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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

(www.reuters.com)
970 points homarp | 3 comments | 30 Aug 22 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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eloy ◴[30 Aug 22 21:05 UTC] No.32655060[source]▶
RIP Gorbachev, one of the few genuinely good people in politics.

After he retired from politics, he was featured in several advertisements:

- In 1994 for Apple Computer: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/10/07/The-first-advertisem...

- In 1998 for Pizza Hut: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev_Pizza_Hut_commercial

- In 2000 for the ÖBB, the Austrian railways: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLscz8kEg6c

- In 2007 for Louis Vuitton: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/business/media/05vuitton....

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jtjbdhsjjdnd ◴[30 Aug 22 22:50 UTC] No.32656177[source]▶
For the West he was a hero, for the Russians he was a disaster https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Russia/Death_rate/ . I don't blame Gorbachev for this. Just as in the case of Nikolai II Russian totalitarian state and lack of checks and balances washed out an inept person to rule the country.
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koheripbal ◴[30 Aug 22 22:57 UTC] No.32656248[source]▶
The communist system is responsible for that, not Gorbachev. Centralized gov't controlled economies create corruption which results in ultimate economic collapse.
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1. brnt ◴[31 Aug 22 05:01 UTC] No.32658543[source]▶
All governments create corruption; centalized systems just have zero checks and balances.
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2. vintermann ◴[31 Aug 22 12:47 UTC] No.32661377[source]▶
"Checks and balances" mean nothing unless you specify who's checking who. System where the military keeps a check on the president, or the king keeps a check on parliament, aren't really much better than the "checker" being in charge all the time. And systems based on mutual checking tend to just reel from one constitutional crisis to another.
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3. brnt ◴[31 Aug 22 20:13 UTC] No.32667733[source]▶
The quality of implementation definitely matters, agreed. However, the Soviet states by and large didn't even have a shitty form in place, the party leader was an 'elected' dictator.