Gorbachev Is a Good Man

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Mikhail Gorbachev  l  The Story of a Good Soviet Man; How a peasant boy turned Communist Party boss ended the cold war and buried the Soviet Union. Economist, Sept 2, 2017

https://www.economist.com/news/b ... eople-70-years-lies
(book review on William Taubman, Gorbachev; His life and times. WW Norton, 2017)

Quote: "He [Gorbachev] believed (and still does) in the high principles of socialism, as preached and yet never practised by the Soviet regime. The paradox was that only a Soviet man who was determined to implement those principles without resorting to lies and violence could dismantle the Soviet regime.

Note:
(a) Mikhail Gorbachev (1931- ; age 86)
(b) "The author [Taubman] applies a Tolstoyan lens to Russia’s recent history"

Tolstoyanism (n): "(adherence to) the principles of non-violent social and moral reform proposed by or associated with Tolstoy"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/tolstoyanism
(c) "Mr Gorbachev's use of unnatural and hackneyed Soviet 'newspeak' made him seem like an apparatchik. But beneath it was a bedrock of moral instinct and common sense that informed his choices far more than Marxist dogma and Soviet ideology."

newspeak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
("is the language of Oceania, a fictional totalitarian state * * * n George Orwell's [book] Nineteen Eighty-Four")
(d) "Mr Taubman calls his first chapter 'Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth' (from the title of Tolstoy's semi-autobiographical trilogy)"

The trilogy is composed of three volumes: Childhood (published in 1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth (1857).
(e) "The first attempt to give socialism a human face was made in Czechoslovakia in 1968 by Mr Gorbachev’s closest university friend, Zdenek Mlynar, and others. That it was crushed by Soviet tanks did not turn Mr Gorbachev from the idea of socialism, but made him all the more determined to try it [giving socialism a human face] again when he came to power nearly two decades later."

Zdeněk Mlynář
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdeněk_Mlynář
(1930 – 1997; secretary of Czechoslovak communist party 1968–1970; section 4 Friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev)

His boss was Alexander Dubček (1921 – 1992), First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia who coined the term "socialism with a human face" in May, 1968 (3 months before Warsaw Pact invasion.

(f) "Yet, revealing as the book is about Mr Gorbachev's ability to overcome ideological dogmas that required squaring up to the West, it is equally revealing about how Western leaders were unable or unwilling to believe him."
(i) square up (v)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/square%20up
(ii) square up:
"assume the attitude of a person about to fight
1.1 face and tackle (a difficulty or problem) resolutely"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/square_up

It is apparent that Oxforddictionaries.com's definitions are more apt. Cambridge online dictionary says it is "UK" -- ie, British English.

(g) "In 1991 Mrs Thatcher [UK prime minister 1979-1990] appealed to Mr [George HW] Bush: 'We've got to help Mikhail' "
(h) "his biggest loss was that of his beloved wife and helpmate, Raisa, who died of leukaemia in 1999. In their last days together Mr Gorbachev, wearing a sterilised mask [to prevent speading germs to Raisa, who was physically weak -- in part because her immune system had been replaced by leukemic cells], held her in his giant combine driver's [Mikhail's (a combine driver as a child] arms, reminding her of their life together."