He's always portrayed as a hero in the US media. Perhaps because he destroyed our nemesis, the Soviet Union. He's portrayed here as accidentally destroying the USSR in the name of freedom — that he tried to make the USSR free but instead it fell to pieces because [so many reasons].
Somehow he's never blamed (or even praised) for what actually happened, but is beloved for his supposed motives: expanding freedom!
Meanwhile, US politicians under Reagan/Bush took credit for the breakup of the USSR — we were the shining beacon of hope that drove the USSR insane with envy so it had to collapse. Now the formerly imprisoned Soviet peoples were finally free to buy Levi's and Marlboros.
It's one chapter in our ongoing story about the US in the world, in which we personalize each country in terms of its titular leader, drawing a narrative about how that one person represents everything about that country (see Putin, Saddam, Kim, Castro, etc.), meanwhile the US is constantly trying to spread freedom and its resulting prosperity around the world, if only those evil rivals would let their people be free.
Of course the US and the Western world praises him for dissolving the Soviet Union and, by that, freeing up all the precious natural resources of the Russian lands which the West wants to consume (still today) and leave the common people behind with the dirt and the trash that results from the extraction.
But, that's a purely external view. There's also that side of Russian/Soviet politics internally. And in that point, he's been like the gravedigger for something that was already withering away on the deathbed. Including that Gorby also had its own agenda of lobbyism and people as his followers among the party members, like a personal club. And in that point, he's been questionable since the very beginning. Since he was also a figure trying to size power (after the Soviet Union's unlucky "fate" of seeing several party leaders and heads of state die one after another in a relatively short amount of time.)
On another hand I can't wish him too well too since he's sold the country I was born to to Kohl and West Germany. Which brought much, much misery upon people, deindustrialized the area and turned "us" into 2nd class German citizens still until today.
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kanzeon-2040.livejournal.com - (no subject) +1 response
(no subject)
Date: 31 August 2022 08:50 am (UTC)Somehow he's never blamed (or even praised) for what actually happened, but is beloved for his supposed motives: expanding freedom!
Meanwhile, US politicians under Reagan/Bush took credit for the breakup of the USSR — we were the shining beacon of hope that drove the USSR insane with envy so it had to collapse. Now the formerly imprisoned Soviet peoples were finally free to buy Levi's and Marlboros.
It's one chapter in our ongoing story about the US in the world, in which we personalize each country in terms of its titular leader, drawing a narrative about how that one person represents everything about that country (see Putin, Saddam, Kim, Castro, etc.), meanwhile the US is constantly trying to spread freedom and its resulting prosperity around the world, if only those evil rivals would let their people be free.
(no subject)
Date: 31 August 2022 10:02 am (UTC)But, that's a purely external view. There's also that side of Russian/Soviet politics internally.
And in that point, he's been like the gravedigger for something that was already withering away on the deathbed. Including that Gorby also had its own agenda of lobbyism and people as his followers among the party members, like a personal club.
And in that point, he's been questionable since the very beginning. Since he was also a figure trying to size power (after the Soviet Union's unlucky "fate" of seeing several party leaders and heads of state die one after another in a relatively short amount of time.)
On another hand I can't wish him too well too since he's sold the country I was born to to Kohl and West Germany.
Which brought much, much misery upon people, deindustrialized the area and turned "us" into 2nd class German citizens still until today.