Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Contrasting, Comparing, and Evaluating Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev
Summary
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was present when Thatcher met Gorbachev in 1984, examines the two world leaders in great detail.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Malcolm Rifkind has served as foreign secretary, minister of defense, and, subsequently, as chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee (which had oversight of MI6, KI5, and GCHQ.) He is, currently a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at Kings College, London.
I certainly think of Gorbachev as one of the most important and impressive statesmen of the last hundred years, but that is not how he was seen in Russia. When communism collapsed, it immediately caused economic chaos and security disappeared. There was a general feeling of it being a national disaster.