EX-SOVIET LEADER MIKHAIL GORBACHEV DEAD AT 91, RUSSIAN NEWS REPORTS SAY.

UPDATE: The Daily Beast apparently wishes they were “Back in the USSR:” Mikhail Gorbachev, Who Sank the Soviet Empire With His Own Glasnost, Dead at 91.

FLASHBACK: Credit The Liberator, Not The Dictator. “Here’s another column from a freed Soviet, who recalls, ‘On the morning of April 20, 1989, the day my family leaving Moscow, a knock came on my parents’ door. It was our next-door neighbor. Ours being one of the Soviet Union’s cramped, communal apartments, I mean that quite literally. Waving a bottle of vodka, he insisted my father drink a toast. He wanted to celebrate our new freedom, which also meant his: By leaving him our half of the apartment, we were bypassing Soviet restrictions on the sale of state property. Agreeing, my father suggested they toast to Gorbachev. After all, our neighbor was a common day laborer, unlikely to be up on the complex realities of international politics; and more than likely to have imbibed his fair share of politburo propaganda, which Gorbachev, in his hick Caucasus accent, spouted daily. Our neighbor only laughed. ‘Gorbachev? You think Gorbachev gave me this apartment? We’ll drink to Reagan. Reagan gave me this apartment.’’ He gave you a lot more than that, comrade. And I’m sure you know it today.”