Gorbachev was notorious for 1) incompetence and 2) avoiding responsibility. "Armenian refugees are being hacked to death with axes in Azerbaijan? Nuts, I better not let that interfere with my meeting with Kohl. Maybe if I ignore it, it'll just go away."
BTW Perestroika was not an invention of Gorbachev. It was born out of think-tanks run under the auspices of his (much more competent) mentor, Andropov. This is not surprising, since the KGB, which Andropov headed, had been pushing for economic liberalization since the early 1970s.
--- On Wed, 6/17/09, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> He inherited Brezhnevian Stalinism and tried to make it
> humane and dynamic. So he failed - but who could have
> succeeded? Intentions count for something in politics,
> especially when the degree of difficulty is high.
>
> SA
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