Gorbachev was let down by the west. Putin’s Russia is the result Letters
about 3 years in The guardian
With better support from the US and Britain, Russia could have been a very different place today, says Michael Meadowcroft, while Bill Robinson remembers photographing the Thatchers and the Gorbachevs in MoscowMikhail Gorbachev’s attempts to reach nuclear disarmament with Ronald Reagan went much further than an agreement “to reduce medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe” (Report, 30 August). In the 1986 Reykjavik talks, Gorbachev proposed the “zero option” of jointly getting rid of all their nuclear weapons, but Reagan refused.Also, the democracy that Gorbachev wanted needed time to develop the civil society that had never existed, plus a sounder economy than was the case. The US, aided and abetted by the UK, pushed immediately for privatisation and a free economy and this led inevitably to the exploitation of the Soviet Union’s vast natural resources and the advent of the Russian oligarchs. Continue reading...
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