Serge Schmemann was one of the New York Times’s best reporters in the ’80s and ’90s, and he wrote an interesting envoi to Gorbachev. But he has to be called out on this sentence. “A popular myth in the United States credits Ronald Reagan with that historic event [the fall of the Berlin Wall] but the forces that Mr. Gorbachev unleashed throughout eastern Europe were immeasurably more important.”

“The forces . . . unleashed” is a hefty bag phrase, enabling Schmemann to assign to Gorbachev numerous things he did not do or want done. One of those things was the pressure exerted on him by Reagan and Bush 41, and the inspiration they gave to his subjects. Gorbachev did not give a speech at the Berlin Wall saying, You know, we ought to tear down this wall. Reagan gave the speech saying, “If you seek liberalization. . . . Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, the last head of the East German government, told Reagan in 1990, “Mr. President, we have much to thank you for.”

We do indeed.