Posted on 08/31/2022 7:44:04 PM PDT by Paal Gulli
Gorbachev ended the Cold War like Louis XVI ended the French monarchy
I don't speak ill of the dead not because they cannot argue back but because they cannot hear me. Why waste my breath?
Instead, let me take on David Hoffman's fact-challenged obituary of Mikhail Gorbachev, the 8th and final thug in charge of the Soviet Union, a communist dictatorship best known for killing about 50 million people and starving Ukraine into submission in the 1930s.
Hoffman wrote, "Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who embarked on a path of radical reform that brought about the end of the Cold War, reversed the direction of the nuclear arms race and relaxed Communist Party controls in hopes of rescuing the faltering Soviet state but instead propelled it toward collapse, died Aug. 30 in Moscow. He was 91."
Well, at least Hoffman got the name and the age right. And so it is with a certain American party which has given us Biden, who paid tribute to him, saying, "Mikhail Gorbachev was a man of remarkable vision."
Fortunately, his vision of the world never came true. Gorbachev ended the Cold War like Louis XVI ended the French monarchy.
As far as reversing the direction of the nuclear arms race, the Soviets dropped out of the race because they ran out of money. Reagan realized that and stiffed Gorbachev at the Reykjavík Summit.
As for relaxing communist controls, I think East Germans walking from Hungary to freedom in Austria had a lot to do with it. The Hungarian border patrol unwillingness to kill women and children encouraged others to escape.
One thing is for sure. Gorbachev -- Mister President -- did not tear down this wall. The people did.
Hoffman tried his best to put lipstick on this historic pig, writing, "The Soviet collapse was not Mr. Gorbachev’s goal, but it may be his greatest legacy. It brought to an end a seven-decade experiment born of Utopian idealism that led to some of the bloodiest human suffering of the century. A costly global confrontation between East and West abruptly ceased to exist. The division of Europe fell away. The tense superpower hair-trigger nuclear standoff was eased, short of Armageddon."
Communism was not an experiment born of idealism. It was a brutal seizure of the state by thugs who then seized the economy in the name of the state. Every communist regime -- Red China, Cuba, North Korea and the USSR -- is harsh, brutal and humorless. The people in the USSR used vodka to dull the pain.
Hoffman and by proxy Jeff Bezos portrayed Gorbachev as a great reformer and statesman when in fact he was a party hack who vainly tried to keep a failed state afloat.
Not until Paragraph 51 does Hoffman admit this.
He wrote, "Five weeks after Ronald Reagan was reelected to a second term, in December 1984, Mr. Gorbachev made a landmark trip to London, where he left a strong impression. He called attention to the dangers of nuclear war and emphasized Soviet fears of an arms race in space. He promised radical reductions in nuclear weapons.
"In substance, Mr. Gorbachev did not change Soviet policy, but his youthful and vigorous style spoke volumes. He seemed to promise a more flexible approach, a sharp contrast with the rigidity of the past."
It was style, not substance.
The Washington Post likes to say democracy dies in darkness. That is its motto. That is its goal.
But darkness dies in democracy. Gorbachev could not stop the collapse of the Soviet state because the people realized those seven decades of utopia -- as Hoffman would have you believe-- were in reality hell. Eventually the Soviet leadership went from a strong man like Stalin to a weak party hack like Gorbachev. He tried open elections in 1991 and by the year's end there was no Soviet Union.
And so it is with a certain American party which has given us Biden, who paid tribute to him, saying, "Mikhail Gorbachev was a man of remarkable vision."
Fortunately, his vision of the world never came true.
He’s seriously NOT some kind of hero. But he did forgo the normal move of a serious crackdown with the Poles, Czechs, and Germans as they started movements.
A few decades before a Soviet leader would have gone Tiennamen Square on them.
Faint praise, but I’ll give him credit for passing on a bloody crack down.
As Rush observed Gorby tried to give out freedoms in tiny increments but keep control of the people as much as possible. No wonder Biden and the rest of the rats loved him
Just thinking back to how the world held it’s breath when Lech Walensa and his Solidarity movement arose. And Pope John Paul II was the main hero here.
The Soviets knew it and tried to assassinate him with that Bulgarian.
Good that Gorb knew the jig was up.
And the word is that his wife was a truly committed communist, more radical than he.
That is a great observation from Rush. He was trying to keep the lid on by handing out small tastes of freedom and it got away from him. But his goal was to save the USSR.
Yeah, sure he did. /sarcasm
Are you taking note Ukraine cheerleaders? The press is lionizing a Russian communist leader. Still think the press, along with this administration gives a hoot about Ukraine?
Rhetorical question, because I know you folks haven't the capacity to seek beyond the latest propaganda piece you have found to post.
Yep, Lech Walesa started out as an electrician, became a union steward and ended up as leader of the Solidarity movement.
The world was glued to the newspapers and TV’s expecting the Soviet army to waltz in and kill everyone. Fortunately Walesa and Solidarity held out, the tanks didn’t roll and the Soviet Union died with a whimper.
If Solidarity had crumbled the German, Czech and other movements may have withered on the vine. Hard to say.
Fortunately for the world Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Britain’s Iron Lady Maggie Thatcher and yes, GW Bush, refused to let hope die. It was a wonderful time to be alive.
That is what I was expecting. I watched the trickle of migrants become a river. I thought it was through Czechoslovakia that it started.
Wasn't it due to opposition to Soviet communism that the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 took place? I was expecting tanks and machine guns. I believe that it was Gorbachev's call to make and that he decided it was time to let it go.
It took no time at all for people behind the Iron Curtain to realize that their jailers were gone. Perhaps I will live long enough to see something similar in North Korea.
https://www.onwar.com/data/ussrlatvia1991.html
Force was tried in Latvia. Had it succeeded you can bet that it would have been used again.
And to think Vladimir Putin was on that assassination team, being KGB assigned to E. Europe during that time...
You’re truly a clown. He was a nothing colonel in the hotspot of Dresden or something. Just making things up now. As far as I know, that has never been asserted anywhere.
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