Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to associate the National Party with this condolence motion and the comments made in the chamber today. It's difficult for anyone born post the 1980s to comprehend what the world was like pre the collapse of the Soviet Union or to convey to those who did not live through the Cold War era just how awful it was. This was a world that lived for decades on the edge of a nuclear holocaust, a world threatened by an empire propped up by twin methodologies of terror and lies, by KGB agents and armies of informants whose task it was to crush all opposition to the official party line. It was a deeply contradictory and a troubled political system. The Soviet Union was responsible for the hyperacceleration of an unhinged international arms race, and yet it could not provide even the basic provisions for its citizens on its supermarket shelves. Perhaps it was inevitable that such a system would eventually collapse, yet history shows that one man almost single-handedly precipitated that collapse, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev came to power in 1985 when he was 53 years of age. This was decades younger than most of his comrades in the politburo and a very stark contrast to his octogenarian predecessors. Gorbachev was the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union. Successor to Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Chernenko, so young was Gorbachev that in the 1980s he was given global rockstar status. Gorbachev was the leader for six short years until 1991. As General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Gorbachev embarked on a remarkable program of reform that was based on two extraordinary ideas: perestroika, the restructuring of the political and economic system; and glasnost, the end of censorship and the introduction of free speech.

Gorbachev was an adherent to Marxist Leninism, yet during his leadership moved the Soviet Union towards social democracy. His achievements included withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan, liberating the Soviet satellite states in East-Central Europe that included the unification of Germany and reducing nuclear arms. As one obituary writer in the New York Times stated last week:

Few leaders in the 20th century, indeed in any century, have had such a profound effect on their time. In little more than six tumultuous years, Mr. Gorbachev lifted the Iron Curtain, decisively altering the political climate of the world.

At home he promised and delivered greater openness as he set out to restructure his country's society and faltering economy. It was not his intention to liquidate the Soviet empire, but within five years of coming to power he presided over the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

As history shows, the economic reforms Gorbachev set in place proved to be greatly flawed. Perestroika proved a catastrophe and became synonymous with chaos, corruption and dislocation that accompanied the country's turbulent transition to a market economy in the 1990s. Privatisation resulted in vast state assets being taken over by Russian oligarchs, many of whom still control them today, while a devastating earthquake in Armenia, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster combined with, ironically, a steep fall in the price of oil impoverish the country and sank Gorbachev's popularity.

Gorbachev's time of triumph was short lived. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in recognition of his outstanding services as a reformer who greatly contributed to change for the better nature of the world's development. In 1991 a referendum confirming the breakup of nations that made up the Soviet empire was approved by more than three-quarters of those who voted, but a few months later a coup was launched against him and, during the stand-off, Gorbachev was forced to step down and Boris Yeltsin took power. This outcome was first alluded to by our own Paul Kelly in the Australian in 1987, commenting on the then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke's, visit to Russia during this time. He said:

In short, Mr Gorbachev has greater obstacles. First, he faces the political reactionaries, with a majority of the Politburo being appointees by his predecessors. Second, he faces the dead weight of the Soviet bureaucracy which only knows Soviet central planning.

The great irony of the passing of Gorbachev last week, aged 91, is that he is despised by many Russians today. As several commentators have noted, it would be hard today to find a Russian who remembers him positively, much less in the brave and heroic way in which he is perceived in the West. Many Russians, like Vladimir Putin, long for a lost empire and believe Gorbachev was the person who destroyed the might of the Soviet state. In fact, Putin has described the Gorbachev era as 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century'.

To Russian liberals, on the other hand, Gorbachev was the leader who failed to set his successor in the right direction. When he visited Australia in 2006, Gorbachev said in an interview: 'When I was in office, I never regarded Australia as just a satellite of the US. Of course, the policies of the [Australian] government could give that impression, but we regarded Australia as an important country, as a wealthy country, as a country with which we wanted to have a better relationship, and that is still my opinion.'

While the Soviet empire is no more, some of the more abominable aspects of that regime have re-emerged in recent years. Indeed, while entire empires can fall, dangerous and destructive ideologies have a habit of re-emerging. The invasion of Ukraine is in part an attempt to reverse the loss of status felt in post-Cold War Russia by the disintegration of the Soviet Union that occurred under Gorbachev. In the West, including in Australia, we're experiencing neo-Marxist novelties re-emerging in the form of challenges to personal and national freedoms, challenges to the free expression of ideas and opinions and threats to true academic freedom, freedom of religion and the right to practise your faith and bring your children up in that faith.

We on this side of parliament and, I hope, across parliament, especially in the Nationals, adhere to certain inviolable values of freedom, respect, fairness, equality of opportunity and private property rights. Mikhail Gorbachev, known as the great facilitator, was the last of the great leaders of the last century. As such, we honour his contribution to a more peaceful, secure world, as well as to individual freedom.

Question agreed to, honourable senators joining in a moment of silence.