Here are some of the kinds of things this traitor dared to say openly once the crime was committed:
If you take my statements, then you will realize that my political sympathies belong to Social Democracy and the idea of a welfare state on the lines of the Federal Republic of Germany. […] With a fundamental commitment to liberalism, the German state actively intervenes in social life and in the economy, I think that’s right.
Even among the conservatives there are people who should be taken seriously and who do not shirk responsibility for the country. There is a wide spectrum to draw on.
Don’t let the surface fool you. There are demagogic attacks from both the extreme right and the extreme left, but neither one nor the other can mobilize real forces on a large scale. The center must prevail here.
Note how he refers to himself in the third person:
And Gorbachev had to steer the ship of perestroika through the cliffs. It was not yet possible to announce things for which the people were not yet ready. […] One had to be patient until the party bureaucracy was so disempowered that it could no longer turn back the wheel of history.
Then he spews a bunch of crap about “Stalin’s atrocities”, repeats a few of the usual anti-communist myths relating to WW2, and he rehashes a Khrushchevite lie about the start of the war. Too boring to quote, we’ve heard this stuff a thousand times.
In general he peddles the same liberal bullshit talking points about the USSR:
Anyone who believes that they can get the problems under control by returning to totalitarianism or by using authoritarian power, like some in our leadership, is making a dangerous misjudgment.
The former Soviet Union is dead and there is no point in trying to revive it.
About Russians left behind in the other republics and facing persecution:
I categorically rule out the use of force to protect Russian citizens […]
He is so far removed from reality he thinks he can compare himself to Deng Xiaoping:
I could of course take on a political function. But it also works without an official office, as you can see with China’s Deng Xiaoping. He exerts his influence without a leadership position. If there were signals from society that Gorbachev should take on greater responsibility, I would not evade it.
And of course this gem: The Gorbachev era is not over, it is only just beginning. Lol.
For me it all goes back to Khrushchev’s “secret speech”. It was that barrage of lies which demoralized the masses when the very leadership of the Bolshevik party all of a sudden poured the most vile slander over a beloved and internationally admired leader of the global communist movement who had only a decade prior been at the helm of the Soviet Union during its titanic struggle and victory over the Nazi invader. One can only imagine how shook the people’s confidence in themselves and their leaders would be after suddenly all of those opportunist lowlifes who held a grudge against Stalin were allowed to freely level the most absurd accusations at him.
The purge against the “Stalinists”, aka the principled Marxist-Leninists, which this historical revisionist garbage “justified” was ruthless and quick, and unfortunately those who would have opposed it were still reeling from the coup that the Khrushchevite clique managed to pull off. There was confusion among those who should have stood up and stopped this about how to react to the new party leadership suddenly attacking the previous in such a heinous and cynical manner since, as good communists, they also didn’t want to undermine the confidence of the people in the party and the government.
Those like Molotov who were too well respected for the Khrushchevite faction to get rid of easily essentially capitulated and accepted the new regime for the good of the party and the stability of the Union. That turned out to be a fatal mistake but one that we cannot begrudge them since they thought they were doing what was best at the time and they could never have foreseen how deep the rot would spread and what disastrous consequences it would have.
I have also heard the argument, and i think there is something to it, that one of the reasons why the Khrushchev coup was able to happen in the first place is because so many of the most dedicated and ideologically firm Bolsheviks had died in the Great Patriotic War, since they were always the first to fearlessly lay down their lives in defense of the motherland whereas the more opportunist party members tended to prefer taking less risks.
However it is also clear that the Stalin era leadership made mistakes as well by allowing the level of ideological education among the party to become abysmally low. Stalin was well aware of this and frequently complained about how the newer, younger party members were insufficiently educated, did not read enough and did not have a solid grasp on Marxist theory instead prefering to focus on the administrative side, on the day to day running of the bureaucracy.
Of course there were other factors as well and other mistakes that led to Gorbachev being able to do what he did, but that would take a whole essay or more to properly get into…two notable things i could mention that, in my opinion, also played a major role were Khrushchev’s revisionist economic policies and the new Soviet foreign policy of detente with the West that he initiated. Some of these may have occurred anyway, but others were only able to happen because of that “secret speech” of lies that shattered the international communist unity and seriously undermined the people’s faith in the communist project.