltsin was willing to pay.)
We should credit Gorbachev for his naive attempt to increase freedom of speech within the communist system. Not for trying to dismantle it. That was a fully unintended consequence.