How Much Credit Should History Give Mikhail Gorbachev?

President Ronald Reagan (L) with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during welcoming ceremonies at the White House on the first day of their disarmament summit, on Dec. 8, 1987. Jerome Delay/AFP/Getty Images

Commentary

Upon meeting Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time in 1984, just prior to his becoming general secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher described him as “a man we can do business with.”