I think even the kids on street corners know that Gorbachev was a traitor .Something that Andrew Murray in his awful MS obit seems to have completely missed .
I believe Gorbachev actually confessed later to the Turkish media that it had always been his secret plan to destroy communism .
As to the idea that Euro-communist criticisms of the USSR have been proven valid . Not really because Gorbachev implemented many of their ideas in the USSR and caused it to collapse . Surely anti-revisionist critcisms of the USSR have proven correct , in fact a 1000 times correct . Really the rot in the USSR began with Khruschov . Some on here scoffed at the criticism of the USSR for building a Pepsi Cola plant on its soil but what this showed was not only a readiness to co operate with imperialism but a marked lack of belief by the Soviet leaders in the superiority of their system , their way of life and culture .
As to the idea that only a few army officers tried to save the USSR , in fact the State Committee for the State of Emergency included KGB and Civilian leaders as well .
I can remember an interview with a Moscow taxi driver around 1991 who said something like ' The Party should have called on us , we would have dumped Yeltsin's punks and hippies in the Volga where they belong ' . Indeed ! ,this was the outcome of several decades of revisionism