gorbachev visits canada 1983

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GORBACHEV'S CANADA STOPOVER STIRS MEMORIES OF FERTILE '83 VISIT

OTTAWA, MAY 28 -- When Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev steps off his plane here Tuesday for a 36-hour layover and meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, he may experience a moment of nostalgia as his troubles at home continue to mount.

It was here where the seeds of perestroika, or restructuring, were nurtured when Gorbachev, as a relatively obscure agriculture minister, visited Canada in 1983 and held long, private discussions with then-Soviet ambassador to Canada, Alexander Yakovlev.

Yakovlev, now one of the Kremlin's most powerful figures and Gorbachev's closest ally, was winding up a 10-year diplomatic posting here that had been, in effect, a political exile for past political transgressions.

A senior Sovietologist in Canada's foreign ministry recalled that Gorbachev and Yakovlev "had quite a bit of time together" as the up-and-coming Soviet agriculture chief visited farms and meat-packing plants in southwest Ontario and Alberta, rode the Maid of the Mist tour boat at Niagara Falls and held a 4 1/2-hour discussion with the prime minister of the day, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Yakovlev, widely viewed as a chief architect of the Soviet reform drive, had developed a keen understanding and appreciation of the West, and North America in particular, as a result of his wide-ranging travels during the era of East-West detente between 1973 and 1978, said the Canadian diplomat, who asked not to be identified.

"He admired many things we do in North America. If he is the author of glasnost, and I think he is, then I think that the North America experience rubbed off. He had to have had a sympathetic audience in Mikhail Gorbachev," the diplomat said.

After the Soviets announced their withdrawal from Afghanistan and Canada reciprocated by moving to restore suspended exchange programs, the diplomat said, Yakovlev was apparently stirred to action by the heated objections of Canadian scientists to the enforced isolation of physicist and human-rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov.

"Yakovlev was the man who recommended the return of Sakharov and his wife to Moscow. The Canadian scientists had turned him 180 degrees, and he realized the importance of human rights here," the diplomat said.

Yakovlev is not scheduled to accompany Gorbachev to Canada and Washington for his summit with President Bush, Canadian officials said, suggesting that the Soviet leader prefers Yakovlev remain in Moscow to handle political tensions at home resulting from retail pricing reform and independence movements in the Soviet Baltic republics.

Ministry officials said that Mulroney, who last November became the first Canadian prime minister in 18 years to travel to Moscow, will discuss a number of issues with Gorbachev, including German reunification and other European matters, international economic developments and the social and political changes in the Soviet Union.

The two are also expected to exchange views on a restructured North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which Canada is a member. Ottawa would like to see NATO assume a wider political role, and Mulroney and External Affairs Minister Joe Clark reportedly are working on a new policy position on Europe.

Canada prides itself on being the only country that participates in NATO, the Group of Seven industrialized nations, the Commonwealth nations and the 30-nation organization of French-speaking countries. Its foreign-policy makers invariably stress that while Canada is decidedly North American, it is still part of the European establishment and does not represent a superpower threat to any country.

On Sunday, Clark said that the role of the 35-member Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe should be expanded to include talks on conventional-arms reductions, and Canadian officials have said they believe that the CSCE is the best framework for Soviet participation in a new Europe. Gorbachev said in Moscow last week that the Soviet Union would review its policies on European arms control and security negotiations, including CSCE, if a reunited Germany were allowed to join NATO.

Officials here said that Mulroney and Gorbachev are also likely to talk about NATO's new generation of nuclear weapons and the continued testing of cruise missiles here.

The Arctic environment will also be discussed, officials said, particularly Canada's concerns over Soviet plans to renew nuclear-weapons testing in 1993 on the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, between the Barents and Kara seas. The Canadians have expressed fears that underground nuclear explosions may vent radioactive debris into the atmosphere.

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In 1983, Gorbachev took a stroll in small-town Ontario that helped shape the future of the Soviet Union

On May 19, agriculture minister Eugene Whelan was late for dinner — making it possible for a Politburo member and the Soviet ambassador to take a walk that would change both their lives

Written by Jamie Bradburn

Sep 2, 2022

Soviet Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev (right) and Ambassador Alexander Yakovlev visit the House of Commons on May 18, 1983. (Chuck Mitchell/CP)

When Eugene Whelan passed away in 2013,  a  Windsor Star  editorial  observed, “He was folksy, flamboyant, and colourful. He was the farmer in the iconic green Stetson. He was blunt and rough around the edges. At times he was the antithesis of all things politically correct. And, while nobody said it in so many words, he was also the guy who made being minister of agriculture seem almost sexy.”

Over his 12-year run (with a brief break during Joe Clark’s short-lived government) overseeing Canadian agricultural policy, Whelan’s most significant moment in world history may have come when he hosted a Soviet delegation for dinner at his Amherstburg home on May 19, 1983. His delay in getting out of Ottawa that day allowed two of his guests — his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev and ambassador to Canada  Alexander Yakovlev  — to  take a long walk  at the back of his property. The conversation they had then would shape the destiny of the Soviet Union.

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At the time of the visit, 52-year-old Gorbachev was a rising star. Two years after he’d been named to head the Soviet Central Committee’s agricultural portfolio in 1978, he received full member status within the ruling Politburo. Ailing General Secretary Yuri Andropov saw Gorbachev as a lieutenant who could fight the corruption that had stifled the country during the later years of Leonid Brezhnev’s reign. Gorbachev would be only the second member of the Politburo to visit Canada (former premier Alexei Kosygin travelled here in 1971).

A conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev (2005)

Yakovlev played a major role in arranging the visit. His ambassadorship, which stretched back to 1973, was a form of exile: he’d been stripped of his duties as propaganda chief for publishing an article criticizing antisemitic Russian nationalism. His reformist views deepened as the USSR stagnated, and he worried about the over-militarization of Soviet society. 

Following Pierre Trudeau’s return to power in 1980, Yakovlev lobbied senior Canadian government officials to visit the Soviet Union, even though relations between the countries had soured following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978. He focused his efforts on Whelan and succeeded in arranging a trip in 1981. During an hour-and-a-half-long discussion, Whelan was impressed by Gorbachev’s ideas for improving Soviet agriculture practices and policy. An invitation to bring Gorbachev to Canada in the spring of 1983 was accepted.

