At first, I thought this must be an "anniversary" of some event from the 1980s or '90s!

His mini-me is NOT going to be president, and his underhanded KGB espionage tactics are 98% of the reason no one that matters takes Wikileaks seriously anymore. Ask him if he's proud.

I mean come on. Chances are the NSA is hacking all sorts of countries.

He made all sorts of promises about softer socialism and Norwegian Liberalism but basically just sold a nation down the river.

Things were collapsing, the government said things were great, and a lot of the population that relied on the status quo needed the government to be right.

Gorbachev came along to clean up the disaster, except he couldn't.

But since so many people had good motivation to believe everything was economically right before, they hate the messenger. Many of them also suffered horribly as a result of the disaster, but it would have been worse under most alternative scenarios.

Then there are the imperialists, who resent that Russian hegemony, prestige, and power declined. I got a bit drunk once sitting on a dormitory staircase with an inveterate Communist who bewailed what was happening. She'd decided she'd never again return to that city or country because the town had changed a huge, imposing granite monument near downtown. They'd ground away the text celebrating the liberation of the country by the glorious and wonderful Red Army and declared undying gratitude and affection for the Russians, a gratitude so heartfelt that it was in both the local language and Russian. This woman believed this to be the case, even though she know that every major town in the country had the same monument, same text, same materials, and this was a country that had Soviet tanks roll in to put down dissent. It was a short 15 minute walk from that monument to where Russian soldiers killed some locals for daring to not following the Party line and daring to stage politically incorrect protests.

She believed the hype. She needed to. It validated her life of suffering for others. She went from heroic benefactress to harsh oppressor in the course of a couple of years; from being a proud Party member of the most economically, politically, culturally, and economically advanced country on Earth to being in what was nearly a failed state, and certainly a failed empire. And along with it her standard of living went to hell as the government could no longer afford to pay all sorts of employees and give them luxurious subsidized housing (below the minimum guaranteed by law, but still ... that would be resolved in the next 5-year plan, as it had in all previous 5-year plans).