 Hello, welcome to what's going on. What's going on today is looking at the demise of two world figures these past days, Gorbachev first and then the Queen of England. What does it mean for the world today and then and retrospectively you know to the past history, I mean the past 50 years we're going to talk about it with Sandy Bird and Kurt Mehta, friends. First of all the two figures going like what does it mean like if we can intersect these two deaths. Right, well Kurt is the person that I would ask what is the meaning even or the significance of the death of Gorbachev in Russia. By the way he died peacefully in Russia. Yes he did. He was disfavored in Russia. He was partly a persona non grata. Persona non grata but nobody assassinated him. Not yet, no. No, not yet, no in the end. Yeah, no he died in his bed. He died of natural causes peacefully at the age of 91. Mr. Gorbachev was born prior to the Second World War 1931 and died in 2022 in early September or last week of August. So why are we talking about him? Let me just say what I'm a little bit about why I think it's an important topic because I think his administration if you want to put it that way his leadership of the Soviet Union led eventually to the demise of the Soviet Union and then the turn from the Soviet Union to Russia, right? And that I think has great significance whether you regard it as a tragedy or not as a different story. I kind of in some ways think it at least is very significant for the future that Russia became Russia rather than the Soviet Union. But anyway what's your take on it? Yeah I mean Gorbachev is potentially one of the largest figures in the part of the 20th century's history in terms of the amount of change that his administration exacted on the world. We can contrast Mr. Gorbachev from prior Soviet leaders. It was a new style of leadership. He was very engaging with the people, the prior Soviet leaders going back from it. To understand what happened immediately before Mr. Gorbachev came into power Lenin Brezhnev a towering figure in Soviet history had passed away in 1982 and then there was a succession of two leaders after him. Konstantin Chernenko and Yuri Andropov who both died within a quick period of time after Brezhnev's death. And then Gorbachev was the fourth Soviet leader in about three years that came in and he was younger than many of the prior Soviet leaders. Kind of colorful. Colorful. He was an amateur musician and he was a lawyer. He was very educated. He was educated at Moscow State University. And he did things he was not as secretive as prior Soviet leaders. He was very engaging. He would go out onto the streets of Moscow and just talk to people impromptu without any advance notice. And as a result he was very well liked. The interesting thing is on our side in the United States he was looked at very suspiciously initially. These actions where he would go out onto the streets. He did it in New York City also. He did it in Moscow all the time. They looked at that very suspiciously. People, my friends on the right in this country because they thought he was trying to lull and to attract the West. Communism. Communism and just being attracted to him and being disarmed by his presence where you had very staid, grim, prior leaders in the Soviet Union. Whether it's Khrushchev or... Khrushchev was colorful. A little bit. Remember him with the shoe in the UN? If you call that colorful. I do. I really call it colorful. But not approachable. Not approachable. He also elevated the status of women. Not so much in Soviet society because they were already relatively elevated compared to the West but in terms of how his wife was presented to the world. Raisa Gorbachev was looked at as almost a co-partner. Where prior Soviet first ladies, that was not the term that they were used, were very, you know, they were recessed in the background and I can't, for example, name any prior Soviet leaders' spouses. But everyone knew Raisa Gorbachev in the 1980s. Including in the West. Including in the West. So he talked about an openness, a new openness called Glasnost. He talked about... It was a political openness. That was a political opening contrasted with an economic restructuring called Perestroika. He wanted to maintain socialism in the Soviet Union. His version of socialism that he espoused was probably closer to what some of the countries in Northern Europe have. It's more of a democratic socialism. He wasn't an ideologue in a Marxist-Leninist tradition. But he was not interested in capitalism either, which is what many people later in the West thought he was interested in. There were people to the left of him, Boris Yeltsin, who wanted quicker reforms. Boris Yeltsin did? Yes, much more so. He thought Gorbachev was slow. So, I mean, you know, it's important to remember that he wanted to preserve the socialist system. But even within communism, he thought it was a reformable ideology. That there were some, you know, changes that they had to make. The Soviet Union was also becoming an extended empire outside of the confines of even the Soviet Union itself. Going into Africa, going into Asia, there was a protracted war in Afghanistan that had started in 1979. And the Soviets were losing lots of people and a lot of money in that war. Even though Afghanistan's proximity was, you know, it was essentially almost practically a bordering country to the Southern Soviet Republics. And Gorbachev wanted to disengage from any extended involvement in areas