Just as Republicans have been trying to tar President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats as socialists, guess who’s coming to lunch on Capitol Hill?

None other than Mikhail Gorbachev — the last leader of the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics.

Gorbachev, in town to speak at a Woodrow Wilson Center forum on the evolution of Russia’s constitution, will join on Thursday Senate Democrats at one of their weekly closed-door luncheons where he is expected to give his perspective on international affairs.

Some Republicans have been hurling the “socialist” epithet at Obama, complaining that his big-spending economic stimulus plan, Wall Street bailouts and moves to expand the federal government’s role into health care, while also proposing tax hikes for the wealthy, were signs that he’s abandoned the capitalist system that is reeling from a global economic meltdown.

Gorby, as he was affectionately known in the late 1980s as he opened his failing country to market reforms, is a Nobel Peace Prize winner who joins an interesting list of past guests at the Senate Democrats’ lunch. Others have included Republican Vice President Dick Cheney (sometimes dubbed “Darth Vader”) and Rupert Murdoch, the global media tycoon who has strong conservative credentials.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Alexander Natruskin (Gorbachev at a news conference in December.)