“The XXI century will be a сentury either of total all-embracing crisis or of moral and spiritual healing that will reinvigorate humankind. It is my conviction that all of us – all reasonable political leaders, all spiritual and ideological movements, all faiths – must help in this transition to a triumph of humanism and justice, in making the XXI century a century of a new human renaissance.”
He won’t go away. Still, he tries to help. He has no political power. And he will fade away.
Those who fail to learn from history, will repeat it.
Slow ideas take longer to work, than fast ideas.
Counterfactuals are hard to do, but we know these atheistic Communists Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung were responsible for well over a hundred million deaths in the 20th century. Current history is also difficult: how many deaths can we lay at the feet of Putin.
So how many lives did this atheistic Communist SAVE? — Probably millions. We will never know. And he now is virtually ignored by his own countries, and the international community gives him accolades, but more likely they need a famous speaker for their get together.
“For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”
– Gen. George C. Patton
Mikhail Gorbachev was key in the relatively peaceful break up of the Soviet Union. He, had been in effect, the Tzar of Russia.
He had the Idealistic Idea that the world, and the Soviet Union, could be a better place.
He had been in jail for 27 years, where some of that involved hard manual labor. Dust, sweat, and blood: the breaking of rocks into gravel or working in a limestone quarry. As he details in his autobiography, it was a Long Walk to Freedom.
