On March 2, 1931, a new life was ushered in by a peasant family in the southern Soviet city of Stavropol, and the head of the family looked at the newborn child with joy and a hint of sadness, when the Soviet Union was starving, and the neighbors in the village sometimes starved to death.
For the time being, I can't manage so much, first give the child a name, just call it Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the boy's parents, at this time no one realizes what this name will bring to the Future Soviet Union.
In 1942, the Soviet-German War broke out, and in response to this sudden war crisis, the Soviet Union soon issued an order for the general mobilization of the whole people, calling on the whole country to participate in production to ensure supply on the front line.
In order to support his homeland, Gorbachev followed his father to work on the farm at the age of 15, and two years later, because of the young lad's outstanding performance, the farm awarded him the Order of the Red Banner of Soviet Labor, which was naturally a supreme honor for him who was not yet twenty years old, and this medal also opened up a completely different path for his later life.
Like other famous politicians, Gorbachev loved to learn since childhood, and in the hard work of the farm, he always insisted on studying in his spare time. In this way, he was successfully admitted to Moscow University, one of the best universities in the Soviet Union, to study law. At that time, the legal department was nothing less than a stepping stone for the political life of young Soviet youth, and this brick also paved Gorbachev's political path.
Gorbachev, who still had excellent grades, gradually matured in his university studies. After graduation, Gorbachev returned to his hometown of Stavropol Krai and officially began his political career in his birthplace.
He first worked in the local Communist Youth League and served as deputy propaganda minister of the Frontier District Committee of the Communist Youth League of the Soviet Union in his hometown. The hard-working style of study extended to his work, and this conscientious and meticulous young man soon attracted the attention of the leaders of the frontier region.
With his innate social skills and later work achievements, Gorbachev rose through the ranks in 6 years and successively served as the second secretary and first secretary of the border district committee of the Communist Youth League. A young man who had not yet graduated so short became one of the top brass of the Stavropol region.
Gorbachev showed outstanding organizational skills and oratory talent in political positions, and a fledgling political novice could speak out of the script in the face of pressing and difficult problems. Soon, and naturally, Gorbachev was appreciated by Kulakov, then the first secretary of Stavropol Krai, and was once again promoted to head of the organization of the Krai District.
It is worth noting that Gorbachev's success was also due to the fact that his ruling region was quite special. Stavropol was an excellent place for government officials, which gave Gorbachev, who held the power of the region, frequent access to the Soviet leadership, and his deep friendship with Andropov, then chairman of the National Security Council (the KGB as we know it), so that Gorbachev was able to serve as the first secretary of Stavropol Krai at the age of only 39, joining a government full of "old people".
Everything went so smoothly that later Gorbachev was trained by Brezhnev as a close confidant, considering him a very promising leader of the Krai, and after Kulakov's death, on The recommendation of Andropov, Gorbachev succeeded Kurakov in charge of agricultural work throughout the country, and was elected secretary of the Central Committee, becoming an alternate member of the Politburo in 1979 and a member of the Politburo in 1980.
After Brezhnev's death, Andropov became general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and Gorbachev became the heir of Neiding and was consciously trained.
When Andropov died in 1984, the Soviet Union, up and down, believed that a relatively young man with vigor was needed to lead the country, so Gorbachev was successfully inaugurated as general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
The country that Gorbachev inherited was not as vibrant as it had been before, and the Soviet Union was already in crisis.
At this time, the Soviet economy was already in a long period of stagnation, the people's living standards were declining, and the industrial structure was seriously out of balance. The lack of material life has also led to the intensification of social and ethnic contradictions.
The Soviet Union's economic development model was very rough, with 70% of the economic growth having to be achieved by expanding factories, increasing investment, increasing raw materials, and then expanding labor demand, and only 30% relying on intensive production and improving efficiency growth. Such a development model directly led to a large waste of labor, raw materials, and funds in the Soviet Union, and the degree of mechanization of factories was basically in place, and could only be maintained by expanding the number of laborers.
By the 1980s, the Soviet handicrafts had up to 50 million workers, with obsolete equipment, resulting in the need for 6 million maintenance personnel and 35 billion rubles in repair costs. By the mid-1980s, 115 million people were employed in various sectors of the Soviet economy, but at the same time the rate of population growth in the Soviet Union began to decline, which made the already extensive economic model face the embarrassing problem of labor shortage.
During World War II, the Soviet Union vigorously developed domestic heavy industry in order to meet the needs of the war, which also brought certain effects to the economic recovery of the Soviet Union after the war, but after the economic recovery, the Soviet Union was still immersed in the dream of heavy industry, and the national economic structure was still in a wartime state. During Brezhnev's administration, in order to compete with the United States for hegemony, he went all out to develop heavy industry and increase military expenditure, which is why we can see a Soviet Union known for its strong military strength.
