By David Himmel

Mikhail Gorbachev died yesterday, August 30, 2022. And I feel… sad? I think that’s what this is. Sadness. But why?

I didn’t know the guy. He wasn’t scheduled to make any more Black Panther films. He was ninety-one years old, so it wasn’t like his whole life was ahead of him. I’m sadder than I was when Ronald Reagan died. Because I didn’t like Reagan. Not in 2004, anyway. I’d learned by then that the leader of my childhood’s country was a bumbling asshat with a racist, homophobic wife pulling the strings.

So, maybe I’m sad because to me, in my memory, Gorbachev and Reagan were the Odd Couple of world events. Their names dominated a large part of my youth. And Gorbachev was the good one. The Felix. No, the Oscar. No… the Mikhail.

As an amateur history nerd whose favorite era is the Cold War, Gorbachev has become, to me—and maybe always was—a hero. Even as an elementary school-aged kid, I knew him to be a good guy. And that made him a rebel, an oddity, because Russians were never good guys. Not to an American youth. “WOLVERINES!”

Gorbachev was destined to fail. He knew his country was not sustainable. He lived through plenty of the horrors, the reality, of Soviet Union life, and he tried to save it—economically and culturally. Ultimately, the shit-muck system Stalin built for him could not withstand its own foul weight or liberal modernization. And so, the USSR collapsed and world peace existed for a hot minute. Global tensions were less tense. Gorbachev’s failure was the world’s win. George H.W. Bush, Reagan, America didn’t win the Cold War; Gorbachev lost it. And that’s what makes him a winner in my book. And it should be written as such in the Book of Human History.

He bucked the system.  He took the hits and kept on getting up. “I can do this all day.” He had that birthmark on his bald head and still took his hat off. Gorbachev was tough as nails and as brave as a cosmonaut. Perhaps the bravest figure of the twentieth century. He’s dead. And so, too, might be his kind. Brave men, unafraid to buck the system at great personal and professional loss to do good for the betterment of the people and the world.

And that’s sad.