Mikhail Gorbachev failed at everything he tried as the Soviet Union’s last leader. The state he led could only change the world for the better by failing — and it did. But, alas, not for long.
I will never forget the moment in August 1991 when — at 19 years old, slightly stoned and very much in love — I watched the statue of KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky tumble in Moscow. This was on Gorbachev's watch. Many of my German neighbors know exactly where they were when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 — also on Gorbachev’s watch. But I have never felt any kind of debt to the fumbling last emperor of the doomed Soviet empire. It was we — we Russians and Germans and Lithuanians and Ukrainians and Poles and Georgians and many others — who created those inspiring moments out of our utter misery. Our generation across much of Europe and Asia were lucky he lacked Vladimir Putin’s evil efficiency. I still believe we would have prevailed even if he did.
However, the fact that we couldn’t hold on to what we won is our responsibility, too. We have wasted Gorbachev’s legacy of beneficial failure.