Prior to the visit, Yakovlev spent over a week in Moscow preparing Gorbachev for every contingency he might face in Canada. The trip would occur in the aftermath of two historic speeches delivered by United States president Ronald Reagan in March 1983: one described the USSR as an “ evil empire ,” and the other introduced the concept for the lasers-on-satellites defence proposal that became known as “ Star Wars .” 

Photo from the May 21, 1983, edition of the Windsor Star of one of Eugene Whelan and Mikhail Gorbachev's stops.

The Soviet delegation landed in Ottawa during the afternoon of May 16. “On the tarmac,” Whelan recalled, “Mikhail greeted me with a great big Russian bear hug.” The next day began with Gorbachev addressing a meeting of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence. He attempted to humanize the Soviet side of the Cold War, blamed the Americans for repeatedly raising the temperature, and proposed closer relations between Canada and the Soviet Union. “The distance between the continents,” he declared, “should not be measured by the minutes of flight of ballistic missiles but by the closeness of our human values, the most basic of which is life itself.” 

He avoided the mistakes of previous Soviet officials, who’d wallowed in dogma and bragged about the superiority of their form of Communism. During the Q&A session, Durham-Northumberland MP  Allan Lawrence , who had served as solicitor general in Clark’s short-lived government, asked why the Soviets planted so many spies in their embassies, noting that 40 diplomats and staff had been expelled from Canada since the end of the Second World War. Gorbachev responded by declaring that Lawrence was “a victim of the spy mania disseminated by the U.S.A.”

On May 18, Gorbachev had a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Trudeau, during which they discussed the rising tensions with the Americans, arms control, and disarmament. Yakovlev biographer Christopher Shulgan describes their conversation as having been testy but frank — “the sort of a dialogue East and West needed to have more often.” Gorbachev also met separately with interim opposition leader Erik Nielsen and NDP leader Ed Broadbent. He attended that day’s question period, a spectacle he compared to a circus. In a rare courtesy, translation of the debate was provided in Russian instead of the usual English or French. 

Photo from the May 20, 1985, Windsor Star of Liz Whelan greeting Gorbachev at her home .

The original plan for May 19 was for Whelan to fly to Windsor with the delegation and then travel with them to his home for dinner. But Whelan was tied up with government business, so the others flew ahead without him. The delegation arrived in Windsor at 6 p.m. To avoid drawing attention, the procession (a limo for Gorbachev and a bus for the rest) took dirt roads through Anderdon Township to the Whelan home on Front Road. The RCMP kept reporters away from the delegation when they arrived, then barred them from the driveway. “They just want to relax,” RCMP officer Mike Kenny told the  Windsor Star . “There’s nothing heavy duty going on here.”

Whelan’s wife, Liz, greeted the delegation and directed them, along with other local guests, into the basement. Yakovlev asked whether he and Gorbachev could go outside for some air. “I don’t remember what I said, but I know I was polite,” Liz told the  Toronto Star  in 2010. “They were glad to be here, but they wanted to go for a walk.” She directed them to the backyard, where they followed a laneway bordering corn and soybean fields. During their walk, the men shared their frustrations with the Soviet system, ranging from diplomatic mistakes to the long-term consequences of suppressing the public’s freedoms. “We took a long walk on that minister’s farm and,” Yakovlev later recalled. “Both of us were just kind of flooded and let go. I somehow, for some reason, threw caution to the wind and started telling him about what I considered to be utter stupidities in the area of foreign affairs.”

As Yakovlev opened up, so, too, did Gorbachev. “He frankly talked about the problems in the internal situation in Russia,” Yakovlev observed. “He was saying that under these conditions, the conditions of dictatorship and the absence of freedom, the country would simply perish.” They discussed their sense of how backward the Soviet Union was compared to the West in most areas, how the country could benefit from elements such as an independent judiciary, how dissidents should be allowed to speak more freely, and how to reform the agricultural system to allow for private ownership. “It was a conversation about the Canadian experience — about using it as an example,” Gorbachev told the CBC years later.

Whelan finally arrived around 8 p.m. Previewing the dinner, the  Windsor Star  noted that the Whelans tended to serve unpretentious meals to dignitaries. “When guests drop in for dinner at Liz Whelan’s table,” the paper observed, “they’d better not expect anything TOO fancy — even if they are top ranking officials of the Soviet government.” As there were 60 people to feed, including local politicians and residents, meal prep was left to caterers. “There’s no household that has dishes for that many people,” Liz Whelan told the  Windsor Star . “I can’t very well use paper plates.” Their daughters (one of whom, Susan, would later become federal minister of international co-operation) performed serving duties. The menu consisted of prime rib, local vegetables, baked potatoes, salad, soup, Canadian cheeses, and assorted desserts. Guests could sip locally produced beverages from Amherstburg (Seagram’s), Harrow (Colio wines), and Windsor (Hiram Walker). 

During his toast, Whelan predicted that Gorbachev would become the next Soviet leader. The move, according to Shulgan, was “quite a gaffe, given the Politburo’s sensitivity to any sign of disloyalty or ambition.”

The delegation spent the night at the Holiday Inn on Windsor’s waterfront — although, for security reasons, that fact was not publicly disclosed. (The hotel, nicknamed the “Plywood Palace” by locals for its flimsy wooden construction, burned down prior to its expected demolition in 1999.) 

A plaque at the King's Navy Yard Park in Amherstburg honours Eugene Whelan for his general accomplishments. (Jamie Bradburn)

May 20 saw a full schedule of stops, starting with a tour of the Hiram Walker plant in Windsor. From there, it was off to Leamington to visit the Sun Parlour Greenhouse Growers Co-Operative. According to Whelan, that stop stuck in Gorbachev’s mind throughout the rest of the trip. “As Gorbachev was leaving, [greenhouse owner Gino] Pannunzio shook his hand and said, ‘I’m just a little tomato farmer, and I know you’re from a big country, but I don’t think my wishes are any different from yours or those of your people. I hope and pray for peace for you and your people.’” They also visited the Heinz plant in Leamington, lunched at the Roma Club, and stopped at a dairy farm near Woodslee before flying to Toronto for a dinner hosted by the provincial government. 

The next day’s itinerary included stops at the Schneider’s meat plant in Kitchener and Bright’s Winery in Niagara Region. When Gorbachev wondered whether his hosts were showing him premier production facilities rather than regular plants, Whelan showed him a supermarket flyer to prove that the items he saw being made were not just for the wealthy. When this failed to convince Gorbachev, Whelan asked their bus driver to pull into the next supermarket along their route and got the store manager to provide a full tour. After another night in Toronto, the delegation flew to Alberta to wind down the trip. 

