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It was an unforgettable evening in Moscow.
I was taken by Russian friends to the city’s then largest cathedral which had been closed for decades by Stalin’s orders.
Amid clouds of incense and the glow of countless candles, a chorus sang the old Orthodox liturgy. Most of the worshippers openly wept. This was the first time that Russians had been allowed to celebrate Orthodox Christmas mass since the 1930’s. Though not myself religious, I was swept away by the deep emotions and beauty of the moment.
The new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had allowed his nation’s churches to reopen. This historic act, and a host of other liberalizations, restored Russia to its cultural roots and brought a dawn to the benighted Soviet Union after the dark Communist times.
Mikhail Gorbachev, a soft-spoken bureaucrat from the rural Stavropol region, seemed unlikely to assume leadership of the mighty Soviet Union. But three previous chairmen of the Union had died from age-related infirmities. The Communist Party’s ruling circles decided that their nations needed youth, rejuvenation and a battle against corruption.
So Gorbachev was named the new party chairman. He wasted no time in unleashing a torrent of reforms known a ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika.’ Gorbachev was hugely aided in this revolution by the tough KGB chief of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze whose primary role in Gorbachev’s revolution was not understood by the west. We used to call him ‘Chevy Eddy.’ He enjoyed this sobriquet.
Gorbachev wanted a Europeanized, liberal Russia living in harmony with the western powers. He partly dismantled the fearsome KGB, guardian of the communist party. I interviewed the KGB’s two most senior officers at the notorious Lubyanka Prison and learned of their tentative support for Gorbachev’s reforms.
The most important action taken by Gorbachev was his refusal to use force against ethnic nationalists in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Central Asia and, increasingly, Eastern Europe. Force and fear had held the old Soviet Union together. Once removed, the union quickly began to disintegrate.
Gorbachev also sought to end the Cold War confrontation with the US and its allies, rightly understanding that the USSR could not sustain a ruinous military confrontation with the western powers. Russia at one time had 50,000 tanks and 5,000 nuclear warheads but no food in its miserable markets.
So Gorbachev bravely called an end to the Cold War and embarked on nuclear disarmament programs. He ended the hopeless war in Afghanistan and recalled the Red Army. As rebellions erupted in East Germany, the Baltics and Central Asia a bunch of drunken Communist Party bigwigs tried to overthrow Gorbachev in August 1991 while he was vacationing in Crimea. The coup was a comic fiasco, but it ended Gorbachev’s authority. Boris Yeltsin, secretly supported by the US and Britain, seized power.
The USSR collapsed, splintering into pieces. Gorbachev and his allies were unwilling to employ brute force to stop the process. Had they done so, nuclear war with the US and NATO would have been likely. While Gorbachev avoided war and allowed the historic reunification of Germany, the US invaded Iraq. Many Russians warned that the US was determined to destroy the Russian Union. Washington’s vows not to expand NATO east turned out to be untruths that delivered the final fatal blow to Gorbachev. He became the most reviled man in Russia, an outcast in his own country. His lovely, cultured wife Raisa was denounced as a snob, but she would form the model for modern Russian women, transformed from dumpy versions of Mrs. Khrushchev into stunning beauties.
Former President Mikhail Gorbachev died last week aged 91 after a long illness. Like the late US president Jimmy Carter, he struggled to spare the world from the threat of nuclear war. He made many mistakes, but Gorby was a great man, a great statesman and a great human being.
Rest in peace, Mikhail Sergeyevich. I salute you.
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I will condemn Gorbachev with the worst insult one can give to a statesman:
“But he meant well!”
“he struggled to spare the world from the threat of nuclear war”.
Utter non-sense. The only time the world was under nuclear threat was the Cuban crisis. Under Brezhnev Russia was economically destitute, defeated in Afghanistan, rudderless, and unable to wage any war, especially with the then omnipotent US.
Gorbachev suicided Russia at the altar of “internationalism”, ignoring the common wealth of his own people – all executed on a plan crafted for him collectively by KGB, and CIA. That is a signature of an irredeemable idiot, not one who ” made many mistakes”. No wonder that the Russians know him as a traitor.
If Russia eventually replaces Putin with someone of Gorbachev’s beliefs, the county may be able to stay together and recover from all the damage that Putin has brought the country.
———
Secretary of National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine believes Russia’s collapse has already begun: “dozen of regions ready to leave the Russian Federation”
IRYNA BALACHUK — WEDNESDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 2022, 14:27
Oleksii Danilov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC) is convinced that certain processes have already begun in Russia that will eventually lead to the collapse of the aggressor country.
