The world celebrates the fall of the Berlin wall twenty years ago on November 9, 1989. This historic event ended the enslavement of millions of European people - and brought about the end of the cold war.
Strangely, the one man who made this possible gets scant attention - and very little praise.
Mikhail Gorbachev was the man at the pinnacle of Russian power - and Russia was the country that ruled the Communist satellite block of nations named as " the Warsaw pact ".
There had been other rumblings of discontent with Communism in the past, and on every occasion the Russian tanks had rolled to crush that dissent. The leaders of East Germany had no intention of allowing their wall to be breached and they looked to Gorbachev for the same support received from other Russian leaders.
Mikhail Gorbachev was a very different man. He was a man of vision and he could see that Communism was a failed system condemning half of Europe to misery, lack of progress - and the possibility of a third world war.
Re rejected those calls for help. The Russian tanks and troops remained in their barracks - and the wall came down and the people were free.
The power of decision rested with one man, and he is no longer the leader of Russia, but a retired citizen living quietly in Moscow.
It is strange that during these celebrations his name receives scant praise, and yet in many respects his resolve to change the world was one of the greatest events of the past century.
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