Grinding through Moscow’s horrendous traffic on my way to interview Mikhail Gorbachev, I casually ask my taxi driver what he thinks of the Soviet Union’s last leader. “You’re interviewing Gorbachev! Why?” barks Yuri, my Uber driver.
Barely 20 when “Gorby” came to power in 1985, Yuri should be grateful for the freedoms that the eighth and final general secretary of the Soviet Union (and its first and only president) gave his people. Instead he has nothing but contempt for Gorbachev’s twin policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (political and economic reforms). “We had an empire when he took over the Kremlin. By the time he left six years later, it was all gone,” says Yuri. “He sold us off to the West. He just caved