Gorbachev dies at 91. Once a major world leader, by the time of his death he seemed like a figure from another age, a man so long out of the limelight that our main reaction to his death is to be surprised that he was still alive. Although he came from a family with Christian believers and victims of Stalinism, he was a Communist true believer and an atheist. He thought his reform path would give new life to Communism, while it was merely part of the death throes of that ideology in Russia and the East bloc. Gorbachev does deserve credit for refusing to use military force to preserve Communist rule in either the Satellite States or the dying Soviet Union. As an historical figure he reminds me of Julian the Apostate, the last gasp of pagan rule in the Roman Empire. Gorbachev’s fate was to make certain that a very long lived man or woman could have seen both the birth and the death of Soviet rule in Russia. I hope it stands him in good stead in the next world that he could have made the death of Communism also the death of hundreds of thousands and he did not.
https://twitter.com/elliemaeohagan/status/1564717457495191552
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” Berlin Wall Speech Ronald Reagan June 12, 1987.
Mr Gorbachev Rest In Peace.
The pages of history are sometimes turned by the most unlikely of persons. Sometimes it is lasting, often fleeting. RIP.
The Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet-Afghan war, trying to compete with the US SDI effort, and attempting to counter the triumvirate of Reagan, Thatcher and JP II undid all Gorbachev’s attempts to hold the USSR together under communism. Yes, Gorbachev was a communist and an atheist to the end. But he was not mean or vicious as other Soviet leaders were. So I hope that the Lord will be merciful to him in the next life.
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