The world after Mikhail Gorbachev seemed like a very different place: Soviet communism, the USSR, the Cold War – all consigned to the past.
Academics gleefully wrote about the “end of history”.
That’s now become nothing more than a distant dream, as one leading Russian journalist put it – all those economic reforms and political freedoms are “turned to dust”.
Kiran Moodley has been looking at Mikhail Gorbachev’s legacy.