Yes, He's For Real Mikhail Gorbachev

For the Russians, tempered by centuries of land invasions, national security has long been defined as the control of territory and the subjugation of neighbors. Moscow's desire for a protective buffer, combined with a thousand- year legacy of expansionism and a 20th century overlay of missionary Marxism, was what prompted Stalin to leave his army in Eastern Europe after World War II and impose puppet regimes in the nations he had liberated.

This Soviet quest for security necessarily meant insecurity for others. It also, as it turned out, meant the same for the Soviets. "One irony of history is that the...