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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

(www.reuters.com)
970 points homarp | 2 comments | 30 Aug 22 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bediger4000 ◴[30 Aug 22 20:56 UTC] No.32654941[source]▶
I was taught that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war and gave us the longest lasting economic boom.
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flavius29663 ◴[30 Aug 22 21:00 UTC] No.32654999[source]▶
He did. It's just that leftists in the US won't accept that and pretend that the Cold War just "ended" one day, because of the goodwill of the Russians, not because the US policy forced them into bankruptcy.
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woodruffw ◴[30 Aug 22 21:11 UTC] No.32655121[source]▶
There's a disconnect here: the US policy in question took place over decades, not the 8 years that Reagan was president.
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1. flavius29663 ◴[30 Aug 22 22:50 UTC] No.32656176[source]▶
of course it was a decades long policy, but Reagan takes the laurels because his predecessor was appeasing USSR and Reagan did the exact opposite, bringing about the downfall of the USSR. If a new Carter would have been in power, I am not sure 1989 would have happen when it did.
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2. woodruffw ◴[02 Sep 22 14:38 UTC] No.32691369[source]▶
This is somewhat ahistorical: Carter's initial policy towards the USSR was a continuation of the "detente" policy pursued by multiple administrations, beginning in the 1960s. But it quickly shifted towards a much more aggressive policy, following the USSR's engagement in Afghanistan. If anything, Reagan continued his predecessor's aggressive policies.

Reagan was instrumental in the USSR's final years and even more instrumental in the policies that built the oligopoly that followed it. But singling him out for laurels does not accurately reflect either the USSR's internal politics or the 50 years of US foreign policy that brought us to 1991.