In 1985, when the first rumblings of Gorbachev’s thunder disturbed the moldy Soviet silence, the holy fools on the street–the people who always gather at flea markets and around churches–predicted that the new Czar would rule seven years. They assured anyone interested in listening that Gorbachev was “foretold in the Bible,” that he was an apocalyptic figure: he had a mark on his forehead
