Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who turns 90 on March 2, presided over the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the Cold War. Originally published at - www.rferl.org/...
He wasn't the Premier (Prime Minister, Head of Government), he was Leader of the Communist Party and head of state -> Chairman of the (Presidium of the) Supreme Soviet and then President of the Soviet Union.
@@anoon- Its a media problem, Biden fucked up so many things, especially Afghanistan, but people still place it on Trump even though he planned a slow pullout unlike Biden's, which somewhat resembles the end of Vietnam, and people don't talk about anything Biden does.
I do respect Gorbachev, he allowed Eastern Europe choose its own fate and didn’t interfere. And he genuinely wanted peace and freedom. I hope when he dies he is remembered, in my opinion he is up there with the greatest people in history.
URSS was born with 2 monsters lenine and staline, URSS dies in the most dignified manner with a true though flawed leader Gorbachev a man with basic human decency above all even at the cost of his own power.
@@francis87589 I love that last point, no one can blame a man for chasing power but at the cost of others it’s the right thing to do to show decency even at the cost of what you chased your whole life.
Interesting life??? How the life of traitor could be interesting? He left us without our Motherland and forced to live in the country I despise so much. America is a real Impire of evil, no doubts. Everything they told us in Soviet Union about america is true! Not USSR had to be destroyed, but definitely the US!
@@cresfirc7349 the problem of the communists is that when they aim at their guns against people they suffer an impenetrable contraceptive at the mouth of the weapons while the rogue democracies like Britain and United Snakes of America can so easily shoot them down on the ground such an artistic way that the world can not help clapping to appreciate this noble task.
@@saulgoodman5451 they saved your asses from nazi and you backstabbed them. You former USSR nations on the European side are the worst, with all your NATO boot licking.
@@musamusashi no, Nazis saved from Russians. If ur talking about what they did to us, they sent 200,000 lithuanians ro Siberia, banned our old and beauiful language culture. By your name I am assuminh you are some random Japanese, so it's not for you to know stuff like that
@@Umar-kj6pd I don't know which one but he went to his birth town and asked people about there thoughts on him. If you do a bit of research you might find which one 👍
Its amazing that the Russians don't recognise that Yeltsin permitted massive corruption and betrayed the Russian people and allowed himself to be surrounded by a mafiosi group of oligarchs whom Putin never confronted even to this day about their ill gotten gains. Gorbachev biggest failing was his naivity in seing the best in people without considering the worst. He may also partially have become less resolute after Raisa became ill and died . Had he stood up to Yelstin it might have turned out differently.
Nah he is miserable and petty and short sighted. I mean he is good only compared to Kamala Harris as it is simply impossible to be worse than that nothingness.
I love that man. He was the pivotal, essential figure of my youth. I was born in 1971. Prior to his appearance, all that Washington and Moscow were doing ( thank you, Ronald Reagan ) was ramping up the threat of nuclear war. He literally saved our lives.
@@sbevexlr848 Lenin?? Lol, he was a fucking maniac. I think if he remained in power, it wouldn't have been much better for soviet citizens than it was under Stalin
He was a great statesman. A man with a real vision and he did much to fix a horrible system and make the world safer. So we wish him a very long life. Look what Yeltsin gave us ? Putin...
Wasn't his fault really. It is said that putin and company did bombing attack on his potential enemies trying race for presidency, way before yeltsin resigned
People saying that he's a traitor seem not to realize that the Soviet Union's collapse was inevitable regardless if Gorbachev or whoever were in charge.
@@Dan-Martin And why is it bullshit? USSR came into existence because of the poor living standard in Tsarist regime and ironically collapsed due to the exact same reason, plus being isolated from the Western world (you know - the Iron Curtain). Oil prices, ruble exchange, low productivity etc. You see, the problem with planned economies is that eventually they all run out of money. And no empire can survive without economy (which is one of the main reasons for the fall of most empires). Not to mention the war in Afghanistan, former republic's desire for independence, and people's need for improved life and more freedom. So, yeah, the USSR was doomed to collapse way before Gorbachev got into power.
