The Mikhail Gorbachev presidential campaign, 1996 was an electoral campaign effort by former President of the Soviet Union and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1996 Russian presidential election. Gorbachev's candidacy was beset by the obstacles of both minimal media coverage and a high level of disdain towards him amongst the Russian populace. Gorbachev's candidacy ended in defeat during the first round of the election. The effort was the first, and only, electoral campaign of Gorbachev's post-Soviet political career.
Background
Gorbachev had led the Soviet Union from March 1985 until its dissolution in December 1991. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin (whose rise to power Gorbachev had tried to prevent) became the Russian head-of-state.
Gorbachev had, reportedly, been contemplating a political return since sometime in the middle of 1993. Gorbachev was still a vigorous and opinionated man. He desired to escape from his political exile and to repair his image. Gorbachev was also motivated, amid chaotic reform efforts by Yeltsin, by a belief that he could implement far superior (and less disastrous) reform than Yeltsin. Gorbachev also had a strong personal animosity towards Yeltsin. All of these factors motivated him to run for president.
Apart from being the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1990 Russian legislative election, Gorbachev lacked previous involvement in electoral campaigns. His 1996 campaign effort would be his first time campaigning for office in a direct popular election.
Campaigning
On 1 March 1996, Gorbachev published an open letter outlining the need for an alternative to the candidacies of Boris Yeltsin and the Communist Party's Zyuganov. He announced his candidacy the following day, marking the first time he had campaigned for a democratically elected office.
Gorbachev resented both the incumbent independent Yeltsin and Zyuganov, who were the front-runners in the election. Gorbachev regarded the Communist Party and Yeltsin as being the two forces that thrust him out of power, and encouraged his supporters to abstain from voting in a second round if it were to be between those two candidates.
Gorbachev believed that with a majority of Russians being dissatisfied with both front-runners, there was a viability for a third candidate, and viewed himself to be a suitable individual to fill that role.
Upon announcing his campaign, Gorbachev proclaimed that, despite polls showing him having immense unpopularity, he would be able to win as the leader of a democratic coalition. He called for all democratic forces to unite and form a wide coalition, indicating his readiness to lead such a grouping. He claimed that there would be immense consequences for an election that merely presented the "false choice" between Yeltsin and Communists. Gorbachev declared, "What they are offering is not a democratic future for Russia. That is why we must unite." Gorbachev clarified that he intended to run even if such a coalition failed to materialize.
A spokesperson for democratic political figure Grigory Yavlinsky indicated that with Gorbachev's unpopularity, such a coalition was, "not very realistic". Yavilinsky, however, did unsuccessfully attempt to form such a third force coalition with the campaigns of Alexander Lebed and Svyatoslav Fyodorov.
Despite his unpopularity and low poll numbers, Gorbachev was quickly able to collect signatures. At a campaign appearance St. Petersburg, less than a month after declaring his candidacy, he announced that he had finished collecting more than the one million signatures needed to register his candidacy. Gorbachev soon after turned in more than 1.4 million signatures, officially registering his candidacy. His candidacy was officially certified by the Central Election Commission on 13 April.
During the course of his candidacy, Gorbachev, accompanied by his wife Raisa, traveled the country to deliver stump speeches. Gorbachev regularly encountered hecklers. Gorbachev once responded to hecklers by exclaiming, Gorbachev would also frequently face hasselers, and many times was spat on by individuals.
On the stump, Gorbachev defended his record, claiming that he had tried to save the Soviet Union, but that he had been betrayed by both communist hard-liners and an ambitious Yeltsin. He additionally placed blame on the 1991 coup attempt for undermining his efforts to preserve the Soviet Union. In his speeches Gorbachev would often refer to himself in third-person. He spent most of his time on the campaign trail criticizing Yeltsin.