At all stops, Gorbachev had no shortage of questions, especially concerning expenses and revenue. “Dapper, soft-spoken and completely at ease with farmers and businessmen he encountered on the day-long tour, Gorbachev soaked up a wealth of information on area food production,” the  Windsor Star  observed. 

Interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev

As for how the trip affected Gorbachev, Shulgan concluded that “he realized how far ahead the Western world was, and he saw how the personal ownership of land and the proceeds of labour could motivate a work force.” By watching how Canadian society and production worked, he could consider how elements of the West could be used to reform the Soviet Union.

Near the end of the trip, Gorbachev asked Yakovlev whether he wanted to return home after a decade away. Shortly after, the ambassador was appointed the head of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations think-tank. When Gorbachev assumed power in 1985, Yakovlev was a key adviser and seen as the architect of policies such as non-intervention in Eastern Europe.

Though there have been efforts to place a historical plaque on or near the former Whelan property to commemorate the evening, none has yet been installed. Summing up the visit a few weeks later in an interview with the  Windsor Star , Whelan noted how astounded Gorbachev had been by the efficiency and productivity of Canadian agriculture and how “he couldn’t get over the warmth that was in our house” during dinner. “You can’t live in isolation. You can’t live without understanding and you can’t understand if you live in isolation.”

Sources: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman (Toronto: Doubleday, 2009); The Soviet Ambassador: The Making of the Radical Behind Perestroika by Christopher Shulgan (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008); Whelan: The Man in the Green Stetson by Eugene Whelan and Rick Archbold (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1986); the March 28, 2010, edition of the Toronto Star ; and the May 18, 1983, May 19, 1983, May 20, 1983, June 4, 1983, and February 20, 2013, editions of the Windsor Star .

Jamie Bradburn

Jamie Bradburn is a Toronto-based writer/researcher specializing in historical and contemporary civic matters. 

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How a three-hour conversation at a Liberal cabinet minister's home triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union

In 1983, a then high-ranking member of the Politburo and the Soviet Ambassador to Canada gathered at Eugene Whelan's home in Amherstburg, Ont., the rest is history

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Sometimes key historic moments occur for the most mundane of reasons.

Thirty years ago, on May 19, 1983, Eugene Whelan, the Liberal cabinet minister of the Trudeau-era who passed away this February, was late for dinner.

Mind you, this was not just any dinner. Waiting to dine with him at his home in Amherstburg, Ont., near Windsor, was an entourage of dignitaries from the Soviet Union. The two most important guests were Mikhail Gorbachev, then a high-ranking member of the Politburo and the secretary of agriculture and Aleksandr “Sashka” Yakovlev, the Soviet Ambassador to Canada.

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As Mr. Whelan’s wife, Liz, made small-talk with the visitors, Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Yakovlev decided to take a walk beside the fields of corn and soybeans. The stroll would become “the walk that changed the world,” in the words of journalist Christopher Shulgan, the author of a 2008 book about Mr. Yakovlev.

In an intense and personal conversation that lasted three-hours, the seeds of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), Mr. Gorbachev’s monumental, if only partly successful, policies that ultimately triggered the dissolution of the Soviet Union were planted. Or, at any rate, Mr. Yakovlev confirmed what Mr. Gorbachev, who would become the general secretary of the Communist Party within less than two years, already had been thinking and hearing from other advisors.

Mr. Yakovlev, who died in 2005 at the age of 81, had never wanted a decade-long assignment in Canada. He had grown up during the brutal Stalin era and had been wounded in his left leg as a young soldier at the battle at Leningrad during the Second World War. Once the Soviets had vanquished the Nazis — an event which roused his Soviet patriotism — he became a historian and also dedicated himself to the Communist Party.

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In the late fifties, he spent a year as a graduate student at Columbia University in New York City, which reinforced his negative views of capitalism and American foreign policy. But his time in the U.S. also left him with a more positive impression of freedom and democracy, even if he repressed such thoughts until much later in his life.

Once he returned to Moscow, he soon became the Communist Party’s chief propaganda minister. His intellectual bent, however, got him in trouble with Leonid Brezhnev, the tough and no-nonsense general secretary of the party. In 1972, Mr. Yakovlev wrote an article entitled “Against Antihistoricism” in which he was critical of the idealistic portrayal of Russian peasants and a “backward-glancing nationalism.”

This hard-hitting academic piece rubbed Mr. Brezhnev and his top officials the wrong way and within a year, he was exiled to Ottawa where he was to remain for the next ten years.

In Canada, he took a keen interest in Canadian politics and agrarian issues and befriended both Eugene Whelan, the green Stetson-wearing minister of agriculture, and then prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

Though Alexandre “Sacha” Trudeau has said he was “named after Yakovlev,” which is noted in a Wikipedia entry, both Mr. Shulgan and historian John English, author of a recent two-volume biography of Pierre Trudeau, point out that it was more likely that Margaret Trudeau, at her husband’s suggestion, consulted with Mr. Yakovlev whether “Sacha” could be used as a nickname for Alexandre.

At Mr. Yakovlev’s urging, Mr. Whelan visited the Soviet Union in 1982— at the time, annual Canadian wheat sales to the U.S.S.R. exceeded $1.5-billion— and met with his counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Naturally, he invited Mr. Gorbachev to visit Canada, which might have been Mr. Yakovlev’s plan all along, setting in motion the celebrated meeting at Mr. Whelan’s home.

In the spring of 1983, with Ronald Reagan in the White House, the Cold War had heated up again. Two months before Mr. Gorbachev’s arrival in Canada, the folksy American president, in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Fla., had declared the Soviet Union to be an “evil empire.”

Such rhetoric — along with Mr. Reagan’s plans for his “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative and the Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles at bases that could target Western Europe and Asia — made Mr. Yakovlev nervous.

“Somewhere between adolescence and the end of his exile [in Ottawa],” writes Mr. Shulgan, “Yakovlev went from Stalin’s acolyte to Stalinism’s nemesis, from zealous communist to enthusiastic endorser of democratic free-market reform.”

Mr. Yakvolev was not one to miss an opportunity, especially with such a rising star like Mr. Gorbachev, who he no doubt hoped might end his exile in Canada. Finding himself alone at the Whelans with Mr. Gorbachev, he decided to go for broke.

Here is how he remembered the moment in a November 1996 interview he gave at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley:

“At first we kind of sniffed around each other and our conversations didn’t touch on serious issues. And then, verily, history plays tricks on one, we had a lot of time together … and, as it often happens, both of us suddenly were just kind of flooded and let go.

