An evening with Gorby

So former Soviet president Mikail Gorbachev came to the Pasadena Civic as part of their Distinguished Speakers Series. First, let me say that they really need to put some quotes around "Distinguished" since only 75% of these people are really distinguished in my view. Gorby, Colin Powell, Shimon Peres, George Will, Benazir Bhutto, etc. could all be considered "distinguished." However, are Bill O'Reilly, Naomi Judd or Carl Reiner really that distinguished? I think not. Second, let me say thank you for Lauri and Pete for getting me into this event. I felt really important going through a back entrance. By the way, Lauri looks super-professional in her suit and I was intimidated.

Now let's get to some of the comments. Please be patient with me as I am going completely from mental notes that are now 40 hours old.

The topic that he was presented was to discuss perestroika 20 years later. I think he covered the topic well, but you really had to think about how he was doing that. Also, he spoke in Russian with translation, so there may have been some loss of poeticism. There are, however, several general ideas that I got from what he said. #1 - He really does not like Boris Yeltsin. Not in the way Bush doesn't like Kerry, but in the way God hates the Devil. I mean, its really personal hatred. #2 - Despite being raised under Stalin, educated under Khrushchev, and came to power under Brezhnev this guy is really anti-totalitarian. Or at least he talks like he is. #3 - He thinks very highly of his country and still wants the best for it. #4 - I don't think he has patience for stupidity - like the KABC talk-show guy that MC'd. Anyways, here are some of the themes that he touched on while speaking.

The overall effect of perestroika. Perestroika was Gorbachev's policy of "restructuring" or re-building Soviet society. He looked to not only open up the repressive nature of the USSR (what he called Glasnost or "openness"), but he also wanted to bring more freedom to the economy. Hence, the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Communism. He made a few comments about the stupidity of totalitarian rule and said that perestroika was inevitable in a world where people were beginning to have a greater understanding of their rights, especially in the realm of private ownership and the need for survival. He felt very strongly that once Yeltsin took over, most of the strongest and most successful parts of perestroika went down the drain and the Soviet economy was based only on providing benefits to the top 10% of society (where have I heard that before?). One of the more interesting comments he made later in the speech was that he thought that if the Soviet Union would have been kept together according to his plan of perestroika, the worldwide balance of power (bi-polar power) would have been maintained and the world would be much more peaceful, including the Middle East. He also talked a lot about his peasant childhood and how that effected his view in life and led him to his reform ideas.

Iraq. It was very clear from the beginning that Gorby does not care much for the war or the way that the U.S. carries out its foreign policy. I thought that his best points the whole night came during this part. First, he pointed out that he and Reagan (and Bush the First a little) were able to settle the Cold War without actual fighting. He said that current Western policy focuses too much on forcing people to do things with the military and not enough on using diplomacy to reach a compromise. Second, he noted that "diplomacy must be home grown" (and that is an exact quote - I remember it clearly). Mr. Gorbachev noted emphatically that it is impossible to force a nation to adopt another country's form of democracy at gunpoint ad he feels that there is no way our forced democracy in Iraq will ever gain stability unless we leave and let them create their own form of democracy. I agree.

Terrorism. Gorbachev recognized the threat of worldwide terror and the need for governments to protect their citizens. Now, this next point is one that I really agree with and had a long discussion with Peter at Pete the Elder about it. Gorby argued that we are not really dealing with the root problem of terrorism. He felt that the leaders of terrorists are certainly a problem, but that the people that take up the fight on behalf of these leaders are doing so mostly because they have been isolated from the world economy. They have been left out and extreme Islamic terrorism gives them a way to fight against the countries that have done nothing to help them. Gorby argued that too many countries have been left out of globalization and that we, as a world, need to do more to bring these developing countries into the global economy. I could not agree more.

Reagan. Obviously, there were a lot of people at the Civic waiting to hear what Gorbachev had to say about old Ronnie, and I have to say that there wasn't much there. He told a joke about what he and Reagan said about each other after their first meeting. He said that they were asked separately about what they thought of eachother. Reagan said that Gorby was a die-hard Bolshevik and Gorby said that Reagan was so conservative that he was a dinosuar. It doesn't sound as funny now that I write it. He also said that Reagan was not that open to the idea of nuclear disarmament at first and he did not respect that. In the only decent audience question, Gorby was asked what he thought when Reagan made the famous "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" comment. Gorbachev said that he and the party members knew that Reagan was an actor before becoming a politician and that they were not impressed and thought that it was a show. That got a good laugh.

Overall, I was surprised that the crowd had such a positive response to his more liberal views. Pete said that this crowd is generally conservative. He got solid applause at least a dozen times. I thought that he had a lot of great ideas and theories, and I really appreciate his concern for world peace. Pete said that it was weird to be in the same room as the guy that we used to see on TV everyday in the late 80s. I agree. We were way in the back, but you could tell that a lot of the crowd was awe-struck to be in his presence. I do wish, however, that the KABC radio guy would not have picked the "Have you ever been to Disneyland?" crowd question from the cards submitted before the show. I felt embarrassed to be part of the audience. In any case, I would love to check out more of these speeches in the future. Maybe not Tom Wolfe, but I am interested to see who they get next year.