Kevin E G Perry - Yesterday
shutterstock_1845553594.jpg© Shutterstock / Mario Breda
Mikhail Gorbachev walks into a Pizza Hut. The year is 1997, six years after the end of the Soviet Union, and the leader who oversaw its dissolution is in Moscow’s Red Square to star in one of the strangest television adverts ever produced. After taking a seat alongside his granddaughter Anastasia Virganskaya, Gorbachev is spotted by two men at a nearby table and a debate over his legacy ensues. “Because of him we have economic confusion!” claims a dour, middle-aged man. “Because of him we have opportunity!” fires back the younger of the pair, perhaps his son. Certainly the two are intended to represent a generational gap. While the elder complains about political instability and chaos, the younger talks of freedom and hope. It’s left to an older woman to settle the debate. “Because of him, we have many things…” she says, “…like Pizza Hut!” On that, they can all agree. The advert ends with the whole restaurant standing to chat: “Hail to Gorbachev! Hail to Gorbachev!”
Gorbachev, who has died after a "serious and long illness" at the age of 91, was not the most obvious candidate to wind up as a pizza salesman. That was sort of the point. Pizza Hut had spent the decade using high-profile figures to generate attention-grabbing advertising campaigns. In 1995, Donald Trump appeared alongside then-wife Ivana in an ad that concluded with the punchline: “Actually, you’re only entitled to half.” The following year, England defender Gareth Southgate wore a paper bag over his head in a commercial that mocked his crucial penalty miss at Euro ‘96. As a former world leader and towering figure in 20th century history, however, Gorbachev was at another level entirely. Former Pizza Hut advertising executive Scott Helbing recalled that at the time Gorbachev was hired, the company “needed an idea that truly traveled across continents” for a “global campaign that would play in any country in the world.” That’s more or less what they got, although ironically one country where the advert was never shown was Russia itself.
Why did Gorbachev agree to flog pizzas? The same reason anybody does: he needed the money. After leaving office Gorbachev had started his own non-profit organisation, The Gorbachev Foundation, and before long was using his platform to become an outspoken critic of his successor as Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin. In retaliation, Yeltsin systematically removed the organisation’s means of support and reduced their office space in Moscow. Gorbachev saw the Pizza Hut money – which unconfirmed reports put in the region of $1m – as a way of protecting his beloved foundation. “At the time, I had some financial problems with my foundation so I did an advertisement for Pizza Hut,” Gorbachev told France 24 in 2007, shooting back at the idea that making adverts was beneath him. “I got the maximum, because I needed to finish the building. The workers started to leave. I needed to pay them.”
Related video: Old Pizza Hut ad goes viral after soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's deathDuration 3:54 View on Watch
Although Gorbachev was paid well, the money didn’t last. A year later, in 1998, he announced he had lost his savings in the financial crash. Meanwhile the political openness he had hoped to steer his country towards began to evaporate after Vladimir Putin took office in 2000. Some in the West have pointed to Gorbachev’s Pizza Hut appearance as embodying the triumph of capitalism over communism, but to others it signifies nothing more than the emptiness at the heart of popular culture. In 1998, Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace referenced the advert in his essay “Big Red Son”. “There seems to be this enormous unspoken conspiracy where we all pretend that there’s still joy,” wrote Wallace. “That we think it’s funny when Bob Dole does a Visa ad and Gorbachev shills for Pizza Hut. That the whole mainstream celebrity culture is rushing to cash in and all the while congratulating itself on pretending not to cash in. Underneath it all, though, we know the whole thing sucks.”
The Pizza Hut spot, strange as it is, was not to be Gorbachev’s last or most incongruous outing as a brand spokesperson. In 2007 he appeared in a print advert for French luxury brand Louis Vuitton, photographed by Annie Leibovitz in the back of a car beside the Berlin Wall. Twenty years earlier, President Ronald Reagan had famously used a speech in Berlin to implore: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Gorbachev justified his appearance this time on the grounds that he was using the money to buy equipment for a centre that treated children with leukaemia. “This is the most recent and maybe best-equipped centre in Europe,” he told France 24. “But we needed some money.”
