In the ‘peoples’ democracies’ the Soviet leader’s domestic travails, though duly noted, counted for less than his foreign pronouncements, notably a widely reported speech to the United Nations on December 7th 1988. After announcing unilateral cuts in Soviet conventional forces in Europe, Gorbachev went on to advise his audience that ‘Freedom of choice is a universal principle. There should be no exceptions.’ This was more than just a renunciation of the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’, an acknowledgement that Moscow would not use force to impose its version of ‘Socialism’ upon fraternal states. What
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