Gorbo gave the USSR a huge shove in the right direction, and then dissolved it and disbanded much of its military and political establishment. Yes, the commissars stole everything that wasn't nailed down on their way out the door: but they couldn't dress up their massive defalcations in Marxist theory, and they stand naked before the judgment of history and their countrymen as embezzlers of their national patrimony and criminals of the first water.
By dissolving the grotesque Soviet empire, Gorbachev did the world a huge favor. His intentions were to refresh, reform, and regenerate the Soviet state, but his acknowledgment that something called principles exists outside the grasp of Marxist-Leninist regime theoreticians (like the late Mikhail Suslov) set a clear benchmark of truth that showed up the whole mass of Marxist theory and Marxist-Leninist political practice as a palpable, walking lie and cost the Soviet regime the last of the Russian people's fealty. Gorbachev could not have done a better job of taking the Soviet empire apart if he'd been Ronald Reagan himself.
Unless you think I err......?
When the Soviet Union dissolved by peaceful secession, it was only 70 years old — the same age as the United States when it dissolved in 1860. Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.?
The secession of the Baltic States was not peaceful, nor was it negotiated. Even the term "secession" implies that the Baltics were once "legally" part of the Sovet Union.
The Lithuanians, for example, based their entire independence-movement on the notion that they were not legally-bound by the Soviet constitution, with their parliament voting to declare independence the night before the Soviets were to re-write their own constitution, making "secession" subject to an up-down vote in the Duma.
The result? Soviet troops shooting civilians in the street. One historical account has the Soviet commander refusing his orders to assault the Lithuanian parliament building because it was surrounded by 100,000+ demonstrators. The rest is, well, history.
The reason for this brief lesson? Because this writer either deliberately, or negligently, obscures the above in order to make a false comparison between the Baltic States and our southern States before the Civil War. What steams me is that an intellectually-honest comparison is possible, without resorting to Orwellian propaganda. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. The Soviet Union peacefully dissolved, and gum-drops fell from the sky.
Which returns me to my earlier question: why are some conservatives outright apologists for the Soviet regime and its leaders? This is a serious question, and I'd appreciate an answer from anyone who otherwise agrees with this mope.