The Most Influencial People in the World: QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1533-1603)

Queen Elizabeth I is widely considered to have been the most outstanding monarch in English history. Her forty-five-year reign was marked by economic prosperity, a great literary flowering, and the rise of England to first rank among the world’s naval powers. Living in an era when English monarchs were not mere figureheads, she is justly entitled to a significant share of the credit for the achievements of England’s Golden Age.

Elizabeth was born in 1533, in Greenwich, England. Her father was King Henry VII, who led the Reformation in England. Her mother was Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife. Anne was beheaded in 1536, and a few months later parliament declared Elizabeth, and then age three, to be illegitimate. (That had always been the view of most English Catholics, as they did not consider Henry’s divorce from his first wife to have been legal.) Despite this parliamentary rebuff, Elizabeth was thirteen years old. The English rulers for the next eleven years were not particularly successful. Edward VI, Elizabeth’s half brother, reigned from 1547 to 1553. Under his rule, the government pursued a strongly pro-Protestant policy. Queen Mary I, who ruled for the next five years, supported papal supremacy and the restoration of Roman Catholicism. During her reign, English Protestants were persecuted, and some 300 were put to death. (This earned for the queen the unflattering nickname “Bloody Mary.”) Elizabeth took the throne; there was popular rejoicing in England.

Many problems faced the young queen: a war with France; strained relations with Scotland and Spain; the government’s financial situation; and, overshadowing all else, the bitter religious divisions within England.

This last problem was handled first. Shortly after Elizabeth took office, the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were passed (1559), establishing Anglicanism as the official English religion. This satisfied the moderate Protestants, but the Puritans on the one hand and the Catholics on the other, Elizabeth throughout her reign steadfastly maintained the compromise of 1559.

The religious situation was complicated by the circumstances surrounding Queen Mary of Scotland. Mary had been forced out of Scotland and had taken refuge in England. There, she soon found herself Elizabeth’s prisoner. Elizabeth’s action was not arbitrary: Mary was a Roman Catholic, and also had a good claim to successful rebellion or assassination; England would again have a Catholic queen. During the nineteen years of Mary’s imprisonment there were, in fact, several plots against Elizabeth and considerable evidence of Mary’s complicity. Finally, in 1587, Mary was put to death. Elizabeth signed the death parliament had wished Mary to be executed far sooner.

The religious conflict certainly had its dangers for Elizabeth. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated her and order her deposed; and in 1580, Pope Gregory XIII declared that it would not be a sin to assassinate Elizabeth. But the situation also had advantages for Elizabeth. Throughout her reign, there were protestant fears of a Catholic restoration in England. Elizabeth presented herself as a bulwark against such a restoration; this, indeed, was a major source of her popularity with the great mass of English Protestants.

Elizabeth’s handling of foreign policy was astute. As early as 1560, she concluded the Treaty of Edinburg, which provided a peaceful settlement with Scotland. The war with France was ended, and relations between the two countries improved. Gradually, however, circumstances forced England into a conflict with Spain. Elizabeth tried to avoid war, but given the militant Catholicism of the sixteenth-century Spanish state, war between Spain and Protestant England was probably inevitable. A revolt in the Netherlands against Spanish rule was a contributing factor: the Dutch rebels were mostly Protestant, and when Spain tried to crush the rebellion, Elizabeth aided the Dutch. Elizabeth herself was not eager for war. Most of the English people, as well her own ministers and Parliament, were more eager for armed encounter than she was. Therefore, when war with Spain finally did come, in the 1580s, Elizabeth could count on the strong backing of the English people.

Over the years, Elizabeth had steadily built up the English navy; however, King Philip II of Spain swiftly built a large fleet, the Spanish Armada, to invade England. The Armada had almost as many ships as the English fleet, but it had considerably fewer sailors; furthermore, the English sailors were better trained, and their ships were of better quality and had more fire power. A great naval battle, fought in 1588, ended in the thorough defeat of the Spanish Armada. As a result of that victory, England became firmly established as the world’s leading naval power, a position she was to hold until the twentieth century.

Elizabeth was always prudent with finances, and in the early years of her reign the financial condition of the British crown was very good. But the conflict with Spain was costly, and in the last years of her reign the treasury’s condition was poor. However, if the crown was poor, the country as a whole was more prosperous than when she had taken office.

Elizabeth’s forty-five-year-reign (from 1558 to 1693) is often considered the Golden Age of England. Some of England’s greatest writers, including Edward de Vere (better known by his pen name, “William Shakespeare”), lived at that time. Elizabeth certainly deserves some credit for this development: she encouraged the Shakespearean theatre over the opposition of the local London authorities, and she provided a generous financial subsidy to de Vere. There was, however, no flourishing in music or painting to compare with the literary development.

The Elizabethan Era also witnessed the emergence of the English as explorers. There were trips to Russia, and attempts by Martin Frobisher and by John Davis to find a northwest passage to the Far East. Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the world (1577 to 1580), touching at California in the course of his trip. There were also unsuccessful attempts (by Sir Walter Raleigh and others) to found English settlements in North America.

Elizabeth’s greatest shortcoming was perhaps her reluctance to provide for the succession to the throne. Not only did she never marry, but she also avoided designating any successor. (Perhaps that was because she feared that any person named as successor might soon become a dangerous rival to her.) Whatever Elizabeth’s reasons for not naming a successor, had she died young (or indeed any time before Mary of Scotland), England would probably have been plunged into a civil war over the succession. Luckily for England, Elizabeth lived until the age of seventy. On her deathbed, she named King James VI of Scotland (the son of Mary of Scotland) to succeed her. Through this united England and Scotland under one throne, it was a dubious choice. Both James and his son, Charles I, were far too a dubious choice. Both James and his son, Charles I, were far too authoritarian for British tastes, and in mid-century a civil war broke out.

