At the end of the U.S.-USSR superpower summit in 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev smiled and waved to me as he proceeded through the ceremonial departure set up for him by the State Department. I knew then that the May summit would probably be his last visit to America as Soviet president. Gorbachev faced what would be insurmountable odds against him in finishing the reformation of the Soviet system.
Although ultimately much of the means in which he sought to make the Soviet system more democratic were flawed, losing Mikhail Gorbachev will prove to be a major travesty to the inter-national community. I`m afraid Boris Yeltsin, as many others are now predicting, will show that he is a self-serving, power-hungry individual that has taken the revolution in Russia to dangerous ground.
