Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev led tributes to Ronald Reagan yesterday, from across the Communist "evil empire" that the former US president demonised and did much to destroy, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow
"I feel his death very deeply," Mr Gorbachev said of the man with whom he helped thaw the Cold War, bring down the Berlin Wall and defuse the threat of nuclear conflagration between the world's superpowers.
"Fate tied us together very closely, through the toughest years of the late 20th century, when both sides felt that they faced the real threat of nuclear war." The two men's landmark summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986, paved the way for meetings that eased tension between Moscow and Washington and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
"Reagan goes down in history as a man who made a huge, possibly decisive, contribution to creating conditions for ending the Cold War," said Mr Gorbachev, who was Soviet supremo from 1985-1991.
"Reagan turned out to be a statesmen who, despite all disagreements, displayed the vision and decisiveness to meet our proposals halfway, improve our relationship and help halt the nuclear arms race."
He added: "I don't know how other statesmen would have acted at that moment, because the situation was so difficult. Reagan, whom many considered extremely right-wing, dared to make these steps, and this is his most important deed."
The two men first met at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1995, a year after Mr Reagan made an unfortunate quip while testing a microphone: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
Mr Gorbachev said he was pessimistic at the start of the summit: "After a first round of talks, I told my aides he was a true dinosaur and Reagan told his aides I was a stubborn Bolshevik," Mr Gorbachev recalled.
"However, within one or 1½ days we made progress, which allowed us to sign an important document."
Mr Gorbachev's former foreign minister and ex-leader of Georgia, Eduard Shervardnadze, praised Mr Reagan's easy charm.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity movement that helped topple Poland's Communist regime, said: "When [Reagan] saw injustice, he wanted to do away with it. He saw Communism, and he wanted to put an end to it."