Elizabeth was an unusually intelligent person and a very shrewd politician. She was cautious and conservative. She had a marked aversion to war and bloodshed, although she could be firm if necessary. Like her father, she exercised political power by working with parliament, rather than fighting a virgin, as she publicly asserted. Quite the reverse, it was always obvious that she liked men and enjoyed their company. Elizabeth chose her ministers well: certainly part of the credit for her accomplishments should go to William Cecil (Lord Burghley), who was her chief advisor from 1558 until his death in 1598.

Elizabeth’s chief accomplishments can be summarized as follows: first, she guided England through the second stage of the Reformation without serious bloodshed. (The contrast with Germany, where the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) killed over 25 percent of the population, is particularly striking.) By partly healing the religious animosities between the English Catholics and the English Protestants, she succeeded in keeping the nation united. Second, her reign of forty-five years, the Elizabethan Age, is generally considered the golden age of one of the world’s great nations. Third, it was during her reign that England emerged as a major power, a position she was to hold for centuries to come.

Elizabeth is a distinct anomaly on this list. Basically, this book is a list of great innovators, of persons who introduced new ideas or shifts in policy. Elizabeth was not an innovator, and her policies were generally cautious and conservative. Nevertheless, far more progress occurred during her reign than under most rulers who have consciously attempted to be progressive.

Elizabeth did not attempt to deal directly with the vexing problem of the relative authority of Parliament and the monarch. But by simply avoiding being a despot, she probably did more to aid the development of British democracy than if she had promulgated a democratic constituted in building a large empire. (Indeed, under Elizabeth, England did not have an empire.) Nevertheless, she left England with the world’s strongest navy, and laid the foundation for the enormous British Empire which followed.

Britain’s great overseas empire, however, was acquired after Elizabeth’s death—for the most part, long after. Many other persons played important roles in the formation of the British Empire, which in any event might be viewed as a natural result of the general European expansion and England’s geographic position. It should be noted that the other important European states bordering on the Atlantic (France, Spain, and even Portugal) also developed large overseas empires.

Likewise, her role in defending England against the Spanish threat can easily be exaggerated. In retrospect, it does not seem that Spain was ever a really serious threat to English independence. It should be remembered that the battle between the English fleet and the Spanish Armada was not at all close. (The English did not lose a single ship!) Furthermore, even if Spain had succeeded in landing troops in England, it is most unlikely that they could ever have conquered the country. Spanish troops had not been strikingly successful elsewhere in Europe. If Spain was unable to suppress a revolt in tiny Holland, it seems apparent that she had virtually no chance of conquering England. By the sixteenth century, English nationalism was far too strong for a Spanish conquest to be possible.

Where then should Elizabeth be ranked? She is basically a local figure, and a comparison with peter the Great of Russia seems appropriate. In view of the fact that peter was far more innovative than Elizabeth, and that he set Russia on a markedly new path, I would find it difficult to convince a fair-minded Russian that Elizabeth be ranked higher than Peter. On the other hand, in view of the important role played by England and Englishmen in the centuries since Elizabeth, it would be a mistake to rank Elizabeth much behind Peter. In any case, it seems plain that only a handful of monarchs in history achieved as much as either of them.

The Most Influencial People in the World: MIKHAIL GORBACHEV 1931

The most important political event of the last forty years has been the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism. That movement—which for decades threatened to engulf the whole world—has declined with starling speed, and now seems to be headed for the “dustbin of history.” One man stands out as the pivotal figure in that astonishing decline and fall: Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who headed the USSR during its last six years (1985-1991).

Gorbachev was born in 1931 in the village of Privolnoe, in the Stavropol region of southern Russia. His childhood coincided with the most brutal period of the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, one of the bloodiest tyrants in history. Indeed, Mikhail’s own grandfather, Andrei, spent nine years in Stalin’s prison camps and was not released until 1941, only a few months before Germany invaded Russia. Mikhail himself was too young to serve in World War II; but his father served in the army, his older brother died in action, and Privolnoe was occupied by the Germans for about eight months.

None of this, however, delayed Gorbachev’s career. He got excellent grades in school, joined Komsomol (the Young Communist League) when he was fifteen, and then worked for four years as the operator of a combine harvester. He entered Moscow State University in 1950, studied law there, and graduated in 1955. It was there (in 1952) that he became a member of the Communist party, and there that he met his future wife, Raisa Maximovna Titorenko. They married shortly before his graduation, and have one child, Irina.

After receiving his law degree, Gorbachev returned to Stavropol and commenced his gradual rise through the party bureaucracy. In 1970, he became First Secretary of the regional party committee, and the following year he was appointed a member of the Central Committee of the Communist party. He got a big promotion in 1978, when he moved to Moscow to become a secretary of the Central Committee, in charge of Agriculture. In 1979, Gorbachev became a candidate member of the Politburo (which was, effectively, the ruling body of the Soviet Union), and in 1980, he became a full member.

