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Mikhail Gorbachev
For Mikhail Gorbachev's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2011
1991 USSR coup attempt's steep cost
Twenty years ago this weekend, a group of Communist Party Politburo members and Soviet government officials attempted a coup d'état. They created an unconstitutional "committee on the state of emergency," isolated the Soviet president and removed him from power.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2011
Setting a new democratic agenda for Russia
MOSCOW — When Russian President Dmitry Medvedev delivered his annual address to the Federal Assembly, I was struck by the fact that his speech seemed intended for an advanced, prosperous country, not the real Russia of today.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 15, 2009
Climatic challenge demands fall of new walls
MOSCOW — The German people, and the whole world alongside them, are celebrating a landmark date in history, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not many events remain in the collective memory as a watershed that divides two distinct periods. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall — that stark, concrete symbol of a world divided into hostile camps — is such a defining moment.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 9, 2007
Climate change raises threat of water wars
PRAGUE — The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released alarming data on the consequences of global warming in some of the world's poorest regions. By 2100, 1 billion to 3 billion people worldwide are expected to suffer from water scarcity. Global warming will increase evaporation and severely reduce rainfalls — by up to 20 percent in the Middle East and North Africa — with the amount of water available per person possibly halved by midcentury in these regions.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 21, 2006
Turning point at Chernobyl
MOSCOW -- The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later. Indeed, the Chernobyl catastrophe was an historic turning point: there was the era before the disaster, and there is the very different era that has followed.

Longform

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