Selling Gorby Short

POLITICAL ANALYSTS in the last two months have been busy writing Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's obituary. They speak of him as a man who is ready to be buried in the Kremlin wall. Gorbachev is eulogized for his achievements, as if he long ago played all his cards.

But what these short-sighted critics don't realize is that Gorbachev is yet to display his most memorable card--being defeated in the first popular election of his country.

IT IS SADDENING to witness how neglecting and tunnel-visioned these analysts can be as they try to evaluate the Gorbachev years. They seem to forget that the events that have so drastically changed the face of world politics since 1989 would not have happened in the particular way they did without the president of the Soviet Union and his remarkable approach. To name Gorbachev a "tragic, almost pathetic figure," as one of the so-called experts, Morton Zuckerman of U.S. News and World Report, recently did, is a historical blunder caused by mediocre reasoning.

Gorbachev has sought power and has enjoyed wielding it not as a narrow-minded member of the Communist apparat but with a much larger purpose. He had a great plan which none of the political leaders or analysts around the world could even imagine: Gorbachev has envisioned a world in which tolerance and cooperation would prevail over mistrust and hatred.

Gorbachev is a courageous leader who defied the old Russian saying, "The czar wishes but the boyars will not allow." Gorbachev imposed his will on the boyars. He built a totally new view of international ethics which debunked the theories of realists like Henry Kissinger, who claim that all we owe foreigners is the minimal obligation of preserving the order that avoids the chaos leading to nuclear war. Instead of pursuing that amoral policy, Gorbachev led the world through one of the most important changes in the course of history with a minimum of blood loss.

The second aspect the narrow-minded analysts seem to neglect is that Gorbachev had no obligation to act the way he did. He could have well continued with the traditional "closed book" Soviet foreign policy of the long Cold War years. Before Gorbachev came to power in 1985, even the most celebrated periodicals on international relations frequently published articles praising how well the Soviets were doing economically. The world knew nothing about the truth since nobody could penetrate into the closed society controlled by the Kremlin's fear-based authority.

By introducing glasnost, Gorbachev chose to lead his nation into the untidy, antagonistic, uncomfortable, but proud and encouraging prospect of open horizons. He did not make the Soviets lose the Cold War. He ended it. He gave his country the hope of an exciting new society--a more just and more efficient one--that would take its rightful place in the family of nations it fled in 1917.

To revive the credibility of fear, the Moscow Eight, a second-rate group of thugs, had to use tanks. Yet for the first time in Soviet history, their tanks were directed not against a competing power elite within the Soviet Union, but against the people themselves. That alone is enough to comprehend the effect Gorbachev had on the course of history.

It is true that Gorbachev will ultimately be rejected by his nation in a free election, and that Russian Republic President Boris N. Yeltsin, emerging as the hero of a new Russian Revolution, could easily take over. Yet while Yeltsin performs a useful function as a radical benchmark against which Gorbachev's reforms can be measured, it is far from clear what his popular brand of leadership and his simplistic platform could do to meet the country's needs at this critical juncture. Yeltsin's rash behavior and undemocratic instincts could turn out to be huge obstacles as he prepares to face the tough job of governing.

DESPITE CHARGES of authoritarianism, Gorbachev's record in office entitles him to ask for the necessary authority to enact a reform program that eventually should employ the creation of a market economy in the Soviet Union and the establishment of a new federation based on consent rather than coercion. If he should be faulted, it would be on one point: his boundless confidence and ambition to harness his country's potential has led him to ignore an essential aspect of politics--that human beings do not always react the way one believes they will when designing programs for them.

The decade of the 1990s will be a period of turmoil and crisis in the Soviet Union. If Gorbachev prevails, he will continue to change his country and the world profoundly. If he does not, he could lose power to another leader. But rather than a defeat, this would be the ultimate triumph of the Gorbachev era. He would set an example for a democratic future in the Soviet Union by accepting an orderly transition of power.

In either case, his personal imprint on the age will remain. Gorbachev is above all a source of inspiration for the defenders of liberty, of change without bloodshed, of trial and error, and thus of people who try to unlock the hitherto closed doors into an open future.