Gorbachev Discusses Cold War at Lafayette

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev gives 3,900 people at Easton college his views on Reagan, nuclear war, and Russia and America today.

Mikhail Gorbachev's lecture Wednesday night at Lafayette College began with a "This is Your Life," kind of moment. Before he began to speak, the school presented a short collection of video clips showing the former Soviet leader at the height of his power. Watching that video, Gorbachev, 80, told an audience that filled the college's Kirby Sports Center, took him back to a time when America and the Soviet Union chose to "step aside from the abyss and lead the world from the abyss." He was talking about the threat of nuclear war, and the end of the Cold War in the 1980s and 1990s. "We had been close to the possibility of the nuclear danger becoming a reality," Gorbachev said, speaking through an interpreter. "Let me mention that at the hgt …

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Ronnie DelBacco

10:32 am on Friday, October 21, 2011

PART3 Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country". We have lost that in society today. The youth want everything handed to them and certain leaders in government are more than happy to enslave them with those hand-outs. Our kids need to learn about the real American heroes, their trials, their victories and their stories that made this nation …   more ›

From the Editor's Desk

5 Facts About Mikhail Gorbachev

The former Soviet leader and Nobel prize recipient comes to Easton Wednesday night.

Mikhail Gorbachev speaks at Lafayette College Wednesday night. Tickets for his talk vanished within hours; an estimated 3,600 people are expected to turn out for his talk. I'm pretty jazzed about it. It's been a few years since I covered someone of his stature (maybe Bill Clinton in 2008, when he campaigned for his wife in Stroudsburg). Here's five things about him that you may not know. 1. He wishes he'd begun his reforms earlier. In an interview with The Guardian in August, Gorbachev listed some regrets about his time in power, and said he wishes he had abandoned the Communist party and started his own political party. 2. His religious faith -- or rather, absence of it -- was the subject of speculation. In 2008, Gorbachev visited the …

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