Gorbachev Wins Nobel: The Cold War's End Begins

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 1990 Peace Prize to Mikhail Gorbachev on October 15, honoring the Soviet leader for policies that were, at that very moment, dismantling the empire he governed. Glasnost and perestroika — openness and restructuring — had unleashed forces that Gorbachev could guide but never fully control, and within fourteen months of receiving the prize, the Soviet Union would cease to exist. Gorbachev had risen to power in March 1985 as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the youngest Soviet leader since Stalin. He inherited a stagnating economy, a ruinous war in Afghanistan, and an arms race that consumed a quarter of the nation's output. Rather than doubling down on repression, he chose reform. Glasnost lifted censorship and allowed public criticism of the government for the first time in Soviet history. Perestroika attempted to modernize the command economy by introducing limited market mechanisms. The international consequences were revolutionary. Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan, signed landmark arms reduction treaties with the United States, and — most remarkably — refused to use military force when Eastern European nations began breaking free of Soviet control in 1989. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and Soviet tanks stayed in their garrisons. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany all shed their communist governments within months, and Gorbachev let them go. The Nobel Committee praised his "leading role in the peace process" and his contribution to "dramatically changing" East-West relations. At home, the award was met with ambivalence. Many Soviets blamed Gorbachev for economic chaos, empty store shelves, and the loss of superpower status. Conservative hardliners would attempt a coup against him in August 1991, and while it failed, the aftermath accelerated the Soviet Union's dissolution. Gorbachev resigned on December 25, 1991. History's verdict remains divided: reformer or destroyer, visionary or naïf, the man who ended the Cold War peacefully or the man who lost an empire.