that went outside of Eastern Europe and outside of the Soviet Union itself, including their involvement in Cuba, including their involvement in other places in South America. His thinking was that too much money was being spent outside of the Soviet Union and that this was not sustainable economically speaking. But how free was he to maneuver? Is there any opposition from the Politburo? I mean, certainly, he had a good deal of opposition. I mean, there was the prior generation of leadership, Eric, that was not interested in a significant change in Cold War politics, as well as what was known at the time as the Brezhnev doctrine when it came to opposing the United States if there was any kind of movement on the part of the United States anywhere in the developing world. And of course, any kind of movement towards pushing into Eastern Europe. And Gorbachev wanted to, you know, he had a plan. He had met with Reagan a few times and there was a talk about, you know, reducing the number of nuclear arms in the world. I thought they came very close to signing something, him and Reagan. They came very close. They had a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986. And at the summit, you know, I still remember the pictures, they met in this little red house, you know, one room house. And spent a few days there talking about how they wanted to actually get rid of all nuclear weapons. That was actually on the table. But nothing was signed, Sandy, the United States had just, under President Reagan, had just started the SDI program, which was known as Star Wars. And taking weapons into space and using satellites at that time. It was a big initiative, extremely, extremely costly. And the Soviets knew that also, that it was going to be costly for the United States, but it was also going to be costly for the Soviet Union to respond in kind. And that was a sticking point at that Reykjavik conference. Reagan would not agree to dropping the SDI, the Star Wars program. And Gorbachev required, that was a conditioned precedent. Well, it seems that it might have been reasonable. But Gorbachev also was perceived as very pro-West. At some point, some people maybe thought that the West influenced his position. How was that? It depends on who you ask, Eric, and it depends on how the media portrayed him. I mean, I had spent a little bit of time in Western Europe at the time, and specifically in West Germany. West Germany, I thought you also spent some time in the East. Both, both. But in terms of how he was perceived in West Germany, I mean, the man was adored. He was loved. Reagan was not as popular amongst a good portion of the population in Western Europe, maybe with the exception of Britain. He was very close with Prime Minister Thatcher. Reagan was very good. They had a very good relationship. But people on the street, the average West German, the average French person, thought very highly of Genekal Gorbachev. So did Americans in general? I think Americans were a little more wary. It depended on how you classified yourself. If you were on the right, you were very suspicious that he was laying a trap for the United States, and more conservative politicians said, we really need to be careful, not change course in the United States. Which is to what? The course at that time was Cold War politics, right? Right, which was to try to basically agree to some of his proposals, Gorbachev's proposals, to disarm, to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. One of the biggest accomplishments of President Reagan and Gorbachev working together was reducing the number of long-range nuclear missiles, as well as intermediate forces, the INF Treaty, which was just recently junked by the last administration here, President Trump, and then Putin responded in kind. But that's always, to me, how it happens. The United States is, to me, always the more recalcitrant power to make a deal with Russia. Right, but they were actually engaged when Mr. Gorbachev was there. No, no, and I think Trump was too, to some extent. Except that, yeah, we retreated from the treaty. Right, exactly. We reached the INF Treaty, which was a big accomplishment Eventually, so what you're saying is that Gorbachev, I think you're saying, was a reformer and believed the Soviet Union should be changed in kind of a, but within the system itself. Within the system itself. To keep the communist or socialist system, but allow for enough changes so that it could become more or less democratic. Right. More democratic. More democratic. And more freer in the economy, but not a capitalist economy. In a Norwegian Swedish way. Exactly, exactly. Not necessarily in an American or West German way or British way, but in a northern European sense. So what happened to this guy? Okay, so I mean, so he had a great deal of difficulty towards the latter part of his administration. The biggest thing was, it was internal. When Eastern Europe began to fall apart, the Soviet Union, what's really important is what prefaced that act, the disintegration of Eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact, I should say, that's probably a little more accurate. Gorbachev actually visited Deng Xiaoping in China immediately prior to the Tiananmen Square Massacre. That's what we call it in this country, the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The reason for the events at Tiananmen Square was to welcome the Soviet Premier. That's why they had a gathering there. It's important to know. So Gorbachev