Daily Herald opinion: Ironically, it was a Soviet leader who advanced themes we need more of today

This editorial represents the consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board

With former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev laid to rest Saturday in his native Russia, we are drawn to comments he offered here in the suburbs as we reflect on his impact on the world order.

Gorbachev of course will be remembered for his role in helping to bring about the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago. He did not intend for that to result in the breakup of the Soviet Union, and he paid a political price for the dissolution. But he set in motion a new relationship with the West that began a tentative new era of cooperation and peace, unfortunately disrupted by the rise of Vladimir Putin.

He also added two Russian words to the vernacular of languages around the world - perestroika, meaning restructuring, and glasnost, meaning openness. They were underlying themes of an April 21, 2012, talk he gave at Judson University's World Leaders Forum.

There, Gorbachev, then 81 years old, raised issues of economic justice and environmental responsibility, and spoke of the need for world leaders to cooperate in order to bring them about.

Ten years later, it is disappointing to note that instead of such cooperation, the nations of the world have tilted more toward competition than cooperation, both internationally and internally. Indeed, it could be argued that even in America many leaders are less inclined to work together than the one-time Soviet dictator was to work with us.

Putin's invasion of Ukraine has set back so many of the important advances Gorbachev put in motion. The impact on the quality of life in his country and throughout the world is a stark reminder of the consequences of rash competition compared to conscientious cooperation.

Who who looks honestly at the state of the world and of many nations today, including our own, can deny that Gorbachev's approach was the more constructive?

Indeed, in his Judson address, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate had words for today's Russian president that feel almost prophetic.

"If Putin and his team are thinking about how to cling to power and how to fool people," Gorbachev told the Elgin audience through an interpreter, "that will end very badly."

The statement surely applies to circumstances related to Russia, Ukraine and the balance of power in Europe. It also doesn't take a great leap of interpretation to see how it may speak to our own contemporary politics in America.

For most of the 20th century, the story of Russia, the Soviet Union and the world order was one of constant tension, suspicion and fear. Thanks to the steadfastness of American and European leadership over the course of many decades and the courage of Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, we got a glimpse of what nations could produce when not at odds with each other.

May we use his passing to rededicate ourselves to the ideals of restructuring and openness that could lead to a brighter, more longlasting vision of harmony and growth, both abroad and here at home.