RIP Mikhail Gorbachev

The last leader of the USSR has died, aged 91.

We owe him a great debt. He showed the world that communist regimes can’t survive daylight. Repression isn’t just a coincidental aspect of communist regimes, but a key element of them.

Gorbachev allowed freedom of speech and media, and the result was the collapse of not just the USSR but also the freeing of Eastern Europe from their slave nation status. Few figures have had a larger impact on world history than Gorbachev, even if not by design.