Mikhail Gorbachev — "I'm a realist. I see things as they are."
I'm a realist. I see things as they are.
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More from Mikhail Gorbachev
"The Soviet Union was a great country. But it had to change."
"We are tired of waiting for the market to regulate itself. We will regulate it."
"I have always been a supporter of the Union. I wanted to reform it, not destroy it."
"The people are tired of promises. They want action. They want results."
"Freedom is the right to choose, the right to err, the right to be oneself."
About Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
Final General Secretary of the Soviet Union whose glasnost and perestroika reforms led to the USSR's dissolution and the end of the Cold War. Closely associated with Boris Yeltsin (his domestic rival and successor as Russian leader) and Ronald Reagan (Cold War counterpart and arms-control partner). For an intellectual contrast, see Vladimir Putin, Russian president (2000-2008, 2012-) — Putin has publicly called the Soviet collapse 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century' — Gorbachev's signature achievement. Putin's two-decade political project has been organized around reversing Gorbachev's liberalization.