I somehow, for some reason, threw caution to the wind and started telling him about what I considered to be utter stupidities in the area of foreign affairs, especially about those SS-20 missiles that were being stationed in Europe and a lot of other things. And he did the same thing.

We were completely frank. He frankly talked about the problems in the internal situation in Russia. He was saying that under these conditions, the conditions of dictatorship and absence of freedom, the country would simply perish.

So it was at that time, during our three-hour conversation, almost as if our heads were knocked together, that we poured it all out and, during that three-hour conversation, we actually came to agreement on all our main points.”

It is curious that in recounting his 1983 visit to Canada, Mr. Gorbachev in his memoirs published a year earlier does not mention the conversation with Mr. Yakovlev, but dwells instead on a stop he and Mr. Whelan made at a large cattle ranch in Alberta.

He found the visit, he recalled, “inspiring” and educational in contrast to what he later referred to as the “decline in economic incentives and inefficient use of resources” in the stagnant Soviet agricultural system.

Nonetheless, Mr. Yakovlev must have said something right. Because two weeks after his chat with Mr. Gorbachev in Amherstburg, he was invited home to take charge of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

As soon as Mr. Gorbachev became the head of the Soviet Union, following the death of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985, Mr. Yakovlev became of one of Mr. Gorbachev’s key advisors and worked closely with him in implementing perestroika and glasnost.

He even got his old job back as the propaganda minister and became a member of the Politburo. But this time, he fought for as much freedom as the declining totalitarian regime could bear.

Even though Mr. Yakovlev later broke with Mr. Gorbachev and founded the Democratic Reform Movement, quitting the Communist Party, in August 1991, Mr. Gorbachev remembered Mr. Yakovlev’s historical significance at the time of his former advisor’s death.

“We were able to bring the country to the point of no return [with the democratic changes],” Mr. Gorbachev told the New York Times. “And we did that together.”

Hailed, perhaps with some exaggeration, as the “godfather of glasnost,” Mr. Yakovlev died an unhappy man. He saw in Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, a danger to the democratic movement he cherished.

So disillusioned was Mr. Yakovlev that he refused to vote in the 2004 Russian presidential election, which he regarded as a Soviet-style election with the outcome decided in Putin’s favour before the ballots were cast.

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Winnipeg historian Allan Levine’s most recent book is King: William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Life Guide by the Hand of Destiny . His next book, Toronto: A Life and Times , will be published in 2014.

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Man in the green Stetson brought verve and sass to public life during Trudeau era

This article was published more than 11 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

Eugene Whelan is seen in a November 2006 file photo. Ian Barrett/The Canadian Press

Pierre Trudeau may have contemplated his political future during a walk in the snow, but it was his long-serving agriculture minister, Eugene Whelan, who helped initiate the fall of the Soviet Union with a stroll in the garden of his Amherstburg, Ont., farm. In the late 1970s, Cold War rivalries had gone back into a deep freeze: Ronald Reagan was promoting a Star Wars version of anti-ballistic missiles from the White House, a belligerent Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street and the Soviets had marched into Afghanistan, precipitating a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics by a slew of Western countries.

Nearly a decade earlier, the aging leaders of what Mr. Reagan liked to call the "evil empire" had ostracized a peacenik, one-legged war veteran named Alexander Yakovlev by making him ambassador to Ottawa – the Soviet version of sending somebody to Coventry.

In the Canadian capital, Mr. Yakovlev made friends with an unlikely pair of politicos. The first was the ascetic Mr. Trudeau, who had been aggressively pursuing The Third Option in Europe and Asia, an alternative diplomatic policy to pandering to American hegemony. They chatted about novels by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, according to an article by Christopher Shulgan in Saturday Night magazine.

The ambassador's second pal was Mr. Whelan, the folksy advocate for women and champion of farmers, who connected with him on all matters agricultural – back in the days when Canada shipped a lot of wheat to the then Soviet Union.

The friendship between the Soviet "exile" and the Canadian cabinet minister led to Mikhail Gorbachev, then a junior member of the politburo and in charge of managing the Soviet farm system. After a meeting in Moscow in 1981, the engaging Mr. Gorbachev accepted the gregarious Mr. Whelan's invitation to tour Canadian farming operations in May, 1983. He was the most senior Soviet official to visit Canada in a dozen years.

That 10-day cross-country trip included shopping in grocery stores, tours of manufacturing plants, visits to Alberta ranches, a one-on-one with Mr. Trudeau – the first Western leader Mr. Gorbachev had ever met – and tentative, and then open, discussions en route with Mr. Yakovlev about the failures of communism and the need for restructuring Soviet society and government. The key conversation took place in Mr. Whelan's backyard in Amherstburg while the future Soviet leader and his confidant waited for their host to arrive home from Ottawa.

The two Soviets ditched their bodyguards and strolled around the garden like characters in a Jane Austen novel, engrossed in private and deep discussions about what they had seen and how to apply it to their own country. Years later, Mr. Yakovlev estimated that 80 per cent of the ideas the two men discussed in Mr. Whelan's back yard were incorporated into perestroika.

At the time, few in Canada realized the key diplomatic role Mr. Whelan had played, first in giving Mr. Gorbachev an inside look at ordinary Canadian life, and then by providing the opportunity for a private meeting with Mr. Yakovlev, the man who would become known as the godfather of Glasnost.

Facilitating that meeting of minds is as integral a part of Mr. Whelan's political legacy as his shamrock green Stetson, his support for farmers and supply-management policies and his advocacy for feeding the poor of the world.

Mr. Whelan was a die-hard Liberal. "The Conservatives have the right wing, The NDP have the left wing. The Liberals have two wings and that's why we can fly," he loved to boast. First elected to the House of Commons in 1962, he served under two prime ministers, Lester Pearson and Mr. Trudeau, and is one of the remaining bridges between the young men, including John Turner, Herb Gray, Donald Macdonald and Jean Chrétien, who went to Ottawa in the early 1960s, and Justin Trudeau, front-runner in the current Liberal leadership contest.

Justin Trudeau's mother, Margaret, took a photograph of her baby son sitting on Mr. Whelan's lap in his role as Santa Claus at the annual Parliamentary Christmas Party in the mid-1970s. After Mr. Whelan died at home on Feb. 19 at age 88 of complications from heart disease and colon cancer, Mr. Trudeau tweeted: "My thoughts this morning are for my old friend Eugene Whelan. A strong voice for Canadian farmers, dear to my family. #goodbyegreenhat."

