Mikhail Gorbachev — "I have spent my whole life living in a country that was always preparing for war…"
I have spent my whole life living in a country that was always preparing for war. I don't want my children and grandchildren to live like that.
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More from Mikhail Gorbachev
"The world needs a new perestroika. A global perestroika."
"The old system is dead, but a new one has not yet been born."
"The Soviet model was doomed from the start."
"The people want change. And I will give them change."
"The West thinks it won the Cold War. That is arrogance."
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.