By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, Sept. 1: The foremost Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama offered his condolences to the former USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s family, friends and supporters on Wednesday. The death of the last leader of the Soviet Union at 91 was reported worldwide on late Tuesday. “I had enormous respect for him and his efforts to introduce greater openness and transformation, as well as for his opposition to nuclear war. He worked actively to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world,” the octogenarian leader wrote to the Gorbachev Foundation from his residence in Dharamshala, adding that they had both remained in close contact.
Gorbachev worked towards reduction of arms with the US, forged partnerships with Western countries to remove the ‘Iron Curtain’ that divided Europe since WW2 and to bring about the reunification of Germany. The Dalai Lama recalled the leader’s commitment to peace after his leadership ended, “Mikhail Gorbachev was a man of vision and an exemplary statesman. Even after his retirement he continued to be committed to promoting peace and reconciliation in the world. His initiation of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates has allowed laureates and their respective organizations to come together regularly to apply their collective thoughts to bringing about a more caring, peaceful world.
“He lived a meaningful life. We should continue to keep his spirit alive by emulating the enthusiasm and determination with which he encouraged freedom and worked to create a demilitarised world.”
Gorbachev had initially set out to revise the declining communist system and to develop a union based on equal partnership between the 15 republics, where Russia and Ukraine were the most powerful. However, his reforms led to the break up of the entire union, a historical moment in Russia’s history which President Putin called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
The controversial figure’s death drew condolences from Western leaders. The US President Joe Biden called Gorbachev a man of ‘remarkable vision’, “Glasnost and perestroika – openness and restructuring. These were the acts of a rare leader, one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it.” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, referencing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, said that the last USSR leader’s “tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all”.
One Response
The world is cruel to the good people and kind to the evil ones. Great world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi was the greatest advocate of peace in the 20th century but he was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize! He worked hard to prevent the partition of India after India became independent in 1947 from British colonial rule. He was assassinated as he was attending a prayer session by a Hindu chauvinist called Nathuram Godse. President John F Kennedy, perhaps the most loved US President of all time wanted a more racially equal America but he was also assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in the prime of his life and at the height of his fame!
Martin Luther King, the greatest black civil rights leader was also assassinated as he gave his famous speech, “I have a dream”.
Mikhail Gorbachev was another world Statesman who was punished for showing his humanity to the Russian people who have suffered grievously under brutal Bolshevik totalitarianism since 1917. It seems he gave thought to the well-being of humanity by reducing nuclear weapons by taking initiatives like MAD (mutually assured Destruction) talks with the Reagan administration. His breezy advocacy of glasnost and perestroika were the highlights of his presidency in the nineteen eighties when the world was lurching towards a catastrophic nuclear Armageddon. It was a real threat that was about to be unleashed anytime during the reign of Leonid Brezhnev and Andropov. Thank goodness, the sudden death of Andropov ushered in the presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev which saved the world from nuclear Armageddon. The Berlin Wall which had divided Europe into two camps of NATO countries and Warsaw Pact countries came down and the world heaved a sigh of relief! There was genuine excitement about the possibility of real peaceful co-existence among the ideological foes. It was one of the most memorable era of the fading twentieth century. However, the man who engineered this colossal change lost his job while a drunk called Boris Yeltsin presided over the disintegrated Soviet Union which was now reduced to just Russia. While Gorbachev was lionised in the west, in his own country, he became a lonely figure who was seen as the man who brought down the erstwhile Soviet Empire.
He may have unwittingly contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union but he gave lease to the another megalomaniac Stalinist regime in communist China.
From the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Chinese communists learned to tighten their grip on the unfortunate people of China and occupied territories like Tibet and East Turkistan. They saw that opening up was fraught with danger and the only way for the regime to survive was to keep a tight grip and clamp down on any dissent. Communist China became paranoid with protests and dissent especially in its occupied territories like Tibet and thus began a saga of total repression and ruthless oppression of the Tibetan people and suppression of religious freedom, human rights and ethnic identity. They saw in the Soviet collapse that giving rights to the nationalities to retain their religious, cultural rights and ethnic identity was the root cause of the dismemberment of the USSR. That is why in occupied Tibet, all semblance of Tibetan identity, religious freedom and human rights are snuffed out. The CCP is erasing Tibetan language, culture, identity and dismantling Buddhism by Sinicizing it in order to homogenise it with Chinese belief system. The paranoia of being seperate from the Chinese has gripped the CCP leadership to the extent of committing genocide in Tibet and East Turkistan by bulldozing the culture, language and identity of Tibet and East Turkistan. They even did away with nationality designation when describing the so called minorities. Now, they are using the word “ethnic” like “people of Tibetan ethnicity”. Before the collapse of the USSR, like the Soviets, they also used to call “Tibetan nationality” when they talked about Tibetans.
However, much as they try, it’s not possible to keep a people oppressed for ever! The disintegration of the Soviet Union was soon followed by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and that triggered the disintegration of Yugoslavia!
Today, Scotland is lurching towards independence after 315 years within the United Kingdom. The parliament of England and Scotland passed a law for the creation of the United Kingdom in 1707 which was done voluntarily and thus mutually binding agreement. If that is not enough to keep them together, keeping occupied territories under the jackboot of a totalitarian hell hole will hardly stand a chance!