蘇聯最後一位領袖，也是它的解體者，戈巴契夫(Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev，1931)於08/30/2022 逝世。以下介紹兩篇對他的評論和報導。

Gorbachev changed the world

08/31/22, Graeme Dobell

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Gorbachev’s intellect and will meant he wasn’t seeking an end to Russia’s role as a great power. But having risen to the peak of the Soviet system, he acted on the truth he knew deeply: the system wasn’t working. He did what apparatchiks seldom dream of—he attacked the fundamentals of the machine that made him.

The changes Gorbachev set running went further and faster than he’d foreseen. His feat was to reach a place he never intended to go. He died as a man with little official honour in his own land. Yet Gorbachev’s role marks him as one of the great leaders of the 20th century. His was a triumph of humanity and intelligence.

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Mikhail Gorbachev: The Soviet leader who helped end the Cold War

BBC News, 08/31/2022

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential political figures of the 20th Century.

He presided over the dissolution of a Soviet Union that had existed for nearly 70 years and had dominated huge swathes of Asia and Eastern Europe.

Yet, when he set out his programme of reforms in 1985, his sole intention had been to revive his country's stagnant economy and overhaul its political processes.

His efforts became the catalyst for a series of events that brought an end to communist rule, not just within the USSR, but also across its former satellite states.

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Free market

His first task was to revive the moribund Soviet economy, which was almost at the point of collapse.

He was also shrewd enough to understand that there needed to be root-and-branch reform of the Communist Party itself if his economic reforms were to succeed.

Gorbachev's solution brought two Russian words into common usage. He said the country needed "perestroika" or restructuring and his tool for dealing with it was "glasnost" - openness.

"You're lagging behind the rest of the economy," he told the communist bosses of Leningrad, which was renamed Saint Petersburg in 1991. "Your shoddy goods are a disgrace."

But it was not his intention to replace state control with a free market economy - as he made clear in a speech to party delegates in 1985.

"Some of you look at the market as a lifesaver for your economies. But, comrades, you should not think about lifesavers but about the ship, and the ship is socialism."

His other weapon for dealing with the stagnation of the system was democracy. For the first time there were free elections for the Congress of People's Deputies.

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