Last year in Moscow, at a performance of the play Gorbachev, the audience gave a standing ovation to the two remarkable performers who played Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa Gorbacheva. The applause became even more thunderous when the performers identified the frail old man in a box seat. A spotlight illuminated Gorbachev as he acknowledged the audience.
This was Russia before the invasion of Ukraine, when a theater festival could still feature plays obliquely critical of the Putin regime. It was also a highly selective audience: the intelligentsia that remained the only significant segment of the Russian population with a positive view of Gorbachev’s legacy.
I must confess that I, too, choked up a bit as I watched a streaming video of this performance at the Golden Mask festival along with its emotional curtain call.
In the summer of 1985, during Gorbachev’s first year in office, I was studying Russian in Moscow. I knew little about the man. The Muscovites I encountered were generally dismissive of their new leader. He was responsible that summer for a campaign against alcohol, which earned him the nickname of Lemonade Joe. Alcoholism was indeed a serious health problem, and a drain on the economy because of …read more
Source:: Institute for Policy Studies