Mikhail Gorbachev — "I'm not a pessimist. I'm an optimist."
I'm not a pessimist. I'm an optimist.
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More from Mikhail Gorbachev
"I believe in human values. In peace, freedom, and justice."
"I consider myself a lucky man. I have lived to see a new world."
"I believe in the triumph of reason. I believe in the triumph of humanism."
"The market is a good servant but a bad master."
"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.