There are only a few individuals who have changed the destiny of great nations and consequently of the world. Mikhail Gorbachev will go down in history as one of them He almost succeeded single handedly changing a totalitarian superpower sometimes called the Evil empire into a free nation. He was hailed and helped by the West but the lament will always be not enough. The future course of Russian history cannot but be influenced by the taste of liberty and freedom the masses experienced for the first time in three or four generations. Maybe the coup will fail is a fervent hope in the west now that a golden opportunity has been squandered. Gorbachey could have carried the day but for the stinted support he got from the west which could not appreciate it now seems the magnitude of the task before the great leader.

The cataclysmic events of this week may prove the most traumatic since Stalin’s purges and World War II. The insecurity and uncertainty of the cold war are again in the forefront. Defense budgets will have to be rewritten with much higher allocations. It is hard to tell which way events will take Russia now -civil war prolonged anarchy chaos. The coup leaders have nothing to offer the long-suffering masses except the terror and starvation of before. The west has promptly stopped all aid.

Why did Gorbachev fail? The economy as always was the stumbling block. Also the preoccupation with the revolts in the Baltic States and elsewhere queered the pitch. Liberty and freedom cannot be doled out piecemeal. There can never be partial freedom. The spark that finally ignited the powder keg was Gorbachev’s final acceptance of a new treaty that promised the final demise of the old Soviet order and a surrender of power to elected representatives in the republics.

The pact to be signed hours before the coup with Boris Yeltsin and two other republics leaders posed an imminent threat to the power of all the institutions represented in the conspiracy: the military the police and the Communist party.

These hardliners of the old guard took a sledge hammer to the hopes of not only world peace but of a free and modern USSR.

The brahmanical order in India predictably is more happy than sad with the tragic turn of events. It showed no sympathy for Gorbachev and will not be concerned at the grave implications of the coup of in terms of human rights suffering. But India needs to see that it cannot escape a fate worse than the USSR if it continues in its repressive and destructive policies.

The prime cause of the fall of nations is their over-extending themselves militarily. This despite the fact that the military is to safeguard the nation from without but if it is used for insurgencies and civil wars within the nation the downfall could be that much quicker. The Sikh Kashmir and Assamese nations have but to bide their time till India collapses from anarchy and chaos.

In the ultimate analysis Indian political mainstream guided as it is by Brahminic psyche finds itself in proximity to the emerging Stalinism in the Soviet Union. The Indian reactions to the Soviet developments give a lie to the fond hopes entertained by western commentators that Delhi had a liberal democratic regime according to analysts of the Indian scene

Article extracted from this publication >> August 23, 1991