MOSCOW — Before Mikhail Gorbachev came along, the Soviet Union seemed an immovable superpower in perpetual antagonism to the United States. With a breathtaking series of reforms, Gorbachev changed all that — and re-directed the 20th century.
Alongside Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Gorbachev was a crucial protagonist in a global drama that many thought impossible and seemed almost surreal for those who lived through it.
Under Gorbachev, the Berlin Wall crumbled, thousands of political prisoners were released, and millions of people who had known only communism got their first real taste of freedom. But he could not control the forces he unleashed — and ultimately waged a losing battle to salvage a crumbling empire.
Gorbachev died Tuesday at a Moscow hospital at 91.
Although little known outside Sovietologist circles before he became the leader in 1985, he quickly became a dominant and charismatic figure on the world stage. The splotchy purple birthmark on his bald pate made him instantly recognizable, and his vigour stood in sharp contrast to the recent run of aged and barely articulate Kremlin leaders.
His vision of remaking the Soviet Union into a more humane and flexible country had the power of the epochal. By 1990, he had won the Nobel Prize for his “leading role” in ending the Cold War and reducing nuclear tensions.
But a mere year later, he was the sad and bewildered embodiment of failure. The country had fallen apart in his hands, and at home he was derided, despised and increasingly shunted aside as irrelevant.
His power hopelessly sapped by an attempted coup against him in August 1991, Gorbachev spent his last months in office watching republic after republic declare independence until he resigned on Dec. 25, 1991, and the Soviet Union wrote itself into oblivion a day later.
Many of the changes, including the Soviet breakup, bore no resemblance to the transformation that Gorbachev had envisioned when he became the Soviet leader in March 1985.
By the end of his rule, he was powerless to halt the whirlwind he had sown. Yet Gorbachev may have had a greater impact on the second half of the 20th century than any other political figure.
