Inside Russia however the economic reforms would come to be seen as failing on their promise for ordinary people. Too often Gorbachev would change tack, move in one direction, then backtrack a few steps, seeking to appease the critics or reconcile the irreconcilable forces which he had unleashed. Hardliners were alienated, progressives were disappointed.

But by the time Gorbachev stepped down in December 1991, he was a towering hero in Western eyes. He had lifted the so-called Iron Curtain, returning freedom of destiny to the countries of Eastern Europe that had previously been under Moscow’s yoke.

He had eased nuclear tensions with the west, presided over the end of the Cold War, enabled the reunification of East and West Germany, ended Russia’s disastrous invasion of Afghanistan, and created the conditions which allowed the 15 former Soviet republics to take their separate paths.

But the abrupt sundering of the Soviet empire had a cost too. The security and intelligence establishments and former party apparatchiks who had been the greatest beneficiaries of the old system simmered in resentment at the loss of empire, prestige and status – a phonemenon I would be witness to as it grew through the early ′90s.

From within their ranks would come the rekindling of authoritarian rule under Vladimir Putin, now six months into his bloody efforts to reclaim portions of the old Soviet empire from a staunchly independent Ukraine.

Gorbachev has an unshakeable place in history, one of those rare figures who fundamentally re-shaped the geopolitics of their time to the betterment of many. It is sobering to recall however that when Gorbachev ran for the post of Russian president in 1996, he received less than 1 per cent of the vote, so far had his stocks fallen inside his own country.

Perhaps it was his private tragedy to have lived long enough to see how curdled his dream of a more benign, open and outward-looking Russia had become.