Quote of the NSDC Secretary: “Processes have begun there that no longer suit the leadership of the Russian Federation. They did not start immediately – not in March, not in April, but they began to gain momentum two months ago.
There are studies, which show that some territories are now ready to be liberated from this colonial state. We have the first, let’s say, ten of these regions. We understand who will be, relatively speaking, at the forefront of all processes.”
Details: According to Danilov, this is confirmed by the results of certain studies that the special services of the Russian Federation conduct directly on its territory.
They show that there are territories that do not support the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and their number is “much higher than, relatively speaking, two months ago”.
Danilov added that the Russians themselves know about these territories that are ready to be liberated from the Russian Federation.
Among these territories, he named Tatarstan in the first place, and Ichkeria in the second, adding that “it will be free.”
….
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/09/7/7366458/
Jimmy Carter is a former American president– not “the late US president.”
I also admired Gorbachev in those days, but this is an exaggeration. America never showed its resolve to defend Europe from the USSR at any cost. If at all, it showed its unwillingness to oppose the USSR in 1956 and in 1968, when it did not help Hungary and Czechoslovakia rebellions against the USSR. The only time USA got ready to use its nukes was during the (Turkish) Cuban missile crisis, when the American homeland was under threat. America would not have unsheathed its missiles to stop the Communists overrunning Europe. And, if we go by the prevailing logic in these days that Communism was entirely a Jewish creation, then it is doubtful indeed whether America, which also had a powerful Jewish lobby even then, would have risked a nuclear war to stop the USSR.
The whole propaganda that “Stalin was out to grab the entire Europe” was a lie. It was Trotsky who wanted to grab the whole world through the Communist “revolution”, and it was Stalin who stopped it; Stalin was never keen to expand his empire beyond the Slavic peoples. He held East Germany because America refused to give up West Germany (and still has not given up Germany and Japan); Stalin never supported any Communist revolutions in West Europe; he funded those Communist parties only to as a token effort to combat Trotskyism; he never interfered when America cracked against the Communists in Greece and elsewhere. Stalin very well knew that West Europe had no love lost for Russia and Slavic peoples. It was America that successfully built the Communist bogey.
In fact, USSR was initially puzzled why America was suddenly turning against it. Winston Churchill was right that an iron curtain did descend across the European continent, but it was America and Britain that drew down that curtain. All the lands the USSR occupied were occupied with the explicit knowledge and consent of America. In fact it was America that delayed the opening of the Second Front, till it became almost too late – for the Soviet armies swept into Berlin and overran much of Germany before the Allied armies could meet them. Stalin grabbed enough land in East Europe not because he wanted to spread Communism there, but because he wanted two layers of buffer states between Russia proper and West Europe – the first layer was the Warsaw Pact countries (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania) and the second layer was the States within the USSR (the three Baltic countries, Belarus and the Ukraine).
Gorbachev was indeed very naive in trusting the Americans, but then he was not alone; even in 1955, USSR wanted to join NATO! Only when it was rebuffed did it form its own Warsaw Pact. The Soviet leaders believed that America would stand by its commitments.
Gorbachev was indeed a great human being; very few people would voluntarily give up such dictatorial powers. He could have used the Soviet army to suppress the rebellions, and the chances of a nuclear war erupting out of that were remote. But I must also agree with member TG above, that indeed he meant well, and that is never an encomium for a statesman.
“The whole propaganda that “Stalin was out to grab the entire Europe” was a lie.”
Then why was rhe whole Warsaw Pact army conglomerate plannng to advance to the Atlantic Ocean?
Which came first – NATO or Warsaw Pact? Had Stalin wanted to capture the western Europe the right time was 1945, when his armies were unstoppable. He did not want to capture the entire Europe; all he wanted was some sort of buffer between Russia and the western Europe. Poland is already overran and dead; Sweden no longer counts; France is effectively dead; and Germany is just strangled; that leaves only Britain backed by the US that could threaten Russia in Europe. Had Stalin wanted to capture the whole of Europe, in 1945, no amount of atom bombs could have stopped him.
Gorbachev was a liar and a thief.
A traitor and a coward.
A fool and an incompetent.
A gullible and naive idiot.
A pompous and vain fool.
A pretentious arrogant dictator.
Gorby’s big mistake was not getting it in writing that NATO would not move eastward.
May he rot in hell !
Mikhail Gorbachev was an idealist, an ignorant statesman; he destroyed the Soviet Union, he brought corruption and misery to his nation, and unleashed gangs of Oligarch opportunists on the state-owned precious assets — all for the glory of getting a few McDonald’s fast food, Starbucks coffee shops, Pizza Hut franchises in Moscow — Mikhail Gorbachev was a disgraced statesman who betrayed his nation.