Memory of Reagan

Grateful contemporaries of politicians are remembered by a well -known set of various qualities. The villains and cunning, Hamlets and radicals, cruel patriots and a good -natured thief - a number of familiar since the long -standing that people began to unite in the states. Against this background, the late Ronald Reagan stood out with a feature, very rare on the political Olympus. He was simple -minded.

Simply should not be confused with stupidity. Stupidity in any manifestations means a person’s inability to understand the problems that life poses before him. Simplyness is a kind of honesty, unfamiliar with insidious and multi -way calculation, but not a meager.

The simple -minded people are stubborn and courageous. The victorious people. Reagan was a simple -minded winner.

A sports commentator from Illinois, then a trade union figure and a second -bit actor, from childhood he learned that peculiar American conservatism in which a childhood faith in a fair God combines deep faith in himself and his country. Such were his first, very standard political speeches: star-striped patriotism, distrust of a social state, sincere hatred of communism. His beliefs remained such - from the first days in politics to the last. So the Americans fell in love with him, consistently choosing a Governor of California and the president named Reagan.

So we were loved by the innocent Soviet educators, firmly believed in America and seeking the light from the West. Like us, he did not like Soviet power. Together with us resisted her, rude and showed disgust. Like Russian dissidents, he dreamed of the time when the communist empire would collapse. There were differences. He believed, even before Solzhenitsyn, that "the clock of communism repulsed his" - we did not go to live. Reagan had nuclear missiles, the Soviet intelligentsia had no nuclear missiles. Our beloved writers composed multi -volume nodes, proving that the USSR was Byaka. Reagan used the minimalist genre. He designated the subject literally in two words - "Empire of Evil."

This also affected the sincereness of the simple -minded President of the United States. Others, such as Carter, thought about our homeland no better, but hid their feelings, far and accurately calculating the noble foreign policy combinations. And always, together with European idealists like Willy Brandt, found themselves in a deep pit. The ingenuous Ronald Reagan always thought, then he said. If he saw an empire of evil in front of him, then what was it to call her differently? If Tsereushniki reported to him about the excessive activity of our diplomats, then he, without hesitation, sent these diplomats. If the Andropovskaya “Upper Volta” scared the world with his missiles, but did not scare anything else, then the simple -minded president set the task of the Pentagon: to create a nuclear umbrella in a short time! The umbrella did not work out, the concept of "star wars" burst at the seams, but the arms race, in which the planned economy entered into an unequal dispute with Reaganomics, rapidly dragged the Empire of Evil into the grave. Oil prices fell ...

The world in Reagan was black and white. Without distinguishing halftones, he severely condemned our fraternal assistance to Afghanistan. He introduced economic sanctions against the USSR in response to martial law in Poland. He actively and purposefully intervened in our internal affairs, standing behind the dissenters and strictly linking Western loans with a betrayal of the Lenin course. Gloomily evaluating our Soviet system, he pointed out the only way to cooperation to the Kremlin leaders - surrender. He spoke with them a single language accessible to them in the language of strength, correctly calculating a primitive two -way: the Kremlin elders will not swing to the world war, they want to live themselves, and they will not survive competitions in all other areas.

Today, looking back, Reagan’s policy can be reduced to the formula "coercion to rebuild." Loans, investments, an agreement on the liquidation of medium -range missiles, humanitarian assistance to a friend Mikhail - only in exchange for civilian freedoms for Soviet people whom he did not know, but rightly believed that they, like in Illinois, walk on two legs, love freedom and want to live in a normal country. “Trusty, BUT check,” he reminded the smiling friend of Gorby when he tried to finit with him, trying to get loans in exchange for warm handshakes and the heavy, verbal verbal structures such as “socialism with a human face”. And he yanked his pretty interlocutor, forcing him to open the boundaries, free the political zones, cancel censorship, open cooperatives, begin reforms ... And then the empire scattered itself.

Unlike a stupid Bush, a simple -minded Reygan did not play politics with Mr. Andropov, Mr. Chernenko, Mr. Gorbachev, and sincerely hated totalitarianism. And he unmistakably defined evil, and beat him with point blows, like Colonel Gaddafi, who began to gradually re -educate after a well -known shelling. Reagan did not start heavy, long and unpromising wars, dangerous to the economy and reputation of his country. He left politics as a winner and will be in history: the crusher of the empire, the best friend of freedom -loving Russian citizens, a brave cowboy of a boring western, in which good wins evil, because he is not afraid of a damn and believes in himself as in God.