moving:
Gorb Tribble (Горбачёв триббл)
"We must calmly sum up the collective experience of humankind, and draw objective conclusions from objective premises." (Mikhail S. Gorbachev, pg. 241)
Gorbachev is not generally known as a historical materialist in America. But all Communist era leaders--even the liberals--had to confront and reconcile this ideology. Gorbachev was mentored by KGB leader and CPSU chair Yuri Andropov. Andropov was responsible for party discipline as ambassador during the Hungarian Uprising (1956) and as General Secretary (and de facto leader) under Brezhnev. Putin was influenced by economist, lawyer and politician Anatoly Sobchak. Sobchak was the mayor who changed "Leningrad" back to "Saint Petersburg" and got caught up in the post-Soviet privatization orgy and fled to France. Boris Yeltsin is the third man of this succession. Yeltsin seem a pragmatic apparatchik under both socialist Soviet and subsequent liberal Russian regimes...if this were a "bar joke"-- Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin walk into a bar:
Gorbachev orders a pizza for the table but doesn't have any money. Yeltsin orders four pitchers, drinks them all and wanders off. Putin, through a series of exposed kompromat and strategic executions, assumes control of the bar, forgives the tabs of his political supporters and locks everybody else in the cooler (like the Overlook Hotel). Watching from hell, Henry Kissinger says, "I predicted this whole thing years ago but nobody let me have the nukes for long enough to make any real money." The Aristocrats!?
The Soviet implosion is usually seen by Americans as mismanaged by shills, drunks and spooks--profiting the seven banker oligarchs who propped up Yeltsin (sometimes literally) and western speculators. But compared to twenty-first century American politician corpses and the illiterate oligarchs who own them, the Russian privatization catastrophe was handled by Kallipolian philosopher kings.
In the photo, Ukrainian Gorbechev gets a fuzzy Kuchma made out of some bug (perhaps a mealybug pseudococcidae with a five o'clock shadow?) crawling on a leaf near Bohn Lake (WI). Larger version: [1280 px (14.4 MB)].
source:
Mikhail S. Gorbachev "To the American Reader" Gorbachev: Mandate for Peace Toronto: Paperjacks LTD., 240-256.
photo credits:
White House Photo Office "Mikhail Gorbachev at the 1985 Geneva Summit" 19 November 1985. via Regan Library (Public Domain: PD - US Code Title 17, Ch. 1, Sec. 105: prepared by federal employee part of official duties).
Юрий Абрамочкин "General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR speaks at the opening of a UN General Assembly meeting." 7 December 1988. RIA Novosti archive image #485307 (CC-BY-SA 3.0).
Лев Леонидович Медведев "Soviet politician, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow" 24 October 1991. Leo Medvedev's Archive (CC-SA 4.0).
Victor Bugge "EX-PRESIDENTE DE LA UNION SOVIETICA, MIJHAIL GORBACHOV fue recibido por el PRESIDENTE DE LA REPUBLICA ARGENTINA, DR. CARLOS SAUL MENEM." 19 March 1997. Presidencia de la Nación Argentina (CC-SA 2.0).