“His reforms can no longer be dismissed as a mere matter of style, of a telegenic new face in the Kremlin. Gorbachev is that, to be sure. Also a dedicated Communist. Also a ruthless political opportunist. In 1987 he became something more, a symbol of hope for a new kind of Soviet Union: more open, more concerned with the welfare of its citizens and less with the spread of its ideology and system abroad. For fanning that hope, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is TIME’s Man of the Year for 1987.”
—From the January 4, 1988 issue of TIME magazine
“With remarkable imagination and daring, he has embarked on a course, perhaps now irreversible, that is reshaping the world. He is trying to transform a government that was not just bad or inept but inherently destructive, its stupidity regularly descending into evil. He has been breaking up an old bloc to make way for a new Europe, altering the relationship of the Soviet empire with the rest of the world and changing the nature of the empire itself. He has made possible the end of the cold war and diminished the danger that a hot war will ever break out between the superpowers. Because he is the force behind the most momentous events of the ’80s and because what he has already done will almost certainly shape the future, Mikhail Gorbachev is TIME’s Man of the Decade.”
—From the January 1, 1990 issue of TIME magazine