The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil

by Michael Malice

Yet his grandfather, like so many other loyal Communists, kept the faith until the very end. “He was convinced that Stalin did not know about the misdeeds of the NKVD and he never blamed the Soviet regime for his misfortunes,”[cdlxxviii] Gorbachev wrote, though “misfortunes” is quite the odd word for him to use here. Despite all this Gorbachev grew up as a firm believer in the Soviet system, and through diligence and hard work rose swiftly through the ranks of the Party after graduating from university. Due to his work he thus became one of the few Russian citizens permitted to go abroad. It was when Gorbachev visited Prague in 1969 that he first understood how the Soviet Union was seen by citizens in other communist countries. It had only been a year since the Russians had sent in the tanks to put down the Prague Spring, and when Gorbachev visited a factory the workers literally turned their backs to him in a blatant show of contempt.[cdlxxix] The USSR’s power was not viewed—as the Soviet papers claimed—as “fraternal help.”