Voice: Mikhail Gorbachev was a hero of our time

Mikhail Gorbachev was a hero of our time. There is no exaggeration in this assessment. Under his leadership, the Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall was torn down, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the other captive nations of Eastern Europe became free and capable to control their own destiny.

During these extraordinary events, no shots were fired and no Soviet soldier intervened to prevent them from happening. Compare that with the invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the Soviet repression of the Prague Spring in 1968, not to mention the gulags, purges and brutality of Stalin and his henchmen.

I met Gorbachev at Checkers when he first visited Margaret Thatcher in 1984. At that time, neither he nor anyone else believed that the Soviet Union would cease to exist. exist seven years later. He was eager to reform the system - not destroy it.

But he knew he would need real reform, and the result was glasnost and perestroika – opening up and rebuilding.

At this meeting in Checkers, we could see that Gorbachev was very different from Brezhnev, Andropov and other Soviet leaders. He and his wife Raisa represented a whole new generation of young communists who knew the Soviet system was nearing breaking point.

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As Gorbachev had his head-to- head with Margaret Thatcher, I took Raisa Gorbachev to the library Checkers bank. Examining the volumes, she notices...