As self-deprecating as he was partisan, Mr. Whelan derided his non-existent French and his rough-hewn English by claiming: "Canada has two official languages and I don't speak none of them." In one of his last public speeches at the Rotary Club in Chatham-Kent in 2004, he opined about the effects of NAFTA and globalization on manufacturing jobs in Ontario: "In the old days we brought the slaves to the work, but now we're bringing the work to the slave."

His loyalties were as ferocious as his feuds, including his headline-making spats with consumer advocate Beryl Plumptre in the battle to confront stagflation (a combination of high unemployment and soaring inflation) in the mid-1970s. Ms. Plumptre, an Australian-born economist who had studied under John Maynard Keynes, was best known as a high-level volunteer and the wife of a Canadian diplomat when Mr. Trudeau named her chair of the Food Prices Review Board.

In style and in ambition, she and the rough-hewn Mr. Whelan were bound to clash. He wanted support for farmers and marketing boards to set production quotas and prices; she wanted competition and lower costs for consumers. "Egg-gate" brought their rivalry to a head in 1974. So many eggs were being produced at a cost consumers were refusing to pay that food inspectors uncovered 28 million eggs rotting in warehouses.

Faced with a triumphant Mrs. Plumptre, the ever quotable Mr. Whelan retorted, "I'd like to take Mrs. Plumptre into a laying house," and was astonished when the press took him to the woodshed over his unintended double entendre.

Mr. Whelan's funeral in Amherstburg last Saturday was a meeting of the old Liberal guard. Both Mr. Chrétien and Mr. Gray gave eulogies, turning what could have been a sombre occasion into a celebration of a singular and well-loved human being. "He was passionate, committed, opinionated, progressive, hardworking ... and most of all committed to his community and his country," said Mr. Gray about the man with whom he shared an office and a secretary after they both arrived in Ottawa as rookie MPs in 1962.

For Mr. Chrétien, who was first elected a year later, Mr. Whelan was an anglophone from a similiar background, who shared his own sense of loyalty, work ethic and compassion. "He was honest, sincere, outspoken … and he was very persistent," Mr. Chrétien said in an affectionate and humorous eulogy. "It was not easy to shut him up."

Eugene Francis Whelan was born on the family farm on July 11, 1924, near Amherstburg in Southwestern Ontario. His father, Charles, was a farmer and a municipal politician, who died of cancer when Eugene, the middle of nine children, was six. For a while, his widowed mother, Frances, had to go on social assistance, but she never lost the family farm and she kept her children together during the direst days of the Depression.

Eugene, who began his education in a one-room rural school, gave up the books when he was 16 to become a welder and a tool-and-die maker. "My marks were no hell, and I was lippy," he told journalist Walter Stewart in a profile in Maclean's magazine in 1974. "In one class, the teacher made me sit at the front so he could hit me with a ruler without having to get up." That was one lesson the burly and blunt-spoken Mr. Whelan never absorbed: He spoke his mind in public and private for the rest of his life.

He first threw his hat into local politics as a trustee for the Catholic school board and then worked his way up to reeve and warden of Essex County before running as a Liberal in the 1959 provincial election. He lost that race, but found his wife in the campaign office. On April 30, 1960, he married Elizabeth Pollinger, the daughter of immigrants from what was then Yugoslavia, and a legal secretary to a big Liberal supporter.

Romance blossomed over Mr. Whelan's campaign speeches, which she typed for the neophyte candidate. They subsequently had three daughters: Theresa, Susan (who represented her father's old riding from 1993-2004) and Catherine.

Electorally, Mr. Whelan fared much better when he switched to federal politics, winning the riding of Essex, a seat he held until he retired from elected politics in 1984. Chafed that Mr. Pearson never appointed him to Cabinet, Mr. Whelan came into his own as a hard-working and popular minister under Mr. Trudeau. He appointed him Agriculture Minister in 1972 and kept him there for 12 years – except for the brief period when the Liberals were out of power in 1979-80.

After Mr. Trudeau retired, Mr. Whelan ran for the leadership, losing on the first ballot with only 84 votes, an experience he described as one of the most humiliating of his career. He then switched to Mr. Chrétien, rather than front-runner John Turner, demonstrating once again that loyalty counted more to him than career advancement.

Mr. Whelan was dumped from Cabinet by Mr. Turner, another slight in what Mr. Whelan later said was the worst year of his life. He resigned his seat before the snap election Mr. Turner called that summer and accepted a Liberal patronage appointment to Rome as Canada's inaugural ambassador to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), only to be fired by the new prime minister, Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney.

It was an ignominious political end for a man who had served his country well and faithfully, but Mr. Whelan never abandoned farmers here or abroad (heading up a number of local and international anti-famine and food management initiatives) or the Liberal Party. He and Mr. Turner pasted over their differences to join forces in 1988. "I definitely wanted him to run again," Mr. Turner said in an interview. "He was a good member of Parliament, a great constituency man … his company was sometimes difficult, but I always enjoyed it."

Although Mr. Whelan didn't throw his Stetson into the electoral ring, he did stump the countryside for his former nemesis, arguing the pitfalls of free trade in an unsuccessful attempt to keep Mr. Mulroney from winning a second landslide majority.

Mr. Chrétien, who restored the Liberal fortunes in 1993, appointed him to the Senate three years later, a honour Mr. Whelan accepted even though he had spent years deriding the unelected body. In fact, when he had to retire at the mandatory retirement age of 75, he joked that he should never have voted to impose an age limit on serving in the Upper Chamber.

Mr. Whelan leaves his wife, Elizabeth, his three daughters and his extended family.

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Visit of Mikhail Gorbachev to Canada, 1983

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Gorbachev Will Stop in Canada Before Summit

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Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will visit Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on May 29 and 30, before his summit with President Bush, Canada announced Tuesday.

Gorbachev and Mulroney will discuss developments in Eastern Europe, East-West relations, international economic issues, domestic Soviet issues and bilateral relations, a statement from the prime minister’s office said.

The visit would be Gorbachev’s first trip to Canada as Soviet head of state and as Communist Party leader. He visited in 1983 when he was agriculture minister and already a member of the party’s ruling Politburo.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater released more details of the U.S.-Soviet summit timetable.

Gorbachev’s meetings with Bush will begin with a formal welcoming ceremony at the White House on Wednesday, May 30, and conclude with a joint news conference on Sunday, June 3.

