Rather, it is the 1991 coup attempt and the conspiracy of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, argues 90-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, who put forward his views of Russia on world affairs.

“Perestroika was right because it wanted to make people the master of their own destiny,” asserts the last president of the Soviet Union, who, since coming to power, tried reforms from 1985 to save the system created by the 1917 revolution. The last decades were years of stagnation before Gorbachev.

“Whoever claims that there is no need for perestroika has a short memory. Or that he does not want to remember what the psychological and moral state of Soviet society was in 1985. People cried for change. Everyone – leaders, leaders, simple people – felt that something was wrong in the country, That was sinking deeper and deeper into a recession. Economic growth almost stopped.”

See also  Google Pay is already available in Erste

It is interesting that at this point in Gorbachev there is no doubt that perestroika was not developed for economic reform. It’s like the one launched in China as early as 1978 under the direction of Teng Xiaoping. Instead, Gorbachev traces the fall of perestroika and the Soviet Union to political reasons:

“Two fatal blows struck perestroika. One was the attempted coup organized by conservative forces – including from my environment – in August 1991. The other was the agreement between the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to end our centuries-old country.”

Thus Mikhail Gorbachev took on the legacy of Tsarist Russia, to which the Russian public today often credits his miscarriage. However, according to Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin is responsible. Gorbachev’s former rival in the Communist Party Political Committee during the coup spoke out bravely against the conservatives, who failed quickly and ugly. He cemented Yeltsin as Russia’s leader while weakening Gorbachev.

“Yeltsin wanted to rule the Kremlin. He and his entourage destroyed the country, sacrificed the Soviet Union. Despite earlier promises that the Soviet Union would somehow survive,” recalls Gorbachev, a 90-year-old rival the president of Russia wrote himself in history.