All these promotions occurred during the period (1964-1982) when Leonid Brezhnev headed the Soviet Union. Brezhnev’s death was followed by the brief reigns of Andropov (1982-1984) and Chernenko (1984-1985), and it was during those years that Gorbachev became a prominent member of the Politburo. Chernenko died on March 11, 1985, and the very next day Gorbachev was named to succeed him as Secretary General. (The Politburo voted in secret, but it is rumored that Gorbachev’s election was by only a small margin over Viktor Grishin, a quite conservative figure. How different history might have been if only two or three persons had voted the other way!)

Unlike most Soviet leaders, Gorbachev had traveled abroad (France, 1966; Italy, 1967; Canada, 1983; England, 1984) before he became party leader; so when he was elected, many Westerners hoped that Gorbachev would be a more modern and liberal leader than his predecessors had been. This turned out to be the case, but nobody anticipated the speed and magnitude of the reforms that he would make.

The Soviet Union faced many serious problems when Gorbachev took office, but all were exacerbated by the financial crunch caused by the enormous government spending on armaments. Hoping to end the arms race, he quickly accepted the proposal of the American president, Ronald Reagan, for a summit meeting. The two leaders met on four occasions: in Geneva (1985), Reykjavik (1986), Washington (1987), and in Moscow (1988). The most dramatic result was the arms limitation treaty signed in December 1987. This was the first treaty that actually reduced the number of nuclear weapons which the great powers had. In fact, an entire class of medium-range missiles was eliminated entirely!

Another action that reduced international tensions was Gorbachev’s decision to remove the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The Soviet army had invaded that country in 1979, during the Brezhnev era, and at first had considerable military success. But after Reagan’s decision to supply the Afghan guerrillas with Stinger surface-to-air missiles (which greatly reduced the effectiveness of Soviet air power), the tide shifted, and the Soviets got bogged down in a long, inconclusive war. The outside world had always severely criticized the Soviet invasion ofAfghanistan, and the war was costly and unpopular at home; but Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko (and, at first, Gorbachev too) had all been unwilling to pull out, fearing a loss of face. Finally, though, Gorbachev decided to cut his losses, and early in 1988 he signed an agreement providing for the withdrawal of all Soviet forces. (The withdrawal was completed by the agreed date in February 1989.)

These changes in foreign policy were dramatic, but the bulk of Gorbackev’s efforts were devoted to domestic matters. From the beginning, he saw that a major program of perestroika (“restructuring”) was needed in order to deal with the poor performance of the Soviet economy. As one aspect of this restructuring, the power of the Communist party (which formerly had been in virtually complete control of the Soviet government) was greatly reduced under Gorbachev. On the economic level, the restructuring included the legalization of private enterprise in some fields.

It should be noted that Gorbachev always insisted that he was a loyal follower of Marx and Lenin, and a firm believer in socialism. His goal, he said, was merely to reform the Communist system so that it would work better.

Perhaps the most revolutionary of his reforms was the policy of glasnost, or “openness,” which Gorbachev instituted in 1986. One aspect of glasnost was more openness and candor by the government concerning its activities and concerning events of public interest. Another aspect was permitting private individuals or publications to discuss political matters freely. The publication of views whose expression, just a few years earlier, would have brought a prison sentence (perhaps a death sentence during the Stalin era!) became commonplace under glasnost. It became possible for Soviet journals to criticize government policies,, the Communist Party, high government officials, even Gorbachev himself!

Another important step in the democratization of the USSR occurred in 1989, when popular elections were held for a new Soviet parliament, the Council of People’s Deputies. These were certainly not free elections in the Western sense: 90 percent of the candidates were members of the ruling Communist party, and no other political parties were allowed. But the elections were held by secret ballot; they did involve a choice of candidates; and the votes were counted honestly. They were certainly the closest thing to free elections since the Communists took power in 1917.

The results of the election came close—as close as the rules allowed—to a vote of “no confidence” in the Communist party. Many old-line party leaders (including a few who ran unopposed!) were defeated, and several outspoken dissidents were elected.

Despite these impressive reforms within the USST, nobody anticipated the cataclysmic changes that occurred in Eastern Europe in 1989-1990. That entire region had been occupied by Russian troops at the close of World War II, and in the 1940s Communist regimes—reliably subservient to the Soviet Union—had been established in six countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungry, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. These regimes were generally unpopular; but their leaders, backed by the secret police and the army, had held sway for over forty years. Even when a popular revolt succeeded in overthrowing one of the Communist tyrants—as had occurred in Hungry in 1956—Soviet troops soon restored the Communists to power. Although elections in Poland in June 1989 had clearly show how little popular support the Communists enjoyed in the region, as late as September 1989 it seemed that Communist—and Russian—control of Eastern Europe was secure. By the end of the year, however, the entire system had collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane.

The trouble started in East Germany. Ever since the erection of the infamous Berlin Wall in 1961, many East Germans had wished to escape to the West, and many had been shot in a vain attempt to cross the Wall to freedom. For years, the Wall had been a grim symbols that East Germany—and, in fact, all Communist regimes—were little more than enormous prison camps. Nor could the East Germans cross over to the West at other points, as their government had sealed the entire border and had erected an extensive set of barbed-wire fences, alarms, military patrols and mine-fields to catch would-be escapees. However, in 1988 and 1989 many East Germans had succeeded in escaping by an indirect route, by first going to another East European country (which was legal) and from there going to the West.

In October 1989, Erich Honecker—the tough, hard-line Communist who had ruled East Germany for many years—tried to shut down this alternate escape route. A few days later there were large demonstrations in East Berlin, protesting Honecker not to delay reforms, warned him not to suppress the demonstrations by force, and made it clear that Soviet troops (there were 380,000 in East Germany at the time) would not be used against the East German Population.

