MediaWatch: January 1990
Table of Contents:
Janet Cooke Award: Gorbachev's Time
In his January 1 Letter to Readers, Time Managing Editor Henry Muller attempted to convince subscribers that the Man of the Year "is not our version of the Nobel Peace Prize nor an attempt at canonization." But by the end of the special Man of the Decade section, Time had beatified, canonized, and worshiped the Soviet leader -- "a hero" -- 20 times over. "Somehow, confining our choice to 1989 seemed inadequate, and thus we named Gorbachev 'Man of the Decade.'" Thus, Time wins this month's Janet Cooke Award.
The title said it all: "Gorbachev: The Unlikely Patron of Change." Senior Writer Lance Morrow summed up the decade: "The 1980's came to an end in what seemed like a magic act, performed on a world-historical stage. Trapdoors flew open, and whole regimes vanished....The magician who set loose these forces is a career functionary, faithful communist, charismatic politician, international celebrity and impresario of calculated disorder named Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev."
The Soviet leader may be "better" than his Stalinist predecessors. But is he "the force behind the most momentous events of the '80s"? Morrow, Senior Writer Bruce Nelan, Special Correspondent Michael Kramer, and Editor-At-Large Strobe Talbott had an array of reasons to justify the increasingly liberal newsweekly's choice.
Personal Style and Philosophy. Morrow described the Soviet leader as "the Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud of communism all wrapped in one," as "a sort of Zen genius of survival," and "simultaneously the communist Pope and the Soviet Martin Luther." Kramer outlined his achievements: "He has embraced Christian values of humanity ...and declared freedom of religion to be 'indispensible' for renewing the Soviet Union. Then, in early December, he became a respectful if not quite penitent pilgrim." All this, in Kramer's view, made Gorbachev a superstar: "As an international figure, Gorbachev is a world-class leader -- with no one else in his class."
But Gorbachev, an avowed atheist, has not accepted Christian values, but acquiesced to them. He still remains antagonistic to freedom of religion in the Ukraine, the Baltic states, and throughout his empire. If greater personal and religious freedom is noteworthy, credit the Soviet people, or the Vatican, or the Pope -- but not Gorbachev.
Democratic Initiatives. Nelan's article was aptly titled "The Year of the People," but early on he dismissed the theme. The subtitle read: "A Catalyst For Reform From Moscow To Bucharest, Gorbachev Has Transformed The World." He claimed: "What were long called, and accurately so, the satellites, the captive nations of Eastern Europe, are defecting en masse to the West. They are doing so because Gorbachev is letting them." But wasn't it really Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel who brought their countries to where they are today? Wasn't the spark of freedom in Romania ignited by the thousands of average citizens who took to the streets -- and died -- just a few weeks ago?
Turning to Soviet reforms, Nelan credited Gorbachev with "sweeping changes" in the realm of "free expression and democratization." One of the reforms was the "revamping of the legislative organs of the government....the Soviet people went to the polls to elect a new 2,250-seat Congress of People's Deputies." Nelan mentioned "Gorbachev draws the line at the formation of rival parties," that "in the absence of rival parties, some 85 percent of those elected to the Congress were party members," and that the Soviets have forcefully clamped down on ethnic groups desiring greater autonomy. Strangely, Time admitted its Man of the Decade refuses to give up his monopoly on power and has killed a number of his own people demonstrating for democracy.
Foreign Policy Outlook. Gorbachev won Time's esteemed award because they share the same foreign policy outlook. To both, the Soviet threat was a Western, right-wing delusion. Strobe Talbott viewed early Soviet expansion as a routine spoil of war: "Scenarios for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe have always had a touch of paranoid fantasy about them....Yes, Joseph Stalin 'conquered' Eastern Europe -- Exhibit A in the charge of Soviet expansion -- but he did so in the final battles of World War II, not as a prelude to World War III. The Red Army had filled the vacuum left by the collapsing Wehrmacht."
Today, in Talbott's mind, expansion is no longer in the Soviet vocabulary: "In its unrelenting hostility to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Viet Nam, the Bush Administration gives the impression of flying on an automatic pilot that was programmed back in the days when the Soviet Union was still in the business of exporting revolution."
Talbott's military theology matched Gorbachev's: "[He] is helping the West by showing that the Soviet threat isn't what it used to be -- and what's more, that it never was....The doves in the Great Debate of the past 40 years were right all along....Much of American policy now seems based on the conceit that...[Gorbachev] is both a consequence and a vindication of Western foresight, toughness, consistency, and solidarity."
Morrow summed it up in his introductory article. "Tanks vs. glasnost, the dead hand of the past vs. Gorbachev's vigorous, risky plunge into the future. Gorbachev is a hero for what he would not do....In that sense, as in so many others, the fallen Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu played the archvillain." But with Ceausescu gone, Gorbachev becomes proprietor of the reactionary stance. East European leaders have committed their nations to truly free elections. That is, all but one -- Mikhail Gorbachev. At best, then, he is rendered simply a reactive player in the changes; at worst, he may be insignificant.
Gorbachev: Man of the Decade? Gorbachev: Patron of Change? Hardly. The true Men and Women of the Decade were those millions who pushed on, despite those, like Gorbachev, who still clung to the old. The Decade's patrons of freedom in the democratic West -- Reagan, Thatcher, Kohl, Bush -- aided and contributed to their success. Perhaps in the '90s Gorbachev will join the ranks of freedom by promoting it, and earn the title Time's Man of the Decade as well. He certainly has not done so yet.
In a conversation with MediaWatch, Strobe Talbott, who supervised the entire project, acknowledged that Walesa and other opposition leaders were in the running for the award: "There were a number of contenders....There is considerable force in the argument that we could have gone in other directions." In the end, however, it was no surprise that Gorbachev won over Time editors' hearts. Talbott also claimed Gorbachev was introducing a pluralistic society, but admitted: "He hasn't gone as far as a number of East European countries have."
