USSR under Gorbachev Sources 1: Personality

1. Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to
Gorbachev, The University of North Carolina Press 2007; Zubok is a Professor of International
history at the London School of Economics. Zubok is a specialist in the history of the Cold War and
20th century Russia.
Arguably the central and most consequential feature of Gorbachevs personality was his remarkable
self-confidence and optimism. His ability to bounce back was extraordinary. As an individual,
Gorbachev possessed a very healthy ego and stable values. The political and social environments he
lived in (the region of Kuban Cossacks in the south of Russia, Moscow State University, and the
Politburo itself, where he was by far the youngest member) fostered his healthy selfesteem. In any
case, he had an unflagging faith in his own capacities to succeed. Flowing from this wellspring of
essential optimism, admirers say, was Gorbachevs natural liberalism and democratic instincts. In
Chernyaevs estimation, Gorbachevs natural democratic instincts had not been completely spoiled
by his long career in the party apparatus, although he acquired some pockmarks. He allegedly
suffered a genuine shock from observing the norms and mores of the top political hierarchy when he
moved to Moscow and joined the Politburo. His democratic impulse, concludes Chernyaev, remained
instrumental to his actions, despite the many transgressions and dirty compromises he had been
involved in.
2. David R. Marples, Motherland: Russia in the 20th Century, Longman 2002; Marples is a
Professor of History at the University of Alberta. He was educated at the Universities of London,
Alberta, and Sheffield. He is the author of many articles in scholarly journals and a specialist on
Ukraine and Belarus.
Gorbachev seemed to delight in meeting the public, albeit sometimes with his large entourage in front
in order to avoid awkward questions. He spoke Russian awkwardly (but then so had Lenin, his hero),
often making grammatical mistakes, but in most respects he was a much better educated and more
sophisticated leader than his predecessors (with the possible exception of Andropov). Western analysts
contrasted him with the elderly US President Ronald Reagan, and wondered whether the US leader
would be able to match Gorbachev in debate. The first example of the contrast with earlier leaderships
lay in his personal behavior. Gorbachev adopted a moral approach, choosing first to focus on
alcoholism, perhaps the most obvious social predicament, but hardly one that was new or likely to
change. In May 1985, the CPSU Central Committee issued a resolution against drunkenness and
alcoholism, raising the penalties for crimes related to alcohol, and reducing the number of outlets
selling it. At diplomatic functions, much to the horror of many delegates, alcohol was banned.
3. George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders, Cambridge University Press 2002;
Breslauer is a Professor of Political Science, at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a
specialist on Soviet politics and foreign relations and is the author or editor of 12 books.
Gorbachev knew how to get ahead by getting along. In one-on-one conversation, he was the type of
man who could "read" the orientations and preferences of his interlocutors, shift his own posture to
accord with theirs, and get them to believe that he was sympathetic to their position - even when his
goal was to change their mind. This trait served him well as he rose within the hierarchy. He greeted
many Politburo members who visited and vacationed in Stavropol in the 1970s, socializing with them
in informal settings. He managed to impress them both as politically reliable and as an intelligent,
dynamic regional leader with interesting new ideas about how to make the system perform better. As
D'Agostino pithily summarizes it, "Gorbachev's various patrons might often have been at odds with
each other, but Gorbachev seems somehow not to have accumulated enemies, not even the enemies of
his friends." (...) Optimism, passion, intensity, curiosity, egocentrism, insatiable energy, and selfconfidence - combined with risk control, prudence, and calculating other-directedness - are personality
traits that Gorbachev brought to the table as he chose his political strategy for reforming the system,
once he had the power to do so. (...)Gorbachev's political rise was likely facilitated by his combination
of demonstrated political reliability and personal dynamism, both in "selling" the system to external
audiences and in experimenting with the system to make it work better.