Bernie Sanders’s rise to front-runner status in the Democratic primary has prompted renewed scrutiny of favorable statements Sanders made about socialist dictatorships in the 1980s (comments he has since defended) and, in particular, his 1988 trip to the Soviet Union.
Sanders’s critics complain that the senator’s compliments of certain aspects of the Soviet Union ignore and minimize that country’s horrible crimes. However, the story is more complicated than they acknowledge. The Soviet Union of 1988 was no longer the Stalinist dictatorship it once was, nor was it even the Brezhnev-era oligarchy that preceded it. Rather, Sanders’s trip to the U.S.S.R. came when the country under Mikhail Gorbachev was taking radical steps to democratize, and U.S. leaders on both sides of the aisle were encouraging such changes. Understood in this context, Sanders’s remarks show a desire to challenge stereotypes and end the Cold War — not support for authoritarianism.
Beginning in the late 1970s, the Cold War dramatically hardened, reversing thaws of the prior decade. Clashes over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, human rights and arms control brought the Soviet Union and the United States to the brink of military confrontation. Ronald Reagan adopted a hard-line strategy to what he labeled “the evil empire”: Even when he wanted to ease tensions, Reagan found himself without a negotiating partner thanks to a rapid succession of aging Soviet leaders.
But with the rise of Gorbachev in 1985 came dramatic transformation. Gorbachev was ready to cast off years of orthodoxy at home and abroad. The new Soviet general secretary was eager to resume dialogue with the United States to both improve the security of the U.S.S.R. and to create room for what would turn into a radical set of domestic reforms.
During the next few years — in fits and starts — Reagan and Gorbachev were able to come to an understanding on a number of issues, including nuclear weapons. In 1988, Reagan even visited Moscow, and he admitted to a journalist that he no longer thought of the U.S.S.R. as an “evil empire.”
This admission was important because the future of the Soviet Union was very much unclear at the time — no one could foresee its rapid disintegration over the next few years. Reagan understood that for peace to succeed, the American public would have to look at the Soviet Union in a new way — and that such a view was warranted, despite criticism from hard-liners in his own party.
Gorbachev was working to transform the Soviet economic and political system. He took steps to liberalize its strict planning system and to legalize small businesses, and he launched his glasnost doctrine, which removed the draconian censorship system.