In between, there will be four formal rounds of talks at the White House, concluding Friday evening.

“We have a lot of difficult issues to discuss with the Soviets,” Fitzwater said, mentioning disputes over arms control and Soviet pressure on the independence-minded Baltic states.

Bush will be host at a state dinner Thursday for Gorbachev. The Soviet leader will reciprocate Friday with a dinner at the Soviet Embassy for Bush.

On Saturday, the two leaders will fly to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, for a day of private discussions.

Fitzwater said the Camp David talks will focus on political issues such as changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and challenges facing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

From Washington, Gorbachev will fly to Minneapolis for a six-hour stop. From there, he will fly to San Francisco.

The next day, June 4, Gorbachev will visit Stanford University.

Soviet officials also began exploring the possibility of a California reunion between Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, but no arrangements had been completed.

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Flashback Friday: Gorbachev visits Canada ahead of U.S.-Soviet weapons deal

Soviet Union leader and reformer Mikhail Gorbachev paid a historic visit to Canada on this day in 1990, where he met with then-prime minister Brian Mulroney before heading to Washington.

Archived footage of CTV National News reveals a guardedly optimistic moment from world history on May 29, 1990, as the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev paid a 29-hour visit to Canada's capital.

CTV’s then-National News anchor Lloyd Robertson called it a "low-key" visit for Gorbachev, but a big deal for the Canadian public.

"Even though no major announcements are expected, the visit is still cause for major excitement," Robertson reported at the time.

Robertson described Gorbachev as "the man who captured the world's imagination," before introducing a report from CTV’s then-Ottawa Bureau Chief Craig Oliver.

"The glasnost and perestroika show comes to Ottawa and packs them in," Oliver said in the opening line of his report, as video showed Gorbachev walking through a crowd of cheering Canadians.

For those not up on their Cold War lingo, "glasnost and perestroika" translates to "openness and restructuring," the two words Gorbachev used to describe his reform approach to overhauling the Soviet Union.

Those core tenets of Gorbachev's government made him a popular figure on the world stage in 1990, as he introduced a number of policies to move the Soviet Union away from Communism while simultaneously scaling back Cold War tensions with the United States.

Oliver's story shows Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, meeting with Brian and Mila Mulroney for a lunchtime sit-down between the two leaders. The report also shows Canada rolling out the red carpet for Gorbachev, who was met at the airport by then-Gov. Gen. Ray Hnatyshyn and a full RCMP honour guard.

In his welcoming speech, Hnatyshyn described Gorbachev as "the man who single-handedly is sweeping away the Cold War map of Europe." He also praised the Russian leader for forging new ties with the West.

Gorbachev's Canadian visit came just six months after he played a key role in the fall of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. The Soviet Union loosened its grasp on many Eastern Bloc nations during Gorbachev's tenure, and that won him a lot of support from the international community. Gorbachev also improved relations with Western nations such as the United States by inking several treaties to reduce the number of stockpiled nuclear weapons.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October of 1990 for his work.

But it wasn't all sunshine and progress under Gorbachev's watch. The Soviet economy struggled badly with Gorbachev's economic policies, and many old-guard Communist Party members were not pleased when their country began moving toward a free market system.

Those dark clouds cast a shadow over Oliver's story, even amid the jubilant atmosphere of "Gorbymania." CTV archive footage shows security personnel escorted Gorbachev everywhere he went, keeping the excited Canadian crowds at bay.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze was asked point-blank during the visit if Gorbachev was losing his grip on the Communist Party back home.

"I can't sense any weakening of the president's position, and I work day-to-day close to him in Moscow, and I don't think I can say that I have that feeling of weakening," Shevardnadze told reporters in Canada during the visit.

Shevardnadze would resign from his post at the end of the year over concerns that Communist hardliners were preparing to undo all of Gorbachev's reforms. He wound be up being right, as several individuals in the party staged an unsuccessful coup d'etat against Gorbachev in August of 1991.

Oliver hinted at that brewing unrest when speaking about the Mulroney-Gorbachev meeting.

"Unpopular economic policies and crises in national unity give the two men a lot to talk about right now," Oliver said, as footage showed the two leaders shaking hands at a staged photo op. Oliver was referring to Mulroney's push for closer economic ties with the United States, as well as his battle against simmering separatist sentiment in Quebec.

"Canadian officials hope they can corner Gorbachev long enough to discuss NATO, reunification of Germany, and future wheat sales in Canada," Oliver added.

Gorbachev left Canada the next day on a flight to Washington, D.C., where he met with then-President George H. W. Bush to sign the bilateral 1990 Chemical Weapons Accord. The deal saw both sides agree to destroy most of their chemical weapon stockpiles over the following decade, while also promising to support a global ban on chemical weapons from that point on.

In this file photo, Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney pose for photographers in Ottawa on May 29, 1990.

In this file photo, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (left) shakes hands with Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in Ottawa on May 29, 1990.

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The Chernyaev Diary, 1982—"The run up to perestroika "

Yuri Andropov Succeeds Leonid Brezhnev Bringing Premature Hopes for Change

A Network of New Thinkers Emerges in The Central Committee, Drafts Reform Program that Presages Gorbachev

Washington D.C., May 25, 2022 – The National Security Archive marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 101st birthday today with the publication for the first time in English of his Diary for 1982 . At the time, Chernyaev was deputy director of the International Department of the Central Committee responsible for the International Communist Movement (ICM). Within a few years he became a close adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev and a leading theorist in the era of perestroika and glasnost .

After the Soviet collapse, Chernyaev transformed into one of the most important and reliable sources of historical information for Western observers about the Soviet system and the Kremlin’s Cold War. An invaluable contributor to international scholarship, including conferences and research conducted by the National Security Archive, he ultimately donated his diary – which Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Hoffman called “irreplaceable” and “one of the great internal records of the Gorbachev years” – to the Archive. Every year, this organization translates and posts another installment of this extraordinary chronicle.

*          *          *          *

Chernyaev’s diary for 1982 records many pivotal moments, notably the anticipation of Leonid Brezhnev’s death along with the gradual demise of the entire Soviet-led international communist movement and the rising hopes for reforms under the new leader. When Brezhnev actually dies in November, there comes a moment of suspense, but Chernyaev is relieved when Yury Andropov is selected as the new general secretary. Throughout the year, the author of the diary is actually hoping that the intelligent and energetic Andropov will pull the country out of its stupor. Despite Andropov's actions as head of the KGB, most reformers do not anticipate that the new leader's changes will include harsh disciplinary measures and suppression of all dissent – all of which is to come in 1983.

