Mikhail Gorbachev has died
The United States didn&#x27;t do enough to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s. There was no &quot;Marshall Plan&quot; after the Cold War like there was after World War II. This was a huge mistake, and we see the consequences now, with Russia having turned back toward totalitarianism and imperialism. Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev&#x27;s efforts were mostly for naught. But it was courageous at the time to open up the Soviet Union to glasnost and perestroika.<p>Of course Yeltsin was a big part of the problem too.