ILIGAN City ― “Gorbachev is dead. Yesterday, August 30.”
Fely, my good friend said while we were snacking it out in some place called the Big Dipper the other day.
“Who (is) he?” I asked, unsmiling.
“Don’t ask me that kind of question. It does not become you.”
True. My friend knew that like her, and I was taken aback by that news. Early that morning I heard about it on a foreign TV channel.
And she laughed. But this wasn’t any laughing matter really. Even if most of the whole world had half forgotten this Mikhail Gorbachev guy who once held sway over this area called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. Now, at 91, he’s dead.
To recall, this guy during his rule as President of the USSR had these two mantras in his mind: “perestroika” and “glasnost.” Which meant “restructuring” and “openness.” To save a failing economy. And more “openness” or freedom for its people, as he then saw the situation.
It was a confusing time for many of them then. What good was there to opening when they were already used to that way of life? But many people too embraced it. And in 1991, the USSR collapsed. Leaving Russia to handle the debts. And all the problems that came with it.
Was Gorbachev a winner or a loser? Experts say “neither.” He was just a “survivor.”
Russia’s present leader Vladimir Putin didn’t like Gorbachev. For obvious reasons, of course. And with the war he’s doing versus Ukraine, he just wants to bring back the USSR, which to him is a “lost glory.”
“This Gorbachev guy has been lost in the consciousness of many people of the world. But now, in his death, people suddenly remember him. And the USSR then. And his mantra, those two words ― perestroika and glasnost,” Fely said.
“And this guy called Vladimir Putin who I suppose has put the blame on this Gorbachev guy. That’s why he has now become a war freak, targeting this Ukraine. And we blame him for the effect on us, on the price of petroleum products that have been rising weekly. Even as we blame too our leaders, current and the immediate past. As in PBBM and PRRD. The latter for putting us into so much debt.”
“Yeah,” my friend put in. “We blame everybody, yes, everybody.”
“Everybody. but ourselves!” I joined her in the blame game.
“And what about this Mikhail Gorbachev guy?”
“He’s now RIP, where all of us are going, anyway. For life is a journey from the cradle to the grave.”
“Hey you have now become poetic,” my friend asked.
“As in?” An unsmiling me said thus, using this kind of millennial phrase. “And I wonder if Putin could reach that ripe age of 91. He’s just in his middle sixties.”
“Does it matter? He’s in the middle of an important mission now in his life ― that is, to bring back the lost glory of the USSR.”
And then, I wondered where our conversation was going. So I said in jest: “Let’s not go to Russia at this point in time.”
“Yes,” my friend agreed. And then suddenly we saw that news on TV where another leader, that of Brazil, Jail Bolsonaro who while campaigning for that October election in a motor vehicle, had somebody throwing some water on him.
And then, I remembered too that several elections ago, here in our beloved city of Iligan, somebody shook a candidate while campaigning, with a hand that was full of mud from a canal.
I related that incident and Fely shook her head saying, “I think the whole world is going to the dogs!”
How does one react to that kind of thinking?
Email: norasorino2@gmail.com
