As liberals mourn the man who let a tyrannical empire disintegrate, they must keep struggling against modern tyrants and empire-builders
). He aimed, rather, to make it stronger and better, through his twin policies of openness and reform,. He believed in the socialist project far more than in liberal democracy; but he also knew that secrecy and repression bred only corruption and dysfunction, and that what he viewed as a worthy and humanist project would not survive without change.
With eastern Europe liberated from foreign overlordship, it seems in retrospect inevitable that similar demands for independence would come from the constituent republics of the Soviet Union itself. Though this was not an outcome that Mr Gorbachev wanted, he again faced a choice: to acquiesce, or to prevent dissolution by force. Again, he made the right one, eventually. Soviet troops spilled blood in Georgia and Lithuania, but he ultimately let all the republics go their own way.
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