There was an abortive attempt to liberate society in the 1960s. The country did not have the demographic strength, nor could it use terror and reprisals like before, nor again was there a comparable level of outside threats. The Soviet Union was no longer able to carry out a modernization reminiscent of Stalin’s breakthroughs in the 1930s. The need for change was obvious even to hardcore conservatives. Strictly speaking, he had to pay the bills and loans that had accumulated in huge amounts by the start of his rule. Gorbachev was destined to take on what was not a pleasant mission. Few gamers (the majority of people in the last two generations) can maintain their initial strategy in one go without saving it at some point or using other trickery.īut politics is not a computer game. Finally, you can put it on pause, take a break, or simply forget about it. You can also save the game at a crossroads and then replay it in case of a setback. You can introduce a cheat code and receive an endless supply of money and resources. Here are our rivals, and here are our allies. Here we have raw materials, factories, food, and a population. Given this thinking, ruling a country might be likened to a sort of a computer game-something like a step-by-step strategy or even a real-time strategy. They are sure that they would not have allowed the country to collapse, or that they would have carried out reforms with a tougher, hard-core approach. When studying the experience of Gorbachev’s leadership, people are tempted to suggest what they would have done differently. A vigorous orchestrator of long overdue reforms, he eventually lost control over them and failed to prevent a quick and inevitable catastrophe. However, he still remains probably the most tragic figure among Russian leaders. Unlike the majority of Soviet and pre-revolutionary leaders, who died either in power or as a result of losing it, Gorbachev lived a long and comfortable life after leaving his post. Positive assessments emphasized unprecedented democratization, the beginning of the transition to a market economy, a sharp reduction in the risk of conflict with the West, and global integration.įor some people, Gorbachev was a symbol of a superpower’s collapse, while for others he was a reformer, who paved the way to liberation and freedom. Negative comments focused on the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the consequences of which still affect us, for example, in the conflict with Ukraine. Mikhail Gorbachev’s death caused a surge of debates on his political heritage.
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