
Spiegel Online har i dag et lengre intervju med mannen som reddet store deler av verden fra kommunismen; nei det var ikke USA’s tidligere president Ronald Reagen som gjorde det men Sovjetunionens leder Mikhael Gorbatsjov (som vi skriver det her i landet).
Dette intervjuet anbefales på det sterkeste. Her følger et bitte lite utdrag av Spiegel Online intervjuet:
SPIEGEL: In fact, you were expected to become head of the party a year earlier.
Gorbachev: Chernenko was ill. Still, they elected him in 1984, and there were scuffles and clashes in the Politburo. They assigned the positions as they saw fit, even though (Yuri) Andropov…
SPIEGEL: … the then-general secretary and head of the KGB for many years …
Gorbachev: … had written, in a letter to the Plenary Assembly of the Central Committee, that he supported Gorbachev.
SPIEGEL: Perhaps you could fill us in on a detail from the decisive Politburo meeting following Chernenko’s death in March 1985. Ironically, it was Foreign Minister (Andrei) Gromyko who nominated you as the new party leader. Why did he do it? He didn’t like you and was envious of you. And there were other candidates?
Gorbachev: Because Gromyko was a very clever and serious person. Why was he envious of me? I don’t know. But he had recognized the signs of the times. When Chernenko was ill, I was often called upon to manage the work of the Secretariat and the Politburo, and it went well, which didn’t go unnoticed. In that regard, Chernenko even helped me. And I gathered important experience in the process. If I may modify something Voltaire once said about God: If Chernenko hadn’t existed, someone would have to have invented him.