@@jekich4433 Ah yes the peoples will for independence, that’s why during the soviet referendum (google it) the majority of people wanted to remain in the Union? The union was dismantled because of opportunistic bureaucrats, who are now oligarchs in their respective republics. No soviet republic is doing well now, it’s a joke. Your buzzwords are laughable. “Freedom” don’t mean jack shit when you’re starving and don’t have a home. Millions of people homeless and starved because of your cute buzzwords, and you still parrot the same words that’s meant to keep them enslaved in the system. Central planning is more efficient in the way that it guarantees that everyone has a job and home. We don’t need 50 flavours of coke and Pepsi, it’s such a massive waste of resources. You don’t understand.
@@Dan-Martin If you're gonna cite the 1991 referendum then how about you be honest about it instead of using it as an argument that the peoples of the USSR didn't want independence? A 2 minute research on google would have debunked what you just spewed. 1) The referendum was not about independence from the Union, but rather supporting the renewal of the USSR brought by Gorbachev's political reforms. It was meant as a legitimizing act for Gorbachev's actions. 2) The Baltic States, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia boycotted the referendum. 3) By the end of the year 99.5% of Georgians, 99.5% of Armenians, 92.3% of Ukrainians (the same ones that according to you voted to remain in the Union a few months earlier) , 74.9% of Latvians, 93.2% of Lithuanians and 98.3% of Uzbeks (the same as with the Ukrainians) voted for independence through a referendum. >Muh central planning The biggest factor for the fall of the USSR was the econonic crisis brought by the inefficiency of central planning which brought food shortages throughout the Union. Gorbachev failed to reform because the bureaucrats refused to accept the reforms because they would take away their privileged position. >buzzwords Says the guy that spews "referendum", "central planning" and "starving" without doing the most basic research on the stuff he says. Get a job.
@@Chaika1974 The referendum was about preserving the Union in which party officials in the republics refused to accept. One key feature you forgot to mention in your nonsensical blabbering, is that from all the votes cast, 77.85% said yes to preserving the union. All central Asian countries wanted to preserve the union, including Azerbaijan and Armenia. Ukraine votes and Belarus voted yes also. Central planning failed because of Gorbachev's privatization of the economy, not because of central planning. Funny how suddenly their was a food shortage in the 80's? why was their no food shortages in the 60's and 70's? It's also funny your name is in Georgian and you have a picture of Gagarin as your profile pic. One of the biggest success in soviet science and engineering was the space program. If you're going to be so anti soviet at least get it together. Gagarin's successes was also Georgia's success, what the fuck has Georgia done now? I have a great job and a home, meanwhile you're trying to cling on to the past because Georgia doesn't have a future. You can't be as meaty as me when you have no money kiddo. Get it together.
the enormous bravery of Mikhail Gorbachev, who released many countries from Soviet captivity, will never be lost on me. I have always had the greatest respect for the man and if i was Russian I would be so proud of him. He is the polar opposite of V Putin.
I'm with you. 100% correct. I' think Gorbachev is/was only clear minded leader in that countrys history. He had great plans and ideas to rebuild Soviet Union with new borders and with new goverment, but the old hard line communists(Brezhnev's old buddies) didn't see that vision and they wanted him out, but even then, the old bastards couldn't do anything to Yeltsin, who then messed up everything.
He still lives and I'm happy to see that but it's also very tragic when you think about how the world has forgotten him. He's been forsaken by most of his countrymen who have been misled by the current regime. It must be tough for him to see his predecessors undo all that he and his team had worked for. I really hope that there would be a Russian leader in the near future who could carry his legacy.
Gorbachev was the biggest rock star in the 80s....at least to his people, and we in the west respected him a great deal. Still do. Wish the world had more of these types of men...men who are willing to do the hard work, and save us from ourselves.
I remember the progression of the cold war in my home of Beerwah Australia. I had a few penpals in Russia in1985 great people and wonderful families. We wrote for nearly 10 years and then drifted apart. People thought I was crazy and nicknamed me the mad Russian. I took it as a compliment. I war even taken to a mental hospital for a couple of weeks but got out and went to college and years later worked in mental health support groups.
