And the The Welcome to Russian history Retold, episode 172, a collapsing empire, Mikhail Gorbachev. Loved in the West and loathed in Russia.

Mikhail Gorbachev elicits these emotions unlike any other international figure in modern history.

Now, you may argue that Adolf Hitler was loathed by much of the world

and loved by his people but that was during his leadership. With Gorbachev the

hatred seems to be in retrospect. To see the depth of the disdain the Russian people feel for

him, you can look at the 1996 election for the presidency of Russia, where he received

all of one half of one percent of the vote.

And this was against Boris Yeltsin whose approval ratings weren't much better.

In today's podcast, we're going to focus on how he became so despised in his own country, whereas he is thought of so highly in most of the rest of the world.

Born on March 2nd, 1931 into a peasant family in Prival Noy Stavropol Krai, his parents were Ukrainian and Russian.

When he was two years old, one of the major famines of Soviet history occurred, according to Gorbachev quote and that terrible

near nearly half the population of my native village Prevalnoi starved to death including two sisters and one brother of my father.

Now instead of rehashing his rise within the Communist Party, which he joined in 1952,

I'll instead refer you to episode 104 where I covered his early life.

I'd like to go into the explanation of why Gorbachev did what he did when he took control of the

Soviet Union in 1985.

Before we can do that, we need to lay some groundwork.

It starts with Joseph Stalin in the system he set up.

It is marvelously explained by Martin Macaulay

and the foreword of Gorbachev's memoirs.

Quote, Stalin became head of government in 1941 and remained so until his death in 1953.

His concept of government was to view it as the mechanism for implementing decisions taken by

...