>My ambition was to liquidate Socialism, the dictatorship over all the people. Supporting me and urging me on in this mission was my wife, who was of this opinion long before I was. I knew that I could only do this if I was the leading functionary. In this my wife urged me to climb to the top post. While I actually became acquainted with the West, my mind was made up forever. I decided that I must destroy the whole apparatus of the CPSU and the USSR. Also, I must do this in all of the other socialist countries. My ideal is the path of social democracy. Only this system shall benefit all the people. This quest I decided I must fulfil.>I found friends that had the same thoughts as I in Yakovlev and Shevernadze, they all deserve to be thanked for the break-up of the USSR and the defeat of Socialism.>A World without socialism is going to be much better. After year 2000 the world will be much better, because it shall develop and prosper. But there are countries which shall try to struggle against this. China for one. I was in Peking during the time of the protests on Tienanmen Square, where I really thought that Socialism in China is going to crash. I sternly demanded of the Chinese leadership that I want to speak to the protesters, but they did not allow me to do so. If the Communist party would fall in China, all the world would be better off, and on the road to peace. - Gorbachev.It is fucking wild that an anti Communist like Gorby could literally not only become leader of the USSR, but make himself an actual dictator beyond even the powers of Stalin like Gorby did.For all the defenses of the USSR, you cannot disagree they had a run of some of the worst major power leaders of all time (Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin) and that shows a massive fault of the Soviet system.
>>18099248>. Supporting me and urging me on in this mission was my wifeIt's always the fucking women.What Hitler couldn't accomplish was accomplished by a roastie who just wanted to live like in the West.
I always thought gorby was a dyed in the wool communist that got manipulated into doing the bidding of the liberal clique that formed in the communist party.
>>18099248It really is just fucking remarkable
>>18099248>>18100042It's cope. At no point did Gorbachev actually try to destroy the Union or the Party instead of fumbling his way into such an outcome. And even that was mostly thanks to Yeltsin who actually went and banned CPSU after the August coup
>>18100042He was a Crypto Christian. Perestroika was about church revival that impulsed Putin in the 2000s
>>18101037Absolutely not cope at all. Gorbachev was a retarded westaboo and Yakovlev outright outlined how they would destroy the USSR.https://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/504512-tezisy-a-n-yakovleva-ob-osnovnyh-slagaemyh-perestroyki-dekabr-1986-gDocument from Yakovlev in 1986 how they will dismantle Socialism, the USSR and how Marxism should be thrown into the trashcan of history.Yakovlev outright admits as well that he wanted to overthrow the USSR>The Soviet regime could only be destroyed through glasnost and the totalitarian discipline of the party, while hiding behind the interests of improving socialism ... Looking back, I can proudly say that the clever but very simple tactic -- use the mechanisms of totalitarianism against the system of totalitarianism -- worked. We had no other way of political struggle. Bolshevism completely rejected any democratic reforms, any dissent.>...A group of real, not imaginary, reformers developed (orally, of course) the following plan: to strike at Stalin, at Stalinism, with Lenin's authority. And then, in case of success, to beat Lenin with Plekhanov and Social Democracy, and with liberalism and “moral socialism” to beat the idea of revolution in general.
>"It is correct to say that it is impossible to destroy the previous system without chaos. But people do not want to pay for 70 years of criminal policy. And they will never understand why, in order to become a civilized country at the end of the 21st century, we have to go through hunger, collapse, debauchery, crime and other such delights"From Aleksandr Ostrovsky>"In his memoirs, A.N. Yakovlev takes offense at the statements of George Bush and some other American politicians that the USA won the Cold War against the USSR. What caused the former Soviet leader's disagreement? It turns out that it was not the Americans who defeated the Soviet Union but it was the Soviet leaders who themselves surrendered their country. They surrendered it, and hoped that doing that would get them the credit with American leadership".
Big reason is the USSR didn't really truly reform Tsarist Russia, institutionally, they took Tsarist instituions, painted them red then used them to carry out "Communism" this led to an extremely top down system where the collective politburo essentially exist at the top and and send commands down. The Soviet system started reforming towards "liberalism" in the 1960s, with the Liberman reforms in particular in 1965 which basically ended Gosplan (Central planning) but the USSR still maintained a very top town attitude, so like... State enterprises could basically do whatever they wanted and they acted like Capitalist businesses, but you couldn't start your own business for ??? reason. This famously led to the N1 rocket fiasco as Capitalist State firms refused to cooperate with eachother, allowing the US to reach the moon first, another big one of course is the sabotage and destruction of OGAS because it would have brought back Gosplan in full force and far more efficent than ever.So this means Soviet citizens nor even party members really knew how to influence or make demands at all, they were trained to just accept things as they were, and this is why people sat back and watched Communism be dismantled by the Party elites. They were literally trained to just do that.Compare this with China which had a Communist movement born out of isolated village Guerrilla cells, Chinese communism was born out of a far more "anarchistic" bottom up movement and when they took power they swept away the entire remenants of the Republic and Qing instituions and society. Chinese Communism has always been built on Mass Line, where the general public have far more impact on policy and party makeup than ever existed in the USSR because of how decentralised China was and how the party existed largely as a bottom up Organisation. This means Chinese were far more able to police the party and stop the overthrow of the Communist party or Socialist aspects of their society they supported.
>>18101819I'm not talking about Yakovlev, I'm talking about Gorbachev>Following the failed coup attempt, Yakovlev blamed Gorbachev for having been naïve in bringing the plotters into his inner circle, saying Gorbachev was "guilty of forming a team of traitors. Why did he surround himself with people capable of treason?"If you don't see Perestroika as the struggle between conservatives and liberals in the Party, with Gorbachev stuck in between and trying to (unsuccessfully) appease both sides, then you're a fool
>>18100042>I thought the obvious western puppet who did everything to destroy the USSR was a dyed in wool communist