If the USSR was not out of money and broke, he would still be in power. He is no hero, he is a hard line Communist to the core. He had no choice but to quit the USSR. They had no way to pay their corrupt little comrades.
Can we all agree that. It doesnt matter if you hate the guy or not. Its your own opinion. Dont try to cause conflict and force other people to follow your beliefs.
When you pay for his treason by having everything taken from you and living a destroyed life without prospects for decades so he'd play dumb from London apartments he couldn't possibly afford on his salary - you'll have a say in it.
When Gorbachev ascended to power in Soviet Union in the mid 1980's, the country had already grown more unsettling, compounded by its failure in Afghanistan. Had he been firmer and obstinate, Soviet could not have disintegrated that fast. Instead, he chose openness and reform. The rest is history..
Mikhail Gorbachev named Man of the year twice in Time magazine 1987 and 1989.and awarded Nobel peace prize in Dec 10,1990, and the Soviet Union Collapsed. During the 1990s, once Boris Yeltsin became President of Russia in July 1991, the oligarchs emerged as well-connected entrepreneurs who started from nearly nothing and became rich through participation in the market via connections to the corrupt,
The collapse of communism happened thanks to the Polish resistance with Solidarnosc and the Pope Jan Pawel II. Gorbachev was only a spectator pretending doing something.
የትናየት I agree, he could have continued in the same way as former Soviet leaders, instead he tried to reform the moribund system he inherited. The world would now have been a much better place had he continued for longer in office. He was surely up among the greatest leaders of the 20th century. I wish him well.
Seems that the public have had a polarizing opinion of him, ranging from him being a hero or being a traitor. There are definitely many things that have happened before, during and after his term. I don't know much about USSR but here's what I know. - The Soviet-Afghan war started since 1979 when he took office in 1985. The war seemed unwinnable by that point. - The economy had been stagnating since the 70s due to fixed pricing - Protests in the Eastern Bloc had been suppressed - USSR focused more on the Science than the Arts (apparently) - There was a referendum which people actually wanted to stay in the USSR but was never implemented - After the USSR collapsed, it lost huge amounts of territory, forming new countries - Rebel groups and the Mafia had become prevalent. - The economy became worst than before and took many years to recover - The military had weakened to the point that they even lost to the Chechens Am I accurate with this? What other things that I might've missed?
Pontosan! A sok zöldfülü okos nem emliti Csernenkot, Androidot, Miko Janit, nameg a névtelen puccsistàkat. Mind Gorbacsov, mind Yelcin pontosan jo volt és idöszerü az akkori krizisben, amit nem ök hanem még elödjeik csinàltak /akarva vagy sem/. Kina nem roskadt magàba Mao halàlakor-Pedig az nagyobb zuhany volt.
it,s a hero for the west and trator for the soviet union, but for me he still not a traitor, because he just want to give people more freedom and save soviet union economy, even if he fail, he still trying to do the good thing
For me Gorbachev was the best president that ever existed on this planet. I'm Brazilian and saw the history of this guy. It's a shame he had to be in charge of a country that was already suffering the consequences of mistakes made by previous regimes.
He’s a two faced figure. He did allowed more freedom in USSR but on the other hand he did kill allot of innocent people like in Vilnius 1991 January or in Baku.
@@5Penkets Putin has killed people and has no regrets, Gorbachev was involved with killing and realized that was a better way of doing things. And the question is , did Gorbachev have complete control, or did he have to roll with the flow. Putin has a problem people are scared of him.
The dissolution of the USSR was one of the worst things to ever happen. Millions were put into poverty and homelesness. Go ask anyone from Russia who lived through that age.
It is both a good thing and a bad thing. The USSR was a failed corrupt system that only stayed around because of an iron grip and suppression of freedoms. Its inevitable collapse came and did make people's lives worse for a significant time but acting like the USSR isn't guilty for this is disingenuous.
