The Last Soviet

"Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep."

Mikhail Gorbachev

November 1987

Mikhail Gorbachev died today, and the Western media is celebrating him as the man who ended the Cold War.  What about Reagan?  No, he was the man who might have nuked the world and only Gorbachev saved us.  How is it that the leader of a totalitarian state has long been hailed as a peacemaker while his democratically elected opponents - Reagan & Thatcher - are painted as dangerous extremists?  The fact is that Gorbachev had the misfortune of coming to power during the final decline of the Soviet system.  He lost the Cold War, but the Democrat and Labour opponents of Reagan and Thatcher weren't about to give them credit.  No, the hagiographies were composed for the loser.  For years, Reagan's refrain was 'We win, you lose,' to the Soviets.  The US economy dwarfed the Soviet economy, and an arms race was like Usain Bolt racing a 10-year-old.  Efforts to keep pace could only result in bankruptcy for the USSR.  Then there was Chernobyl.  That disaster changed the dialogue.  Even Gorbachev decried the shoddy workmanship in the Soviet Union, admitting failings that prior leaders spent decades denying.  While the Soviet people view Gorbachev negatively, he has been quite popular in the West.  By presiding over the destruction of the nation he led, he received a Nobel Prize (1990).  The man who wanted to save Soviet communism, and failed, was lionized.  In retrospect, that was a fair trade.  Even Reagan would agree.

“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.”

Ronald Reagan

"The role of Ronald Reagan had been deliberately diminished; the role of the Europeans, who, with the exception of Helmet Kohl, were often keen to undermine America when it mattered, had been sanitized; and the role of Mr. Gorbachev, who had failed spectacularly in his declared objective of saving communism and the Soviet Union, had been absurdly misunderstood."

Margaret Thatcher