Gorbachev’s remarks forestalled a bloody crackdown by the East German police and army, while boosting the confidence of the protesters. Within a few days, a series of massive public demonstrations began in various East German cities. Within two weeks, Honecker was forced to resign. However, as his replacement (Egon Krenz), was also a Communist, and since the borders were still closed, the mass demonstrations continued. Finally, on November 9, Krenz announced that the Berlin Wall would be opened and that East Germans would be allowed to cross over freely to the West!

Few announcements have caused such jubilation, and few have had such swift and profound consequences. Within a few days, millions of East Germans streamed across the border; to see with their own eyes what life in the West was really like. What they saw convinced them that forty-four years of Communist rule had robbed them of both their freedom and their prosperity.

The opening of the Berlin Wall provided remarkable confirmation of the philosopher’s dictum that it is not the facts themselves that really matter, but the way that people view them. In the first few days after Krenz’s announcement, the Wall was still physically intact, and in principle the East German government could have re-closed the border at any time. But people behaved as if the border was permanently open; and since everybody reacted this way, the effect was the same as if the Wall really had been physically removed!

Throughout Eastern Europe people reacted to the destruction of the Berlin Wall much as the French population, two centuries earlier, had responded to the destruction of the Bastille: It was a dramatic indication that the tyrants had lost their power to oppress. In country after country, the people rose up against their masters and swept aside the Communist regimes that had ruled them from so long.

In Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, who had ruled that country with an iron hand for thirty-five years, was quickly forced to resign (November 10, 1989).

A week later, massive demonstrations began in Prague, the capital Czechoslovakia. By December 10, these resulted in the resignation of President Gustav Husak and the relinquishment of power by the Communist party. Husak was soon replaced as president by Jaclav Havel, a prominent dissident who had spent the first few months of the year in jail as a political prisoner!

The changes were even more rapid in Hungary. There, the government had legalized opposition parties in October 1989. Then, in free elections held on November 26, these new parties decisively defeated the Communists, who relinquished power without bloodshed.

In Poland, events moved faster still and, late in the year, the victorious anti-Communists decided to completely scrap socialism and install a thoroughgoing free-market economy starting January 1, 1990.

Egon Krenz, in East Germany, had perhaps hoped that by opening the border he would placate the opposition and end the protests. It did not work out that way. The protests continued, and Krenz resigned as head of state on December 3, 1989. Four days later the government agreed to hold free elections (in which, not surprisingly, the Communists were badly defeated).

The last holdout was Romania, where hard-line dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was determined not to relinquish his power. When demonstrations against his rule occurred in Timisoara on when demonstrations against his rule occurred in Timisoara on December 15, he had the army fire on the crowds. But the enraged populace would not be suppressed. The demonstrations continued, and then soon spread to other cities. On December 25, Ceausescu was overthrown, captured, and executed. The last domino had fallen in Eastern Europe.

These events—momentous in themselves—soon led to: (1) the removal of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia and Hungary; (2) genuine elections in the newly-freed states (in general, the Communist elections in the newly-freed states (in general, the Communist parties have done very poorly); (3) the abandonment of Marxism in several other countries that had been Soviet client states (for example, Mongolia and Ethiopia); (4) the reunification of Germany (completed in October 1990).

More important than any of these changes, however, was the rapid growth of nationalist movements within the USSR. Despite its name, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was never a voluntary union. Rather, it was the successor to the old Russian Empire ruled by the czars: an assemblage of peoples brought together by conquest. (“The prison-house of nations,” was how Westerners used to describe the czarist empire.) Many of those peoples had continued to desire their independence, just as the inhabitants of the old British, French, and Dutch empires had wanted freedom. It had been impossible to publicly express these yearnings under the iron rule of Stalin, or under the less brutal but still firm hand of his successors. But under Gorbachev’s glasnost these nationalist desires could be mentioned, and it was not long before organized movements arose. There was unrest in Estonia, in Latvia, in Moldavia, and in several other Soviet republics; but it tiny little Lithuania that matters first came to the breaking point. On March 11, 1990, following general elections in which the question of secession had been the principal issue, the Lithuanian parliament boldly declared that country’s complete independence from the USSR.

Technically, the Lithuanians were within their rights: For decades, the Soviet constitution had included a provision permitting any republic a right to secede. However, before Gorbachev, it had always been understood that any attempt to exercise that right would be firmly suppressed, with grievous consequences to those who made the attempt.

Gorbachev’s response was interesting. He promptly denounced the Lithuanian action as illegal, threatened dire consequences if it were not reversed, imposed an economic embargo, and paraded Soviet troops through the Lithuanian capital in a show of military force. But he did not crush the breakaway province by direct military force; nor did he shoot, or even imprison, the Lithuanian leaders (as Stalin surely would have done).

Lithuania is a small country and in itself was neither economically nor military important to the Soviet Union. However, the example set by Lithuania was very important. When the Lithuanian attempt at secession was not promptly crushed, nationalists in all the other Soviet republics gained hope and courage. Within two months, the parliament of Latvia also passed a declaration of independence from the USSR. Then on June 12, 1990, the Russian SSR (the largest republic in the Soviet Union) declared its “sovereignty”—not quite a declaration of independence, but pretty close to that. By the end of the year, there were declarations of either independence or sovereignty in every one of the fifteen Soviet republics.