Gorbachev is great men. He truely deserved Nobel peace prize. I know most of the Russians resent him for breakdown of Soviet union but his called was for global peace. It's wrong and childish on part of the west for making it their triumphalism. Respect and regards to this great men. He has genuine concern for world peace and cooperation.
he is a huge leader. and it's his brave act that things got over in ppls favor back around 1990. that the u.s. would claim a moral victory, spending ever more on military while the ussr was gone to gain as much power as possible and interfere and expanding with nato was not his fault as it's felt by many russians. it's the fault and the responsibility of the u.s. elites. now with some different characters than Gorbachev in the kremlin rich families' interest to expand their powers in the east of europe like kolomoisky, biden etc. are a dangerous mixture of delusional old egomaniacs on all sides. the ppl of ukraine for now find themselves caught in power structures where they obey some rich folks to kill each other. they literally share the same blood, so many of them... we don't have to just overthrow the elites we have to overthrow the system leading to such chain reactions. war is over if we all want it - the rich are not only stealing our money by tax evasion and therefore our future, even our present day they steal by pushing us in a war. Ca. 70% of the population does not take any active part in politics. this majority is forced to live in a battle field now because of a handful rich old men... we can do something. look up works of noam chomsky or rutger bregman peace
Man, Gorbachev was not fucking around. The man has very, very fucking strongly set morals and ideals, and he's a wall made of titanium: aint gonna give in an inch. If anything else, he should be admired for believeing, and standing by, what he believes to be right.
Why is he blamed for disintegration? Why ppl say he should have done this and that..? Soviet union was disintegrating on it's own, it would have disintegrated even if he did something about it. Nobody can stop the idea whose time has come...I would rather say if he would have done something forcefully to stop the collapse, that would have led to massive bloodshed and violence. The fact that they collapsed without any violence as such is itself a victory..
I recall a journalist or politician who said something incredible in the eighties The Soviet Union is about to collapse I had lived under the terror of a nuclear war and that prediction out of the blue came as a surprise We knew Little or nothing of what was going on behind the iron courtain Shortly the Berlin Wall came down along with the empire of the soviets
@@O5-hans lies. The USSR would never have gotten into such a situation had this bourgeois socialist destroy his homeland under sheer incompetence. Gorbachev is an assistant not a leader. Assistants assist the leaders who lead. Assistant have their own special jobs and are not meant to be leaders, assistants put their dependence on leaders. Given this, a juxtaposition of contrasting roles would leave a bad impact on the country. Gorbachev was meant to be at the side, not the front.
Lazer Kaganovich, Bolshevik leader at October revolution and closest ally of Joseph Stalin lived to see the destruction of Soviet Union. He was the last Bolshevik
Yes indeed! Humanity needs compassion & cooperation, world leaders must lead on road to peace & prosperity for all humanity. Diplomacy, dialogue, open hearted understanding of diversity, differences in culture, language & background can find common ground if only humanity opens up in a spirit of forgiveness, acceptance & positivity. Humanity must unite in fighting the pandemic but more importantly, human politics must get healthy too, gain maturity & shed off old ways & bad habits! Praying for humanity's deliverance as God's love & wisdom prevails. May God bless Gorbachev & all world leaders, govt officials, civic & public servants. God bless! 😇
Dear audiences, The wholle situation was more complicated, than: This man is good, that comrade is evil, these steps were good, these were wrong, ugly, The Perestrojka and Glasnost could save The USSR Vs. Could not work. I have to say openly, M. S. Gorbacov was my hero, together with V. Havel, R. Reagan, G. W. Bush - these heroes from my childhood are 100 % perfect! Are not they? No, they were not perfect at all, because nobody is! I was born in The Czechoslovakia in 1985, so I was 4 years old, when The Velvet revolution started and was 6, when The USSR colapsed. I learned a lot, because I am highly interested in the real life behind The Iron curtain, mainly in The CS and The USSR. The great missinformation is, that M. S. Gorbacov was "the father" of The Perestrojka, but this package of reformation was the idea presented by J. Andropov, who was supporter of Gorbacov. There were involved in exactly 3 persons: Riskov, Gorbacov, Dolgih. I lost one