But there was still lament over the coup and the end of the Soviet Union. Many Russians still hold him responsible for its collapse.
Although a pragmatic and rational politician, Mikhail Gorbachev failed to realise that it was impossible to bring in his reforms without destroying a centralised communist system that millions in the USSR and beyond no longer wanted.
The sheer cognitive dissonance in that final paragraph; reads like some ghoul at the BBC realised halfway through that they were on the verge voicing a mild criticism of the dissolution of the USSR but that just could not be done because of muh “liberal democracy”, and had to assure the reader that “everyone hated the USSR, actually; please ignore the previous paragraph and the first 3/4s of this paragraph”
Also notice the awkward use of “many Russians” instead of “many citizens of former Soviet states”, because thay wanted to push the Orwellian narrative that the Soviet communism was actually just Russian imperialism.
The sheer cognitive dissonance in that final paragraph; reads like some ghoul at the BBC realised halfway through that they were on the verge voicing a mild criticism of the dissolution of the USSR but that just could not be done because of muh “liberal democracy”, and had to assure the reader that “everyone hated the USSR, actually; please ignore the previous paragraph and the first 3/4s of this paragraph”
Also notice the awkward use of “many Russians” instead of “many citizens of former Soviet states”, because thay wanted to push the Orwellian narrative that the Soviet communism was actually just Russian imperialism.
Sounds about right, doesn’t it?