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Mikhail Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at 91, changed both his country and the world, but neither as much as he wished. His ultimate failure seems almost inevitable in retrospect, but he deserves to be celebrated, in the worlds of the late Russian scholar Dmitry Furman, as “the only politician in Russian history who, having full power in his hands, voluntarily opted to limit it and even risk losing it, in the name of principled moral values.”
When he entered office in 1985, Gorbachev had almost unlimited power. He could have presided indefinitely over the status quo. Instead, he destroyed what remained of Soviet totalitarianism; brought freedoms of speech, assembly and conscience to people who had never known them; and introduced free elections and genuine parliamentary institutions. More than anyone else, it was he who ended the Cold War and reduced the danger of a nuclear holocaust. He acquiesced in the dismemberment of the Soviet empire without the violence that accompanied the collapse of most other empires. He dreamed of a new world order, based on the renunciation of force, in which divisions between East and West disappeared.
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