As well as his appearances in adverts, Gorbachev was also a regular fixture of television comedies during the Eighties and Nineties. Despite the reforms he brought to Russia, Gorbachev was depicted as an old-style Soviet leader on long-running satire Spitting Image. The puppet version of his distinctive birthmark was reshaped to resemble a hammer and sickle. Meanwhile in the 1996 The Simpsons episode “Two Bad Neighbors”, Gorbachev (voiced by Hank Azaria) arrives to find former President George HW Bush wrestling with Homer Simpson. “I just dropped by with present for warming of house,” he sighs in broken English. “Instead, find you grappling with local oaf.”
In the wake of Gorbachev’s death, tributes have poured in from a wide range of pop cultural figures. The Terminator actor Arnold Schwarzenegger described the former Russian leader as “one of my heroes”. Meanwhile, former children’s television presenter Timmy Mallett recalled how Gorbachev had inspired him to travel to Red Square in 1990 to explain Russian politics to children. Just as in a certain Pizza Hut a quarter of a century ago, there seems once again to be a whole crowd shouting: “Hail to Gorbachev!”
Isabel Sepulveda - Yesterday
100 greatest speeches of the 20th century
The 20th century was one of the most varied, hopeful, and tumultuous in world history. From the Gilded Age to the beginning of the Internet Age—with plenty of stops along the way—it was a century punctuated by conflicts including two World Wars, the Cold War, the War in Vietnam, and the development of nuclear warfare. At the same time, the 20th century was characterized by a push for equality: Women in the United States received the right to vote after decades of activism, while the civil rights movement here ended the era of Jim Crow, inspired marginalized groups to take action, and introduced this country to great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Hundreds of people have used their voices along the way to heal, inspire, and enact change with speeches that helped to define these poignant moments in world history. Stacker has curated a list of 100 of the greatest speeches from the 20th century, drawing from research into great American speeches as determined by 137 scholars of American public address, as well as other historical sources. What follows is a gallery of speeches from around the U.S. and the world dealing with the most pressing issues of the day.
Text of Gorbachev’s Resignation Speech
December 25, 1991
MOSCOW (AP) _ Following is the text of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s resignation speech broadcast on national television Wednesday night, as translated by The Associated Press.
Dear compatriots, fellow citizens, as a result of the newly formed situation, creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, I cease my activities in the post of the U.S.S.R. president.
I am making this decision out of considerations based on principle. I have firmly stood for independence, self-rule of nations, for the sovereignty of the republics, but at the same time for preservation of the union state, the unity of the country.
Events went a different way. The policy prevailed of dismembering this country and disuniting the state, with which I cannot agree. And after the Alma-Ata meeting and the decisions made there my position on this matter has not changed. Besides, I am convinced that decisions of such scale should have been made on the basis of a popular expression of will.
Yet, I will continue to do everything in my power so that agreements signed there should lead to real accord in the society, (and) facilitate the escape from the crisis and the reform process.
Addressing you for the last time in the capacity of president of the U.S.S.R. I consider it necessary to express my evaluation of the road we have traveled since 1985, especially as there are a lot of contradictory, superficial and subjective judgments on that matter.
Fate had it that when I found myself at the head of the state it was already clear that all was not well in the country. There is plenty of everything: land, oil and gas, other natural riches, and God gave us lots of intelligence and talent, yet we lived much worse than developed countries and keep falling behind them more and more.
The reason could already be seen: the society was suffocating in the vise of the command-bureaucratic system, doomed to serve ideology and bear the terrible burden of the arms race. It had reached the limit of its possibilities. All attempts at partial reform, and there had been many, had suffered defeat, one after another. The country was losing perspective. We could not go on living like that. Everything had to be changed radically.
That is why not once - not once - have I regretted that I did not take advantage of the post of (Communist Party) general secretary only to rule as a czar for several years. I considered it irresponsible and amoral. I realized that to start reforms of such scale in a society such as ours was a most difficult and even a risky thing. But even today I am convinced of the historic correctness of the democratic reforms which were started in the spring of 1985.
The process of renovating the country and radical changes in the world community turned out to be far more complicated than could be expected. However, what has been done ought to be given its due. This society acquired freedom, liberated itself politically and spiritually, and this is the foremost achievement which we have not yet understood completely, because we have not learned to use freedom.
