TIME Person Of The Year

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The Person of the Year is the one who, for better or for worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year. But when Ayatullah Khomeini was chosen, many readers could not accept the "or worse" provision. Khomeini's fundamentalist Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran and gripped the nation in a despotic, anti-Western regime. With his blessing, militants held 52 Americans hostage for months. TIME received 5,200 letters--far more than for any other Person of the Year--most of them protesting the selection.

1981 LECH WALESA

Sometimes when a humble man steps into history's spotlight, he is transformed, and history with him. So it was when Lech Walesa, an unemployed electrician from the shipyards in Gdansk, Poland, formed the labor union Solidarity and led its struggle against the country's repressive communist government, demanding a series of democratic reforms. The regime at first made concessions and then cracked down harshly, arresting Walesa and outlawing Solidarity. But the movement could not be stifled, nor could Walesa. By the end of the '80s the government would collapse and Walesa would be elected President of Poland.

1982 THE COMPUTER

Having chosen men, women, couples and groups of the year, TIME in 1982 named a machine, the computer. (It would take similar liberties with the formula in 1988, hailing the endangered Earth as Planet of the Year.) The computer had long been a fixture in modern life, but the advent of the personal computer made the "desktop revolution" accessible to millions. TIME's story predicted that home computers would someday be as commonplace as TV sets or dishwashers. Twenty years later, with 60% of the U.S. wired, that is well on the way to coming true. The story also foresaw "dramatic changes in the way people live and work, perhaps even in the way they think. America will never be the same." Right again.

1987 MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Gorby. Glasnost. Perestroika. Those quaint, inseparable terms entered the global lexicon in the 1980s as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed a new glasnost (openness) in Soviet society and began implementing perestroika (restructuring) in its economy and politics. He sought a more conciliatory relationship with the U.S., negotiating arms reductions. With a Western-style politician's charm and homey touch, he became, as TIME put it, "a symbol of hope for a new kind of Soviet Union: more open, more concerned with the welfare of its citizens and less with the spread of its ideology and system abroad." What did spread, at home and abroad, was a fever of democratic reform. Soviet satellite states gained independence. The Berlin Wall fell. The cold war faded. The ferment grew chaotic and eventually swept away Gorbachev and the Soviet Union. But for surviving so long and so boldly and imaginatively as "the patron of change," Gorbachev was again TIME's choice in 1989, this time as the Person of the Decade.