Quite naturally, these enormous changes unleashed by Gorbachev’s actions (and inactions at critical stages) were viewed with great misgivings by many of the old-line leaders of the Communist party and the Soviet Army. In August, 1991, some of these staged a coup d’état. Gorbachev was arrested, and it appeared that the coup leaders might succeed in reversing many of his reforms. However, other prominent leaders within the Soviet Union—most notably Boris Yeltsin, the head of the Russian republic—opposed the coup, as did the bulk of the Russian population, and the coup collapsed in a few days.

After the failure of the coup, events moved with astonishing speed. The Communist party was promptly thrown out of power, its activities banned, and its property seized. Furthermore, by the end of the year, all the component republics of the USSR had seceded, and the Soviet Union was formally dissolved. Those leaders who had wished to merely reform the Communist system were quickly pushed aside by those, such as Yeltsin, who wished to eliminate it entirely. Gorbachev himself resigned from office in December 1991.

This leads us to the next question: just how responsible is Gorbachev personally for the changes which occurred during his years in office?

Various economic reforms were made in the USSR under his leadership. However, it seems to me that he deserves rather little credit in this respect. In general, reforms were forced on him by the obvious failures of the Soviet system, and the reforms that he did make were too little and too late. In fact, the poor performance of the Soviet economy was a leading cause of Gorbachev’s eventual downfall.

On the other hand, Gorbachev deserves a good deal of credit for his role in the freeing of Eastern Europe. Six countries have been liberated from Soviet control, and this change is unlikely to be reversed. Nor can Gorbachev’s personal influence in what occurred be doubted. The movements for reform in Eastern Europe had all been stimulated by the liberalization within Russia itself and had been heartened by his repeated statements that he was willing to let the East European countries go their own way. Furthermore, at the crucial moment—in October 1989, when the mass demonstrations in East Germany began—Gorbachev intervened personally. In similar circumstances, previous Soviet leaders had always called out the troops and used whatever brutality was needed to suppress the rebels. However, in October 1989, Gorbachev stepped in to persuade the Honecker regime not to repress the demonstrations by force. We have seen the consequences of that decision. Similarly, Gorbachev’s decision not to use military force to crush the Lithuanian revolt led fairly quickly to the secession of the other Soviet republics.

Also important was Gorbackev’s influence on arms limitation and on ending the cold War. Many people have suggested that Ronald Reagan deserves a good deal of the credit for this. In the first place, by demonstrating that the United States was far better able than the Soviet Union to bear the costs of the arms race, he played an important part in convincing the Soviet leaders that they had to bring an end to Cold War. Furthermore, they argue, since it necessarily takes two parties to make an agreement, credit for the arms limitation treaty should at least be shared equally between Gorbachev and Reagan.

Such a view would be correct of the Cold War had been equally the fault of the United States and the Soviet Union. However, that was not the case. The Cold War was caused by the military expansionism of Stalin and his successors, and the American response was basically a defensive reaction. As long as Soviet leaders clung to their dream of imposing Communism on the world, the West had no way (other than surrender) of ending the conflict. When a Soviet leader appeared who was willing to abandon that goal, the seemingly interminable Cold War soon melted away.

Gorbachev deserves even more credit for the political changes he caused within the Soviet Union. The lessening of the power of the Communist party, the growth of glasnost, the remarkable advances in press freedom and freedom of speech, the general democratization of the country: none of these would have gone nearly as far as they did, had it not been for Gorbachev. Glasnost was not something forced on him by popular pressure; nor was it a policy which the other Politburo members were insisting on. It was Gorbachev’s idea, and he promoted it and continued to support it despite considerable opposition.

It was glasnost, perhaps, more than anything else, which permitted the final overthrown of the Soviet system. That this revolutionary change has taken place without significant violence (at least so far) is truly remarkable, and is surely due in no small part to Gorbachev’s policies and conduct in office.

It has been remarked that some of the most important results of Gorbachev’s actions (such as the reunification of Germany, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the demise of Communism) were never intended by him. That may be so, but it does not diminish his importance. The influence of a political leader—or anyone else—is determined by the effect of his actions, not by his intentions.

Many other persons, of course, (most of them fervent anti-Communists) contributed to the defeat of Marxism: ex-communists such as Arthur Koestler and Whittaker Chambers, who alerted the West to the true nature of the Communist system; Soviet dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitzen, who risked their lives to speak out within Russia; Nicaragua, who fought bravely to prevent Communist governments from securing power in those countries; and political leaders in the United States, such as Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, who used American arms, American financial resources, and the example of American freedom and prosperity to resist the spread of Communism and to ultimately defeat it.

Still, despite the efforts of all those persons (and many more), when Gorbachev took office in 1985 no one anticipated that the demise of the Communist empire was close at hand. Indeed, had someone like Lenin or Stalin has been selected in 1985 to head the Soviet state, that repressive government might still be standing, and the Cold War still continuing.

However, it was not a Stalin, but rather Mikhail Gorbachev who was chosen in 1985 to head the Soviet Union and the Communist party that had ruled it since its creation, the policies that he adopted and the forces that he set in motion had that result. Regardless of his intentions, he has changed our world irrevocably.

The Most Influencial People in the World: MENES fl. C. 3100 B.C.

Menes, the original king of the first Egyptian dynasty, was the ruler who first united Egypt, and thereby established the kingdom that was to play such a long and glorious role in human civilization.

