Mikhail Gorbachev passes away

[Kapitan]

It’s now reported Mikhail Gorbachev has passed away aged 92

https://www.reuters.com/world/mikhai...es-2022-08-30/

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by Mikhail Gorbachev

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

RIP

[Skybird]

Bon Voyage. Your life left traces in history. Some Westerners say they were more good than bad, some Russians say they were more bad than good. Germany for its part owes you a bit.

[Catfish]

^ well said.

"After visiting Gorbachev in hospital on June 30, liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg told the armed forces news outlet Zvezda:
"He gave us all freedom - but we don't know what to do with it.""

I had hoped Gorbatchev would have been able to change more, for the future of all. But it already was a lot.

Rest in peace.

[Platapus]

He left his mark on the world

[August]

Originally Posted by Platapus

He left his mark on the world

Almost as big as the map of Thailand on his noggin.

[Aktungbby]

I just loved the cartoons: ...too bad it didn't last!

Originally Posted by Skybird

Germany for its part owes you a bit.

[Jimbuna]

R I P

[mapuc]

R.I.P Mikhail

[Skybird]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62062852



But you can also see him like this (from FOCUS):


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Was Gorbachev really guided by "peace and understanding between people," as Annalena Baerbock says? Was he the "great statesman" to whom Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier "bows"? The dripping obituaries border on historical claptrap.

Of course - you don't kick the dead. But the dripping obituaries of the alleged super statesman Mikhail Gorbachev already border on historical misrepresentation. Gorbachev was not only "a great statesman", as the German President says, but first a driven man and in the end a failure.

No, Annalena Baerbock is not right. "Mikhail Gorbachev was guided by peace and understanding between people at fateful moments in our history." No, it wasn't like that: Gorbachev was guided above all by necessity.

When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, his Soviet Union was a hopeless case: far inferior to the West economically, technologically and militarily, highly corrupt, ruled until then by stubborn dictators from old people's homes. A bankrupt country, today one would say: a "failed state," or with Helmut Schmidt: "Upper Volta with nuclear missiles."

The only economic goods that were never in short supply in the largest country in the world were: Gas, oil, and - vodka. The Russians experienced the greatest humiliation after the end of the Soviet Union, and this explains Vladimir Putin's aggression, his unending rage.


The Russians had to watch after the "Wende" how the countries they had under their thumb, the Baltic states that were part of the Soviet Union, the Poles, the Hungarians that they had subjugated, got better and better afterwards. Their citizens became free and - compared to the Russian citizens just across the border - prosperous. The West had won the system competition. And Gorbachev had always wanted to prevent exactly that.

Theo Waigel, along with Helmut Kohl probably the most important architect of German unity, told it again and again, in personal conversations, in his memoirs: Gorbachev had believed that "he could somehow hold the communist system." That, and the Soviet Union as a federation of states. As late as 1991, he was still trying to keep alive the construct held together solely by the violence of the communist clique - with a union treaty that was supposed to function according to the "Sinatra principle." Each Soviet state was to have a right to "my way" - its way to socialism.

But the essential point was, in the unvarnished words of Theo Waigel, most recently in a long interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung: "He needed Western capital." And that was to alleviate the economic hardship - in the ruling system - to prevent a revolt. That was also the reason for the disarmament that Gorbachev made possible in the first place - but not out of philanthropy, as our foreign minister thinks, but out of sheer economic need.

40 percent - you have to imagine that, the Germans argue about two percent - 40 percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product was spent on defense in the mid-1980s. With that, it was living miles beyond its means. One man in particular recognized this - and exploited it mercilessly.

Gorbachev's great opponent was the American president. Ronald Reagan, ridiculed in Germany as a "former actor" and denigrated as a militarist by the peace movement, from which the Greens emerged, countered this not only by rearming NATO with medium-range nuclear missiles, but above all with a gigantic project:

The "Strategic Defense Initiative," or SDI for short. Reagan's "War of the Stars" was the idea of making first the U.S. and then the rest of the Western world invulnerable - through a protective shield against Russian nuclear missiles. What drove peace movements into the streets in Germany drove Gorbachev to despair. He knew that from that point on, his ailing state would no longer be able to keep up.

Thus driven, he proposed what no Russian before him had ever proposed: a gigantic disarmament of the nuclear arsenals. What was then agreed in the mid-1980s between the two great powers, the USSR and the USA, was driven by Gorbachev not out of love for peace but out of fear of state bankruptcy.

This was also the big driver for the withdrawal of the Russians from Afghanistan - which Gorbachev also decreed for two reasons. He had recognized that the conventionally acting Russian army would not be able to win against the freedom-loving Afghan partisans, and: the Afghan war was a single ruble-destroying machine.


The withdrawal from Afghanistan, by the way, refutes the claim, which is again widespread today, that the Ukraine war can be brought to an end solely through negotiations. The war in Afghanistan ended because the Russians left. This possibility for Ukraine is hardly on anyone's mind in the West at the moment (although it was the same for the Americans in Vietnam).

