I saw then Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev up close and personal. So up close and personal I could have touched him.

I had a girlfriend at the time whose older brother worked for the Secret Service here in Minneapolis, and he arranged it when Gorby came to town for a short visit . I remember not being enthused about going, he was after all a communist, the leader of the evil empire and our cold war enemy, but I went because she had her heart set on it. She was swept up in the charisma the Soviet leader and his wife Raisa exuded. I was not. As I said before, he was the leader of the Soviet Union, I was (and still am) a conservative realist hardliner, she was an idealistic liberal.

Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union I have a different take on Gorby. I respect him immensely and would love nothing more than to pick his brain and hear stories of the old days.

The former leader of the Soviet Union is now calling for the tyrant, Vladimir “The Impaler” Putin to resign from politics. I concur.

Mikhail Gorbachev called on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin not to seek a third term as president next year.

He told the Moscow Echo radio: “I would advise Vladimir Putin to leave now. He has had three terms: two as president and one as prime minister. Three terms – that is enough.”

Mr Gorbachev, 80, has been virulently critical of the elections that took place on December 4. Soon after the poll he said that the results of the poll should be annulled and new elections held due to “numerous falsifications and rigging.”

“The results do not reflect the will of the people,” Mr Gorbachev said at the time. “Therefore I think they [Russia's leaders] can only take one decision – annul the results of the election and hold new ones.”

Those elections were definitely rigged. Putin rules with an iron fist. He’s a cold warrior and former KGB agent. He wants a return to totalitarianism, and a rise of the old Soviet Union. He wants a new cold war, particularly now, with the U.S. having an extremely weak and naive leader, he envisions Soviet dominance. He can’t let it go. He lives in the past.