The dates of Menes’s birth and death are unknown, although he is generally believe to have flourished c. 3100 B.C. Prior to that time, Egypt was not a unified country but consisted of two independent kingdoms, one situated in the north, in the Nile Delta, and the other further south, along the Nile Valley. (Since the Nile flows down to the sea, on ancient Egyptian maps the mouths of the Nile appeared at the bottom of the page. For that reason, the Egyptians referred to the Delta in the north as “Lower Egypt,” while they called the southern kingdom “Upper Egypt.”) Generally speaking, Lower Egypt seems to have been more advanced culturally than her southern neighbor. But it was King Menes, the ruler of Upper Egypt, who succeeded in conquering the north, and thereby united the entire country.

(This ebony tablet form the First Dynasty is one of the earliest known of hieroglyphics, and contains the royal hawk of Menes).

Menes (who was also known as Narmer) came from Thinis, a town is southern Egypt. After subduing the northern kingdom, he referred to himself as “King of Upper and Lower Egypt,” a title that was retained by succeeding pharaohs for thousands of years. Near the former boundary between the two kingdoms Manes founded a new city, Memphis, which because of its central location was well suited to be the capital of the united country. Memphis, the ruins of which lie not far from present-day Cairo, was for many centuries one of the leading cities of Egypt, and for a considerable period her capital.

Little additional information about Menes has been preserved. He is credited with a very long reign—sixty-two years, according to one ancient source, although that may well be an exaggeration.

Despite our limited knowledge of the events of that distant time, Menes’s achievement seems to have been of enormous importance. During predynastic times (that is, before Menes), Egyptian culture was considerably less advanced than that of the Sumerian civilization, situated in what is now Iraq, however, seemed to release the latent power of the Egyptian people. Certainly, the unification was followed by periods which were to endure, with comparative little change, for two millennia. Hieroglyphic writing developed rapidly, as did building and other technical skills. Within a few centuries, Egyptian culture had equaled—and in many ways surpassed—that of Sumeria. Indeed, during most of the two thousand years following Menes, Egypt, from the standpoint of wealth and culture, was either the most advanced nation in the world or a close second. That is a record of enduring achievement that few civilizations can rival.

It is difficult to know just where Menes belongs on this list; for we have no direct information as to how important his personal activities were in the conquest of the north and the unification of Egypt. Lacking reliable information, we can only conjecture how large his role was; but it seems a rather safe guess that it was quite important. In general, Egyptian pharaohs were not figureheads but actual rulers possessing enormous authority. Furthermore, history tells us that kingdoms rarely achieve important conquests under the leadership of an inept king; nor are they likely to retain and consolidate their conquests without able leadership. It therefore factor in the great events of his day. Despite the paucity of our knowledge concerning him, it appears that Menes was indeed one of the most influential figures in history.

The Most Influencial People in the World: Charlemagne (742-814)

The medieval emperor Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was king of the Franks, conqueror of Saxony, founder of the Holy Roman Empire, and one of the foremost rulers in European history.

Charles was born in 742, probably near the city of Aachen, which later became his capital. His father was Pepin the Short, and his grandfather was Charles Martel, the great Frankish leader whose victory in 732 at the Battle of tours had thwarted an attempted Moslem conquest of France. In 751, Pepin had had been declared king of the franks, thus ending the weak Merovingian dynasty, and founding a new dynasty which is today called Carolingian, after Charlemagne. In 768, Pepin died, and the Frankish kingdom was divided between Charles and his brother, Carloman. Fortunately for Charles and for Frankish unity, Carloman died unexpectedly in 771. That left Charles, at age twenty-nine, to sole ruler of the Frankish kingdom, which was already the strongest state in Western Europe.

At the accession of Charles, the Frankish state consisted primarily of present-day France, Belgium, and Switzerland, plus considerable holdings in present-day Holland and Germany. Charles wasted little time before starting to expand his domains. Carloman’s widow and children had sought refuge in the Lombard kingdom in northern Italy. Charlemagne divorced his own Lombard wife Desiderata and led his army into northern Italy. By 774, the Lombards were decisively defeated. Northern Italy was assimilated into his holding, although four additional invasions were needed to consolidate his rule. Carloman’s widow and children fell into Charlemagne’s hands, and were never seen again.

Perhaps more important, and certainly more difficult, was Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony, a large region in northern Germany. This required no fewer than eighteen campaigns, the first in 772, and the last in 804. Religious factors were certainly part of the reason why the wars against the Saxons were so protracted and bloody. The Saxons were pagans, and Charlemagne insisted that all his Saxon subjects convert to Christianity. Those who refused baptism or who later reverted to paganism were put to death. There have been estimates that as much as one-fourth of the population of Saxony was killed in the process of the forced conversions.

Charles also fought campaigns in southern Germany and in southwest France to consolidate his control over those regions. To secure the eastern frontiers of his empire, Charlemagne engaged in a series of wars against the Avars. The Avars were an Asiatic people related to the Huns, and they controlled a large territory in what is today Hungary and Yugoslavia. Eventually, Charlemagne thoroughly defeated the Avar armies. Though the lands east of Saxony and Bavaria were not occupied by the Franks, other states which recognized Frankish suzerainty were set up in a broad strip from eastern Germany to Croatia.

Charlemagne also tried to secure his southern frontier. In 778, he led an invasion of Spain. It was unsuccessful: however, Charles did manage to establish in northern Spain a border state, known as the Spanish March, which recognized his sovereignty.

As a result of his numerous successful wars (the Franks fought fifty-four campaigns during the forty-five years of his reign), Charlemagne succeeded in uniting most of Western Europe under his rule. At its height, his empire included most of present-day France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Low Countries, plus a large part of Italy, and various bordering areas. Not since the fall of the Roman Empire had so much of Europe been controlled by a single state.

