Then came the man everyone had been waiting for: Mikhail Gorbachev, 54, an intelligent, energetic, apparently reasonable politician, of whom the "Iron Lady," Margaret Thatcher, had said, "We can do business together." Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party, fully aware that the state of his country's economy was horrendous: outputs were falling, and there was no longer any way to increase inputs. Gorbachev thought at first that he could reinvigorate the society. He soon concluded that the system could not recover without perestroika, or restructuring. To take the pressure off the economy, he would have to cut back on military spending.

The end result of this "new thinking" about foreign relations was to set the communist regimes of Eastern Europe adrift, under instructions to figure out what reforms might make them palatable to their own citizens. At a Warsaw Pact meeting in the summer of 1989, Gorbachev put it bluntly, "Each people determines the future of its own country. There must be no interference from outside." The meaning was clear to the satraps of Eastern Europe: they should expect no support from the Soviet army if they tried to use force on dissenters at home. Some scrambled to reform, and some resisted, but they were all doomed. Communism was always an alien growth in that part of the world, a Russian occupation enforced by Soviet bayonets.