GORBACHEV’S AMBIGUOUS LEGACY: The article is five years old but it’s still a timely reminder of the Soviet Union’s evils, the dismal existence of its people and Gorbachev’s attempts to maintain the totalitarian state. As for the August 1991 coup:

Was he (Gorbachev) simply a victim or also a perpetrator of the coup attempt? “I can’t believe that Gorbachev didn’t know anything,” claimed former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. There is a rumor that persists to this day that the Communist Party leader collaborated with the putsch to give him an excuse to purge the party of its right wing after its expected failure. But ultimately Gorbachev was just a pawn in a complicated scenario, one which Yeltsin ended up taking advantage of.

Read the whole thing.