Gorbachev turns 80-Millions of People Are Alive Thanks To Him

BY CHARLES KENNY 

Mikhail Gorbachev turns 80 on March 2, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, over which he presided, celebrates its 20th anniversary this fall. In the intervening years, Gorbachev has put out an album, filmed pizza commercials, and founded a string of failed political parties. And with the benefit of two decades' worth of hindsight, the legacy of Gorbachev's accomplishment, however staggering, might seem a bit equivocal, too: rich, stable democracies in most of Eastern Europe, but also the increasingly czarist antics of Vladimir Putin and a miserable assortment of collapsing economies and vicious strongmen throughout the 'stans. And global tensions, from the Middle East to the Spratly Islands, have hardly gone away.

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Millions of People Are Alive Thanks
To Mikhail Gorbachev
Iron Curtain Call - By Charles Kenny