Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, and author of the ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’—restructuring and openness - political movements, died yesterday at age 91. His reforms allowed over one million Jews to emigrate to Israel, including the famous refusenik Natan Sharansky (See more below.) "3 million Soviet Jews owe him their freedom,” said Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, Moscow’s chief rabbi from 1993 until 2022.
Please see link to 2004 film on his life, Gorbachev's Revolution, directed by Habonim member Fern Levitt, which explores Gorbachev’s dramatic rise in the Communist Party to the eventual coup which ended his leadership and dissolved the Soviet Union.
Please see excerpt from Op-ed in the Washington Post written by human rights leader and refusenik Natan Sharansky, who was ultimately released from prison by Gorbachev.
“….If we look at the 20th century not through the lens of political struggles, but rather from the bird’s-eye perspective of history, we see how utterly unique Gorbachev was. In nearly every dictatorship there are dissidents, and from time to time there are also Western leaders willing to risk their political fates to promote human rights abroad. But Gorbachev was a product of the Soviet regime, a member of its ruling elite who believed its ideology and enjoyed its privileges — yet decided to destroy it nevertheless. For that, the world can be grateful. Thank you, Mikhail Gorbachev.”
Excerpted from Washington Post Opinion, "Gorbachev played a complicated but unique role in world history" By Natan Sharansky, August 30, 2022
