On Aug. 30, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev passed away in a hospital in Moscow at the ripe old age of 91.
Gorbachev served as the leader of the Soviet Union and as the General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1985 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He was also the last surviving head of state of the Soviet Union, although it should be noted that the main reason for this was the result of his two more recent predecessors passing away while still in office. He was also the only head of state of the Soviet Union to have been born after the Russian Revolution. Gorbachev has been unfairly blamed for the failures of Boris Yeltsin, as Gorbachev tried to do good for the Soviet Union during his time in office. He was the only good Soviet leader and the only one worthy of respect.
During his time in office, Gorbachev tried in vain to liberalize the system and reform the Soviet Union. When we were in high school, teachers would drill into our heads the terms of Glasnost and Perestroika.
The policy of Glasnost, Russian for openness, would bring about the open discussion of political and social issues. The Soviet state was notorious for its censorship, particularly during the Stalin period, and any other non-Marxist-Leninist political party and ideology was banned from holding office.
Perestroika on the other hand sought to liberalize the Soviet economy in order to bring it on par with the capitalist West, decentralizing the control over the economy and encouraging enterprises to become self-funding, even though the bureaucracy fought back against it. Some of the military leadership tried to depose Gorbachev in a coup, but ironically it brought about the end of the Soviet Union.
Barely a week later, the BBC interrupted their programming to report that Queen Elizabeth II fell ill while staying at Balmoral, her residence in Scotland. Later that day, anchor Huw Edwards confirmed that the queen had died at the age of 96. It was certainly a shock and a bit hard for many people to process. People from older generations even wept at the news of the queen’s passing, and Great Britain went into a week of mourning. The ever so disgusting far left decided to show its true colors, if they have not already, by their defense of the Holodomor or the celebration of the plight of Cuban exiles and by openly celebrating the queen’s passing on Twitter.
Elizabeth had been queen since 1952 when her father, King George VI, died in his sleep after having been ill for a few years. Her first Prime Minister was Sir Winston Churchill, who led Britain during her darkest hours from 1940 to 1945. Elizabeth herself served in the British Army during the war as a mechanic and driver in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. At the time of her death, Elizabeth was the last serving head of state to have served in the Second World War.
She was also one of Britain’s last surviving links to the Victorian era, as her first three Prime Ministers were born during the last years of the Victorian period, and her paternal grandfather, King George V, was a grandson of Queen Victoria.
No one seems to be talking about this, but the deaths of Queen Elizabeth and Mikhail Gorbachev represent the end of an era. Both were among the last surviving heads of state from the Cold War, at least from the major powers. Of all of America’s Cold War presidents, all but one has since passed away, the one exception being Jimmy Carter who recently turned 98. Both of them were from different eras of history, and the fact that they passed away just goes to show that the 20th century is over and that history is changing rapidly.
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