However, work of historic significance has been accomplished. The totalitarian system which deprived the country of an opportunity to become successful and prosperous long ago has been eliminated. A breakthrough has been achieved on the way to democratic changes. Free elections, freedom of the press, religious freedoms, representative organs of power, a multiparty (system) became a reality, human rights are recognized as the supreme principle.
The movement to a diverse economy has started, equality of all forms of property is becoming established, people who work on the land are coming to life again in the framework of land reform, farmers have appeared, millions of acres of land are being given over to people who live in the countryside and in towns.
Economic freedom of the producer has been legalized and entrepreneurship, shareholding, privatization are gaining momentum. In turning the economy toward a market it is important to remember that all this is done for the sake of the individual. At this difficult time, all should be done for his social protection, especially for senior citizens and children.
We live in a new world. The Cold War has ended, the arms race has stopped, as has the insane militarization which mutilated our economy, public psyche and morals. The threat of a world war has been removed. Once again I want to stress that on my part everything was done during the transition period to preserve reliable control of the nuclear weapons.
We opened ourselves to the world, gave up interference into other people’s affairs, the use of troops beyond the borders of the country, and trust, solidarity and respect came in response. We have become one of the main foundations for the transformation of modern civilization on peaceful democratic grounds.
The nations and peoples (of this country) gained real freedom to choose the way of their self-determination. The search for a democratic reformation of the multinational state brought us to the threshold of concluding a new Union Treaty. All these changes demanded immense strain. They were carried out with sharp struggle, with growing resistance from the old, the obsolete forces: the former party-state structures, the economic apparatus, as well as our habits, ideological superstitions, the psychology of sponging and leveling everyone out.
They stumbled on our intolerance, low level of political culture, fear of change. That is why we lost so much time. The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working and the crisis in the society became even more acute.
I am aware of the dissatisfaction with the present hard situation, of the sharp criticism of authorities at all levels including my personal activities. But once again I’d like to stress: radical changes in such a vast country, and a country with such heritage, cannot pass painlessly without difficulties and shake-up.
The August coup brought the general crisis to its ultimate limit. The most damaging thing about this crisis is the breakup of the statehood. And today I am worried by our people’s loss of the citizenship of a great country. The consequences may turn out to be very hard for everyone.
I think it is vitally important to preserve the democratic achievements of the past years. They have been paid for by the suffering of our whole history, our tragic experience. They must not be given up under any circumstances or any pretext, otherwise all our hopes for the better will be buried. I am saying all this straight and honest. It is my moral duty.
Today I’d like to express my gratitude to all citizens who supported the policy of renovating the country, got involved in the implementation of the democratic reforms. I am grateful to statesmen, public and political figures, millions of people abroad, those who understood our concepts and supported them, turned to us, started sincere cooperation with us.
I am leaving my post with apprehension, but also with hope, with faith in you, your wisdom and force of spirit. We are the heirs of a great civilization and its rebirth into a new, modern and dignified life now depends on one and all.
I wish to thank with all my heart all those who have stood together with me all these years for the fair and good cause. Some mistakes could surely have been avoided, many things could have been done better but I am convinced that sooner or later our common efforts will bear fruit, our nations will live in a prosperous and democratic society.
I wish all the best to all of you.
December 25, 1991
MOSCOW (AP) _ Following is the text of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s resignation speech broadcast on national television Wednesday night, as translated by The Associated Press.
Dear compatriots, fellow citizens, as a result of the newly formed situation, creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, I cease my activities in the post of the U.S.S.R. president.
I am making this decision out of considerations based on principle. I have firmly stood for independence, self-rule of nations, for the sovereignty of the republics, but at the same time for preservation of the union state, the unity of the country.
Events went a different way. The policy prevailed of dismembering this country and disuniting the state, with which I cannot agree. And after the Alma-Ata meeting and the decisions made there my position on this matter has not changed. Besides, I am convinced that decisions of such scale should have been made on the basis of a popular expression of will.
Yet, I will continue to do everything in my power so that agreements signed there should lead to real accord in the society, (and) facilitate the escape from the crisis and the reform process.
Addressing you for the last time in the capacity of president of the U.S.S.R. I consider it necessary to express my evaluation of the road we have traveled since 1985, especially as there are a lot of contradictory, superficial and subjective judgments on that matter.
