To the Editor:
Your Nov. 16 editorial “Gorbachev’s Baggage,” criticizing Mikhail S. Gorbachev for “cashing in on his image,” dismissing him as a “peculiar hero” and characterizing Russia today as “all about raw money and raw power,” is distasteful in every respect. The editorial appears in our own country, where many retired political leaders have long and routinely profited from their former positions.
While the library-centers of our former presidents are amply financed by public and many private sources, Mr. Gorbachev, alone and now almost 77, has personally borne the financial burden of constructing his Moscow foundation and maintaining its staff, along with much of the fund-raising for the admirable environmental organization he heads, Green Cross International.
Still worse, the editorial does not mention the most “peculiar” outcome of his legacy — the squandering by subsequent leaders, at home and abroad, of the historic possibilities he created for Russian democracy and American-Russian relations. And, not surprisingly, you are equally silent about The New York Times’s past enthusiasm for the post-Gorbachev policies of the 1990s, in Moscow and Washington, that wasted those opportunities.
Stephen F. Cohen
New York, Nov. 16, 2007
The writer is a professor of Russian studies at New York University.
