Gorbachev lost his country but changed the world

The tumultuous events of the Soviet Union during the 20th century — Stalin’s Great Terror, the unimaginable losses of World War II, hardships, thaws, stagnation — all directly touched Mikhail Gorbachev. From a village boy to a party official, he saw a reality strikingly different than the Communist Party slogans. He saw a people living in poverty, disenfranchised, ruled by a distant, stuffy elite, a nation of vast wealth sucked dry by over-militarization. And most remarkably, Mr. Gorbachev kept these realizations to himself, rising through the ranks and then, at the top, embarking on an epochal quest for change. On being chosen Soviet leader in March 1985, he told his wife, Raisa, “We can’t go on living like this.”