I see we will never agree about Reagan.
As one who lived through many administrations, I just have to disagree. He *never* had a chance to get rid of all WMD’s. If Gorbachev is claiming otherwise, Gorbachev is lying or deluded. Remember, Gorbachev supposedly did this at a time his government, with his approval, was mass producing smallpox and other biological weapons. That is not the action of a peacemaker. Russia was also sponsoring wars and revolutions in countries around the world, some of which were successful in putting Russia-friendly (or USSR friendly) regimes, such as Nicaragua.
As to breaking USSR — citing Wikipedia is not a credible source to me. On contentious issues, is has a very consistent bias. I learned how hard it is to put the truth in there when public events I had helped plan and participated in were described incorrectly and still are. At the same time, people whom I knew to be scoundrels were shown in a favorable light. I gave up being a Wikipedia editor because the process of adjudicating disputes was so biased and useless. Anyway…
USSR was an economic mess. But the Democrats in the US were convinced it was doing well, even predicting its GDP would exceed that of the uS by 1990. It was *not* common knowledge, even in the CIA, that Russia was falling apart.
Reagan, who had better advisors because he knew how to pick them, knew better (and Reagan was an economist, remember). Reagan also understood why central command economies are doomed to fail, because of his knowledge of economic theory.
Reagan broke the USSR by forcing an arms race — with missile defense and other rapid modernizations of US forces. Gorbachev recognized he could not match this without liberalizing his society, but he had to match it or the USSR would lose its power. He tried with glasnost and perestroika, but these led to his downfall and the collapse of the USSR, as the increased freedoms (he felt necessary for economic reasons) led people to realize that they lived in an oppressive tyranny, while Americans and others lived much better, with more freedom.
In that sense, it supports your thesis about a universal desire for rights. And I do believe that desire is there in many people. But translating that into democracy requires the right culture and the right circumstances. And, that can backslide, as witnessed in Turkey, for example.
Now look at today’s Russia. Many of the people who desire democracy have left, and many more are leaving as a result of the Ukraine war and Putin’s increased oppression. But that leaves behind the oligarchs, the power hungry political types like Putin, and the poor who don’t give a damn about rights. Of course, this is an over-generalization, but it is a true description of trends. Of course, there are brave dissidents (who often “fall” from windows or are poisoned). And of course there are people who want more rights but are not willing or able to leave their homeland.
Russia fills its military’s enlisted ranks with the poor — people who live in a culture of poverty, theft and violence. These are the people who casually committed and are committing atrocities in Ukraine. That’s their culture. At the same time, the security services, which are present in the military, are supervising other atrocities, such as torture and deportation. The officer corps is more professional, but suffers from corruption, which is why the Russian military machine doesn’t work well.
That country is a long ways from democracy. Given that it has never had a successful one, I am hardly optimistic. I, like many in the west, was way overoptimistic about the prospects for Russia after the dissolution of the USSR. I traveled to newly freed Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and saw the poverty communism had brought. It hadn’t changed since I visited East Berlin in 1966. But unlike Russia, the former Russian colonies had people who wanted and were able to achieve democracies — at least, the European ones.
