Mikhail Gorbachev with Yasser Arafat, March 2, 2000, in Ramallah. (Jamal Aruri/AFP)
A failed putsch on Aug. 19 to Aug. 21, 1991 saw a handful of conservative communists try to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. In the aftermath, however, neither Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nor his Libyan counterpart Muammar Gaddafi congratulated the Soviet president following his return to Moscow. The lapse of protocol did not escape Gorbachev, who made light of the leaders’ silence during his first press conference after his brief ouster. During the coup, official and press reactions in the Arab world were sufficient to assess regional views of Gorbachev’s Middle East policy, which was either hailed or despised depending on the country.Head of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and the final president of the USSR, Gorbachev died Tuesday evening at the age of 91, after years of illness.As soon as he was sworn in as the USSR’s Communist...
A failed putsch on Aug. 19 to Aug. 21, 1991 saw a handful of conservative communists try to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. In the aftermath, however, neither Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nor his Libyan counterpart Muammar Gaddafi congratulated the Soviet president following his return to Moscow. The lapse of protocol did not escape Gorbachev, who made light of the leaders’ silence during his first press conference after his brief ouster. During the coup, official and press reactions in the Arab world were sufficient to assess regional views of Gorbachev’s Middle East policy, which was either hailed or despised depending on the country.Head of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and the final president of the USSR, Gorbachev died Tuesday evening at the age of 91, after years of illness.As soon as he was sworn in as the USSR’s...