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Gifts from The Morning Star
The Gorbachev years – what went wrong?
KATE CLARK, the Morning Star's Moscow correspondent from 1985, reflects on her tumultuous years covering glasnost and perestroika for our paper
Kate Clark, Morning Star Moscow correspondent

IN ALL the fulsome media tributes to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as the statesman who ended the Cold War, there is one thing missing: there were two sides in that decades-long war.  

Gorbachev did his bit, withdrawing troops from eastern Europe and Afghanistan, disbanding the Warsaw Pact — and what did the West do in return? Nothing.  

In February 1991, when the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist, did Nato disband?  No. Nato started its expansion eastwards in 1999, and by 2004 all the former Warsaw Pact countries were in Nato.  

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