Reunification became perfect when Gorbachev, at a legendary meeting with Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Theo Waigel in the Caucasus, agreed that the reunified Germany would be allowed to join NATO. It was the first eastward expansion of the Western defense alliance, namely to include the territory of the former GDR. And that, too, had to do with money, which Gorbachev needed more than anything else.

350,000 Russians finally left East Germany. Germany spent 17 billion deutschmarks on them. Theo Waigel, the treasurer at the time, still talks about it today, marveling like a little boy, what a "bargain" this deal was that freed the GDR from the Russians. For Gorbachev, however, this had devastating consequences in Russia, which Waigel describes thus:

"Even today, they think Gorbachev is a terrible person there, who sold everything." This also shapes Putin's view of history, who considers the disintegration of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev to be the greatest geostrategic accident that ever happened to Moscow in its history.

Gorbachev wanted to hold the Soviet empire together, in the end even with military force in the Baltic states. He failed. Gorbachev wanted to save socialism with glasnost and perestroika. He failed. Russia's weakness and America's determination - that was Germany's luck.

Postscript:

On Twitter, Ukrainian investigative journalist Danylo Mokryk writes: "Gorbachev sent 100000 people, among them children, to irradiated Kiev - on May 1, 1986. While he concealed the Chernobyl disaster."

Reacting to Mokryk's tweet, Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk said, "My wife was one of those poor children. Therefore, no condolences on his death."


-----------------------

[Dargo]

Prison radio reported the death of Mikhail Gorbachev. It was under his rule that the last political prisoners were released in the USSR. The fact that today people like me find out about his death through loudspeakers in their prison cells perfectly characterizes the transformation of my country initiated by this outstanding man. My attitude toward Gorbachev evolved from savage irritation - he was standing in the way of the "radical democrats" I adored - to sad respect. When it turned out that those "radical democrats" were mostly thieves and hypocrites, Gorbachev remained one of the very few who did not use power and opportunities for personal gain and enrichment. He stepped down peacefully and voluntarily, respecting the will of his constituents. This alone is a great feat by the standards of the former USSR. I am sure that his life and history, which were pivotal to the events of the late XX century, will be evaluated far more favorably by posterity than by contemporaries.

My deepest condolences to the family and friends of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.

https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1564922977715687424

[August]

The Morning Briefing: Lefties Use Gorbachev's Death to Remind Us That They LOVE Commies

By Stephen Kruiser Aug 31, 2022 4:19 AM ET

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who we last heard from when MTV still played music videos, exited this mortal coil yesterday and went to the Great Politburo in the Sky.

While I generally consider myself to be well informed I have to admit that I thought Gorby checked out at least twenty years ago. That’s probably because he was a mere footnote to the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Of course, commie-loving American leftists don’t see it that way. Our sister site Twitchy anticipated the lovefest that we’re sure to be subjected to from the mainstream media in the coming days.

Sure, Gorbachev may have been a softie compared to most of his predecessors, but he was still mostly just the unfortunate shmuck who happened to be in power when the United States was blessed with a real president who had no patience for the commie nonsense. The Soviet Union was no doubt headed for doom as soon as old Vlad Lenin decided that its people could be sacrificed on the altar of a global domination pipe dream. Ronald Reagan — with assists from Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II — greatly hastened that doom.

Spencer tells the story at Townhall about Reagan’s defining moment with Gorbachev:

Of the Cold War meetings between Gorbachev and Reagan, one of the most consequential was their October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. The Soviets likely knew they’d ultimately lose an arms race to the United States and desperately wanted Reagan to kill off America’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, aka Star Wars).
Despite Gorbachev’s attempts to coax Reagan to stop the program with an offered concession for Russia to limit its long-range weapons, Reagan stuck to his guns and refused to budge. In the end, Reagan left Reykjavik without a deal, one of the major examples of his winning “peace through strength” foreign policy.

Reagan was going on his gut with that move, by the way. His advisors were telling him not to do it and to make a deal. SDI used to be roundly mocked by the American left then too. “Star Wars” was an epithet, meant to mock what they thought was Reagan’s cowboy folly.

But of course, it’s Gorbachev who is remembered fondly by the media. The New York Times says that he presided “over the end of the Cold War.”
In reality, Gorbachev was along for a ride that he knew he had to go on. Ronald Reagan was always the driver.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-...Fwy5N1I3-Mw7pw

[Jimbuna]

A man and a child walk through an almost empty Red Square in Moscow, umbrella in hand, snow on the ground. It looks extremely cold - a good day to be inside eating lunch with your family.

As dramatic music plays, the advert cuts to close-up shots of the pair - a troubled-looking man in a black overcoat and cap, and his smiling granddaughter.

Within seconds they reach their destination: a Pizza Hut restaurant located directly in Red Square - the central plaza where so much of Soviet and Russian history is reflected.

But why, 24 years on, is this advert being shared as an era-defining artefact?

Because the man in the black overcoat - the man, in effect, selling American pizza - is Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62736976

[August]

Congratulating Gorby for ending the Cold War is like congratulating George III for ending the American Revolution. The choice was forced upon them.

[MGR1]

British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore on twitter:

"A decent man & thats high praise for a Russian ruler."

Mike.