by Olugu O. Orji

Gorbachev’s reforms were defined by restructuring and openness: two concepts highly likely to dominate President Jonathan’s proposed National Dialogue. It shouldn’t therefore be far-fetched if it turns out to be our local adaptation of perestroika and glasnost.

It is generally agreed that war is undesirable and one is not about to challenge that assertion. However, war – by devious default – delivers certain profound benefits. It was the Civil War that exposed me to the intrigues and intricacies of global politics. Finding myself a citizen of the hurriedly-formed republic of Biafra that was somewhat desperate for recognition and survival, I was not yet 10 when I became aware of an intensely bipolar world kept in constant tension by the duo of the USA and the USSR. The USA may have been ahead in the matter of cultural imperialism but when it came to the dialectics of ideology and propaganda, the now-defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the undisputed avatar.

Every policy idea was hotly debated and every piece of real estate conspicuously marked on the basis of the existing paradigms. For the 30 long months the Biafra debacle lasted, it was merely another off-shore playground for these superpowers. With the privilege of hindsight, I think it was a much livelier world in complete contradistinction to the keg of gunpowder we currently sit on.
Who could forget such characters like Nikita Sergeyevich Krushchev, Richard Milhaus Nixon, Leonid Brezhnev, Jimmy Carter, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, the inimitable Ronald Reagan and the mercurial Mikhail Gorbachev? These were men who could as easily flash angelic smiles as they could devour like lions. For me, the most colourful and enigmatic of them all is the man, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.

When he became the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, he was only 54: a revolution in itself considering that all previous occupants of the office were closer to 70 on arrival. As if to reinforce the seriousness of his mission, he came with a delectable lass, Raisa Maksomovna Gorbachev, in tow. Here was a woman as intelligent and exuberant as she was urbane. Much of the positive publicity Gorbachev garnered outside the USSR is traceable to the Raisa magic.
With the economy in tatters and public morale at an all-time low, Gorbachev inherited a deeply troubled empire. It was in a bid to shore up the USSR’s capacity to remain relevant in global affairs while improving citizens’ living standards that he inaugurated the twin initiatives of perestroika and glasnost.

Perestroika focused on restructuring the economy away from excessive government planning and control to one more amenable to market forces. Glasnost, on the other hand, sought to relax the very strict government controls over the media and religious groups and grant citizens more freedom of expression, and by extension, greater participation in governance. The grand intention was not just the revitalization of the ailing economy but also measured moves towards democratization.
Unfortunately, things did not turn out exactly as Gorbachev had envisaged. Greater openness meant that citizens became aware of facts that had, up till the time, been hidden from them. Revelations of official corruption and duplicity combining with reactions following Gorbachev’s decision to ease Soviet control over the Communist nations of Eastern Europe like Poland and Hungary became the beginning of the ungluing of the Soviet behemoth. Despite spirited attempts to slow the pace of the reforms, the small stream turned on by Gorbachev had swelled into an unmanageable deluge that by 1989 had swept away the Communist governments in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
Gorbachev was to be deservedly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the next year: the same year that saw the reunification of Germany. By Christmas of 1991, the USSR had dissolved into 15 individual republics and Gorbachev resigned from the presidency of a nation that no longer was. Gorbachev could not have remotely imagined any of these outcomes but history will credit him as one of the architects of the world as currently configured; even if it was by default.

Gorbachev’s reforms were defined by restructuring and openness: two concepts highly likely to dominate President Jonathan’s proposed National Dialogue. It shouldn’t therefore be far-fetched if it turns out to be our local adaptation of perestroika and glasnost.

Many have queried Jonathan’s true intentions, with some suggesting they may be less than altruistic. I have thought about it deeply myself and come to the conclusion that the President’s personal convictions will barely impact the eventual outcome of the dialogue. The President might be reluctant to follow the direction the dialogue will point but that would be a different matter altogether.

Those who fear Nigeria might go the way of the USSR are perfectly justified. We delude ourselves if we believe disintegration cannot happen, yet we must not on account of that possibility shirk from doing the utterly necessary. The advantage we have is that we can draw vital lessons both from nations that split and those that reunited to aid us in the arduous task of fashioning a better future.

In my opinion, the USSR failed because it lacked proper transcendental or spiritual footing, and that should never be confused with ideology. And in spiritual, I certainly do not mean religious. It is possible to be spiritual without being religious and there are very many religious people without an iota of spirituality. Nigeria is unarguably a global leader in religiosity but it is obvious we’re not measuring up on the spiritual scale.
Communism functioned on the basis of the Marxist-Leninist ideology that was just as materialistic as Capitalism that it sought to upstage. In declaring religion to be the opiate of the people, Communism banished not only the idea of God or a Supreme Being, but foreclosed any possibility of giving credence to anything spiritual. Man and Science were installed as gods: the very basis of its eventual unravelling.

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