> Thanks for this very long, un-cryptic and enlightening reply.
You're very welcome, of course. We are here to learn from each other.
But, again, what do you mean by "prematurely ending the short twentieth century"? What is that and how is it a historically significant deed?
> But the question wasn't whether Gorbachev was "good" or a "loser,"
> but rather how important he was.
Important sounds like an important word. Important for what? Important for whom? Important by action or by omission? We are not judging hurricanes here, but human beings. A wrecking ball crushing through your wall is obviously important and urgent. But, if importance is measured by haplessly letting very bad things happen, without having the ability to stop them, then you and I may qualify as important as well. Under my watch, the U.S. bombed, invaded, and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, and that's just a part of the bad things that happened under Bush 2 and Obama.
Hegel's criterion requires pondering the extent to which their passions and willful *actions* of particular individuals match the necessity of the times. "Great men," "world-historical Individuals" were such because they "willed" what "met the needs of the age." A young man in the 1830s believed that the greatest persons were those who "ennoble themselves by working for the common good" and the happiest persons those who "make the greatest number of people happy."
By measures of *that kind*, Gorbachev flopped. The need of his time was the reform of the Soviet society in ways that advanced "the common good" and he failed. Unintentionally, no doubt, but he prompted a catastrophe that wrecked the lives of many people. That later on other people put some of the broken pieces back together does not deny the failure, and lingering sequels.
> But, since you veered the conversation
> this way, I'm not sure that the collapse of Stalinism was an unambiguously
> bad thing and certainly not the tragedy you make it out to be.
Well, "unambiguously" is not what I said. But here's a very conventional measure of the catastrophe (and subsequent partial recovery):