Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Sep 22 - 12:23 PM

Like all great men, Gorbachev was flawed and made many a mistake (he supported Putin in the annexation of Crimea, for example). But he released his people into a freedom they had never known, and by some miracle he managed to work constructively with those western right-wing horrors Thatcher and Reagan. When he first got the job he whispered to his wife "we can't go on living like this." Tragically for the world, once he was ousted his efforts at reform were set aside. Decades of media manipulation, secrecy and internal fake news had led the Russian people, except the relative few who could see through all that, into thinking that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy. The free world could see the very opposite, but his legacy didn't prevail.

Churchill was also supposed to be a great man because he was instrumental in winning the Second World War, but he was also a serial bigot and his WW1 blunders led to tens of thousands of deaths of his own forces (including my Great Uncle Jimmy, aged 19, in the Dardanelles, which I guess makes me biased). We all make our own minds up about this stuff, but I'm still casting Gorbachev as a good man.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Sep 22 - 11:17 AM

I can still sadly picture a Soviet meeting, on T.V., where Yeltsin bulldozed Gorbachev out of it & became the Russian face of capitalism - thus, getting away with as much bottom-pinching as he wished, while, as with the West, a small minority quickly grabbed 100s of times more wealth than the majority.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Sep 22 - 10:52 AM

You have for all to see lied four times in this post alone.
I proved what I wrote is a fact and you ignored it, continuing to lie.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Sep 22 - 01:02 PM

Of course you're allowed to respond. No one has ever suggested otherwise. When you do respond, it behoves you to do so without telling outright lies or making scurrilous insinuations. When you do that, as you are serially prone to do, it aligns you with your hero Donald Trump (well he may not be your hero, but you sure are obsessed with him). Two peas in a pod, purveyors of fake news and princes of misinformation, the pair of you. You are (in)famous for it.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Sep 22 - 11:05 AM

The one I remember, strangely, is Raisa Gorbachev.
Remember during the Reagan Administration when the Gorbachevs visited Washington D. C.?
And Raisa Gorbachev began making an impassioned speech about socialism, or something, in an art gallery standing next to Nancy Reagan, who remained silent and cold as ice? I remember that.

Raisa was the first to die, and I always felt sorry
for her bereaved husband. Now they can be together again.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Sep 22 - 08:50 AM

https://www.rferl.org/a/lukoil-chairman-russia-latest-mysterious-death-maganov/32014240.html

Pravda said he died after a long illness but the cause of death was falling from a 6th story window.
This was the fifth such incident.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Sep 22 - 08:38 AM

As in court once you bring up a subject and cast espersions I am allowed to respond. It is up to you to be smarter or remain senselessly vindictive. Your bile does have an effect but it's not favorable to you. You have become as toxic as a MAGA Republican.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/30/world/gorbachev-dead

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Sep 22 - 04:14 AM

You are repeating the scurrilous and disreputable insinuations that were deleted in the joke thread. I am as far from being in any way sympathetic to paedophilia as it is possible to be. I have no power to "censor" anything here and you know it. Go and play on the railway, why don't you.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 22 - 08:37 PM

Totalitarian rulers do put a crimp in sanity when there is an obsession with killing any rumored enemy of the state/ruler.

Yes Steve you did get to censor actual jokes told today in real Comedy clubs. Perhaps you feel false grandeur to be censor and chief of subjects like pedophile priests. I thought you were an athiest against pedophilia and for free expression but you behave in the opposite.

When people sound like they are in crises I tug thier coat tails when they are in existential mental jeopardy. If a person hates themselves they do feel better when they try to make others feel anguish. Its easier to see that in others than ones self. The courts call it emotional abuse in divorce court. Doing your worst will only make a person more pitiable and unhappy be it in thier anti social media or real life.

The alternative is open doors, free exchange, new ideas, democratic acceptance and fresh air. You know...like Mikhail Gorbachev tried.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Sep 22 - 07:19 PM

The writer Richard Rhodes has authored several books about the creation use and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. In "Arsenals of Folly" he goes into the background of Gorbachev sympathetically enough to bring an understanding of Mikhail's idealism and disillusionment with the Communist 'faith' of his youth and the meeting of minds he enabled between the Soviet Union and the West.

I don't think we can blame Gorbachev for the failure of Russia to 'launch democratic'. The same thing happened in 1917. Russia has a popular tradition of border warfare, absolutist rulers, and a certain casual approach to sanity on the part of her leaders.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Sep 22 - 06:12 PM

Accusing someone who you do not know and have never met of being under the influence of "late night drinking," an accusation which you can't corroborate (and which in my case is never true, as it happens), is highly disreputable. As you've already had one lot of your abhorrent rubbish deleted today already, I suggest that you desist from posting defamatory material and reflect on the reasons for your bitterness. I think it's fine to come to Mudcat and talk about good wines and beers and this should not encourage you to accuse anyone of alcoholism. You yourself have frequently extolled here the virtues of illegal and unregulated substances. Time you copped yourself on.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 22 - 05:41 PM

09:13 PM "The truth is that"... what follows is usually a delusion of the speaker for purposes real or imaginary.

