By Caitlin McCallister, ’16
Former USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev visited Virginia the week of April 10, 1993, where he spoke at several colleges, including the University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Virginia. Coming about two years after resigning as Soviet president and six years after US President Ronald Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech in Berlin, Gorbachev was an intriguing guest speaker choice for the University of Virginia’s commemoration of Thomas Jefferson’s 250th birthday, and the University of Richmond’s inaugural year of its Jepson School of Leadership Studies. Gorbachev is examined by many for both his emphasis on freedom within a state, especially one like Communist Russia, as well as his leadership as the last president of the USSR. However, after a humiliating end to his Soviet presidency, Gorbachev’s Virginia visit carried scholarly tones, rather than focusing on politics and policy, throughout his many University addresses.
Gorbachev’s Political Rise and “Fall”
Mikhail Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, in Privolnoye, Russia . After studying law at the University of Moscow, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1952, becoming a local party leader in 1970. He worked his way up the CPSU, and was appointed party general-secretary after Konstantin Chernenko’s death in 1985. It was during his time as CPSU general-secretary that most of Gorbachev’s work happened. During these years, Gorbachev introduced a campaign against alcoholism, withdrew Soviet forces from Afghanistan, and set the stage for a more progressive and liberal state. Under the slogans glasnost (‘openness’) and perestroika (‘restructuring’), he introduced a series of economic and social reforms which he hoped would liberalize the stagnating Soviet economy and make Soviet society more efficient and open. Gorbachev increasingly tried to work with Western powers as well, meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan several times. In 1989, he aceeded to the end of Soviet control over Eastern Europe.
Gorbachev was elected head of state in 1988, and became an executive President with increased powers in 1990. This presidency was short lived, though, as internal criticisms led to a coup plotted against him only one year after becoming President, and Gorbachev formally resigned in 1991. However embarrassing his short term may have been, in hindsight, many people now point to his policy reforms as positive initiatives that offered more freedom to the Soviet people. Although unappreciated in his home country as the USSR collapsed, Mikhail Gorbachev was lauded among Western politicians for his diplomacy, statesmanship, and openness to negotiations with other world leaders. And while he was not very successful in speaking to his own citizens during the 1990s, he was able to find an audience in the West, including Virginians, curious about his leadership and character, and wondering what was in store for future US-Russian relations.
Greater Implications of a Virginia Visit
Gorbachev had visited the United States prior to his Richmond trip, but his previous appearances were geared towards political meetings, especially with President Reagan,. Though his presidency failed to withstand criticisms of Soviets, he was still welcomed by Westerners in 1993 as a model of change for communist countries toward Western democracy. What did it mean that Gorbachev agreed to speak at multiple sites in Virginia? In Richmond?
Gorbachev’s decision to speak at universities may have had multiple layers to it. While it may be true that universities would have the biggest venues for an event of such magnitude-the Robins Center sat about 8,000 at the time, they also draw a certain type of audience. Holding the events at universities makes it more public (as opposed to Gorbachev only coming to speak at the Virginia General Assembly, for example), but also frames the event as an academic one, where college students, professors, and other highly educated members from the community were more likely to attend. In 1993, Gorbachev’s visit to Virginia was not distinctly diplomatic or political, as his meetings and foreign travels had once been in the 1980s. Although Gorbachev’s name will always be remembered as a political one, this time, Gorbachev’s visit was defined by scholarship, history, and theories and models of leadership.
Though Gorbachev was technically only speaking for Jefferson’s anniversary at Monticello and the University of Virginia, he repeated allusions to the democratic ideals held by Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers in his speech at the University of Richmond. Through their ideals, Jefferson and the framers gave Virginia, and the city of Richmond, affirmation for its claim as being the site of the nation’s founding. Richmond, which had once been the Capital of the Confederacy and a major slave-trading hub, was, even before then, the site of Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” speech at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Church Hill. In hopes of contrasting with a dark aspect of the city’s history, Richmond had been working since the end of the Civil War to shed new light on its colonial history, and stake its claim among the great cities of the American Revolution.
