Free Seize the Moment by Richard Nixon

regime, with massive demonstrations and general strikes in Moscow and other major cities overwhelming the capacity of the state to suppress them with force.
    Gorbachev failed at first to understand that he returned from captivity to a changed nation. Even before the coup, he had two political strikes against him. The first was his responsibility for the collapse of the Soviet economy. No Western democratic leader could possibly survive the fallout after a 15 percent drop in the economy over one year. The second strike was his position atop the Communist establishment. He won no friends by ruling the house that Stalin built and perpetuating the system of parasitical privileges for the Soviet elite. Yet while down in the count, he was not yet out. He could have gotten ahead of the pitcher if he had resigned from the party, accepted genuine democracy, accelerated market-oriented reform, and permitted self-determination for the republics immediately upon his return to Moscow. Instead, by proclaiming that he would “fight to the end for the renewal of the party,” he went down without swinging.
    Just as history has bypassed communism, it has also bypassed Communists. Gorbachev faced a rapid erosion of his political position until he finally was forced to leave office. Before the coup, Gorbachev’s only constituency was the Communist party. After the party betrayed him and the reformers scorned him, he was left with a constituency of one—himself. In viewing Gorbachev as indispensable, many inthe West assumed that any alternative to him would be worse. In fact, the alternative—Boris Yeltsin—may turn out to be better.
    History will view Gorbachev as a transitional figure, a bridge between a system based on communism and one based on freedom. He was too closely associated with yesterday’s tyranny and today’s disorder to lead tomorrow’s reforms. While he took the crucial first steps down the road toward peaceful change, the people will make the rest of the journey without him. As a reforming Communist, Gorbachev followed Bismarck’s maxim, “If there is a revolution, we would rather make it than suffer it.” For seventy-five years, Gorbachev’s party made a Communist revolution, while the people suffered it. In August 1991, the people made their own democratic revolution. And now Gorbachev had to suffer it.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    While the upheaval in the Soviet Union swept the old regime away, no revolution can wipe the slate of history clean. Vestiges of the past stand alongside opportunities for the future. All-too-familiar problems confront the new noncommunist leaders: the deepening economic crisis, the redefinition of relationships among the elements of the former Soviet Union, and the construction of a viable postcommunist political system. Toppling a corrupt old regime was far easier than erecting a just new order. In the euphoria of the moment, we must not forget that along with great opportunities, Soviet reformers now face profound dangers.
    In any revolution, two battles must be fought, one over ideology and one over control of the state. The democratic forces have won the first and prevailed in the first major clash of the second. The looser restrictions on the Soviet press hadmade the Soviet Union, as one hard-liner acidly remarked, “the most anticommunist country in the world.” But the victory of freedom will not be secure until new democratic institutions are firmly in place. Events will take many different turns. Since our interests will be profoundly affected by how they play themselves out, we cannot afford a policy of passively wishing the reformers well from the sidelines.
    All former Soviet republics have claimed sovereignty and asserted the supremacy of their laws over Moscow’s. It is inevitable that virtually all will follow up with full declarations of independence. Managing economic ties forged during seventy-five years of