Former Soviet leader to speak at UC Irvine

Alicia Robinson

While Mikhail Gorbachev’s accomplishments may not be recognized in

the country he once led, the former president of the Soviet Union and

Nobel Peace Prize laureate will be honored at UC Irvine tonight as

the first recipient of an award that will bear his name.

Gorbachev will speak at the university and then be presented with

the inaugural UCI Citizen Peacebuilding award, said Paula Garb,

professor of anthropology and a founder of the UCI Citizen

Peacebuilding program.

“It’s for all the work he’s done since he’s been in office as a

private citizen continuing to work for disarmament and environmental

issues, both from nuclear weapons and other sources of damage,” Garb

said.

In the future, the award will be rededicated to bear Gorbachev’s

name, Garb added.

The former Soviet leader will discuss his ideas about enhancing

“global glasnost,” or openness and cooperation among nations, as well

as eliminating nuclear weapons and addressing environmental problems

around the world, Garb said.

In many countries, Gorbachev is a hero for his part in ending the

Cold War and bringing down the Soviet Union, but not all his reforms

had the effects he intended, UCI political science professor Patrick

Morgan said.

“The result is a Russia with a much lower standard of living, that

is a much less important country in the world than it used to be, so

his popularity at home is nil,” Morgan said.

Gorbachev worked his way up through the Communist party, which was

beginning to decay when he became its leader in 1985, Morgan said. He

was expected to reform the Soviet government by introducing some

elements of democracy and free enterprise. Among his key reforms were

reducing censorship of ideas and information coming into the country

and allowing more open discussion and critique of the government than

before.

“We celebrate him in the West because he took very important

steps, initiatives that led to the end of the Cold War, and he

embraced the end of the Cold War from very early on in his career,”

Morgan said.

But not everyone accepted his reforms, and the country’s economic

changes led to loss of jobs and higher prices. The new openness

allowed Soviet states to voice their discontent with the government

and ultimately break away, collapsing the Soviet structure, Morgan

said.

“I think most analysts agree that Gorbachev and his friends didn’t

manage the economic reforms properly,” he said.

Although he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, the demise of

the Soviet Union in 1991 spelled the end of Gorbachev’s political

career, and today, Russia and many other former parts of the Soviet

Union still struggle with conflicts among ethnic groups and economic

instability.

But Gorbachev has carried on another of his key reforms in his

environmental work. Morgan said Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader

to take seriously the environmental damage caused by the

Communist-planned economy, which focused on production and output

while ignoring the means necessary to achieve them.

Now a private citizen, Gorbachev founded Green Cross International

in 1993 with the goal of preventing or repairing environmental damage

and getting nations to cooperate to disarm.

“As a citizen tirelessly working for those issues, we really

wanted to hear what he had to say more and bring him here to talk

about it,” Garb said.

This is the first award to be established by the UCI Citizen

Peacebuilding program, which was founded in 1998. Garb said the

school only learned a month ago that Gorbachev would be in the area

and would have time to speak, but most tickets for the event sold

quickly.

Gorbachev will speak at 7 p.m., and then there will be a question

and answer session. He will receive the UCI Citizen Peacebuilding

award at 8 p.m. All this will take place in the Irvine Barclay

Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. For tickets or information, call

(949)854-4646 or visit https://www.thebarclay.org.