An ERA gone - Gorbachev RIP

[ll74]

We can only hope Russia gets rid of the current asshole for someone like this again

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mikha...oviet-empire-with-his-own-glasnost-dead-at-91

 

[butters]

We can only hope Russia gets rid of the current asshole for someone like this again

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mikha...oviet-empire-with-his-own-glasnost-dead-at-91

one can wish but isn't his sister the likely heir in waiting? (it's hot, i might be getting mixed up with north korea)

if russia can't find the will to turn things around when putin fails, i don't know what they'll do. Right now, a lot of russians must be praying the Ukraine reactor doesn't leak because they'll be affected by the radiation

 

[oggbashan]

Unlikely. Gorbachov is frequently polled in Russia as the worst President in Russian history. He is blamed for the USSR ceasing to be a major power.

 

[LupusDei]

one can wish but isn't his sister the likely heir in waiting? (it's hot, i might be getting mixed up with north korea)

You are mixing with North Korea. The hot and totally scary evil sister is over there.

Putin has no obvious heir, and no famous relatives.

There's one guy they were laundering some money through, but I think he's no closer than nephew to Putin, and absolute nobody living very simple life despite being paper multi millionaire of money he doesn't actually control.

Then, there's Alina Kabaeva, Putin's long term mistress (and one of the most decorated gymnasts in rhythmic gymnastic history), she's now made a media magnate, and who knows, wouldn't be the first girl to fuck her way to the title of Russian Empress. They have at least two or three children, born in 2015 and 2019 (possibly twins).

Although it's perhaps a bit exaggerated legend that Alisher Usmanov become Russia's wealthiest man and one of world's top 100 with $20B worth to his name just for being husband of Alina's gymnastics coach... He already wasn't a pauper when Putin saw interest in Alina and that was helpful, I guess, but indeed, that's how the business in the family is done.

 

[RachelWalsh]

Thank goodness he steered Russia to a good and long lasting relationship with the West that would..... oh wait....

 

[IrezumiKiss]

To be honest, I thought he had already passed away. This is what happens when one person stays in the top seat for ages, the next one comes in and you figure they'd kicked then.

Huh. Ol' Gorby. Yeah, he is the end of an era.

 

[LupusDei]

I would side with Gary Kasparov on this: Gorbatchev was an accidental hero through failure.

He never sought the actual results he provided, not primarily at least. While he perhaps had been an okayish crisis manager open to changing world, he actually crashed the project he was tasked on leading -- that it desperately needed crashing notwithstanding. But China was far more successful for mixing systems, at least for a while (it may or not be on a trajectory to crash now), so while his position was arguably harder, it wasn't actually impossible by that evidence.

Instead, the generation of actually intelligent reformers and democrats he enabled back then are now all dead, in jail or in exile. Meanwhile Chubais purposefully built the mafia state, Yeltsin sought imperial heir amid drunken delirium, and so we got Putin. While I wouldn't dare to replay all the dice throws of 1990 and around, there was so much potential for even better futures.

Instead, we have this:

 

[butters]

To be honest, I thought he had already passed away. This is what happens when one person stays in the top seat for ages, the next one comes in and you figure they'd kicked then.

Huh. Ol' Gorby. Yeah, he is the end of an era.

you weren't alone. i thought he'd died ten years or more ago

 

[ll74]

My point is that with Putin in the head....the USSR would've never been dissolved

 

[LupusDei]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1566481252865437696

Garry Kasparov
My article on Mikhail Gorbachev in
@NYDailyNews
I met him once, on 20 Jan 1985, the day he sent Soviet troops into my home city of Baku, where they shot protesters. Gorbachev is best described as a successful failure.

nydailynews.com
Gorbachev’s true legacy: It’s far more complicated than most observers admit

Did Gorbachev smother the Communist state with his reforms, or did it die of natural causes despite his best attempts to resuscitate it? How much do cause and motive matter when the results were undeniably good? To those of us in the USSR, very little.