from my last ilusion few Years ago. The ilusion about hero from my childhood, because I realised, M. S. Gorbacov has tvo faces: 1st is world wide popular Gorbi as I knew him before (has only minnor personal flaws etc) And the 2nd is human beeing M. S. Gorbacov, who is not evil person, his personality is composed by pluses and minuses, of course. There were evil forces, who manipulated him to this and that needed situation and position. On the one hand, I highly appreciate his good work, but on the other hand, I am not worry to point out, he did a lot of misstakes and commited unjustices, for example: The Special forces (SPECNAS) was the elite forces of The Soviet army and there were unit - the best of the best, Alpha team. These guys had been deployed by his own command to respond against his own Soviet people. Nobody could sign that command / ordeer, than Gen. secretary of The CPSU, even The KGB was not authorised such order! I would like to recommend You memoirs by N. I. Riskov, B. Scerbina, Gen. N. Antoskin, Gen. N. Tarakanov, V. Legasov, I. Silajev, A. A. Borovoj, M. Legasova, I. Legasova, A. P. Aleksandrov and others, who were involved in the last stage - scientists, family members, The Politbiro of The CPSU members, C. C. of The CPSU, the government of The Soviet union. You can read books by M. Gorbacov, R. Gorbacova, J. Velichov, J. Jelcin and others, of course! I would like to point out, there were another reasons, why The USSR colapsed: The bloody war in Afghanistan, The Chernobyl NPP disaster and tragic, horrible earthquake in The Spytak city area in Armenia. Michael Sergejevic tould many times, The Chernobyl NPP disaster became the start of the end of The Soviet Union and I agree with him. There were wholle chains of events, with unclear and more difficult consequences and at the end was well known tragic year 1991. Nikolaj Ivanovic Riskov - the last prime minister of The government of The USSR sayd great idea: "I believe, Michael Sergejevic really did not want to destroy the state, where he was the elected president." , I would like to recommend You The Rabbithollefiles RU-vid, where You can find wide variety of highly accurate videos, in Russian with English subtitles. You can visit also this blog Itsmydutytotell.worldpress.com. I am member of the small group of enthusiasts, who runn this web. I would like to invite You, dear visitors, to my RU-vid. Thank You both for understanding as well as attention, stay safe and be healthy, take care!
Gorbachev truly believed in peace, but the West didn't. Gorbachev took the Soviet forces out of Eastern Germany (and the rest of the Eastern Europe) because he wanted Germany to be unified. The West promised him "not a step more" beyond Eastern Germany. However, the West went back on its word to Gorbachev. NATO enlarged past East Germany all the way to the doorstep of Russia into Ukraine! In essence, Gorby made a pact with the wolves.
Got nothing but bad things to say about the man. Weakness is worse than wickedness. Had Gorbachev not been so weak a ruler, millions wouldn't have perished in various wars, ethnic conflicts and such. He was solely responsible for reigniting the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict that had been dormant for almost a century. Millions of lives lost and millions were never born in the breakup of the Soviet Union caused by his indecisiveness. For the people of the USSR Gorbachev was worse than Stalin. Both my grandfathers - God rest their souls - hated Gorbachev and a vast majority of Russian citizens still do.
This is uncomparable. Stalin was a militant revolutionary who became totalitarian maniac, gorba was a bureaucratic party administrator, who had to deal with the grim consequences of the derailed soviet empire and ideology. Wwiii was not a realistic scenario for him and i dont blame him for that.
@@mirabelkitty2735 It wasn’t derailed lmao but stabbed in the back by traitors. I suggest you look up the soviet referendum, most people voted to remain in the union, but the abolished it anyway. The ussr was a leader in science, space and was producing more scientists than any other country in the world. Russia is a complete joke in comparison. They had a system that respected and admired people STEM fields and praised them also. Our culture our kids looks up to the Kardashians...
@@mirabelkitty2735 For all his faults and undeniable ruthlessness, Stalin took an agrarian, underdeveloped country with a largely illiterate population and weakened by almost a decade of warfare and civil strife and turned it into an economic and industrial superpower in a little over a decade. He then led it to victory in the war of annihilation over Nazi Germany and its European vassals. Now imagine if it had been Gorbachev leading the USSR in 1941, do you for one second think the country would have survived the initial Nazi onslaught? He would've crumbled like a beyatch and given up like the French and the rest of them.
