MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that his new book was a "mishmash," which comprised his memoirs of historical events scattered across a wide time frame, as well as featured some ideas mentioned in his previous writings.
"I won't leave the country for the West, I'll keep living in Russia," Gorbachev said during the presentation, commenting on the question, which implied that the former USSR leader was more popular abroad than in his home country.
"Thanks to the fact that it [the Perestroika] happened, and despite the fact that it was disrupted and kicked about later, it gave such an impetus both to our country and our people, it set the whole world in motion," Gorbachev insisted.
Mikhail Gorbachev was also asked to draw parallels between the situation in modern Spain and the events in the Soviet Union prior to its collapse.
"We have several 'Catalonias' and we will have to deal with this and we should do this. We must know our history and make conclusions from this," Gorbachev answered a visitor's question.
The Perestroika, which literally translates as "restructuring," was a political movement within the Communist party of the USSR initiated by Gorbachev during the late 1980s aiming to restructure the Soviet economy and its politics via a series of democratic reforms.