What I see in the above behavior is late night drinking that one can not apologize for because one does not remember or if they do remember, they feel embarrassed. I would use the moment again as a warning sign.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 22 - 01:10 AM

https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/publications/smallpox-fact-sheet

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 22 - 12:40 AM

"The phenomenon of UFOs does exist and it must be taken seriously"
Quote: Mikail Gorbachev

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 09:13 PM

The truth is that you make things up for effect. Now kindly give us the complete lowdown on those "multiple tons" of "stockpiled virus."

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 08:55 PM

I can't blame someone for being shocked by the truth,
or even being a non violent social psychopath
but being an ass hole has its own self inflicted wounds.
I can not argue with the name 'Evil Empire'.
There is also evil trying to become the new US government today.
At least Sarah Palin lost her election tonight, she can still see Russia from her house.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 08:45 PM

Which patently fails to answer the question. Now do tell us about these "multiple tons" of stockpiled virus. Tell us where they are, and do tell us who weighed them. No more sidetracking on this if you don't mind. Naturally, I'm not holding my breath...

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 08:29 PM

tons of Soviet small pox

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 08:18 PM

Tell us more about those multiple tons then. Bejaysus, you're so bloody transparent it's not true. Now can we please stick to facts and stick to the thread, please?

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbashev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 08:07 PM

Aah Steve, you poor walking thread drift. Oh dear are you lonely? Do you need someone to talk to you? There's always the Samaritans and I've heard the Salvation Army can help. I'm sure they could help in 12 easy steps.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 07:51 PM

Kevin tells it like it is dead straight, without all the the patronising perversions you try to impose on his take. "Multiple tons of stockpiled smallpox virus" my arse. I doubt that you could read "The Adventures of Spot the Dog" without putting a perverted twist on it. Sheesh.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 04:30 PM

Yeltsin actually auctioned off the Russain economy to billionaires at bargain basement prices. Each billionaire got a slice of Russain production and services. While McGrath of Harlow tells it like it is, it was worse than his words portray. Perhaps it is due to English politeness and Statesmanship.

Kleptocratic is accurate. The padlock on Trump's laundry room where he moved some top secret files was not dissimilar to the padlock on a shed that contained Soviet Plutonium.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union was a chaotic and bloody mafia war of murders and theft. Some things left behind were unimaginable such as the multiple TONS of stockpiled smallpox virus to be used after the nukes had done their worst.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 03:59 PM

A brave man and a good man. What really wrecked things was the way the West responded to his opening of Russia, not by genuinely helping but by seeing it as an opportunity to exploit and join in the pillage.

What's become clear since then has been that the problem with the USSR and Russia wasn’t really anything to do with "Communism", it was authoritarian nationalism, the hegemonic in Russia throughout the last few centuries. Now the regime has junked junked all the Socialist and Communist veneer this operates happily with its more natural bedfellow, kleptocratic capitalism. China did it differently, retaining some of the socialist veneer, along with the kleptocratic capitalism.

It is tragic that Gorbachev's vision of. Glasnost and Perstroika was swept aside.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 03:01 PM

a few seconds of that at 38 seconds here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3hrHa2CdUM/a>

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 02:52 PM

I remember video of him in a parade in Wash DC..hopping out of the car and shaking hands with people behind the barriers! The guards... American & Russian.. were going crazy, but he made some sort of point about freedom....

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 09:32 AM

What really won the cold war was America outspending the Soviet Union in weapons and defense spending during those Star Wars days. The Soviets ran out of cash. For Gorbachev to step back without firing a shot was a strategic retreat but going farther toward openness and peace was complicated by the rot and corruption of the Soviet system.
We did not aid a process of democracy in the CCCP and let a mutual opportunity slip away. Such are the fruits of suspicion.
Good or bad depends on who you ask. Villains will say he was bad.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Aug 22 - 12:52 AM

To my mind, he was a brief ray of hope for Russia, but it wasn't long before that hope was extinguished.
Was Gorbachev a good man? I think so, but am I right?
May he rest in peace.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev,
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Aug 22 - 09:15 PM

The US party line is that he ended the cold war, stopped Nuke production, promoted Glasnost and Paristroika. He then suffered an insurrection. Because of that, power was handed to the drunk Yeltzin who in turn promoted Putin.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev,
From: ST
Date: 30 Aug 22 - 08:25 PM

Well, the guy had a choice between letting the church he headed go down peacefully thus leaving a good impression, and being true to his religion's tradition by murdering a few more millions yet still have his church become history anyway.

All the critical mistakes that had doomed the Communist faith had been made by a previous leader of the church, Mr. Khrushchev — ironically, the one and only head of the "Party" that I know of who was indeed a Proletarian everybody was supposed to worship.

Granted, Mr. G. came up with his revelations just in time to save me from prison for signing songs in the language of Capitalists but I still doubt whether or not this was a good thing on the global scale. Probably a bloody end would finally make Communism a universally despised and rejected monstrosity even in the eyes of the US Lefties. Having ended the way it did, this ugly cult still has a chance.

Subject: BS: Obit: Mikhail Gorbachev
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Aug 22 - 07:26 PM

I don't know what to think about this fellow. He cosied up to Thatcher and Reagan, but he seemed to know where things were going and he embraced that. He knew that the USSR was doomed and he wanted a soft landing. My view is that, as a man of peace who could see that the nuclear arms race was futile, he was good for the world. Of course, once he was out of power the future was out of his hands, and it hasn't gone well. But I think, overall, that I'd rather applaud him than excoriate him.