MOSCOW : Mikhail on the Spot
The reputation of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, former Soviet president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, may be changed forever Friday when formerly top-secret internal Communist Party documents--some bearing Gorbachev’s signature--are open for public perusal in archives that once belonged to the Communist Party.
Officials in Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s administration say the party that Gorbachev once led stopped supporting international terrorism only last year.
If true, that would mean that even as Gorbachev was wooing the West with his “new way of thinking” in foreign policy, his Kremlin was working to destroy its traditional capitalist adversaries.
Friday is also a new holiday in Russia--Independence Day. It marks the second anniversary of lawmakers’ proclamation of Russian sovereignty and the first anniversary of Yeltsin’s election as Russia’s first president.
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