How Mikhail Gorbachev discovered Gustav Mahler
RIPIn August 1991, while being held hostage by insurgent generals in his Crimean dacha, the Russian leader came close to despair.
His wife Raisa was locked in another room, suffering a hypertension attack.
He was refused all contact with the outside world unless he agreed to resign. Gorbachev walked round and round the room, studying the classical record sleeves on the bookshelves.
Four months later in Moscow, on one of his last nights in office, he saw that one of those symphonies, Mahler’s fifth, was being performed that night, conducted by Claudio Abbado. ‘I had the feeling,’ wrote Gorbachev, ‘that Mahler’s music somehow touched our situation.’ Raisa told Abbado: ‘I have been shaken by this music. It left me with a feeling of despondency, a feeling that there is no way out.’
Abbado remembered the conversation as a moment when he touched history. I reported it on the opening page of my book, Why Mahler.
Gorbachev was certain he would be murdered by the coup leaders. He suffered extreme terror and was never the same afterwards. This was a great misfortune for Russia which fell into the hands of incompetent leaders and unnecessary hostility from Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright, followed by the hostility of the Bush administration’s New American Century radicals. So many opportunities to help Russia develop into a more solid democracy connected to Europe were lost. Today we live with the results. I’m not sure even Mahler’s 5th even begins to capture the monumental stupidity of it all.
British Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind (of whom I am no particular fan) neverthless insightfully said at the time – we should be bringing Russia towards us – creating a two tier NATO / EEC (as it then was) if necessary. That was good wine spilt on cold stone. We should have been more gracious in victory and much of this could have been avoided.
Russia has known nothing but dysfunctional leadership throughout its history. When this happened yet again after Gorbachev for the zillionth time, it was all the West’s fault. Um, OK…got it.
To Max Raimi: Such ridiculous, Russophobic generalizations are ridiculous and border on being chauvinistic and racist.
The issue at hand is that Russia was clearly at rock bottom after the collapse of the USSR. We in Europe saw this firsthand in the many refugees that arrived. Among these were many fabulous Russian orchestral musicians who were trying to survive by busking on the streets. It was one of the more pathetic sights I’ve ever seen. Russia was quite open to assistance and collaboration with the West. In 2002, Putin even suggested to Clinton that Russia join NATO, and with that eventually the EU. Numerous US foreign policy experts suggest similar ideas. If those ideas had been followed, we would now be living in peace and prosperity with Russia and the West sharing in each other’s wealth.
The USA and EU should have responded with a kind of Marshall Plan to help Russia establish a healthy and prosperous democracy integrated with the West—just as was done with Europe after WWII. Instead, Russophobes like Madeline Albright and the members of the New American Century group (far-right, imperialistic Russophobes like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumseld, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Paul Wolfowitz) put in motion plans to isolate and encircle Russia with NATO expansion. More experienced foreign policy experts like former CIA Director William Burns, historian and diplomat George Kennan who authored the Cold War containment plan, and Former Secretary of State Robert Gates emphatically warned that NATO expansion would lead to war. As Kennan noted in the 1990: “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.” The Russophobes have now gotten the hatred they promoted and with the inevitable result that blood is flowing.
And none of this is to defend Putin who is a war criminal and thug, but peace will only come when we begin to look at the whole picture of how this insanity evolved, something difficult with the binary thought that war creates, to say nothing of Russophobia.
I wholly agree with all you say!!! Blinkered thinking on the part of American politicians
Has led to disaster upon disaster..
What bad timing
And thoughtless behaviour!!!
I agree with Mr. Osborne mentioning the “unnecessary hostility” from the Clinton and Bush administration toward Russia during the 1990s and early 2000s. The hubris of Triumphalism wasn’t just an emotional reaction of winning the Cold War, but included a deep seeded hatred of Russians by the the foreign policy radicals in charge of shaping Russia’s future, in my opinion. The belief in the lost opportunity for democracy was shared by the late Soviet/Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen. The Gorbachev connection to Mahler’s music reminds me of Leonard Bernstein’s Norton Lectures he gave at Harvard when he talked about Mahler being a musical prophet for the 20th century with the death of tonality, music itself, and society. Bernstein was referring to Mahler’s Ninth. Perhaps Mikhail and Raisa found that cathartic release for their lost country in Mahler’s 5th.
Yes… just so Marina
Regardless of how the west may have bungled it, the Russians did plenty on their own to not protect and, eventually, jettison their new found democracy. I prefer to keep the blame where it really is due. Russia has had a long history of less than benevolent leadership.
What a story !
Hoping they will play this one on Saturday
Thanks to WO for accurately describing VP as “a war criminal and thug”, as well as to Max Raimi and Barry Guerrero for being much more reasonable about everything else. By the way, in 2002 neither Clinton had any official important role in government, so whatever that “wc&t” allegedly told any of them means nothing, even if it really occurred which is highly doubtful. In any event, there is no good reason to take any “friendly”statements by WC&T seriously, whether they are real or, as most likely in this case, fully fictitious.