actually went to China, to Beijing, and went to Tiananmen Square and met with Deng Xiaoping and they had, you know, grand speeches and everything. And it was after Gorbachev left that the Chinese sent tanks in to quash the protesters and the people striking. That was like 86? That was 89. And Gorbachev did not condemn the Tiananmen Square actions on the part of the Chinese government. That's really important to know. However, what he learned from that was that for himself, he was not going to use force in the event there were Eastern European countries who wanted to leave the Warsaw Pact. He would not use force. So when the Hungarians and the Austrians opened up their border, and we flow from Eastern Europe into Austria and then into Germany, there were no Soviet tanks that went in to enforce and secure that border between East and West. Did you have something? Yeah, I think Gorbachev even said it in an interview before he passed away that he did that because he didn't want to risk any lives. He could have backlash more than that. But at the end, you know, his legacy is like mi fig mi resen as we say in French, you know. Some would say that he is the one who precipitated the fall of... Sorry, because the biggest thing, Eric, was there wasn't a use of force. Except, you know... So, I mean, a lot of people look at the end of the traditional Cold War on November 9th, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was breached. And then when the reunification of Germany was being placed on the table as a discussion point where both the Eastern, East and West were consenting to that. But interestingly, the French and the British were not as excited about Germany reunited. Oh, I understand. I understand. I get it. Historically, it was historical and economic. I mean, they were very concerned that Germany, once again, was going to become the most dominant power in Europe. Guess what? Which it became. Which it became. Which it ultimately became. But wait a minute. I want to explain a little bit. So, at this period of time, Germany was divided because of World War II. That is correct. Okay. So, East Germany was communist and under some kind of, I don't know if you'd call it leadership, not really an occupation, though, either by the Russians, but it was a communist country. Yeah. It was as occupied, honestly, as West Germany. As the Western. You know, when I was there in the 80s. I was there also, by the way. Yeah. You remember, there were lots of American troops in West Germany, in West Berlin, and still are. And there were a lot of Soviet troops in East Berlin and in Eastern Germany. That had been a result of the end of World War II. That's correct. I don't think most people in this country understand that the reason Germany was divided was that the Soviets basically came into Berlin, liberated that part of Germany from the Nazis. Right. And we, the Americans, were in the West. Yeah. Right. The two sides, allies at that time. Allies at the time. Right. The Soviets came from the East, the United States, the French, and yeah. Yeah. And Turgau, Germany. They shook hands and had a big party. Right. Of course. So we need to also talk about, you know, another, you know... Well, wait a minute. So how did then the demise of the Soviet Union happen after that? The demise of the Soviet Union itself was, Lithuania was one of the first Soviet republics that announced its independence. Mr. Gorbachev was not interested in that. He was okay with the East Germany going, okay with the Warsaw Pact disintegrating, but he sent tanks into East Berlin. I mean, I'm sorry. Into Lithuania. Into Lithuania. And there was a loss of life there. He sent troops into Armenia and there was loss of life there, too. And Armenia declared its independence. What happened afterwards is that there was a lot of soul searching within the Soviet Union. There were hardliners who were not interested in the republics breaking apart. Mr. Gorbachev talked about creating a new Soviet Union and talked about a new constitution where all of these different republics would work together and stay together. There was a referendum done in Ukraine. Mr. Gorbachev thought that Ukraine would stay with the Soviets. 90% of Ukrainians decided to vote for secession. From the Soviets. And after that referendum, that was a pivotal part and played a pivotal part in Mr. Gorbachev's decision on how to govern forward. And that was basically a disintegration. Okay. Yeah, there was a hardline coup for a short period of time. And then the West got very involved in basically financing Boris Yeltsin. Correct. And ultimately, that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Which Mr. Gorbachev was not happy about. And he didn't think that the West was going to go as far as trying to relegate the former Soviet Union now the Commonwealth of Independent States into a backwater. And that's what they did. And ultimately, that's what he was very unhappy about. Right. And also, that led, I think, directly to kind of the election eventually of Vladimir Putin. Yes. Okay. So that's turning to the... And that's what we have today, is Vladimir Putin. Right. Who is continuing to lead Russia as Russia. Yes. Right. Yes. It's interesting about Vladimir Putin how Gorbachev put it this way. You know, sometimes nations are faced with challenges that requires the leadership to stay there because, you know, there's nobody capable of taking over and that's where Putin is right now. You know, because the country is at, you