How Gorbachev's successes and failures foretold the tragedy of modern Russia

This was Gorbachev’s tragedy: He thought he could make the Soviet Union more Western—letting in free ideas and free markets—while retaining the Communist Party’s grip on its politics. But the Party couldn’t survive the shocks; it couldn’t be thoroughly reformed without falling apart. This was the lesson that other authoritarian leaders, especially in China, learned by watching from afar: reform the economy first, not the politics. They later learned they could reform the economy without bothering to change politics—at least for a while (we will see, someday, for how long).

The turning point for Gorbachev came in August 1991, when hardline Communists arrested him while he was vacationing at his Crimean dacha, and tried to mount a coup. The putsch failed, thanks in large part to the resistance mounted back in Moscow by masses of citizens as well as key army officers, all rallying behind Boris Yeltsin, the charismatic, radically reformist president of the Russian Federation.

Gorbachev too had played a heroic, though less public, role while in captivity, resisting the putschists’ demands to resign as the USSR’s President and sign over power to them. But by the time the putschists were arrested and Gorbachev flew back to Moscow, the country had changed more than he could have foreseen. In his returning speech, he continued to laud the productive role of the Communist Party; he expected to resume the steady course of his reforms. But Yeltsin and those who had struggled on the front lines were ready for more—the defrocking of the Party, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and deeper steps toward Western-style freedoms.