Gorbachev gave us freedom of worship and freedom of speech and freedom to see what was going on and freedom to vote, but that freedom won't last unless it is underpinned by economic freedom.
Pavel Palazchenko has given us a well-written, inside account of Gorbachev's and Shevardnadze's diplomacy. Remarkably objective, it is full of insights, makes fascinating reading, and will also be a prime source for scholars long into the future.
An old Russian woman goes into Kremlin, gets an audience with Mikhail Gorbachev and says, In America anyone can go to the White House, walk up to Reagan's desk and say, 'I don't like the way you are running the country. ' Gorbachev replied, You can do the same thing in the Soviet Union. You can go into the Kremlin, walk up to my desk and say 'I don't like the way Reagan is running his country. '
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
If we talk about changes of power in Russia, that has occurred several times in the past century. After Stalin came Khrushchev, who implemented his legacy quite radically, one could say. But there was no blood, nonetheless. After Brezhnev came Gorbachev. I'm not talking about the ones who were in power for only a short period of time. Gorbachev, too, left a very radical legacy.
Whatever efforts for peace President Gorbachev had in mind, they were pretty substantially undercut very swiftly by Saddam Hussein.
Over the course of the year 1990, the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had many conversations with President [Mikhail] Gorbachev and other Soviet officials.
I have Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to thank that a Russian writer can not only write anything he wants, but also publish it.
If you read history, right, if you read [Mikhail] Gorbachev's memoirs, Gorbachev memoirs said the key thing in winning the Cold War was our insistence on nuclear defense, because they knew they couldn't match us.
The role of Ronald Reagan had been deliberately diminished; the role of the Europeans, who, with the exception of Helmet Kohl, were often keen to undermine America when it mattered, had been sanitized; and the role of Mr. Gorbachev, who had failed spectacularly in his declared objective of saving communism and the Soviet Union, had been absurdly misunderstood.
I like Mr Gorbachev, we can do business together.
Those who warned that Gorbachev was being put under too much pressure were wrong.
Mr. Gorbachev initiated Glasnost, Perestroika, so he was already, you know, way disenchanted with the rigid Communist ideology, and he was looking to become an international leader. He was more accepted actually outside of the Communist Soviet Union than inside.
