Originally Posted by
Andalusian girls
the fairest assessment. he was not blame for the rotting imperial edifice and mass of economic and social contradictions that the USSR had become, seething with unrest among both the urban intelligentsia and Russian nationalists, as well as all ethnic minorities at the reaches of empire. the transition from communism was painful, it was always going to be painful, but far less so than it could have been as Gorbachev declined to intervene militarily in the Warsaw Pact nations (as the Soviets had in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968) when they began tearing down one communist regime after another. perhaps more critically, though he did not desire it he was willing to allow the dissolution of the USSR, unlike the communist hardliners who did their best to push the country into civil war.
Russia's post-dissolution history was not to be a happy one, but Gorbachev did what few others in history have ever done and oversaw the collapse of a major empire without major bloodshed. za nashu druzjbu old chap.