{"id":29727,"date":"2022-10-05T00:06:37","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T04:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=29727"},"modified":"2022-10-05T00:10:32","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T04:10:32","slug":"how-mikhail-gorbachev-became-the-most-reviled-man-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2022\/10\/05\/how-mikhail-gorbachev-became-the-most-reviled-man-in-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"How Mikhail Gorbachev Became the Most Reviled Man in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey Sommers has the article on CunterPunch <\/em>How Mikhail Gorbachev Became the Most Reviled Man in Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nMikhail Gorbachev presented a figure of Greek tragedy proportions. Possessing good intentions and intellectual curiosity, Gorbachev nonetheless became the most reviled man in Russia, following the USSR\u2019s demise. Yet, with Gorbachev, his worst qualities were connected to his best. Gorbachev was the wrong man at the wrong time to resolve the contradictions created by the Stalinist and then Brezhnev bureaucratic model of really-existing socialism in the Soviet Union. Increasingly hated at home, Gorbachev was beloved by world leaders in the \u201cWest\u201d as the man who peacefully (at least by the comparative metrics of collapsing empires) unwound the USSR, even if trying to save its all-union character. Meanwhile, for China, Gorbachev delivered lessons in what not to do when reforming a sclerotic post-Stalinist system requiring economic reforms, if not transformation.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I haven’t had the chance to read the article yet, so I will take you through the interviews I have seen that finally led me to the article he discussed in the interviews.<\/p>\n

Paul Jay has conducted a very interesting interview, and has published the first part “Why the Soviet Union Imploded \u2013 Jeffrey Sommers (pt 1)”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cTerror and tyranny in the USSR arose more from war and the demands of state security services required to survive, and the paranoid politics it enabled, rather than any \u201cinevitable\u201d path from the socialist path taken,\u201d writes Jeffery Sommers. He joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news to discuss the end of the Soviet Union.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I then found a CounterPunch <\/em>podcast Jeffrey Sommers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nThis week Eric welcomes back political economist and author Jeffrey Sommers to discuss the political and historical legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev in the wake of his recent death. Jeffrey examines how Gorbachev rose to power, the forces with which he had to contend while in power, and his ultimate failure to change the course of the Soviet Union. The conversation explores everything from the dismantling of the USSR and rise of the oligarchs to the ways in which the Gorbachev period paved the way for the Putin era. So much ground covered in this conversation with one of our favorite CounterPunchers.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And finally I found the article that they all were all talking about. The link to that article is at the beginning of this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey Sommers has the article on CunterPunch How Mikhail Gorbachev Became the Most Reviled Man in Russia. Mikhail Gorbachev presented a figure of Greek tragedy proportions. Possessing good intentions and intellectual curiosity, Gorbachev nonetheless became the most reviled man in Russia, following the USSR\u2019s demise. Yet, with Gorbachev, his worst qualities were connected to his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-29727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29727"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29731,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29727\/revisions\/29731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}