But who was behind it all? Mikhail Gorbachev? No one will disagree that, with perestroika and glasnost, and, most of all, with his explicit rejection of force, Gorbachev set off the avalanche of revolutionary change. But did he know what he was unleashing? I'm sure Gorbachev intended to free the European satellite countries--even East Germany--of Soviet hegemony, but did he mean for East Germany to simply disappear from the political map of the world and be absorbed into its West German brother state? [...]