QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, you are usually humble about your affect. Chances are you’ll not be capable of reply or desire to not reply this query, however it’s rumored that you just had extra influence on the Reagan-Gorbachev assembly than you let on. From the Russian aspect, it’s believed that Mikhail Gorbachev was conscious of your work and tried within the Nineteen Eighties to interrupt the cyclical sample of Soviet financial stagnation and political repression via reforms (Perestroika and Glasnost). He confronted fierce opposition from the hardline Communist Occasion, who had been invested in sustaining energy. This led to a coup try in opposition to him in 1991, which finally resulted within the collapse of the USSR.
You’ve got confirmed that you just had been the Western Financier that the Communists accused of influencing Galina Starovoitova, who was assassinated on November 20, 1998. Your ebook, The Plot to Seize Russia, demonstrates that you’ve got had firsthand expertise with Russia’s turmoil for many years. Are you prepared to reply the query that, since Mikhail Gorbachev was attempting to reverse the cycle of oppression in Russia, is it true that he was additionally a minimum of influenced by your forecast that Communism would collapse beginning in 1989.95?
You apparently wrote how the Communists had been after Gorbachev in 1991:
“In Australia, an ex-KGB agent lived quietly in Queensland. He went to highschool with Mr. Gorbachev and maybe had some filth or perception into his previous which may show to be politically helpful at residence. He was kidnapped and drugged – positioned in a field and shipped off into the outback below the disguise of a mining expedition. The US CIA was tipped off as to this plot and labored with Australian safety forces. An old style shoot-out passed off on an previous deserted World Conflict II air st rip. The abductors had been killed and the ex-KGB agent recovered. Two related incidents have taken place in different components of the world. Clearly, somebody in Russia is attempting their greatest to realize management of Gorbachev. Based mostly upon the resignation speech of Mr. Shevardnadze, we will safely assume it’s the navy.
The meals shortages in Russia have been deliberate. They shouldn’t be happening to this extent given the file crops of final yr. Dependable sources inform us that meals has been left to rot outdoors Moscow. The hard-liners could also be out of the lime-light however they’re nonetheless in management on the native ranges all through Russia. There may be certainly a sinister drive rising behind the scenes and it’s stemming from the KGB and the navy.“
Would you a minimum of verify that you just did write this?
Uri
ANSWER: Sure that was an intelligence report I wrote again then. OK, solely since Mikhail Gorbachev is now lifeless, I suppose I can verify. I used to be requested questions on Gorbachev’s behalf after I was in London. I recall Galina Starovoitova, a outstanding democratic reformer, and Gorbachev shared ideological alignment. Sure, Galina Starovoitova actually knew Mikhail Gorbachev. They had been outstanding political figures in the identical transformative period of Soviet and Russian historical past. Their relationship was primarily considered one of political allies and fellow reformers. Each had been key figures within the democratic and reform actions throughout the perestroika and glasnost interval.
Starovoitova was a democratic deputy within the Congress of Folks’s Deputies and a fierce advocate for human rights and nationwide self-determination. Gorbachev, because the final Normal Secretary of the Communist Occasion, initiated the reforms that made her political exercise potential. They moved in the identical excessive political circles within the late Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties. Starovoitova was an in depth advisor to Boris Yeltsin on nationalities points, which positioned her on the middle of the political struggles between Gorbachev’s Union authorities and Yeltsin’s Russian republic—struggles that finally led to the USSR’s dissolution.
