The question most often asked is, “Do you hope Gorbachev will succeed?” The formulation that, typically, follows is, “Do you think Gorbachev will succeed?”
It is illuminating to organize one’s mind to answer these questions by contemplating what itiswedo not want. Clearly, what we don’t want is an economically reconstituted Soviet Union braced to renew its seventyyear offensive against the free world. The evidence is great that, finally, the Marxist—Leninist afflatus which commanded the Soviet Union, arm in arm with history, to spearhead a drive against the free world is intellectually and spiritually dead. Although we recognize the abundant signs of an exhausted historical imperative, we know also that there are theaters in the world in which activity goes forward of exactly the same character as went forward under the leadership of Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. That Mikhail Gorbachev has tacitly renounced his own pledge to Communize the world, even though it was reiterated as recently as in 1988, is meaningless to Cubans, Nicaraguans, Vietnamese, Ethiopians, and Angolans who feel the iron of the Soviet boot; and, indeed, not yet of much importance to Bulgarians, Czechoslovakians, or Rumanians.
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