The success of Stalin - the man who used to boast that he conquered the United States "from the plow to the atomic bomb in just a generation" - compared to Gorbachev's failure shows that a socialist economy is unable to function with a minimum of efficiency without requiring a massive dose of political violence. In an attempt to reform a decadent regime, Gorbachev moved faster with the process of economic opening in the hope of removing the predictable resistance that the Soviet bureaucracy would create to economic reform measures, as thorough proof with the failed attempt. coup d'état in August 1991 - which ended up precipitating the final crisis of socialism and the dissolution of the USSR itself Its Chinese parallel - Deng Xiaoping - adopted a logic diametrically opposed to that of Gorbachev: it prioritized the achievement of economic prosperity (adopting in practice capitalism) precisely to delay any attempt at political opening, as was evident with the acceleration of the economy. reforms after the Tiananmen Square massacre. It is important to note that it was Karl Marx himself who, in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, discerned the scenario in which the conditions for a social revolution process are formed, describing it as follows: “At a certain stage in its development, the material productive forces of society contradict existing production relations or - which is only their legal expression - with the property relations in which they have been active until then. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into fetters of them. So, it is a time of social revolution. '* By rejecting the pursuit of profit maximization as an instrument to stimulate innovation, socialist countries ended up condemning themselves to obsolescence. Thus, they lost the chance to incorporate the productivity gains made possible by technological progress. That is why the capitalist countries managed to provide a greater rise in the standard of living of their population, even without pursuing the egalitarian ideal. Therefore, until the “final crisis of socialism” (to paraphrase K. Marx's own definitions once again), it was only a matter of time. But religious fanatics do not give up on their faith, even against the indisputable proof of the facts, which completely refute it! * Reproduced according to MARX, K. Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, organized by Florestan Fernandes and published under the title K. Marx: Theory and historical process of the social revolution, In Marx & Engels, Great Social Scientists Collection, History, vol. 36. São Paulo: Ática, 1983. p. 232. Commemorative edition of the centenary of Karl Marx's death.
Gorbachev was a naïve dreamer in a cutthroat totalitarian regime, he only even became the leader because all the previous generation of leaders had died out. He was into policy rather than politics, a naïve viewpoint which led him to miss the reality that he was not running a normal country, he was running a Communist superstate united in revolution by pure force, with public policy merely serving as a reinforcement, a veneer of legitimacy. Undermining the economic policy would not have destroyed the Soviet Union; as we see in Communist China capitalist economics can be successfully shoehorned into a totalitarian Socialist system. But undermining the revolution and the Party, as Gorbachev did by allowing a free press, slowly unraveled the state’s narratives and allowed for the true nature of the regime to be revealed; within 5 years the state had disintegrated.
@@pancytryna9378 not sure, I think he was well intentioned and is a very genuine person, among the most genuine world leaders in recent years, but I do think his policy was overly naïve and idealistic, causing the massive unforeseen issues that the world saw play out during his tenure
The west have treated Gorbachev really badly. He gave us a hand and NATO forcefully took both arms. Dishonourable. Gorbachev tried his best and what happened because of arrogance and disrespect was a Russia in chaos in the 90s. This was not the fault of gorbachev, it was the fault of hostilities from ourselves, the western powers.
Dont blame Gorbachev for the demise of the Soviet Union. U.S.S.R. economy is in bad shape under Kruschev - Breschnev -Chernenko.How many decades of mismanagement of Soviet economy.
He tried, the Soviet Union in the last few years was like Communist China is today, except with less censorship, as Gorbachev also tried a free press alongside his economic reforms. This is ultimately what made the reforms fail because it allowed Communist corruption to come to the fore. It also allowed managers of state enterprises to envision a new political system free from the limitations of Socialism. If a free press were ever allowed in Communist China, the Deng-era economic reforms would no longer be sufficient to appease the population and the country would likely collapse like the Soviet Union.
Paradise: Don't come closer or else the heaven would collapse! Hell: Stop there sir, one step closer and the hell would crumble down! Paradise & Hell signs peace treaty: make sure Gorbachev lives no matter the cost.
