LAST UPDATE | 3 Sep 2022
ONE OF THE more positive aspects of being a political journalist is that, from time to time, you encounter people who have played, or are still playing, a significant role in changing the course of history.
I say “encounter” advisedly because you might be in the same room at a press conference, putting questions to them, but you don’t actually meet them at a personal, one-to-one level.
US Presidents are high on the totem pole and I did get to shake hands with Bill Clinton at a St Patrick’s Day reception in the White House, as well as interviewing Jimmy Carter subsequently at the Irish state guesthouse in Farmleigh.
On the other side of the spectrum in global politics, I clasped the hand of Mikhail Gorbachev a few years later.
Gorbachev in Dublin
Unlike Clinton, by the time we shared a handshake Gorbachev had lost his big job. The location was the Institute of European Affairs (now the Institute of International and European Affairs) on Dublin’s North Great Georges Street, where he gave a talk on 9 January 2002.
As reported by myself in The Irish Times, the former president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) made an impassioned plea for the unity of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals and called on the European Union to admit Russia to associate membership.
I’m not sure if the term “Cold War” means anything to the younger generation of today but it was the term applied to the hostile relationship between the western powers, especially the United States, and the communist bloc spearheaded by Russia. This mutual antagonism brought the world to the brink of destruction in October 1962 over deep US concern about the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, some 90 miles from the Florida coast.
Gorbachev played a central role in bringing the Cold War to an end, but in his Dublin speech, he was critical of the fact that this didn’t lead to greater progress in terms of global demilitarisation and a reduction in poverty.
He said there had been “a real possibility to move towards a new world order” but that this was missed.
He cited the example of the war that broke out in the Balkans, where he argued that European powers, especially Germany, should have done more to promote reconciliation.
And speaking only months after 9/11, he said there was no justification for such actions but added that “we need to see the root causes of terrorism and start addressing them”.
Accessible leader
It hardly needs saying that it was standing-room only for the Gorbachev oration. The attendance included leading political figures such as former taoisigh John Bruton and the late Garret FitzGerald as well as ex-Justice Minister Desmond O’Malley and former European Commissioner Richard Burke, both of whom are no longer with us either.
In what was quite a full day, at another event the former Soviet leader received the Freedom of the City of Dublin.
Presenting the award, Lord Mayor Michael Mulcahy of Fianna Fáil told Gorbachev: “You helped change and enhance the lives of hundreds of millions of people.”
Interestingly, the attendance included Cardinal Desmond Connell and the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Lazzarotto, as well as numerous city councillors in their robes.
First awarded in 1876, Freedom of the City includes the right to graze sheep anywhere in Dublin and the recipient of the honour said he would “buy a flock” to exercise that right, adding mischievously: “I have seen some very nice places in the [Phoenix] Park, near the President’s palace.”
Others who have received the award include William Gladstone, Charles Stewart Parnell, George Bernard Shaw, John F Kennedy, Eamon de Valera, Maureen Potter, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and (immediately prior to Gorbachev) the members of U2.
Life in Moscow
Thirteen years beforehand, in 1989, I gained some experience of life under the Gorbachev administration.
A group of Irish journalists, including myself, were invited to Moscow by an organisation called the Ireland-USSR Friendship Society, acting in cooperation with its counterpart in Russia, the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies.
It was said that, even a year earlier, such a trip would be unthinkable, but under Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (openness) there was a new spirit of freedom in the air.
It was arranged that we would stay with residents of Moscow who would later be coming on a visit to Ireland and that we would reciprocate their hospitality by having them as guests in our homes.
Growing up in Catholic Ireland, I had been instilled with a fear of communism and its chief protagonist, the Soviet empire. I thought I had outgrown that, but when I looked out the window of my bedroom in Moscow and saw a red star shining in the distance over Red Square, a chill went through me.
Gorbachev’s other main policy was perestroika (reconstruction), a process of economic and political reform.
I have a vivid recollection of a crowd gathered outside a newspaper office, eagerly discussing the issues of the day in a manner that was not encouraged under previous regimes. But it also became clear that Gorbachev’s popularity on the international stage did not exist to the same extent on his home ground.
There was a shortage of basic everyday goods such as tea, coffee, soap and toothpaste. People told us that, although there were problems with a previous administration headed by Leonid Brezhnev, more food was available in the shops. There was even a theory that elements of the Soviet bureaucracy were working to rule in order to sabotage the policy of perestroika.
But memories of more oppressive times in political terms were still vivid in people’s minds. A woman we met told us her communist father had been sentenced to 12 years in prison in 1947 after he was accused of plotting to overthrow the dictatorship of Josef Stalin.
A biographer of Stalin, Dmitry Volkogonov, told us how, on 12 December 1938, the dictator and his close ally, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed their approval on 30 lists of party members who were to be executed and then the pair of them went off to the pictures.
On a visit to the Supreme Soviet, the communist version of parliament in the Kremlin, we had a chance encounter with Boris Yeltsin who was something of an outsider at the time but went on to become president of Russia in 1991, the year of the Soviet Union’s dissolution and Gorbachev’s resignation as President.
He took questions from us in an impromptu press conference and then went on his way. Before doing so, he shook hands with everyone in our group. Maybe I can claim it as a distinction to have shaken hands with both Gorbachev and Yeltsin?
Five years later, in 1994, I spent five months in Moscow as a temporary correspondent. Gorbachev was yesterday’s man but he lived on for another 28 years and, as shown in his Dublin visit, continued to have his point of view.
He was controversially in favour of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and remained silent in the face of the recent invasion of Ukraine, but will be better remembered for his years promoting glasnost and perestroika and, above all, for his contribution to world peace.
Deaglán de Bréadún is an award-winning Irish journalist, writer and columnist. He worked for many years with The Irish Times as Northern Editor, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Political Correspondent and Irish Language Editor. He is currently a columnist with The Irish News.
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