This week the world learned of the passing of England’s 96 year old Queen Elizabeth II. A couple weeks ago Russia’s 91 year old Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Communist Soviet Union, passed away. And the difference in coverage in the media was, shall we say, interesting.
The New York Times published an essay by one Maya Jasanoff. Jasanoff is described as “a professor of history at Harvard, is the author of three books about the British Empire and its subjects.” The title of her essay:
Mourn the Queen, Not Her Empire …
Contrast this with the Times obituary of Gorbachev’s death.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Reformist Soviet Leader, Is Dead at 91
Adopting principles of glasnost and perestroika, he weighed the legacy of seven decades of Communist rule and set a new course, presiding over the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R.
Granted, there is a difference between an obit and a column. But very little focus on the fact that Gorbachev was the Soviet leader in the first place because he had spent an adult lifetime nodding along to the massive, global violence of Soviet Communism.
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