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NOT ONE OF the grey men who assembled this week 25 years ago to pick a successor to Constantin Chernenko, the greyest of all leaders of the Soviet Union, had any idea what they would set in train. Within hours of his death the Politburo had earmarked the youngest among their number, Mikhail Gorbachev (54), to become the last secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He would later become the first and last President of the Soviet Union and, despite himself, its gravedigger.

Although he would pass from power widely reviled at home – hated by ordinary people for the economic and social impoverishment that would follow him, and by communists for betraying their state and losing their empire – history and the world will judge him more kindly as one of the century’s outstanding figures.