He's with the angles now

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Doing a toast to this man. Its sad that he couldnt manage to keep the Soviet Union together. If his reforms were succesfull we wouldve gotten to see a "socialist" country that wasnt repressed by totalitarian "vanguard" dictators. A system ACTUALLY by the people as socialism should be by definition. I appreciate that he tried, and you cant blame him for the collapse of the USSR. If you cannot reform a dictatorship into a democracy, then let it fall and rebuild.
Next to Tito this guy was one of my all time favorite communists. They actually cared.

This. Gorbachev was a real communist, a man of and for the people unlike many of his dictator predecessors.
He tried to save the soviet union by introducing democracy and transparancy, something you would think should be a default for an ACTUAL socialist system. He believed it was neccesary aswell.
However, considering the Soviet Union had totalitarian roots and major scars inflicted by the likes of Stalin. Also the ways the tyrants used and abused the system to their hearts content, it was obvious that there was no reforming this degenerated almost fascistoid system.
So Gorbachev did the right thing and let it collapse.
It was either succesfull reform or bust. Too bad Glasnost and Perestroika failed.

>Its sad that he couldnt manage to keep the Soviet Union together
The Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Ukrainians etc don't seem sad about it.

Duh. The bolshevik powerhungry dictators did horrible stuff to their people.
It wasnt the communist ideal that make the bolsheviks violently opress their subjects, it was these false powerhungry leaders who consolidated power under the pretense of "communism".
When Stalin died, Krushchev (the guy after Stalin) immediately opened up about the crimes against humanity he committed. He wanted to open up the soviet union too, but it was too early for that at the time. He ushered in the "Destalinization" era.
Overall the Soviet Union was built with good intentions, it just got royally fucked up because of corruption and power struggle.

If Gorbachev were succesfull with his reforms, today the USSR wouldve been probably as democratic as the west is now. But thats just the thing, the system was ruined from within.

Nationalism is a thing. All those nations I listed have a strong sense of national identity and a desire for independence. None of them wanted to be adjuncts to Russia, which they would be under any kind of politicl unification.

>democracy and transparancy, something you would think should be a default for an ACTUAL socialist system
What if the people vote not to have a socialist system? Like they regularly do in other countries ...

Redundant

Then go right ahead. Even Lenin didnt mind this. Seceding used to be a right at the beginning. Infact there were quite a few communist and socialist uprisings in Warsaw Pact countries that were smashed by the bolsheviks.
Socialism itself was not as unpopular there as you may think, it was just that they hated the oppression, obviously.

Yeah nationalists definitely. They sort of have a point considering how they were treated.
Look at Tito's Yugoslavia however. As a nationalist you were to stfu, but Tito's treatment of the average people was way more benevolent.

I'm saying that Gorbachev was a very different animal from the dictators of the past, but he was definitely a communist. Infact, communism by definition SHOULD be more democratic, but obviously you cant reform a system so degenerated into repression into its polar opposite.
The history of the revolution and communism is alot more nuanced and intricate as you would think. Its a massive pill to swallow to understand all of it.

I come from a leftist workers family of western europe, they were always against people like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, for a while even against Ho Chi Minh etc.
This history is anything but black and white.

Oh I forgot to add that I'm not a communist. I like the idea as being utopian, but its not a system that is possible for probably atleast a few more hundred years.
I just researched it alot because of interest, because I am a social democrat/moderate socialist

For the last commie, he was a pretty good guy. He wanted to liberalise the USSR, but he let it collapse.
The republics wanted out and the people were sick of the CPSU.
Considering the 40+ years of Cold War, with mutually assured nuclear destruction, it ended peacefully.
Reagan outspent the Soviets into bankruptcy; though the US didn't get the memo that it was time to cut back and then 9/11 lit the touch-paper.
Yeltsin turned out to be a disaster, with 1990s Russia going through a worse depression than the 1930s were in the West.
Putin rebuilt a gangster state with the oligarchs and got total power, but has probably ruined his legacy forever with the embarrassment in Ukraine.