Mikhail Gorbachev hits CTRL+Z

In 1991, the men around Mikhail Gorbachev spent two years begging him to send in the army and hold the Soviet Union together. He had already ordered three crackdowns that left unarmed civilians dead, but when it came time to crush the republics for good, he refused. By the end of that year the largest empire on earth had dissolved, and in Russia they have cursed his name ever since.

It almost went the other way. The crackdown his hardliners wanted had been on the table the entire time, and the only real questions were who would give the order and whether the soldiers would obey. Across the same years, the other great communist power made the move Gorbachev wouldn't, sending its tanks into Tiananmen Square, and it's still standing today, richer and stronger than the Soviet Union ever was.

What if Gorbachev had given the order himself?

This week we hit Control Z on the order Gorbachev refused to give, follow the surviving Soviet Union all the way to 2026, and find the lesson underneath: the choice his own country can't forgive is the one that ended the Cold War and set Eastern Europe free.