Source: Current History
Presidents Bush and PutinEarly in his tenure as general secretary of the Soviet Communist party, Mikhail Gorbachev took a radical first step toward reversing decades of Soviet isolation from the outside world with his quest for a "common European home." Gorbachev eventually came to acknowledge that a common European home would mean that most of the change would have to come first from within the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. But even as the monumental prerequisites for integration became clear, including the dismantling of command economies and authoritarian regimes and the creation of market and democratic institutions, Gorbachev stayed the course.
Reprinted with permission from Current History (October 2005) c 2005, Current History, Inc.
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