Mikhail Gorbachev — "We cannot build socialism without democracy. This is a fundamental truth."
We cannot build socialism without democracy. This is a fundamental truth.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Mikhail Gorbachev
"My life has been full of struggle. And it will continue to be so."
"I am not afraid of glasnost. I am not afraid of criticism. I am not afraid of democracy."
"Some people say that I destroyed the Soviet Union. But I was trying to save it."
"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
"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.