Gorbachev wins Nobel Peace Prize
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from October 1990.
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He has brought sweeping political change to the Soviet Union, championed reform in Eastern Europe and helped to end the Cold War.
But even as the world lauds his achievements, his country is on the brink of economic collapse and political chaos.
After more than five years of perestroika and new freedoms undreamed of during decades of hardline dictatorship, his popularity has been battered by food shortages, ethnic strife and the struggle to drag the economy into the modern age.
The battle over shifting to a market economy has highlighted deep-set divisions between reformers and conservatives, and left Gorbachev, 59, sitting uncomfortably on the fence.
Internationally, Gorbachev altered superpower relationships, holding eight meetings with U.S. presidents.
He has boosted disarmament, pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, and joined U.N. condemnation of former close ally Iraq.
He has forged diplomatic ties with a number of ideologically alien states, including South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Nearer home, he paved the way for German unity by allowing a peaceful revolution in Eastern Europe in which hardline communist regimes were successively dismantled and the Warsaw Pact was all but dismembered.
Gorbachev has also presided over the abolition of the Communists' 72-year monopoly on power in the Soviet Union, arousing vociferous opposition among diehard party conservatives determined to preserve old-style communism.
He told conservative communists in June 1990 their concept of socialism had "lost connection with reality long ago."
He may even find himself in a shotgun marriage with his populist rival Boris Yeltsin, forming a centre-left bloc with the Russian Federation president to finish off the old order.
But the Communist Party, whose general secretary Gorbachev remains, is still powerful.
At a meeting of top officials Gorbachev renewed a call for its members to join "progressive and patriotic movements" in an "anti-crisis programme."
On the eve of the meeting, Gorbachev was given a stern warning through the influential newspaper Izvestia.
"Today the moment of truth has arrived for Gorbachev and his team. Manoeuvring between left and right has exhausted its possibilities. If it goes on, the president could miss the train forever," historian Lyubov Shevtsova wrote.
"This is exactly what happened to a number of leaders in Eastern Europe who started reforms but failed to abandon in time their old stereotypes and their outdated political line."
The public is increasingly unimpressed by Gorbachev's other achievements while food and basic goods are in short supply.
