| Summary/Abstract |
SOME TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, those who in the old dispute about the role of the individual in history argued that success of political initiatives depended on the ability of state leaders to look into the future acquired another argument. Tired of the string of failed reforms inside the country and trying to get rid of the tag of failures, the Soviet "architects of perestroika" turned their attention to the global world. A talented man is talented in everything: by the same token, once a failure always a failure. The predecessors of the "Pokemon catchers" of our times borrowed the Anglo-American derogatory "looser," an apt definition of the "foremen of Soviet perestroika": the accolades piled up on them in the West transformed into tragic failures inside the country they ventured to make happy.
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