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RIP, Mikhail Gorbachev
I have had a soft spot for Gorbachev ever since the occasion — probably after the last Reykjavik meeting — when the elderly Reagan was startled by the press lights flashing, and Gorbachev very graciously took our President by the elbow and led him away from the crowd.
It was a touching sign of respect, particularly after Reagan had crushed Gorbachev in negotiations and effectively brought on the end of the Soviet Union.
RIP
Published in General
For you younger kids, he was the guy from the Pizza Hut commercial (viva capitalism)
Damn. Rest in Peace.
Worlds greatest magician.
Made the entire USSR disappear.
Actually, the credit should go to the Holy Trinity.
Pope JP 2 Thatcher and Reagan.
Let us not forget Lech Walesa and Solidarność.
I wholeheartedly agree with the trio of Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul the Second, as well as the Polish People.
I would like to give an Honorable Mention to George H.W. Bush. When the Berlin Wall fell, he communicated throughout the federal government that it was essential that America not dance a victory dance in any way, shape or form. There is a time for modesty and not rubbing your victory in your opponent’s face. Bush called it right. Reagan won the Cold War, and Bush handled it with grace and modesty.
And an assist from the Saudi King who helped bankrupt the USSR by running the pumps at warp speed.
He was better in the movies.
Uh. He gave the “Chicken Kyiv” speech that was very poorly received in much of the former USSR.
The Chicken Kiev speech is the nickname for a speech given by the United States president George H. W. Bush in Kiev, Ukraine, on August 1, 1991, three weeks before the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine and four months before the December independence referendum in which 92.26% of Ukrainians voted to withdraw from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed 145 days after the speech, partially pushed by Ukraine. The address, in which Bush cautioned against “suicidal nationalism”,[1] was written by Condoleezza Rice—later Secretary of State under President George W. Bush—when she was in charge of Soviet and Eastern European affairs for the first President Bush.[2] It outraged Ukrainian nationalistsand American conservatives, with the conservative New York Times columnist William Safire calling it the “Chicken Kiev speech”, named after a dish of stuffed chicken breast, in protest at what he saw as its “colossal misjudgment” for the very weak tone and miscalculation.[3]
RIP Gorbachev – unmourned (perhaps unfairly) by your own people.
Now is not the time to go wobbly, George.
I didn’t even know he was sick.
Was this another time when Russian radio just suddenly started playing sad music?
And when Gorby clapped for Rocky after he beat Drago, that was the beginning of the end for the Cold War.
He could have elected for the Soviet Union to go out in a wave of blood and glory, like Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan, but chose a better way.
That should be remembered.
Pardon me if I don’t mourn, right about now.
I remember when he came to Minnesota. Big PR push, favorable treatment. People ran after his car like he had the reunited Beatles stuffed in the trunk. Never did get close, which I regret. A consequential man who will be remembered, perhaps, for what he did, yes – glasnost and perestroika and all that, the intention of which was to build a better Communist state – but also remembered for what he did not do. There may, at some point, been men waiting for the orders to shoot. The order never came.
I thought I invented the term “Gorby Groupies” to refer to our media but maybe it was invented simultaneously by others. I soon developed a much higher opinion of Gorbachev than when I came up with that phrase, but not of the groupies.
I never thought about it before, but “Gorbyfans” sounds better to me.
“Gorbylytes?”
“Gorbregation?”
Gorbyniks
I’m thinking there’s the perfect option in there somewhere, I just haven’t found it yet.
But I remember talk of people having “Gorbasms.”
Beyond a certain age, I figure, it’s not unexpected. I expect that he was beyond that age, especially for a FUSSR type.
I disagreed with many of his later (supposed) pronouncements, but with him being the man in the arena at the time, I thought him to be a decent man in an indecent milieu.
Some day, I’ll tell you about an unclassified anecdote from a classified briefing. You know — back in the day. Not that it has anything to do *really* with Gorby — just as a sign of the times, which had a lot to do with Gorby.
Corporate media would rather give Grobachev credit than admit they were wrong about Reagan.
I learned more about Gorbachev in Claire Berlinski’s excellent biography of Margaret Thatcher than anywhere else. They all respected each other and it sounded like he welcomed change.
That’s what I remember, too. in the 1990s Gorby got all the accolades for the downfall of Soviet Communism. Mrs Thatcher, His Holiness and Ronaldo Magnus were viewed as bit players. This utterly mis-states history.
The MSM is already heaping most of the praise on Gorby. The “Gorbasm” still exists . . .
Remember Rush’s “Gorbasm”?
Gorby Groupies has gone down in history without anyone acknowledging it as my contribution.
Gorbachev presaged the Davos Man. He wanted to create prosperous, innovative productivity but all entirely contained inside a bubble controlled by an external elite and with limited entre for the masses. He and Raisa could wear designer clothes, enjoy Western goodies available at the stores for party members but still keep absolute control. The Party would evolve to be comprised of enlightened types like him but still with enough hard men in the shadows to prevent threats to power.
But he did not think it through. Because it would conflict with his new image to send tanks into Poland to crush Solidarnosc it got out of hand and that Polish pope was a wild card.
The freedoms necessary to expand production of consumer goods just would not stay in the bubble.
It is possible that the whole mess would have collapsed anyway but Gorbachev’s image ambitions and aversion to old-style (overt) Soviet repression perhaps allowed the collapse to be less violent and not a matter of the masses overcoming tanks and bullets.
You just described Communist China that actually pulled it off.