Fate had it that when I found myself at the head of the state it was already clear that all was not well in the country. There is plenty of everything: land, oil and gas, other natural riches, and God gave us lots of intelligence and talent, yet we lived much worse than developed countries and keep falling behind them more and more.
The reason could already be seen: the society was suffocating in the vise of the command-bureaucratic system, doomed to serve ideology and bear the terrible burden of the arms race. It had reached the limit of its possibilities. All attempts at partial reform, and there had been many, had suffered defeat, one after another. The country was losing perspective. We could not go on living like that. Everything had to be changed radically.
That is why not once - not once - have I regretted that I did not take advantage of the post of (Communist Party) general secretary only to rule as a czar for several years. I considered it irresponsible and amoral. I realized that to start reforms of such scale in a society such as ours was a most difficult and even a risky thing. But even today I am convinced of the historic correctness of the democratic reforms which were started in the spring of 1985.
The process of renovating the country and radical changes in the world community turned out to be far more complicated than could be expected. However, what has been done ought to be given its due. This society acquired freedom, liberated itself politically and spiritually, and this is the foremost achievement which we have not yet understood completely, because we have not learned to use freedom.
However, work of historic significance has been accomplished. The totalitarian system which deprived the country of an opportunity to become successful and prosperous long ago has been eliminated. A breakthrough has been achieved on the way to democratic changes. Free elections, freedom of the press, religious freedoms, representative organs of power, a multiparty (system) became a reality, human rights are recognized as the supreme principle.
The movement to a diverse economy has started, equality of all forms of property is becoming established, people who work on the land are coming to life again in the framework of land reform, farmers have appeared, millions of acres of land are being given over to people who live in the countryside and in towns.
Economic freedom of the producer has been legalized and entrepreneurship, shareholding, privatization are gaining momentum. In turning the economy toward a market it is important to remember that all this is done for the sake of the individual. At this difficult time, all should be done for his social protection, especially for senior citizens and children.
We live in a new world. The Cold War has ended, the arms race has stopped, as has the insane militarization which mutilated our economy, public psyche and morals. The threat of a world war has been removed. Once again I want to stress that on my part everything was done during the transition period to preserve reliable control of the nuclear weapons.
We opened ourselves to the world, gave up interference into other people’s affairs, the use of troops beyond the borders of the country, and trust, solidarity and respect came in response. We have become one of the main foundations for the transformation of modern civilization on peaceful democratic grounds.
The nations and peoples (of this country) gained real freedom to choose the way of their self-determination. The search for a democratic reformation of the multinational state brought us to the threshold of concluding a new Union Treaty. All these changes demanded immense strain. They were carried out with sharp struggle, with growing resistance from the old, the obsolete forces: the former party-state structures, the economic apparatus, as well as our habits, ideological superstitions, the psychology of sponging and leveling everyone out.
They stumbled on our intolerance, low level of political culture, fear of change. That is why we lost so much time. The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working and the crisis in the society became even more acute.
I am aware of the dissatisfaction with the present hard situation, of the sharp criticism of authorities at all levels including my personal activities. But once again I’d like to stress: radical changes in such a vast country, and a country with such heritage, cannot pass painlessly without difficulties and shake-up.
The August coup brought the general crisis to its ultimate limit. The most damaging thing about this crisis is the breakup of the statehood. And today I am worried by our people’s loss of the citizenship of a great country. The consequences may turn out to be very hard for everyone.
I think it is vitally important to preserve the democratic achievements of the past years. They have been paid for by the suffering of our whole history, our tragic experience. They must not be given up under any circumstances or any pretext, otherwise all our hopes for the better will be buried. I am saying all this straight and honest. It is my moral duty.
Today I’d like to express my gratitude to all citizens who supported the policy of renovating the country, got involved in the implementation of the democratic reforms. I am grateful to statesmen, public and political figures, millions of people abroad, those who understood our concepts and supported them, turned to us, started sincere cooperation with us.
I am leaving my post with apprehension, but also with hope, with faith in you, your wisdom and force of spirit. We are the heirs of a great civilization and its rebirth into a new, modern and dignified life now depends on one and all.
I wish to thank with all my heart all those who have stood together with me all these years for the fair and good cause. Some mistakes could surely have been avoided, many things could have been done better but I am convinced that sooner or later our common efforts will bear fruit, our nations will live in a prosperous and democratic society.
I wish all the best to all of you.
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