Hours after former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev was pronounced dead in a Moscow hospital, several users on Twitter started to retweet a photo of JFK Jr. and Gorbachev together.
The photo was taken when President Mikhail Gorbachev gave a speech at the JFK Library and Museum.
Besides Gorbachev and JFK Jr., Jackie Kennedy was also featured in the photo.
Here’s the photo here:
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🤠🇺🇸✌️ pic.twitter.com/47U4UKbSHz
— AGoodDay AKA The Quite Gentleman🤠🇺🇸🦅 (@A_GOOD_DAY_1111) August 30, 2022
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is welcomed to the JFK Library and Museum by Jackie Kennedy & JFK Jr pic.twitter.com/WMpJIb3J2o
— ThoseKennedys (@ThoseKennedys19) April 29, 2014
Here’s an article from 1992 archived by UPI that explains Gorbachev’s visit:
Mikhail Gorbachev ended a two-week tour of the United States by paying tribute to slain President John F. Kennedy and warning it would be ‘criminal’ not to follow through on ‘historic shifts’ in his homeland and throughout the world.
Speaking to an audience of Kennedy family members, political leaders and academics, the former Soviet president said Friday the end of the Cold War and the ’emancipation’ of his country and Eastern Europe have ‘inspired us all.’
But he warned the ‘manifestations of chaos, collapse and loss of control’ demand effort to ‘seek the paths to an intelligent and necessarily democratic organization to our common abode.’
The speech at the waterfront John F. Kennedy Library capped a triumphant Gorbachev tour in which he urged the United States to commit politically and financially to helping democracy thrive in the former Soviet Union. He also raised a hefty amount of money, reportedly $2 million to $3 million, for a ‘think-tank’ foundation he is launching in Moscow and San Francisco.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and only President of the Soviet Union, has died at age 91.
Several times over the years, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate wrote for TIME ⬇️ https://t.co/M7141sJApN
— TIME (@TIME) August 30, 2022
Time had more details about Gorbachev’s death:
Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and only President of the Soviet Union, has died, according to Russian media. He was 91.
He will be remembered, at least in the West, as a pragmatic leader who transparently transitioned the Soviet Union away from its days as an Evil Empire and toward a more modernized economy that was integrated on a global scale.
At home, however, he is largely seen as the man who brought a collapse of Soviet-era prestige and power, preaching reform while protecting his own influence. In a 2017 poll of Russians, 30% said they had anger or distaste toward him, and 13% said they felt disgust or hate for him. For many, he was the harbinger of the end of Russian greatness.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has led to punishing economic sanctions and the highest tensions with the U.S. and Europe since the Cold War, has been seen as an attempt to reclaim at least some of the power and glory lost as a result of Gorbachev’s legacy.
Gorbachev himself refrained from commenting publicly on the war, but argued in 2016 that tensions were the fault of Kyiv’s lean toward NATO. “This conflict was not of Russia’s making. It has its roots within Ukraine itself,” Gorbachev argued.
Was that your first time seeing the two together?
Also, doesn’t JFK Jr.’s eyes seem as if he knows something Gorbachev doesn’t?
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