However, the unbalanced industrial structure has brought about a shortage of daily consumer goods, not only the decline in quantity, but also the misery of quality, which simply does not meet the international basic demand standards for consumer goods. Domestic consumers are even more bitter about the frequent quality problems of Soviet products. At that time, the Soviet Union was rumored to be grateful for the "first half of the year to buy TV", the reason is that the rapid decline in product quality, the quality of the TV bought in the second half of the year is finished.
Under the situation of the United States and the Soviet Union competing for hegemony, the Soviet Union tried to maintain its status as a big brother in the socialist camp, forcing the socialist countries in Eastern Europe to copy the Soviet model and point fingers at the Allies.
The expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Intelligence Service in 1948; the Soviet intervention in Poznan and Hungary in 1956; the Prague Spring in 1968; and a series of other events gradually led to a gradual decline in the soviet union's national image. The old rival, the United States, has even adopted the method of suppressing oil prices to suppress the Soviet Union, whose economy depends on crude oil exports, and the Soviet Union is in the midst of internal and external troubles.
Faced with a declining situation, Gorbachev began to implement economic reforms in the hope of saving the Soviet Union.
If radical reforms are to be undertaken, there must first be a group of supporters. Because the Brezhnev period implemented the system of lifelong officials and the status of officials remained unchanged for a long time, in the 26th CPSU Congress, all the members of the Politburo were over 60 years old except 2, while there were as many as eight political commissars aged 79, and even the average age of alternate members of the Politburo was 67 years old.
Gorbachev was about to replace the elderly officials with vegetarian and conservative temperaments with promising young men. In order to smoothly carry out the reform, Gorbachev first started with the central government and then dealt with the localities, and successively removed And replaced Romanov, Grishin and other conservative top brass. Power from top to bottom was mastered and absolute majesty was established.
Gorbachev, who came out of the war years, naturally did not forget the barrel of the gun. Economic reform is the foundation of political reform, and the military can escort his reforms. In 1986, Gorbachev replaced the commander of the Far Eastern Military District with his cronies, and in October replaced half of the top defense ministry for old age and illness.
After the political situation stabilized, Gorbachev began to move towards the economy. Faced with an old economic model that had become an obstacle to development, Gorbachev adjusted the planning committee to manage enterprises and joint companies, opposed government intervention in the economy, expanded the power and functions of enterprises and companies, and let them manage themselves.
In addition, Gorbachev loosened restrictions on private enterprise, changing the previous soviet model of public ownership. The Individual Labour Law and the Cooperatives Act were promulgated successively to stimulate the vitality of enterprises and support the "privatization" of land.
Reform the pay system to link people's basic wages to labor productivity and economic efficiency. In the face of officials who had enjoyed the illegal income from excessive decentralization in the past, Gorbachev strictly rectified corruption and re-established the image of the government.
In order to change the imbalance of the industrial structure, Gorbachev proposed to accelerate the development of consumer goods production and service industries, improve the production capacity of daily consumer goods, meet market supply, and meet people's daily life needs by improving basic service facilities.
We all know that Gorbachev's reforms ended in failure, so what made this seemingly vibrant reform a Soviet tombstone?
The first is the deflection of the direction of reform. From the reform measures, we can see that the important content of reform is liberalization, but this liberalization that is relaxed for the country is gradually spreading in the ideological field. Gorbachev's reforms seemed drastic, but they were extremely unscientific, which led to the spread of liberal ideas to all corners of the country.
This is because Gorbachev one-sidedly believed that the Stalin model of the past was useless, and that the development of the Soviet Union must be based on the complete dismantling of the Stalin model, which caused the Soviet economy to take a sharp turn, but politically, effectively prevented the penetration of capitalist ideology into this powerful country.
Gorbachev's ideological liberalization was too rapid and intense, so that the emancipation of the mind did not effectively prevent and curb those malicious attacks against the Soviet Union, which triggered bad public opinion in society, and it was obvious that some remarks were deliberately attacking the Soviet Union with false reports, but they could not be corrected, which made the whole society gradually develop in the direction of anti-communism and anti-Soviet.
Economic reforms gradually derailed and turned into a capitalist coup.
In addition, some careerists began to dominate the reforms, especially Yeltsin, after winning Gorbachev's trust, began to criticize the government, took the lead in criticizing the reforms, and proposed more radical reform policies, which was supported by domestic democrats and led to a complete coup d'état in the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev's reforms did not free the Soviet Union from the crisis-ridden environment, the terminally ill Soviet Union was completely crushed by this poisonous drug, the social problems became more acute, social contradictions were also catalyzed, and the various forces in society began to use the reform to fight for power and profit, so that the final result of the late reform could only lead to disintegration.