In 1982, Chernyaev’s duties are centered mostly on writing articles and speeches for powerful Central Committee International Department head Boris Ponomarev and meeting with leaders of foreign communist parties. A lot of these drafts are rebuttals to various communist leaders’ criticisms of the Soviet Union and the Soviet interpretation of Marxism. The year begins with the conflict with the Italian communists, who, in Chernyaev’s words, “expelled us from socialism” in reaction to martial law in Poland. Summarizing Italian party leader Enrico Berlinguer’s report, Chernyaev agrees that “the fate of the revolutionary process now depends on the ability of the Western European labor movement to overcome capitalism and create a socialist system that would integrate all the democratic achievements of European civilization,” which is quite stunning for a Soviet Central Committee official. At the same time, this entry shows Chernyaev’s forward thinking that he will eventually bring to Gorbachev.

Work for Ponomarev stopped being intellectually satisfying for the author of the diary, in a way becoming a burden that made him experience the everyday hypocrisy of the decaying system. As in previous years, Chernyaev devotes a lot of diary entries to the deteriorating situation in the economy and the absence of food and basic consumer goods in the stores. But even more so he chronicles the pervasive corruption in the upper echelons of power and in Brezhnev’s family. He describes Ponomarev’s deputy, Karen Brutents, coming back from Yemen and talking about shocking instances of corruption during visits of Brezhnev’s son-in-law, Dmitry Churbanov, to Third World countries.

1982 was a year of “significant” deaths. February saw the passing of the legendary Mikhail Suslov, the ideology secretary, and one of the most orthodox party figures. He worked with all Soviet leaders starting with Stalin and played the role of the “grey cardinal” in the rise of Nikita Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Chernyaev muses about Suslov’s legacy, noting his personal stoicism, moral authority among party members, and opposition to the personality cult. He notes also that Suslov never wanted to “become the ‘First,” but if he did, “he would have become one … in 1964.” In Chernyaev’s view, Ponomarev wanted to become Suslov’s successor, but was bitterly disappointed when Konstantin Chernenko took his place. In August, head of the influential Institute of World Economy and International Relations Nikolai Inozemtsev dies of a heart attack. And in November, the most anticipated death of 1982 takes the general secretary himself – Brezhnev.

Among other highlights of the year are the many important conversations between Chernyaev and other future “new thinkers,” like Georgy (Yury) Arbatov, Alexander Bovin, Brutents and Alexander Yakovlev, in which they share their assessment of the rotting political system and hopes for the future. Like Gorbachev in 1983, Chernyaev talks to Yakovlev during his visit to Canada in February 1982. He describes how Yakovlev “yearns for his homeland … rail[s] at the order of things, the bosses, the mess,” and asks the eternal questions of Russian intellectuals: “Where are we going? What will happen? What’s to be done?”

A significant number of diary entries are devoted to Chernyaev’s conflict with Oleg Rakhmanin, the conservative deputy head of the CC department for relations with ruling Communist parties (known simply by the Russian word for department – Otdel ), who tried to push a strong anti-Chinese line in Soviet foreign policy even after Brezhnev himself spoke in favor of improving relations with Beijing in his Tashkent speech. In another glimpse of future new thinking, Chernyaev pushes hard against the anti-Chinese stance, and eventually the “Tashkent line” prevails.

During this period, Brezhnev continues to decline and almost dies in an accident at a factory in Tashkent, from which he had to be “transported off the plane,” because “he could not stand on his feet.” Chernyaev describes Brezhnev’s visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, where he was unable to read a speech printed with “inch-size” font. He notes that other Politburo members, like Arvids Pelshe and Andrey Kirilenko, have not been seen for a long time either. He writes in his diary: “Here's what I think: if Andropov replaces Brezhnev, change may come. If Chernenko replaces Brezhnev, change is unlikely.” As everybody anticipates the death of the top leader, Chernyaev’s mind is preoccupied with Andropov. He notes his presentations at the Secretariat, his new style of chairing meetings, and his “prone[ness] to reflection.”

When Brezhnev finally dies on November 10, Chernyaev writes in his diary a “program” for Andropov, whom he expects to become the successor. The program consists of 15 points and includes practically all the items that would eventually be included in Gorbachev’s program less than three years later, such as getting out of Afghanistan, removing SS-20 missiles from Europe and curbing the military-industrial complex. It turns out that Georgy Arbatov, the omnipresent adviser to Soviet leaders and head of the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, has also prepared a similar “program” for the new leader.

The year culminates with the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the USSR, with delegations of 140 countries gathering in Moscow. Chernyaev was busy working with the delegations, including with the Communist Party of the USA, and oversaw publications of various speeches in Pravda . He saw real signs of change in Andropov’s report and noted the air of hope in the meeting hall: “Everyone is expecting major changes from us, something the entire world would notice, changes that would eclipse Afghanistan, and Poland, that would make everyone forget the “Brezhneviada” created in the West (about the use of power for self-enrichment, nepotism – relatives everywhere, about irrepressible boasting, demonstratively showcasing senility as wisdom, corruption, and so forth).”

In his own postscript, Chernayev calls the year 1982 “the runup to perestroika.” A reader of this year’s installment might observe the gradual formation of the unofficial group, or rather network, of people who in three years will form the core of Gorbachev’s “brain trust,” who in this momentous year are tentatively probing each other and finding agreement on the main outlines of change that the country needed desperately.

The Document

Donated by A.S. Chernyaev to The National Security Archive

Translated by Anna Melyakova

Why Mikhail Gorbachev is a cautionary tale for the United States

The year is 1983. It’s two years before Mikhail Gorbachev will come to power in the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan is president of the U.S., the Cold War is again heating up, I am in high school, and most policy experts and academics speak of the USSR as if it is, if not eternal, then at least destined to be around for a very long time .

Gorbachev was one of the most significant political figures of the second half of the 20th century. He became general secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR in 1985 following the death of Konstantin Chernenko . Gorbachev was the extraordinary communist leader who recognized the Soviet system, characterized by a centralized planned economy and an absence of political freedom or democracy, was not working and embarked on a risky path of reform.

While the comparison between the U.S. today and the USSR in the early 1980s should not be overstated, it would be equally wrong to think the U.S. is the bastion of stability and democracy that it could claim to be even a decade ago.

