good riddance. he was an uneducated idiot, who is indirectly responsible for the millions that were killed in Afghanistan, in 1992.
In 1989, when he pulled the red army out of Afghanistan--he also cut all aid to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. the then-president of DRA went to Moscow to persuade Garbageoff to not to do so, predicting that the terrorist zealots would overrun his government leading to chaos in the region.
Garbageoff dismissed him, and did not even go to the airport to receive him. In the ensuing two years, the DRA fought the terrorists to the last bullet, until food became scarce and defenses crumbled. The terrorists entered Kabul and began fighting each other (they were self-labeling themselves "Mujahedeen" then).
In the carnage that followed, Kabul was destroyed, millions died and became refugees. I was an 11-yo boy who witnessed my neighbors getting torn to pieces by the rockets fired by the terrorists. I barely survived the rockets myself, and we fled and became refugees in Pakistan.
Not to dimish your experience in any way, there are only a few things tgat are worse than that. Blaming all of it on Gorbatshev is too easy so. We cannot forget the US meddling in Afghan affairs, nor the fact the long term intervention of the West led to similar results. Nor wad the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan very kind on the Afghan people in general.
Well, since today we hear about Garbageoff, so I discussed my opinion from THIS side of things. For sure, many other "players" are also to blame for a lot of the mess my people have found themselves in.
Which makes absolute sense. Gorbachev is held in such high regard in the West, rightly so IMHO, that it is easy to ignore and forget the other points of view.
it's you again, the "committee" man. actually, since Garbageoff did not do well in school and he was admitted to the universities in Leningrad on the strength of a medal he had won that was given to him based on the large amount of crops he had harvested (he was a "machinist"). There he wrote to his family members that the studies were "grueling", meaning he merely winged it and because he was not cut out for education, he was sent back to his village to do more of crop-harvesting.
So yeah, he did go to school but he was not what you call truly educated (just like other self-important, arrogant people suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect). That he was an idiot can also be seen from his posing in advertisements while his countrymen were starving in the long lines for bread--something unthinkable during any USSR year.
It is easy for you to judge not having experienced the cruelty of the war and communisism and central-planning. He saw a problem and lead people to fix it.
it is easy for you to speak for me, not having experienced war and famine directly. Also, on that Russian score you are wrong: after what he did, the ex-USSR population suffered devastating poverty. And you have the cheek to defend him. Are you a troll?
No, after what he did Russia and the eastern bloc were more prosperous in the 90s than they were in the 80s. I do not recall bread lines and famine in former USSR countries in the 90s. I didn't know he required defending all that money that went into an arms race went back to the people, the greatness and pompous image of the soviet union ended,that's about it. Nostalgia is deceptive, USSR in the 80s was not better off than 90s.
Westerners benefited directly from the downfall of the USSR. Gorbachev prolonged the American liberal world order at the expense of his people, to the West that makes him a great hero
So you put all of that on just a single person - Gorbachev?
How about Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, two Afghans? The Soviets only sent troops after multiple requests by Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin and President Nur Mohammad Taraki. Do they not share proportionate responsibility?
If that were truly the case, the red army should not have entered Afghanistan in the first place and kept their little claws to themselves. Now that they entered and created chaos and conditions for civil war, it was on them to clean up the mess.
Moreover, red army was not really shedding all that much blood. They were sending Afghan army to the dangerous fronts--basically to die (my father was one and he told me how the Russians sent them off to an ambush. When the Afghan army halted because they knew they were gonna die, the Russians began shelling them in order to push them forward.).
In any case, the problems were created by Russians and it became their responsibility to fix it. Moreover, they had agreements and treaties and Garbageoff reneged on those.
To the little boy who lost his childhood and future because of his strategic stupidity he is guilty of deceit, incompetence and inhumanity and I will not stop praying that he continues to burn in hell for it.
In 1989, when he pulled the red army out of Afghanistan--he also cut all aid to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. the then-president of DRA went to Moscow to persuade Garbageoff to not to do so, predicting that the terrorist zealots would overrun his government leading to chaos in the region.
Garbageoff dismissed him, and did not even go to the airport to receive him. In the ensuing two years, the DRA fought the terrorists to the last bullet, until food became scarce and defenses crumbled. The terrorists entered Kabul and began fighting each other (they were self-labeling themselves "Mujahedeen" then).
In the carnage that followed, Kabul was destroyed, millions died and became refugees. I was an 11-yo boy who witnessed my neighbors getting torn to pieces by the rockets fired by the terrorists. I barely survived the rockets myself, and we fled and became refugees in Pakistan.
May Garbageoff rot in hell.