know, a very important crossroad and then there's no other leader because he was asked somehow if he condemns, you know... Right. Putin being there forever. So that's what he said. And Gorbachev was a big supporter of Putin initially. He was for the Russian involvement in South Ossetia and in Georgia when there was an action, I think it was in 2008 or 2006. But I remember that. Yeah. So Gorbachev was in favor of Russia taking action. He was in favor of Russia taking Crimea also. Yeah. He went on record stating that. Crimea has always been part of Russia. Right. So Gorbachev did not condemn Putin in either of those actions. He did not go on record. It wasn't known what his point of view was with respect to this recent incursion into Ukraine, into Ukraine proper. But I really want to look in a way and then we'll turn to your subject to say that Vladimir... I don't understand why Americans don't get that Vladimir Putin is a Russian and he's going to defend Russian interests. Period. And that's, I think one of the reasons that this war has broken out in the Ukraine. But anyway, so turning to the demise. Yeah. Of the Queen Elizabeth... Do you have any thoughts on that? I do. Yeah. I think it's very different. Yeah, I think so. I think so. You know, the United Kingdom was... I think Queen Elizabeth came to the throne in the early 1950s. Is that one? Yeah. Much of the United Kingdom had already disintegrated with the exception of many of its holdings in Africa which did not gain their independence until the early 1960s. But they lost a lot of their... They lost a lot of their income from colonies even before Elizabeth left. I mean, I'm sorry, before Elizabeth came. Right, exactly. And partly because the damage done by the Germans during the Second World War. And the First World War. And the First World War. But their resources were really stretched. And also because of the takeover by the American Empire of the former British Empire. Right. And I mean, sure, she was the regent. She was the Queen. However, the British government was intimately involved for the prior century in their holdings in Africa and Asia. The Queen didn't really have a whole lot to do with, you know, governing foreign policy. As much as the Prime Minister of Britain. No, no, go ahead. That's my point of view. Okay, I have a different point of view. Did anybody... And this is a podcast by Chris Hedges yesterday which is really funny in some ways. But I do believe that the Queen had a great deal of power and influence as the symbol of a large British Empire. And a symbol also of class privilege. That the British monarchy is not powerless and not without influence. And it stands for very conservative values all over the world. And so her demise kind of reminded me that as an empire, she is sort of... She really was a status quo person and put forth the idea anyway of a great British Empire, even though it's in demise. But part of it was personal because the British monarchy wanted to preserve itself within Britain because a lot of young Britons that were interviewed this week after the Queen passed away was that the monarchy was irrelevant. It's not irrelevant. That's the point. Right, right. But self-preservation, you know, I mean the monarchy during the 20th century did a couple of things for self-preservation. You know, one is to create this tourism thing that they have, you know, in London. The second thing was the monarchy was German. Yes, originally. Originally, yes, yes. And the term, the Mount Batten family, the original family was Battenburg, which was not a palatable name during World War I and World War II. During World War I. Yeah, so they recreated themselves, you know, deftly, and were somehow able to maintain their privileged position of being this British, you know, mainstay when, you know, if you went back a few generations, you know, four or five generations, they didn't even speak English. I know, they didn't speak German. And guess what their name was? I believe Hanover, I think. They came out of Hanover. Yeah, but the family of Battenburg and, yeah, there were a couple of different German names. So they kind of very, in a crafty way, made themselves more British as the 20th century went on. And ruled over a huge, big empire. Yeah, I would say that the Prime Minister ruled over the empire. But I don't say that. She was a symbol. No, I disagree. I disagree, not vehemently. So two big figures, one lost completely the empire. Right. And another one managed to keep... She hung on to it. Yeah, yeah. And they still have some colonies. There's still islands that they own. I'm going to end by this, I think, and this is... I couldn't believe the adulation of the monarch in this country. I want to remind our people that we are a revolutionary republic. We fought against these people. Right. And we kicked them out in 1776. And so I do not... and became a republic. Maybe it's a... I mean the Stockholm syndrome. Yeah, right. Kind of like, you know, our... Stockholm syndrome. Yeah, I mean, the closest thing we have are the Kardashians. So, you know, we don't have our own royalty. Yeah. But we instituted a republic. We could have kept the monarchy and we didn't. We became a republic where all people are considered equal. Yeah. Correct? All right. This is the demise of this show. Sell up. Yeah. This is, you know... Okay. All right, folks. This is it for today. That was what's going on. And we'll be back in a month. I hope if we're all still here. Right. Thank you.