Gorby the Democrat | NewsReal Blog

Gorby the Democrat | NewsReal Blog: "Mikhail Gorbachev is a living negation of the axiom that history is written by the winners. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, whose existence he tried desperately to salvage, Gorbachev has improbably recast himself as a heroic democrat who, however imperfectly, brought down the edifice of communist repression and now champions democracy for his native Russia. Gorby’s revisionism can be wincingly embarrassing, but it does not necessarily tarnish his pro-democratic campaign – especially since his is one of the rare prominent Russian voices making the case for political reform.

Gorbachev’s op-ed in the Times today is a case in point, provided you can get past the self-serving historical exegesis. For instance, he depicts himself and foreign minister Andrei Gromyko as anti-ideologues and principled reformers, conveniently skirting past the fact that both were, until the bitter end, hidebound communists who simply hoped to return the Soviet Union to its foundational, Leninist roots but who failed to foresee the cascading consequences of their modest reforms.

Never mind that for the moment. What Gorbachev lacks in honesty about his own historical role he compensates for in an importantly candid critique of Vladimir Putin and the current Russian government. In essence, he argues that Putin’s Russia is starting to look very much like the Soviet Union of old. That is not an original view, exactly, but its airing, even in an American newspaper, has become an auspicious occasion as Putin’s government has silenced or marginalized what there was of a free Russian press."