MIKHAIL Gorbachev went a very long way in his life. Not just in becoming the most powerful man in Russia, but in his own political journey.
He began life as a Leninist and made his way up the Communist party ranks. But he made history by achieving the highest office in Russia and becoming a democrat.
Mikhail Gorbachev went a very long way in his life. Not just in becoming the most powerful man in Russia, but in his own political journey[/caption]
It was one of the most significant personal political journeys of the 20th Century – a shift in belief that meant East and West could try to understand each other again.
Without Gorbachev, the Cold War might still be rumbling on.
Yet those who came after him did not appreciate him.
The manner in which the USSR fell apart was pinned on him, and his latest successor, Vladimir Putin, blamed him for nearly everything.
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Indeed, Putin blamed Gorbachev alongside Tsar Nicholas II for Russia’s “humiliation”, something he felt it was his destiny to reverse.
There is something tragic about Gorbachev’s life. He made a leap of faith, and while it worked for some, it did not help the lives of enough.
The grand theft of the country’s resources in the 1990s and the rise of the oligarchs were seen as the inevitable results of “capitalism”.
Putin is among those to have gained most from the theft – he is one of the world’s richest men.
But it is what Gorbachev had to witness in his last years that is most tragic.
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He tried to make his country free only to see it return to tyranny.
He tried to make peace only to see his successor make war.
His legacy has not yet been undone, but he must have wondered if it had.
