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Yet it is by no means certain that will happen, and that is definitely not the message the people of Eastern Europe sent their leaders and the world when they filled the streets with powerful yet peaceful protests. Governments, even ones as ruthless as the now toppled Rumanian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, realized that they cannot ignore the voices of their citizens. They must now think seriously about the consent of the governed and, mirabile dictu, about getting elected.
Historians and political scientists debate whether great forces or great men move the world. By unleashing the forces of democracy, Gorbachev gave new luster to the great-man theory. He may not be able to control those forces himself. They could even sweep him away, just as they did Egon Krenz and Karoly Grosz and Milos Jakes. But no matter what happens next in the great Eurasian land mass where 1.8 billion people live under communism -- and no matter what happens to Gorbachev himself -- he has established his place in history as the catalyst of a new European reality. "Any nation has the right to decide its fate by itself," he said last month in a parliamentary statement on events in Eastern Europe. It is one thing for the most powerful communist on earth to speak those words. It is momentous when he not only means them but also puts them into practice.