He did refuse the force, indeed. But he was in a state of deer caught in the headlights, rather then acting consciously. He was a good man, but we give him too much credit for things he hasn't done. The USSR crumbled, unexpectedly for everyone inside. A lesson to rest of the world - if you think you know what is going to happen tomorrow, think twice.
I think you're under-estimating how important his refusal to use force was. This was an unprecedented reversal of 50+ years of policy of using force.
More importantly, it was humane. We sit in comfy chairs with Starbucks lattes in front of us arguing the pros and cons of Communism. But in Communism, people died for no good reason. People had no free will. People had no ability to express a thought freely. Gorbachev's policies (implemented from within the regime!) signaled a change. That's no small feat.
All correct about Communism at its peak, but by the time Gorbachev came to power it was already in severe decline, unable to use force. Gorby wanted to modernize it, he had no intention to destroy it. Things went beyond his control quickly. For old communists he was a traitor, for new generation he wasn't moving fast enough. He picked the worst of both worlds. He saw himself as a messiah, for no good reason. At first he sounded cool are refreshing, but then people quickly got tired of him, of endless indecisiveness. They wanted real change, which Gorby never delivered.
I would mostly disagree with this. The USSR did use force around that time. The thing people often do not take into account is that the power structures or societies are not monolithic. There are fractions, groups, competing, or allied. Just like here in the US we have religious right, military industrial groups, banking groups which do compete for power like rats in a can.
Similarly, in the USSR in 80s and 90s, there were different groups. In 1956 and 1968 the hardliners held majority, so no socialism with a human face for you. But 1991, thanks in some large part to Gorbachev, things were different.
Yes, he was a slow moving, verbose demagogue, and I hated him for that. But one has to admire that he held back enormous mass of the Soviet machine build around Communist Party, KGB, and the military, armed with thousand of nuclear weapons. One wrong step and the world might have been different today, with a Geiger counters drumming a happy beat.
I think we ought to give him credit for it. We owe it to him.
I don't remember force being used during Gorbachev time. 1st putsch fizzled, because there was no support for violence in any part of society. While, on the other hand, during Eltsyn time, when the whole thing fell apart, oh buy, was there a violence! Primarily former republics, but also Russia. But that was after communists lost power.
I think we overestimate the ability of elites to steer. They mostly react in a slow and inefficient way to changing environment. Remember fall of the Berlin wall? KGB and others were in state of shock. They were impotent. I am not saying that one moron couldn't have pressed red button, but there is always risk of that.
On April 9, 1989, the army, together with MVD units, massacred about 190 demonstrators in Tbilisi in Georgia. The next major crisis occurred in Azerbaijan, when the Soviet army forcibly entered Baku on January 19–20, 1990, removing the rebellious republic government and allegedly killing hundreds of civilians in the process. On January 13, 1991 Soviet forces stormed the State Radio and Television Building and the television retranslation tower in Vilnius, Lithuania, both under opposition control, killing 14 people and injuring 700.
I recall reading an article many years ago that said that a repeated pattern in history is that an oppressive government attempts to be somewhat less oppressive, but this creates a feedback loop where being less oppressive creates self-awareness and increased desire to be less oppressive, and thus those persons that try to preserve such regimes by creating incremental reform tend to bring out their collapse.
IIRC, this article also stated that the subsequent pains as even the dependable/reliable parts of society become unreliable tends to lead to a new oppressive regime, which is why truly straightforward oppressive->relatively democratic regime changes are so rare.
I'm likely torturing the actual article with my twisted memories (this would be, like, 15 years ago), but those are the points that stuck with me. If that article was accurate, you could then credit Gorbachev AND assume he wasn't intending the future that came about.
It is depressing though, because if true, it's an argument against incremental reforms.
In Crane Brinton's "The Anatomy of Revolution" he analyzes the English, French, American and Russian revolutions. One of the conclusions is that revolutionary events tend to occur during times of rising expectations. The tyrant gives the proles a little freedom or a crumbs of bread and they start to expect continued improvement.
Basically, if you want to be a dictator be a bad one (like Saddam or mr Kim). A nice dictator will not survive (witness the Romanovs -forgiving an assassin, for example) because people naturally will "take advantage" of that situation.