Genres

Gorbachev

Lists

The Collapse of the Soviet Union by International Communist Sem...

The Velvet Revolution - 1989

34 books — 5 voters

Featured News & Interviews

Readers’ Most Anticipated New Books for April

Read »

“ Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited suc Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity. ...more ”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

50 likes

“ The criticisms made of Gorbachev-that he was indecisive, spineless, lily-livered, half-hearted, evasive-were all true. Just as it was true that he earned them all in his opposition to the radical democrats, whom I idolized at the time. The camp of those who hated Gorbachev was divided between those who did not like the reforms and those who did not like the fact that he was introducing them too slowly. The latter, to whom I belonged, hated him much more fervently: we had a goal we could see else The criticisms made of Gorbachev-that he was indecisive, spineless, lily-livered, half-hearted, evasive-were all true. Just as it was true that he earned them all in his opposition to the radical democrats, whom I idolized at the time. The camp of those who hated Gorbachev was divided between those who did not like the reforms and those who did not like the fact that he was introducing them too slowly. The latter, to whom I belonged, hated him much more fervently: we had a goal we could see elsewhere-complete freedom of speech, capitalism, and democracy-and that made us active critics hammering away. We also deprived Gorbachev of support from the only section of society he could count on. So when, in his own good time, having missed every opportunity, he ceased to be afraid and ran for office (before that, he had been elected only by collegial bodies like congresses and supreme soviets whose subordinate status removed the risk of losing), he gained a derisory 0.51 percent of the vote. The older I grew, the more intolerant I became of Gorbachev, but now I view him positively, if only because he proved completely incorruptible. In that he was unique. Everyone who had power during the transition from socialism to capitalism tried to grab as big a slice of the pie as they could. The Communist leaders of the central Asian republics of the U.S.S.R. became owners of entire countries and promptly turned them into totalitarian states. Ministers scooped up whole industries for which they had responsibility. Directors of factories found ingenious ways of becoming their owners. Nimble-footed members of the Young Communist League, whose resonant voices had vowed their preparedness to give their lives for the party, now employed their influence and connections to become oligarchs. When Gorbachev stepped down as president, he took nothing with him, though there had been colossal opportunities for him to get rich. No one would have blinked an eye if a couple of major factories had somehow been transferred to offshore companies under the guise of "joint ventures." He could have helped himself to state property abroad. It would have been so easy to siphon party money into personal accounts. He did none of that. People can argue as much as they like that it was because he did not have the opportunity, but the fact remains that he made no attempt to do so. In my view, that was because he was a different kind of person. Not avaricious. ...more ”
― Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

0 likes

More quotes...