A former French foreign minister said that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev - whose funeral was held on September 3 this year in Moscow - was a great tragic historical figure who, with his failure, in addition to the end of the Soviet Union, made the starting point for great chaos in Russia and Europe, and Westerners should also question their responsibility on this matter.
Hubert Vedrine added in an article in the French newspaper Le Figaro that Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and wanted to profoundly change the Soviet Union out of concern for it, not to make it disappear. How, he is a Slavic nationalist but also a communist with an idealistic tendency, which made it difficult for Westerners to understand until it was too late.
He noted that Gorbachev launched perestroika as boldly as glasnost (transparency) bravely decided, but the unprecedented freedom of expression set off against him immediately to undermine what he was doing "I think he might have had a better chance of succeeding and overcoming the expected resistance if he had delayed Declaration of glasnost in order to succeed in establishing a partnership with the West and the introduction of the Soviet Union into globalization in stages.
If Gorbachev had not failed,
As firm, steadfast, cautious, deterrent, and effective as the West was during the decades of the Cold War, it lacked, through arrogance and capitulation to the great American power, a historical and strategic sense during the Gorbachev period, and more so in the early post-Soviet years under Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin in his and Dmitriy periods. Medvedev, according to Vedrine.
Although it seemed difficult for Gorbachev to succeed in his reform movement, what he was trying to achieve globally was in the interest of Europe for French President François Mitterrand at the time and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and therefore it was not in vain to help him, but Washington and London were their main preoccupation with overthrowing the Soviet Union.
In order to support Gorbachev, François Mitterrand included the Soviet Union in his great project for the "European Union", but unfortunately the idea was killed in its infancy - according to the writer - and the Americans vetoed any new aid to Russia, which led to the communist coup and says, "I am one of those who believe that Putin's tragic development was not entirely fatal."
And after Putin's sudden decision on February 24 - as Vedrine says - there was no room for hesitation, and we should always prevent him from winning in Ukraine and thus maintaining the toughest line without entering into an open war between NATO and Russia. .
The former minister concluded that in the face of these disasters, one can only imagine what the history of Europe and Russia would have been if Gorbachev had not failed, but history does not repeat itself even if its wheel moved backwards, according to Vedrine.