First, Copernicus proved that the earth is not the center of the universe. The self-esteem of Soviet communism suffered all three blows at once but lumbered on for years in a dusk of denial. Despite the pretensions of Marx and Lenin, the system that bears their name is manifestly not the ordained design of history, not superior to all others, and not even the master of its own house. Mikhail Gorbachev is the Copernicus, Darwin and Freud of communism all wrapped in one. The metaphysics of global power has changed.
Markets are now more valuable than territory, information more powerful than military hardware.
Peasant cultures shrink from foreign contamination. Gorbachev is a sort of Zen genius of survival, a nimble performer who can dance a side step, a showman and manipulator of reality, a suave wolf tamer. He has a way of turning desperate necessities into opportunities and even virtues. Much more than that, Gorbachev is a visionary enacting a range of complex and sometimes contradictory roles. He is simultaneously the communist Pope and the Soviet Martin Luther, the apparatchik as Magellan and McLuhan.