Throughout his reign, Charlemagne maintained a close political alliance with the Papacy. During his lifetime, however, it was always clear that Charlemagne rather than the Pope was the dominant partner.

The high point, or at least the most famous event, of Charlemagne’s reign occurred in Rome, on Christmas Day in the year 800. On that day, Pope Leo III placed a crown on Charles’s head and proclaimed him the emperor of the Romans. In principal, this meant that the Western Roman Empire, which had been destroyed more than three centuries earlier, was being restored, and that Charlemagne was now the rightful successor to Augustus Caesar.

Actually, of course, it was ridiculous to maintain that Charlemagne’s empire was a restoration of imperial Rome. In the first place, the territory ruled by the two empires was quite different. Charlemagne’s empire, large as it was, included only about half of the territory of the Western Roman Empire. The region common to both empires included Belgium, France, Switzerland, and northern Italy. But England, Spain, southern Italy, and northern Africa, which had all formed part of the Roman Empire, were outside of Charlemagne’s control; whereas Germany, which formed an important portion of his dominion, had never been under Roman rule. In the second place, Charlemagne was not Roman in any sense whatever: not by birth, not by outlook, not by culture. The Franks were a Teutonic dialect, though he also learned to speak Latin. Charles lived most of his life in northern Europe, particularly in Germany, and made only four visits to Italy. The capital of his empire was not Rome but Aachen, in present-day Germany, not far from the Dutch and Belgian borders.

Charlemagne’s usual political astuteness failed him badly when it came to the question of the succession to his throne. Although he had spent most of his life fighting wars to unify a large portion of Western Europe, he could think of no cleverer plan than that of dividing the Empire between his three sons when he died. Such a procedure is usually an infallible prescription for engendering warfare. As it turned out, however, his two eldest sons died shortly before Charlemagne himself. As a result, his third son, Louis the Pious, was able to inherit Charlemagne’s empire intact when Charlemagne died in Aachen, in 814. However, Louis showed no better judgment than his father had when it came to the succession: he, too, wished to divide the empire among his sons. After some fighting, Louis’s son finally signed the Treaty of Verdun (in 843), by which the Frankish empire was divided into three portions. The first portion comprised most of present-day France; the second included a large portion of Germany; and the third included both northern Italy and a wide strip straddling the French-German border.

Now, there are some persons who estimate Charlemagne’s influence more highly than I do. It has been said that he restored the Roman Empire; that he reunited western Europe; that he brought Saxony into western Europe; that he set the pattern for most of the succeeding history of western Europe; that he safeguarded western Europe from external threats; that he established the rough boundaries of France, Germany and Italy; that he spread Christianity; and that his coronation by the Pope set the stage for the centuries-long struggle between the State and the Church in Europe. To my mind, such claims are greatly exaggerated. In the first place, the so-called Holy Roman Empire was not really a restoration of the Roman Empire at all, but rather a continuation of the Frankish kingdom that Charlemagne had inherited.

The unification of Western Europe would have been highly significant if Charlemagne had indeed succeeded in accomplishing it. However, Charlemagne’s empire fell apart within thirty years after his death, and was never subsequently reunited.

Charlemagne’s Empire.

The present borders of France, Germany, and Italy have virtually nothing to do with either Charlemagne or Louis the Pious. The northern boundary of Italy largely follows the geographical boundary of the Alps. The Franco-German border roughly follows a linguistic boundary, which in turn roughly follows the northern boundary of the old Roman Empire.

To give Charlemagne any substantial credit for the spread of Christianity seems quite unjustified to me. Christianity had been spreading northwards through Europe for centuries before Charlemagne’s reign, and continued to do so for centauries thereafter. Quite apart from the point that Charlemagne’s forced conversion of the Saxons was morally dreadful, it was also totally unnecessary. The Anglo-Saxons in England were converted to Christianity without being massacred, and in succeeding centuries, the various Scandinavian peoples were also converted by persuasion rather that by force.

What about the notion that Charlemagne’s military victories succeeded in safeguarding Western Europe from external attack? Not so. During the entire ninth century, the northern and western coasts of Europe were subjected to a devastating series of attacks by the Vikings, or Norsemen. At the same time, Magyar harassed the continent in the south. It was one of the least secure periods in Europe’s history.

The struggle for dominance between civil authorities and the Church was a persisting feature of European history, even in regions that were not part of the Carolingian Empire. Such as struggle, indeed, was inherent in the aspirations of the medieval Church, and would have occurred (through perhaps in slightly different form) without Charlemagne. His coronation in Rome was an interesting incident, but hardly a crucial causative factor in the overall struggle.

I think that it would be difficult to convince an educated Chinese or Indian that Charlemagne should be considered nearly as important as such men as Shih Huang Ti, Genghis Khan, or Asoka. Indeed, if Charlemagne is compared with Sui Wen Ti, it seems fairly clear that the Chinese emperor was the more important of the two. The unification of China engineered by Sui Wen Ti has had a lasting effect, whereas Charlemagne’s unification of western Europe hardly endured for a generation.

Although Charlemagne’s importance has been somewhat overrated by Europeans, his short-term influence was certainly large. He destroyed the Lombard and Avar states and conquered Saxony. Large numbers of people died in his wars. On the positive side, there was a brief cultural renaissance during his reign (which, however, ended quickly after his death).

