Meeting Gorbachev
 

Director: Warner Herzog
Year:  2018
Rating: 7.0

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the great figures of the 20th century who changed the world. He was and still is a remarkable man. Because the end result was not what he hoped for he has been shunted aside and many in Russia consider him a traitor, the architect of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the world we live in today is partly due to him - the good parts. In Germany though he is still revered because of the reunification of East and West Germany - an event that many thought would never happen in their lifetimes. This documentary from Werner Herzog reflects that admiration and near hero worship that he has for the man. In a series of interviews with Gorbachev who at 87 at the time is still quite alert and reflective and some biographical information, Herzog presents him to us in a totally positive light.



Gorbachev grew up as a son of a farmer in a commune - a peasant in truth - but he did well in school and was able to get into Moscow University. Once he entered politics and the Communist Party he had a smooth glide path to the Politburo in 1978. He was a bureaucrat, an apparatchik within a rigid orthodox party that was ruling over a country that was slowly collapsing within. As he says in the interview, nothing worked any more. His career within a decaying Party makes it all the more remarkable that when he came to power as the General Secretary after a series of three old men died one after the other - Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko - he began to make remarkable changes. Domestically he began Perestroika - economic reforms - and Glastnost or openness which allowed more freedom of the press and critical thoughts.



But it was his foreign policy which changed the world. He brought home the troops from Afghanistan ending a ten year war, he met with Reagan and negotiated treaties that greatly reduced nuclear weapons and ended the Cold War and then when Eastern Europe which had been under their domination since 1945 began to push for freedom he allowed it to happen without a shot being fired. In 1991 though while he was vacationing in the Crimea an attempted coup took place by hardliners and Yeltsin stopped it and became a hero overnight and within a short period pushed Gorbachev out of power. Within a few years everything spiraled out of control under Yeltsin. The Soviet Union disintegrated with all the Republics breaking off to form their own countries, rampant crime and corruption became the norm, the selling off of government assets took place creating a class of rich mafia and Putin came to power and once again we are slowing entering into another Cold War. Gorbachev says none of that would have happened under him - it all was done too quickly - and it was his dream to bring the Soviet Union and Europe together and to eventually get rid of nuclear weapons worldwide. If only.