With each passing day, Caracas more closely resembles Moscow circa 1991.

Searching for Gorbachev in Caracas

By Jay Hallen

Whether it ends in the ballot box, by violent revolution, or by Chavez’s succumbing to the cancer he has suffered over the last year, the Bolivarian Revolution will crumble. Chavez has wrought astonishing devastation on his country, in the name of a futile ideology that history condemned in 1991. The Soviet experiment ended bloodlessly, only because it had a ruler who could see past his own ambitions. If only the Venezuelan people can be so lucky.

http://www.american.com/archive/2012/april/searching-for-gorbachev-in-caracas