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The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station was graphic evidence, not only of how obsolete our technology was, but also of the failure of the old system. At the same time, and such is the irony of history, it severely affected our reforms by literally knocking the country off its tracks.

— Mikhail Gorbachev Memoirs (1995)

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More quotes by Mikhail Gorbachev

We are witnessing most profound social change.

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Progress towards the civilization of the 21st century will certainly not be simple or easy.

Nobel Address (1991)

In the name of Communism we abandoned basic human values. So when I came to power in Russia I started to restore those values; values of "openness" and freedom.

The [Berlin] wall can disappear when those conditions that created it fall away.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mikhail Gorbachev (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.