The Rise and Fall of Mikhail Gorbachev

Berlin, 1989
For his allies under the Warsaw pact, Gorbachev believed that the reforms he had tried at home would work to modernize each nation's ruling Communist Party. But by allowing each nation to set its own course, he unwittingly unleashed a string of counterrevolutions, most of them peaceful. These popular uprisings culminated in the decision to allow the Berlin Wall, long a symbol of the Cold War divide between East and West, to come down. President Reagan himself made a direct appeal to Gorbachev in June 1989 to let the Wall fall, and one month after the Soviet leader visited East Berlin in October, above, Germany was reunited.

• Remembering the Fall of the Berlin Wall