Congratulations, 2.03.2021

Mikhail Gorbachev. Photo by Alexander Polyakov / RIA Novosti

On 2 March, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the first President of the USSR, turns 90. Yabloko leaders congratulate Mikhail Gorbachev on his anniversary and speak about the role of his personality in history.

Nikolay Rybakov, Yabloko Chairman:

– Figures of Gorbachev’s scale – regardless of how they ended up in their status – do not need praises. They are doomed to a place in history and polarised assessments in this history, and, often, to a personal tragedy. No matter how hard one may try, one can’t describe them in black or white. Nevertheless, I am grateful to the person who gave me the most important thing – a chance for freedom.

Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko:

– Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev liberated us. And he did it himself, of his own free will, we even did not ask for it. Only a few fought for freedom then, there were even fewer those who believed that such a thing was possible. He gave freedom to all of us, and what we did with this freedom was not his fault or even his concern. This is our responsibility. Actually, that’s it. In history, this happened peacefully only once and thanks to him.

Boris Vishnevsky, Deputy Chairman of Yabloko

– If Gorbachev had only wanted power, theoretically, he could have ruled the country to this day. And people would go to demonstrations with his portraits and top officials would put them in their offices. And bookshops would have been filled with collections of his speeches. But he made a different choice. Having the opportunity not to start any changes, he decided on this – and changed not only the country, but also the world.

Lev Schlosberg, member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko:

– Gorbachev is the only living politician who changed the world. The changed world is grateful to him for this and honours him as a political titan, and Russia, which grew up on the ruins of the USSR, could not choose what it was engaged with: either the great-power nostalgia for the Bolshevik empire or the construction of modern democracy.

Alexander Gnezdilov, member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko

– Today, neither me, nor people of my age, let alone the next generations, can imagine a world where as many things would be banned as there was before Mikhail Gorbachev. About half of my home library was published then, in the wake of glasnost from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Millions of people discovered a whole world that they could previously looked at only through the keyhole. This is an incredible, albeit very brief, cultural explosion. The time when Acad. Dmitry Likhachev, Yuri Lotman, Ntan Eidelman, and Sergei Averintsev were able to speak up… At this time, the world opened wide, doors opened, walls fell…  At this time Russia was looking for its true identity looking at its history.