The Crusader by Paul Kengor

Author:Paul Kengor [Paul Kengor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061740992
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

BORN MARCH 2, 1931 IN A SMALL VILLAGE IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA, Mikhail Gorbachev, like Ronald Reagan, came from humble origins. He was raised a peasant on a collective farm during Stalin’s disastrous collectivization, where his father worked at a tractor station. Like Dutch’s father, Mikhail’s dad struggled financially. Both boys’ mothers endured their troubles by consulting the Bible, which was a considerably greater risk in Russia than it was in Dixon, Illinois.4 Mikhail was young enough to be spared from World War II, a conflict that took the lives of more men from Russia than any other nation.

Gorbachev was admitted to Moscow State University, where his academic focus was law and agriculture, the latter of which became his area of expertise in the Communist Party. At Moscow State, politics also captured his interest, and Gorbachev began his political career as leader of Komsomol, the country’s Communist youth group. There, in 1951, he met his future wife, Raisa, a devout Marxist-Leninist-atheist, a soul-mate who, like Nancy Reagan to Ronald Reagan, supported his political ambitions.

It was with this marked background of education and ambition that enabled the charismatic Gorbachev to rise quickly up the ranks of the Communist Party, eventually becoming a full member of the Politburo in 1980 and positioning himself for the top spot in March 1985. Perhaps it was fitting that as Reagan’s second term was in its infancy he suddenly had a new counterpoint in Moscow, an individual that he and the world hoped would stem the tide of oppression that had flowed from the Kremlin for so long.

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