Mikhail Gorbachev – not a prophet in his own country ++ Reagan

Mikhail Gorbachev described as a “one-of-a kind statesman who changed the course of history” has died. Celebrated in the west for playing a critical role in ending the Cold War, he was blamed in Russia for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed – glasnost (“openness”) allowing for freedom of speech and perestroika (“restructuring decentralizing economic decision-making “) –  and the sharp drop in the standard of living domestically.

BBC broadcaster John Simpson paid tribute to “a decent, well intentioned, principled man who tried to rescue the unrescuable”. His biographer William Taubman said his main issue was that Russia simply had no real experience with the freedom it was being offered. “He gave us all freedom – but we don’t know what to do with it,” said liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg.

  He was the first and the last president of the Soviet Union, from March 1990 till December 25, 1991 and as Yeltsin and other hardliners took over after a coup he retreated away from front line politics.

  He was born 2 March 1931 in Stavropol with a questionable birth time of 8.30pm and was one of the innovative Depression generation, like Rupert Murdoch born eight days later.  Gorbachev had a confident and lucky Pisces Sun trine Jupiter in Cancer, but his chart was dominated by the signature tough-minded Pluto Mars in Cancer opposition Saturn and Venus in Capricorn square a revolutionary, status-quo-upsetting Uranus in Aries conjunct North Node. His early years were blighted by Stalin’s worst excesses with various relatives being imprisoned, tortured and starved which would make sense of his Mars Pluto Saturn aspects. His Moon in Leo was trine Uranus but otherwise not well integrated into his chart.  

  When the collapse of the USSR came with the fall of the Berlin Wall on 1989, the triple conjunction in Capricorn was in place, with tr Saturn Neptune exactly opposition his Jupiter and then moving in to upend the rest of his Cardinal T square in the years following. His relationship chart with Russia 1917 has a potentially ‘transformational’ composite Sun opposition Pluto and a reforming Pluto trine Uranus. But the power struggle he unleased with Russia’s hardliners saw him defeated.

  His chart is substantially Cardinal giving him initiative and resourcefulness but he was up against Russia’s Fixed energy which tends towards stasis and inertia and resists change.

His get-it-together 5^th harmonic is strongly aspected; as is his rise-and-fall, wheel-of-fortune 10H. His leaving-a-legacy 17H is stressed but his global-eminence 22H is highly positive.

   It can be a problem with an over-active Uranus that it aims to disrupt stuck situations without giving sufficient thought about how to bring about stability on the far side.

  Rupert Sheldrake who has a background in botany once said to me that plant development is a question of the balance between creativity and structure. Which seemed a useful analogy.

  Uranus is creative in introducing change but situations also need stability. Too much change or too fast and it ends in anarchy or chaos, lacking in solidity. Reconstruction needs to follow deconstruction otherwise the phoenix won’t arise from the ashes of the old.      

Add ON: It would have to be said I don’t see what the strong astrological connection between Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan was – though confirmed birth times might help. There were faint traces of amiable feelings with MK’s Sun conjunct RR’s Venus and both trine RR’s Jupiter – and maybe MK’s Jupiter in RR’s 7^th (though birth times are iffy). If anything Gorbachev and Maggie Thatcher, though poles apart politically, had more resonance together. 

  Gorbachev did fit well with the USA chart with his Leo Moon conjunct the USA ‘leadership’ North Node and his reforming Uranus Node square the USA Sun and opposition the USA Saturn.