As I review comments from Russian politicians about the passing of former leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the consistent theme I see is that Gorbachev's role in the end of the Soviet Union is lamented. This strikes me as strange, because anyone old enough to remember the old Soviet system ought to remember the pervasive surveillance, bread lines, shoddy and nonexistent consumer products, and the like.
So what's going on? Well, as far as I can tell, this is another admission by the Russian ruling classes that the KGB didn't go away at the end of the Cold War, and its heir, the FSB (or perhaps a shadow organization in parallel with the FSB) is actually calling the shots, as is evidenced by the Russian Army flying the old Soviet flag in its war in Ukraine, their raising of statues of Lenin there, and most recently as evidenced by the head of Lukoil, a Putin critic, falling to his death out from a sixth story hospital window.
Unless you believe that extremely sick elderly men tend to do this, your best assumption is that, yes, Putin ordered him to be defenestrated. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, and yes, I've seen this before. Pray that Russia loses here, because if they don't, it'll be extremely bad news for freedom in the world.
Putin delenda est!
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