The Cold War

The Cold War, as it has been called, lasted from the late 1940s until the early 1990s. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the Cold War ended when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Mikhail Gorbachev was leader of the Soviet Union at the time, leader of what was known in all previous years as a communist regime. It was erected by Soviet leaders, Marx, Leninist and Stalin, but it was believed that this regime needed to modernize a bit, so as leader, Gorbachev was working to create "reform." Known as Perestroika, or Restructuring, his model of reform maintained the socialist ideas of price controls, the inconvertibility of the ruble, exclusion of private property ownership, and governmental monopoly on production. In his own words, "The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice." ((Mikhail Gorbachev, in his book, Perestroika; 1987) Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his efforts.

The world watched in 1989 as Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. We saw East and West Germany joined again as the Berlin Wall, a monument to opposing ideas came tumbling down. Then in 1991, came the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It was August 1991, and Gorbachev was on vacation in the Crimea,when opponents to his reform staged a take-over of the country. It was a bloodless coupe; no one was killed, but the attackers placed Gorbachev under “house arrest” for three days. As the coupe was unable to gain support, they were forced to surrender and Gorbachev was reinstated to leadership, but subsequently he resigned... first from leadership of the Communist party, and then as president of the Soviet Union, on Christmas, December 1991.

Since then, the coupe leaders have been pardoned for their "crime against the state" and Gorbechev became somewhat of a hero to the world, not only for his reform, but because with the fall of the USSR, and the end of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were now friends. The Soviet Union disappeared into the annuls of history and became known to the world with a new name, Russia.

Mikhail Gorbachev, ousted from his homeland, moved to America and was given lodging at a closed military based, the Presidio in San Fransisco, California, a place known to the military as the guardian of the Golden Gate. The Presideo, with it's historicity of having been the longest continually run military base in the USA, closed to active military use in 1989. In April 1993, Mikhail Gorbachev was given the privilege of being the Presidio’s first civilian tenant since it's closure.

Lieut. Gen. Glynn Mallory Jr., commander of the Sixth Army, welcomed the former Soviet President, Gorbechev who had come there to live with his wife. In the dedication ceremony, when giving him the keys to his new house, he said, “It is only fitting for the leader of a peace foundation to be welcomed by a soldier, showing that the defenders of the Golden Gate have been a success." Gorbachev left Russia and came to live on American soil.

In October 1994, The Presidio, no longer a military compound soon became owned and operated by the "National Parks and Conservation Association," which is self-described as a "private nonprofit citizen organization dedicated to protect and preserve the U.S. National Park System." It had been closed under the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1988, and was consequently annexed into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is described as an outdoors paradise, a paradise now home to Mikhail Gorbachav and to the “Gorbachev Foundation” which "conducts research on global, political and environmental issues."

In 1996 while living at the Presidio, Gorbachev once more ran for president of Russia. He didn’t win, but in 2001 he founded and financed the Social Democratic Party of Russia and served as the party leader till 2004. He has amazingly been able not only to travel frequently between the US and Moscow, but has continued to be a powerful and active political force in the world.

Since taking up residency in the United States, Gorbechev has founded several organizations. He has founded the Gorbachev Foundation, “a non-profit public charity working to the strengthening and spread of democracy and economic liberalization through a program of advocacy, research, and education.” He has founded the State of the World Forum, “to establish a global leadership network across a multiplicity of disciplines and from around the world dedicated to working toward a sustainable civilization,” and Green Cross International, “to help ensure a just, sustainable and secure future for all by fostering a value shift and cultivating a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility in humanity’s relationship with nature.” He is a busy, busy man.

And the world is a much better place now, because the “Cold War ‘ has ended.

Gorbachev has written many books, some by himself and some apparently as a collaboration with other authors. Some of his many titles include: The Search for a New Beginning: Developing a New Civilization (1995) You Can Change the World (2002) Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century (2005) Earth Charter in Action (2006) Manifesto for the Earth: Action Now for Peace, Global Justice, and a Sustainable Future (2006) Antarctica: The Global Warning (2007) Rediscover Your Heart, Seven Keys to Personal and Planetary Transformation. (2008)

In his 1995 book, The Search for a New Beginning: Developing a New Civilization, Gorbachev wrote: “We must begin to define certain moral maxims or ethical commandments that constitute values common to all humankind. It is my view that the individual's attitude toward nature must become one of the principal criteria for ensuring the maintenance of morality. Today it is not enough to say, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Ecological education implies, above all, respect and love for every living being. It is here that ecological culture interfaces with religion.”

It seems that a broad all-encompassing command that came direct from God (Thou shall not kill.) is simply not enough for Mikhail, let alone “all mankind.” He doesn’t stop there in his rejection of the Ten Commandments. He also suggests we let ecological culture, that is, nature and created things, define our God. And he does not stop there. It’s politics plus pantheistic religion.

In 1987, long before he departed from the USSR, on the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Gorbachev told his peers, “In October 1917, we parted with the Old World, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a New World, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road."

November 2, the same year to the Politburo, the political bureau of his Communist state, Gorbechev said, “Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about glasnost and perestroika and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal change within the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep."