Mikhail Gorbachev was a hero of our time. There is no exaggeration in this assessment. Through his leadership, the Cold War came to an end, the Berlin Wall was demolished, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and Poland, Czechoslovakia and the other captive nations of eastern Europe became free and able to control their own destiny.
Throughout these extraordinary events, not one shot was fired, and not one Soviet soldier intervened to prevent them from happening. Contrast that with the invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the Soviet suppression of the Prague spring in 1968, not to mention the gulags, the purges and the brutality of Stalin and his henchmen.
