President Mikhail Gorbachev is truly a heroic and historic figure. Through his policies of perestroika and glasnost, he forever put his country's Stalinist past behind it and set the Soviet Union on an irreversible path toward freedom.

Thanks to him, hundreds of millions of people around the world today enjoy immensely more hopeful lives than when he assumed power.

This is true, not only for citizens of the former Soviet Union, or even for the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. It is true of Americans, residents of Western Europe, and others who no longer need fear the horror of thermonuclear war.

After forty years, the Cold War ended peacefully, in large part because of the high ideals and consummate statesmanship, the innate confidence and optimism, and the tremendous personal and political courage of President Mikhail Gorbachev.

For this, he rightly received the Nobel Prize for Peace. For this, the world is forever in his debt.