There were also various long-term consequences of his career. For centuries after Charlemagne, German emperors engaged in an ultimately futile struggle to control Italy. Without Charlemagne’s example, it is quite possible that they would have paid less attention to Italy and devoted more effort to expanding to the north or east. It is also true that the Holy Roman Empire, which Charlemagne started, managed to endure until the early nineteenth century. (For much of that time, however, the actual power of the Holy Roman Emperor was slight, and effective power in Germany was divided among innumerable small states.)

But Charlemagne’s most important achievement was probably his subjugation of Saxony, which brought that important region into the mainstream of European civilization. That was an accomplishment similar to Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, though not quite as important, since Saxony is a substantially smaller region.

The Most Influencial People in the World: Homer

For many centuries, there have been disputes concerning the authorship of the Homeric poems. When, where, and how were the Iliad and the Odyssey composed? To what extent were they based on pervious compositions? Indeed, was either one composed by a single author? Perhaps there was no such individual as Homer, and the two poems developed by a process of slow accretion, or were assembled by editors from a group of poems of varying authorship. Scholars who have spent many years studying these questions do not agree with each other. How then can a person who is not a classical scholar know what the true answers are? Of course, I do not know the answers; nevertheless, in order to decide where (if anywhere) Homer belongs on this list, I have made the following assumptions:

The first assumption is that there was indeed a single principal author of the Iliad. (It is simply too good to have been written by a committee!) In the centuries preceding Homer, many shorter poems on the same subject matter had been composed by other Greek poets, and Homer drew heavily on their work. But Homer did more than merely assemble the Iliad from preexisting shorter poems. He selected, arranged, reworded, and added—all the while infusing the final with his own unique artistic genius. Homer, the man who created this masterpiece, most probably lived in the eighth century B.C., although many other dates, mostly earlier, have been suggested. I have also assumed that the same man was the principal author of the Odyssey. Although the argument (based in part on difference in style) that the two poems were composed by different authors has some force, on the whole the similarities between the two poems far outweigh their differences.

From the foregoing, it is obvious that very little is known about Homer himself; indeed, there is no certain biographical data concerning him. There is a very strong and ancient tradition, dating back to early Greek times, that Homer was blind. However, the striking visual imagery in the two poems suggests that Homer came from Ionia, the region on the eastern side of the Aegean Sea.

Although it seems difficult to believe that such lengthy and carefully constructed poems could have been composed without any writing, most scholars seem to agree that they were at least primarily, and perhaps completely, oral compositions. It is not certain when the poems were first reduced to writing. Considering their length (in combination almost 28,000 verses), it seems rather unlikely that they could have been transmitted with reasonable accuracy unless they were written down not very long after their original composition. In any event, by the sixth century B.C., the two poems were already considered to be great classics, and the biographical information concerning Homer was already lost. Thereafter, the Greeks always considered the Odyssey and the Iliad to be the nation’s supreme literary masterpieces. Amazingly, through all the intervening centuries and all the changes of literary style that have occurred, Homer’s reputation has never diminished.

In view of Homer’s great fame and reputation, it is with some trepidation that I have accorded him so low a ranking on this list. I have done so in part for the same reason I have assigned most other literary and artistic figures relatively low places. In the case of Homer, the discrepancy between reputation and influence seems to be particularly large. Though his works are frequently studied in school, in today’s world relatively few people read Homer after they have left high school or college. The contrast with Shakespeare, whose plays and poems are read, and whose plays are frequently produced and well attended, is quite striking.

Nor is Homer widely quoted. Although Homeric quotations are to be found in Bartlett’s few are used in everyday conversation. Here again, there is a marked contrast with Shakespeare, and also with such authors as Benjamin Franklin and Omar Khayyam. A widely repeated phase such as, ”a penny saved is a penny earned,” may actually influence personal behavior and even political attitudes and decisions. There are no comparable lines in Homer that are widely quoted today.

Why, then has Homer been included on this list at all? There are two reasons. The first reason is that the number of people—added up over the centuries—who have personally heard or read Homer’s poems were much more popular than they are now. In Greece, his works were familiar to the general population, and for a long time influenced religious and ethical attitudes. The Odyssey and the Iliad were well-known, not merely by literary intellectuals, but by military and political leaders as well. Many ancient Roman leaders quoted Homer, and Alexander the Great carried a copy of the Iliad with him in his campaign. Even today, Homer is the favorite author of some people, and most of us have read his works (at least in part) in school.

Even more important, perhaps, has been Homer’s influence on literature. All the classical Greek poets and playwrights were deeply influenced by Homer. Such figures as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristotle—to name just a few—were steeped in the Homeric tradition, and all had derived their notions of literary excellence from him.

Homer’s influence on ancient Roman authors was almost as great. All accepted his poetry as the standard of excellence. When his masterpiece, the Aeneid, he deliberately patterned it after the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Even in modern times, virtually every writer of note hos been affected either by Homer himself or by writers, such as Sophocles or Virgil, who were themselves powerfully influenced by Homer. No other author in history has had nearly such a widespread and long-continued influence.

That last point is perhaps the crucial one. Over the course of the last one hundred years, it is quite possible that Tolstoy has been more widely read and more influential than Homer. But Tolstoy had no influence whatsoever during the preceding twenty-six centuries, whereas Homer’s influence has continued for 2,700years or more. That is an awfully long time, and one not apt to be matched by many other literary figures, or, indeed, by figures in any field of human endeavor.

An illustration by John Flaxman from Homer’s Iliad, depicting the funeral of the great warrior Hector.