Speech at the University of Richmond
Gorbachev’s visit to the University of Richmond on Easter Sunday, 1993, drew an audience of thousands, and was an especially significant event for the inaugural year of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies. While the university had been well established in today’s location since 1914, the 1990s proved to be a time of change and expansion of the university, one in which Richmond came to know the world, and the world, Richmond, under President Richard Morrill. The university hosted the presidential debate between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush and, in a “bold experiment in higher education,” the Jepson School was created through the donations of UR alum Robert Jepson, becoming the first school of its kind. Among the list of five goals that the founders of Jepson aimed to achieve through the school’s creation, two stand out in particular: that of “[exposing] the University of Richmond to the world and the world to the University,” as well as “[changing] the lives of our students by broadening their perspective on leadership and responsibility and deepening their understanding of moral and contemporary issues, thereby shaping their growth as leaders who will make a lasting impact for the good of society.” In a world that was becoming increasingly smaller due to vast technological advances, the field of Leadership Studies emerged, enabling students to take new access to knowledge and decipher leadership through multiple disciplines, studying leadership as it was in the past, in the present, and how it should be.
Never before had there been a school within a university devoted solely to studying leadership, so while this brought innovation and expansion to academia and the University of Richmond itself, the ideas were also met with skepticism by some outsiders, and perhaps, even some faculty at UR. Hosting Gorbachev as the keynote speaker in its inaugural year thus gave the Jepson School of Leadership Studies legitimacy in an international playing field. In his address at the Robins Center, Gorbachev stated:
Leaders are born in the sense that one has to have certain natural qualities in order to become a leader. It is a kind of natural gift like a natural stone. But in order for that natural gemstone to show its facets, it has to be worked, it has to be cut, and that’s why such schools [as Jepson], are, I believe, necessary.
In likening the Jepson School to gem cutters, Gorbachev’s analogy legitimized the school and highlighted its purpose, while also providing international endorsement for the curriculum. It also allowed room for Gorbachev to further his legitimacy in the academic world, and to be looked to on matters of scholarship, history, and leadership, as well as politics.
ust as Gorbachev examined the Jepson School in his address at the University of Richmond, students and faculty, in turn, examined Gorbachev during his visit. Dr. Joanne Ciulla, a key player in the planning of Gorbachev’s campus visit, recalled how many people felt it “surreal” that a leader as unique as Gorbachev was coming to speak at the University of Richmond. Both a pioneer in the field of Leadership Studies and a founding faculty member of the Jepson School in 1992, Ciulla was able to spend the day with Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, which included a private dinner event with esteemed University faculty at President Morrill’s house, and small group-meeting time with the first-ever class of Leadership Studies majors. She remembers Gorbachev’s diplomatic, yet personable demeanor as he joked with students that Richmond “must not be that hard, because you’re all smiling!” Others, like President Morrill, recalled Gorbachev as diplomatic, or statesman-like; but also distinctly “Russian.” Morrill’s most vivid memories of his time with Gorbachev include answering Gorbachev’s numerous questions about the size, assets, and even the price of the University President’s home during the dinner party, which, though considered rude among Americans, is commonplace in Russian culture.
In Richmond, some saw Gorbachev’s Easter visit as a symbol of times to come. “One way to look at it is that Easter is a time of new beginning and new life,” said then-junior Matt Straw to a reporter at the Collegian, the school’s newspaper. “Gorbachev represents and symbolizes a new way of life in Russia.” Although one person (not a student) was escorted out of the center and later charged with disorderly conduct for heckling during the speech, most of those who met Gorbachev or attended his lecture agreed with Straw’s comment. Gorbachev’s leadership marked the end of the Cold War, and launched the United States and the former Soviet Union into an era with new diplomatic focuses- an effort that would be recognized by Virginia universities, if not Russian citizens.
Further Reading
Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ken Ringle, “Virginia’s a Gold Mine for Citizen Gorbachev,” Washington Post, April 10, 1993.
Mikhail Gorbachev. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
Joseph Troncale, “Gorbachev: At UR, Former Soviet Leader Discusses Politics and Morality.”
The University of Richmond Magazine. 55.3, 1993. 2-5.