Last month Mikhail Gorbachev celebrated his 75th birthday. Gorbachev, the final leader of the brutal Soviet Union, was treated to a media love fest that proclaimed him the architect of the democratization of the former captive republics of his regime. ABC News called him, ???????The man who ended the Cold War and launched democratic reforms that broke the repressive Soviet regime..??????? Katrina vanden Heuvel attended a party for Gorbachev and proclaimed, ???????He liberated Eastern Europe to find its own political path.??????? The party also had video tributes from former President George Bush, Bill Moyers, Leonardo di Caprio, former President Bill Clinton, and a rambunctious Ted Turner ( who belted out “happy birthday, my good friend Mikhaiiiil”) and California Senator Barbara Boxer were broadcast on the banquet hall’s walls, according to Ms vanden Heuvel.

Gorbachev, in reality, worked hard during his time in power to preserve the Soviet Union, and he never intended for the captive republics to gain independence. He surely was not a proponent of democracy in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev came to power when the Soviet Union had already begun to disintegrate. He was faced with an empire that had a life expectancy rate that was falling, a pathetic agricultural sector and an overall weak economy. But, a more significant problem was a growing nationalism and independence movements in the republics. Facing these problems, Gorbachev????????s glasnost and perestroika were designed to save the Soviet Union and preserve Communism, not to democratize the USSR. As Gorbachev moved to transform the Soviet Union he underestimated the power of the nationalistic urges of the people that led to their heroic efforts to gain independence. Once the genie of democracy was out of the bottle, Gorbachev became the captain of a rudderless ship and he lost control.

I will give Gorbachev credit; at least he is more honest about his intentions than many in the media. In an interview, published recently in USA TODAY, Gorbachev says that, ???????The Soviet Union could have been preserved and should have been preserved.??????? I also give him credit for being consistent. In his New Year????????s message to the people on January 1, 1991, he said that ???????no cause was more sacred than the preservation of the Soviet Union.??????? And being a man of his word, in order to preserve the Soviet Union, the next day he had special forces of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs shut down publishing plants in Latvia, and a few weeks later he had the Soviet army takeover a television station in Lithuania. The brutal OMON, a special police unit, took control of buildings and offices in the Baltics. The attempt to stop the democratic movement in the Baltics caused the lost of dozens of lives. He had already in the past year sent tanks and troops to Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan to stop independence movements.

While Gorbachev worked to save the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin was leading the drive for an independent Russia. It was Boris Yeltsin????????s fight for Russian democracy and independence that put the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union. To this day Gorbachev, the involuntary catalyst of the Soviet demise, has not forgotten or forgiven the man who willingly ???????ended the Cold War and launched democratic reforms that broke the repressive Soviet regime.??????? In the USA TODAY interview, Gorbachev says, ???????Putin inherited a terrible situation from (former leader Boris) Yeltsin. With Yeltsin, the Soviet Union broke apart, the country was totally mismanaged, the constitution was not respected by the regions of Russia. The army, education and health systems collapsed. People in the West quietly applauded, dancing with and around Yeltsin.???????

Maybe the people and the media in the West should have more boisterously applauded and danced with Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was not as polished as Gorbachev and was seen as an unsophisticated politician by many in the West. Yeltsin celebrated his 75th birthday earlier this year with little media attention and with few in the West heralding his contribution to democracy for the former Soviet Union republics.