His reforms included “glasnost” (openness), which brought about a slightly more open and freer political environment, and “perestroika” (restructuring), which sought to alter the economics of the country and introduce some market-based elements. 

The system proved too brittle for change, and the result was the end of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev’s  resignation in 1991. While he was lauded in the West for helping to end the Cold War (in part because of the reforms he ushered in), views about him in Russia were quite different. For many in Moscow, not least Vladimir Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a travesty that needed to be undone. Putin’s aggressive war on Ukraine , which is now in its seventh month, is, in part, an effort to put back together what Gorbachev’s reforms broke apart.

The final days of the Soviet Union might seem like something far away from the U.S. and almost ancient history for anybody under 40 years old, but Gorbachev’s death on Tuesday highlights essential lessons that are very relevant to the U.S. today. The key to those lessons is just how briefly Gorbachev was in power, a reminder of how temporary political systems can be.

By 1993, two years after the end of Gorbachev’s time leading the USSR, Bill Clinton was in the White House, and the Soviet Union was no more. I was in graduate school, and the consensus in academic and policy circles was that the collapse of the Soviet Union had been inevitable . The journey from unimaginable to inevitable, with regard to the end of the Soviet Union, had taken only a decade.

When I started spending time in the former Soviet countries in 2002, I frequently met middle-age people who had been blindsided by the end of the Soviet Union and had not been able to build new lives. Many of those people had lived through a decade of economic duress as industries and factories shut down. It was not unusual to see people who had trained as engineers and scientists working low-paying jobs in hotels. What Western academics agreed had been inevitable still seemed unimaginable to the people who lived through it.

Following Gorbachev’s resignation,  Boris Yeltsin had took over  as president of Russia and steered the country through  a decade of acute economic crisis . For many people, standards of living plummeted as unemployment was rampant and currency devaluation was a massive problem. The transition from a planned Soviet economy to a free (and freewheeling) one created a handful of wealthy people but impoverished millions. The tough times of the 1990s led to the authoritarian Putinist regime, in which democratic reforms have been rolled back but the economy is stronger than it was in the 1990s. 

Indeed, those six years when Gorbachev was in power, from 1985 to 1991, were thus a period of extraordinarily rapid change for the communist bloc and the world more generally, as the system that had defined international relations for over 40 years quickly collapsed.

The relevance of all of this to the U.S. is that over the last seven years, we have seen more political instability, threats of violence, talk of Civil War , political polarization and efforts to undermine key democratic institutions than at any other time in modern American history. 

While the comparison between the U.S. today and the USSR in the early 1980s should not be overstated, it would be equally wrong to think the U.S. is the bastion of stability and democracy that it could claim to be even a decade ago. 

Our political institutions and civil society are much stronger than those of the late Soviet Union, but that is not a guarantee that our democracy will survive.

The possibility that American democracy could come to an end or that the U.S. could fall into irrevocable disunity and instability has not been this significant since the Civil War. The U.S., as Kamala Harris said when she accepted the nomination to be Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020, is at an “inflection point.”  

Our political institutions and civil society are much stronger than those of the late Soviet Union, but that is not a guarantee that our democracy will survive. The speed with which the Soviet collapse went from unimaginable to a fait accompli to seen as inevitable should, at the very least, remind Americans of the fragility of our democracy.

It is certainly possible that within a few years, polarization in the U.S. will naturally decrease, the Republican Party will break with Donald Trump, and we will find ways to reform institutions like the Supreme Court, the Electoral College and the Senate, which are preventing much-needed reform. Still, one would have to be extremely pollyannaish to look at where we are now and think those outcomes are likely.

What seems to be a more probable, albeit gloomier, scenario is that the GOP continues to sow doubt about the legitimacy of elections it loses; a Supreme Court that does not reflect the views of the American people continues to exercise more power; and mass shootings, harassment and threats against judges and elected officials and other forms of political violence increase. In this scenario, American democracy would continue to wobble, and it could ultimately collapse into civil conflict and widespread political violence.

And 20, 10 or perhaps fewer years from now, scholars could be discussing not how American democracy crumbled but why it was inevitable. The building blocks of that argument are already apparent: an attempted insurrection, ongoing loyalty to Trump (and political leaders he has backed ), continued efforts to undermine faith in elections, and the deepening of racial and other divisions. 

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought an end to a brutal and repressive system, but it also brought instability and massive economic setbacks to a large part of the world. The time to do everything we can to ensure that does not happen in the U.S. is now.

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• What Russia does in Ukraine won't stay in Ukraine. Democracies need to restrain Putin
• Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine — and the world — will stop only through unity

Lincoln Mitchell is a political analyst and author. He teaches in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and is an adjunct research scholar in the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.

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The Gorbachev Visit

Gorbachev's U.N. Surprise: Soviet Arms Cuts Gorbachev Plan: Over the next two years reduce Soviet armed forces by 500,000. Mr. Gorbachev did not say which forces would be reduced. The Soviet Union has about 5.1 million troops all over the world, including 1.5 million that are used for railroad work, construction civil defense and other purposes. Current Warsaw Pact forces: Total active ground forces from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains: 2.1 million, Current NATO forces: Total U.S. troops worldwide: 2.2 million. Total NATO active ground forces from the Atlantic to the Urals: 2.34 million. Gorbachev Plan: Soviet Union would withdraw by 1991 six tank divisions from East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary and disband them. Total reduction: 5,000 tanks and 50,000 men from these countries. The Soviet Union has about 10,000 tanks in Eastern Europe. Current Warsaw Pact forces: 26 tank divisions outside the Soviet Union in Warsaw Pact countries, of which 14 are Soviet. Current NATO forces: 14 1/3 tank divisions, of which 2 1/3 are U.S. Gorbachev Plan: Also, Soviet forces in the European part of the Soviet Union would be cut by 5,000 tanks, and total Soviet forces from the Atlantic to the Urals would be reduced by 8,500 artillery systems and 800 combat aircraft. NATO estimates are that there are 37,000 soviet tanks in this area, not including a small number of stored tanks. The Soviets have 33,000 artillery weapons in the Warsaw Pact and 6,050 combat aircraft, according to NATO estimates. Current Warsaw Pact forces: Equipment deployed: 51,500 Artillery systems of 100mm or more: 43,400 Combat aircraft: 8,250 Current NATO forces: Equipment deployed: Tanks: 16,424 Artillery systems: About 14,458 Combat aircraft: 3,997 (Sources: American Defense specialists, International Institute for Strategic Studies, NATO)