The obituaries for Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet premier who was buried this month, are a reminder of how unresolved is the historical debate over how much credit Gorbachev should get for the peaceful end of the Cold War.

“Visionary Soviet Leader Who Lifted the Iron Curtain” was the headline in the print New York Times. To my mind, that way overstates it. A peaceful end of the brutal Soviet Communist dictatorship he headed was the last thing Gorbachev wanted. As the Russian chess champion and dissident Garry Kasparov once put it, “the peoples of the then-USSR were preparing for the overthrow of a regime which Gorbachev was desperately trying to save.”

It’s a controversy that matters for contemporary policy toward China, Iran, and other dictatorships. If the Soviet Union ended because some visionary leader emerged who voluntarily closed up shop, then maybe the best American policy toward China and Iran is to wait patiently until a Chinese or Iranian Gorbachev emerges to dismantle the tyranny. 

The reality, though, is that Gorbachev had to be forced. He was dragged kicking and screaming. He resisted stubbornly and conceded only under pressure. He stepped down only after being pushed by the power of America, its allies, and, most importantly, the people of the captive nations, including his own. That story has its own implications for present policy. It suggests that if the free world steps up pressure, it could hasten the pace of democratic change.

President Reagan had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that said, “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” Part of his generosity of spirit was giving Gorbachev some credit for the fall of communism. It was more than Gorbachev deserved.

The facts support the interpretation of Gorbachev the reluctant, not Gorbachev the visionary. He was determined to negotiate Reagan away from developing and deploying the Strategic Defense Initiative, a system that would have protected America from Soviet nuclear missiles. Gorbachev was grudging in granting exit visas for the 2 million Jews who were trapped in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev used summit meetings to lecture Reagan about America’s deep-seated racist discrimination, a communist talking point that somehow has managed to outlast the Soviet Union.

The vocal concern about structural racism is at least one way that Gorbachev managed to be ahead of his time. The declassified U.S. official notes of the May 29, 1988, meeting at Moscow between Gorbachev and Reagan have Gorbachev asserting, “If one looked at figure on unemployment of Blacks and Hispanics, on per capita income of Whites and Blacks, on access to education and health, there were big differences.”

Reagan responded that Blacks had started at a disadvantage because of slavery, but were catching up.

Gorbachev said during the meeting that “recently, the Soviets had become much more self-critical, but the U.S. had not.” Gorbachev noted that Reagan was nearing the end of his presidency. “Gorbachev said he thought the President’s successors would be more self-critical than he was. Maybe everything was not ‘alright’ (Gorbachev used the English word) in the United States, as the President’s Administration seemed to think.”

Even the term “critical” foreshadowed the “critical race theory” that has hit American headlines in recent years.

I’m not suggesting that anyone complaining about persistent racial disparities in America or tracing their causes to racist discrimination is secretly advancing a communist agenda.

The communists were not motivated by sincere, altruistic concern for the well-being of American minorities. The Soviet communists, after all, were plenty brutal toward their own minorities.

However, in predicting that the post-Reagan presidents would be more self-critical about America than Reagan was, Gorbachev sure got one right. Whether that trend of criticism will lead to American strength through self-improvement or to weakness through self-doubt is a debate just as heated as the one about the causes of the Soviet Union’s demise.