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talkpolitics2022-08-31 08:14 pm
mahnmut) wrote in talkpolitics2022-08-31 08:14 pm
RIP Gorby
Rest in peace Comrade Gorbachev. He tried to give the USSR some actual democracy and transparency and rid it of its dictatorship and cruel treatment of its own people.
Too bad he wasn't successful because we would've probably seen a system closer to an actual socialist system (one OF, FOR and BY the people).
He tried, yet he failed. None of it was his fault however, it was the fault of the cruel power-hungry tyrants that hijacked the USSR for their own benefit, one of the worst ones being Stalin.
Gorbachev was what a better communist could've looked like.
If the reforms actually worked, today the USSR might've been just as democratic and free as the West, if not even more so.
Too bad he wasn't successful because we would've probably seen a system closer to an actual socialist system (one OF, FOR and BY the people).
He tried, yet he failed. None of it was his fault however, it was the fault of the cruel power-hungry tyrants that hijacked the USSR for their own benefit, one of the worst ones being Stalin.
Gorbachev was what a better communist could've looked like.
If the reforms actually worked, today the USSR might've been just as democratic and free as the West, if not even more so.
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It should be remembered, Lenin killed about a million of his own countrymen and oversaw the Red Terror. He laid the groundwork for the Cheka, Gulags, and using terror to intimidate the population into obedience. Stalin was certainly a montherfucker, but he really just built upon Lenin's foundation. And added a zero to the number of his countrymen he killed.
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The socio-economic situation of the 80s forced his hand. The only reason he is fondly remembered is for not drowning a sixth of Earth's land surface in blood.
He sent in the military to suppress anti-Soviet protests in Lithuania and Latvia in January 1991. Seven people lost their lives on the barricades in the Latvian capital, Riga, and another 14 were killed by Soviet troops trying to seize the TV tower in Vilnius.
When thousands of protesters took to the streets in Soviet Kazakhstan in 1986, Soviet and local forces reacted with brutality, leaving an estimated 200 people dead.
Soviet tanks rolled into the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, to quash pro-independence protests in April 1989, leaving 21 people dead, most of them women.
A crackdown on Azerbaijan's pro-independence movement in 1990 left 147 people dead.
Countless lives were lost due to the suppression of news and general handling of the Chornobyl catastrophe.
P.S. Just saw a great summary "In short, he was not a ghoul and not a big bloodsucker. For this, we are grateful to him. And he seemed almost human. True, everything that he undertook turned out FUBAR. But that was actually for the best. If he was smart, there would be much more harm."
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