Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev deserves substantial credit for the reductions in U.S./Soviet tensions during the late 1980s, for the perestroika and glasnost “reforms” — simultaneously too little and too much as tools with which to preserve the Soviet Union — of Soviet communist totalitarianism, for the reduction in the internal security clampdowns by the KGB, for the easing of emigration restrictions, for the end of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe, and, finally, for the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, however much he did not intend it.
At the same time the media for many years have been all too eager to minimize the monumental role and achievements of Ronald Reagan, who understood long before most that communist totalitarianism is a profound evil. His refusal to abandon principle — mutual assured destruction is immoral as a military doctrine — forced Gorbachev toward demilitarization.
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