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Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev Biography

Former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

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“I find it difficult to say whether the leadership's 'second echelon' could have preserved the German Democratic Republic. Helmut Kohl later told me he had never believed that Egon Krenz was capable of getting the situation under control. I do not know — we are all wiser after the event, as the saying goes. For my part, I must admit I briefly had a faint hope that the new leaders would be able to change the course of events by establishing a new type of relations between the two German states — based on radical domestic reforms in East Germany.”

Cold WarEast GermanyGerman Reunification
Book:Memoirs
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“Perestroika is an urgent necessity arising from the profound processes of development in our socialist society. This society is ripe for change. It has long been yearning for it. Any delay in beginning perestroika could have led to an exacerbated internal situation in the near future, which, to put it bluntly, would have been fraught with serious social, economic, and political crises.”

Perestroika
Book:Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World
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“An essential prerequisite for the reforms to which I gave the name of perestroika was glasnost or transparency, which gave people the possibility but also the right to speak the truth. How could reforms be put in train if one did not tell the truth about the actual situation, if people could not hear the truth about the past?”

Perestroika
Book:Manifesto for the Earth: Action Now for Peace, Global Justice, and a Sustainable Future
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“There are different interpretations of perestroika in the West, including the United States. There is the view that it has been necessitated by the disastrous state of the Soviet economy and that it signifies disenchantment with socialism and a crisis for its ideals and ultimate goals. Nothing could be further from the truth than such interpretations, whatever the motives behind them. Of course, perestroika has been largely stimulated by our dissatisfaction with the way things have been going in our country in recent years. But it has to a far greater extent been prompted by an awareness that the potential of socialism had been underutilized. We realize this particularly clearly now in the days of the seventieth anniversary of our Revolution. We have a sound material foundation, a wealth of experience and a broad world outlook with which to perfect our society purposefully and continuously, seeking to gain ever greater returns—in terms of quantity and quality—from all our activities.”

Perestroika
Book:Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World
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“It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past.”

ThinkingMeanProblemWould BeTodayPastWorkMankindMethodNaiveSolved Problems
Book:A Road to the Future: Address by Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ... at the Plenary Meeting of the Forty-third Session of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, Wednesday, December 7, 1988
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“The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government.”

WorldNeedsImportantGovernmentActionPoliticalNationsInterestCommunityUnitedCivilizationConsequenceAspectAssumingClimate ChangeGlobal WarmingMultipleUnited NationsEmergingVigorousWorld GovernmentGlobal CommunityGradual Change
Author:Mikhail Gorbachev
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“Though representatives of many ethnic groups came together in the United States, English became their common language. Apparently, this was a natural choice. One can imagine what would have happened if members of each nation moving to the U.S. had spoken only their own tongues and refused to learn English.”

IfsStatesTogetherMovingChoicesLanguageNationsNaturalUnitedCommonUnited StatesImagineHappenedGroupsMembersTongueRepresentativesEthnic GroupsCommon Language
Author:Mikhail Gorbachev
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