April 23 is the 30th anniversary of former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev's launching of unsuccessful reforms.

The latest poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center showed that most Russians believe Gorbachev's reforms did more harm than good to the country - they took away people's confidence, brought in chaos and eventually led to a disaster for the nation. In 2010, about 53 percent of people polled took this stance. This year the figure rose to 55 percent.

As to the Gorbachev reforms that led to the demise of the Soviet Union, Russian society wants to forget it as soon as possible, according to the research center.

On April 23, 1985, Gorbachev proposed a "strategy to speed up social and economic development" at a Central Committee plenum of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which marked the beginning of the reforms.

When the reforms brought the country's economy to a halt, Gorbachev believed that political reform should become the priority. He pushed for democracy and openness, reduced the power of the Communist Party in running the country, and advocated "all power belongs to the Soviet Union." The country span out of control. Today Russians under the age of 30 have no memory of the Soviet Union. People have little interests in talking about Gorbachev. The comments on Gorbachev among Russian and world intellectuals are split. But one thing is certain: that he was the leader of a failed reform attempt.

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union put forward one after another ambitious reform plan. Russians at that time were expecting to embrace the life of the developed Western countries overnight. China also started reforms and opening-up in the 1980s. But it trod more carefully, stressing that it was still at the primitive stage of socialism and had to move forward step by step.

Three decades later, it has become clear who picked right.

The lessons of Gorbachev include idealism, underestimating the difficulties of reform, and over-emphasizing Western feedback.

The biggest mistake is the cut of the Communist Party's leading power, which led the reforms to total chaos. The major events that hit the foundation of the Soviet Union hard were led by senior Party officials. Local leaders of the Soviet republics were behind the republics' breaking away from the Soviet Union.

Reform is very difficult in a big country. There is still a long way to go for China's continued reforms. Maintaining a fast and steady pace is a challenge. It is still necessary for China to study Gorbachev's reforms and the things that led to the Soviet Union's dissolution. Even though the Russians forget about these lessons, we will not.