Gorbachev’s heir

One year ago this month I found myself in the unusual position of hosting lunch for Mikhail Gorbachev. It was a work meeting at the L.A. Times, not some kind of rubber-chicken tribute (the former Soviet president was in town to talk up his Green Cross environmental initiatives), but there was something personally chilling about staring into the eyes of a man whose military shot and bludgeoned to death 13 peaceful Lithuanian protesters a full 14 months after the Berlin Wall fell, at a time when I was living in a country (Czechoslovakia) still occupied by tens of thousands of Red Army troops.

By Matt Welch

April 17, 2007