Given his own willingness to use violence against people in Kazakhstan, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia and elsewhere, no one should be surprised that the first and last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, says he supports Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and, in his place, would have done the same, according to Andrey Malgin, a Russian opposition journalist who lives in Italy.
But Mr. Gorbachev’s remarks, which appeared in an interview with London’s Sunday Times, call attention to his own willingness to use lethal force and “worker detachments” which all too often are forgotten, the commentator suggests, adding that he would have been better served by saying nothing (nr2.com.ua/publications/ U-Gorbacheva-ruki-po-lokot-v-krovi-publicist-Andrey-Malgin-119895.html).
Mr. Malgin points out that Mr. Gorbachev’s reign began with his use of force, including “worker detachments” of the kind Mr. Putin has relied on and also consisting of “ethnic Russian hooligans,” to suppress protests by young people in Alma-Ata and Karaganda against the Soviet Communist Party general secretary’s imposition of an ethnic Russian in place of an ethnic Kazakh as that republic’s leader. There were deaths. Two years later, in another Kazakhstan city, Novy Uzen, Mr. Gorbachev sent in the special forces to suppress another demonstration by young people. And again there were victims.
Less than a year after that, Mr. Malgin continues, when the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh petitioned Mr. Gorbachev to grant them independence from Azerbaijan, he sent into that republic another group of Soviet internal troops, where they “stood shoulder to shoulder” with the Azerbaijanis, he says.
Then, in April 1989, Mr. Gorbachev sent troops into Tbilisi to suppress Georgian demonstrations, and these troops used a new weapon to do their work. In addition to gas, they dispatched many of the protesters with entrenching tools. Sixteen Georgians died on the spot, and 250 more were hospitalized.
In early 1991, Mr. Gorbachev ordered troops to fire on demonstrators in Vilnius and Riga in a failed attempt to prevent the Baltic countries of Lithuania and Latvia from pursuing independence. (Mr. Malgin doesn’t mention it, but the Soviet leader wanted to do the same thing in Tallinn, but was blocked by the commander of the Tartu air base, Maj. Gen. Dzhokhar Dudayev, who closed air traffic over Estonia.)
Despite those who believe Mr. Gorbachev wanted to destroy the USSR, the Russian commentator continues, the Soviet president in fact was committed to using force in the name of preserving it, although his use of force probably had the unintended consequence of accelerating the demise of the empire.
The only thing that might surprise anyone is that Mr. Gorbachev delayed so long in making his declaration of support for Mr. Putin’s Anschluss, but Mr. Malgin says there is a likely explanation for that: the former Soviet leader probably didn’t want to offend his Western supporters but now has concluded that for him that isn’t as important as not offending Mr. Putin.
In response to Mr. Gorbachev’s statement, the Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry has put him on a watch list of those banned from entering Ukraine. More than that, Kyiv has asked that the European Union impose the same restrictions on his travel to any member country and to impose other sanctions on him.
Mr. Malgin says that if he were in Mr. Putin’s place, he would have responded to any question about Crimea “with humor.” After all, he could point out that he was at Foros in Ukraine when the August coup occurred and he could simply express his “gratitude” for the support he received from the people on the peninsula.