One can imagine in a world without Gorbachev, 1990s Russia would have looked more like 1920s China, dominated by insane drug-addled warlords riding armoured trains and fighting each other in dozens of cliques and alliances. Your average Russian may lament the disaster of the 90s but things could have been far worse.
Sam Sky
1 year ago
In some ways the war in Ukraine was a war that Gorbachev suceeded in only delaying. Had a hardliner been in power we’d have talked of a Soviet civil war – the Soviet Union had far more internal stressors and division than China, that would naturally have led to a radically different world now.
Agreed. Those that criticise Gorbachev fail to acknowledge what could have happened if a hard line leader had taken over the Soviet Union in the eighties.
One can imagine in a world without Gorbachev, 1990s Russia would have looked more like 1920s China, dominated by insane drug-addled warlords riding armoured trains and fighting each other in dozens of cliques and alliances. Your average Russian may lament the disaster of the 90s but things could have been far worse.
In some ways the war in Ukraine was a war that Gorbachev suceeded in only delaying. Had a hardliner been in power we’d have talked of a Soviet civil war – the Soviet Union had far more internal stressors and division than China, that would naturally have led to a radically different world now.
Agreed. Those that criticise Gorbachev fail to acknowledge what could have happened if a hard line leader had taken over the Soviet Union in the eighties.