Former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev says he believes protests occurring now in many places signal the emergence of a "new world order" movement. The 80-year-old Gorbachev told 3,600 people at Lafayette College in eastern Pennsylvania on Wednesday that global governments need to work toward a "more humane and more just" world.
The (Easton) Express-Times reports that Gorbachev said opportunities that existed at the end of the Cold War were "not used properly." He said with the breakup of the Soviet Union, some U.S. leaders and scholars became "arrogant" and advocated for a new American empire, and that contributed to continued poverty, environmental and development problems around the world.
But Gorbachev said he believes that there has been a push for positive change among many Americans in recent years.
"The protests that we are now witnessing everywhere actually are a sign that, in a very difficult situation under different circumstances, the new world order movement is emerging," he said.
Gorbachev was scheduled to meet with about 15 students studying Russia and Eastern Europe during a pre-speech reception, but did not attend because he was not feeling well.
But one woman who met him Wednesday was 1992 Lafayette graduate Jacqueline Olich, now a European studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She said Gorbachev inspired her to study history and Russian at the college, and she was one of the students who took part in a Soviet Union exchange program endorsed by the Soviet leader. Lafayette, along with Harvard, Yale and Stanford, were among the first U.S. colleges to send students to Russia starting in 1987.
"I was studying him during a time of remarkable changes in the world, and now he's here," Olich said. "It's surreal. It's an amazing feeling."
___
Information from: The Express-Times, www.lehighvalleylive.com