Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev: Time Magazine Cover March 25, 1985

Gorbachev served as an influential member of the politburo during the early 1980s before asuming the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1984. He then instituted a number of reform campaigns that ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Emma Goldman as portrayed in E.L Doctrow’s Ragtime serves as a rallying cry, a figure for those in America who advocate Anarchism, Socialism, Marxism, pretty much anything that isnt capitalism.  She fights and pushes her agenda to help the poor working man and others who have been downtrodden by the current system. She decrys how people are disregared by the system and left without housing food or means to survive. Yet her ideas are difficult to put into practice. The founders of the Soviet Union, good intentioned, as they may have been still created a system of social hierarchy despite the flowery rhetoric preaching equality and no class distinction. Without a clear model or good ideas to base such a society the creation of one on the fly is very difficult.