The Legacy of Gorbachev

    A month has passed since the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the last remaining great leaders of the 20th century. In what was a predictable scene reactions were mostly muted in Russia while in the west there was a mourning of the "great reformer" the man who ended the Cold War. I didn't really know what to make of this phenomenon, is this the most base kind of cynicism I wondered, to celebrate a politician so corrosive to an adversary that it caused them to collapse. Would it be like France sending a wreath to the funeral of Henry VI to honor such an own-goal of a king. But then it occurred to me that it might not be cynicism but an extreme form of naivete among the press, in the belief that of course liberal democracy must be so correct and true that Gorbachev was a crypto-liberal that was some sort of Buddha who nobly sacrificed his own nation to save the world from Marxism and as thus is one for humanity. 

    I suppose the later view is something Gorbachev himself might have been content with if not for his support of the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and his criticism of the westward NATO expansion. These are actions of a man flattered by the admiration of the whole world but would throw it all away in an instant for the admiration and respect of his countrymen, as any man would. 

    The full impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union can't be judged yet with the advantage of a century of events succeeding it yet what can be certain is that its legacy has brought the world closer to a nuclear confrontation than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the likelihood of the use of tactical nuclear weapons increasing by the day. But there is a case to be made that the sudden power vacuum that was caused by the extremely swift deterioration of the Soviet position in the Cold War has been the catalyst for an even more aggressive NATO and revanchist Russian successor state to collide. 

    So what to make of Mr. Gorbachev, I can only think of him as a true believer in Communism, a man who fully breathed the propaganda espoused by the Soviet Union. Internally he followed the simple logic espoused by the communists, if communism worked what need is there for restriction on expression, because everyone with a voice would be singing the Internationale. He was unequivocally a failure for the Soviet people both domestically and abroad yet we as westerners cannot judge him as such until we realize that the Soviet catastrophe in the late 20th century might very well be the cause of the Western one in the early 21st. And so we must use the memory of Gorbachev as a warning against the dangerous foreign policy failures which led the world to the current brink of annihilation.   

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