Betsy Newmark notes the collective disinterest in new documents that give us a much better look into the waning day of the former Soviet Union.

This is amazing stuff: Claire Berlinski reports on documents smuggled out of Russia about the last years of the Cold War. These are documents from Gorbachev’s own files and are an amazing treasure trove of notes from his meetings with foreign dignitaries and from the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Simply fascinating stuff. But no western publisher seems to be interested in publishing any of this.

Why wouldn’t western researchers and publishers be interested in documents containing such tidbits as Gorbachev’s response to the Chinese killing dissidents in Tiananmen Square? Maybe they don’t like the real story of how he just shrugged it off. Or his laughter at the news of the Soviets shooting down a Korean jetliner.

The press and the Left in this country were apologists for the Soviet Union, very nearly lionizing Gorbachev.  So it’s no wonder that this is not getting more notice in the network news.  Again, it’s all about the narrative (and not wanting to be shown to be horribly wrong about them).  And not only the US press but the European press as well which, again, were all too ready to seek the USSR’s approval rather than take the hard positions on what was right.

(This is the same press/Left/Europe that freaked out when Reagan stood up to the Communists and set in motion their downfall soon after.)

Betsy has more, and Clair Berlinski has lots more.  And you gotta’ wonder if "USSR" was replaced by "Nazis", whether this would be equally as ignored.

Filed under: DougForeign PolicyGovernmentMediaRussia

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