Is he considered a fuck-up or a hero for the disbanding of the USSR?

He isn't a fuckup for disbanding the USSR, he's a fuckup for everything he did previously.

A fuck-up. Anticommunists also hate him, because he didn't get rich off the USSR's collapse.

>>1784073
Historians basically view him as an incompetent fuck up.

He also didn't disband the USSR.

>>1784073
He didn't disband the USSR, just accelerated its demise

he tried to save the Soviet Union's existence by going to a State Capitalism economy driven by the market. hardliners overthrow him. someone else overthrows them. Yeltsin ends up in charge after all the coups.

meanwhile. China is also on the verge of collapse. reform economy to be state capitalism and market driven. everything goes as planned. China is now second largest economy on the planet.

>>1784171
deng started liberalizing the chinese economy way before the USSR even began to collapse tho

>>1784073
He essentially destroyed a civilization

>>1784073
He's a hero considering he saved millions of Russian lives from more a violent collapse of the Soviet Union. Commiebros think that the Soviet Union was in tip top shape when Gorbachev came around when in reality it was already a sickly body. He prevented another Russia civil war and Russia being balkanized.

>>1784209
>soviet communism
>civilization

pick one

Mao, Stalin, and others killed civilization for their athiest, cultureless workers' paradise.

>>1784257
Transformed an outdated rural country into a space -faring nuclear superpower.

>>1784326
Shooting dogs into space isn't a good achievement

>>1784511
Shooting something into space, even a dog, before anyone else is an achievement. lol

>>1784326
>space -faring nuclear superpower.

Both of which became pretty huge money-sinks with little return (yes, space tech is invaluable but versus the cost)

>>1784568
>nuclear arms are a money sink
http://how.dumb.ru

>>1784326
Wouldn't have been as outdated if decades of revolutionary terror and civil war hadn't held it back.

>>1784326
at the cost of all the traditions and culture of the people.

>>1784326
And their farming system was so shit they had to import American grain despite having more farmland and less population.

The trick, you see, is to become a space-faring nuclear superpower without going broke in the process

>>1784943
>The trick, you see, is to become a space-faring nuclear superpower without going broke in the process

"I think national economies operate like a household finance."

"Now let met tell how geopolitics really works."

>>1785282
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/20070419_Gaidar.pdf

>>1784229
>he saved millions of Russian lives
>He prevented another Russia civil war and Russia being balkanized.
Then he really was a fuck-up.

>>1784575
I don't think you realize just how ruinously expensive maintaining a large nuclear arsenal is. I think as insane as it was MAD turned out to be a good thing for humanity overall, and ended the prospect of world war. But it is upsetting to think about all the money that could be spent on education, infrastructure, and research instead of maintaining doomsday devices.

>>1784171
This. Gorbachev wasn't the bad guy, the Pizza Hut-loving fuck Yeltsin was, for all the corrupt privatisation for oligarchs bullshit.

>>1785567
if it ensured MAD and averted large scale conventional land war I don't think it's fair to call it a money sink. insanely expensive yes but calling it a money sink implies it conferred no advantage whatsoever.

>>1785609
Didn't Gorbachev bring Pizza Hut to USSR/Russia?

>>1785621
Shit, my bad, I misremembered which president appeard in a Pizza Hut commercial.