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A battle-hardened Soviet journalist told me in a convivial conversation in Moscow circa 1989 that he wished to metamorphose into a fly and perch on Unter den Linden, Berlin's grandest boulevard — as in a Franz Kafka novel. Mikhail Gorbachev had just arrived in East Berlin on October 7 as the guest of honour at the gala parade to celebrate 40 years of communist rule in East Germany. By then, he had become communism's leading agnostic. My good friend's journalistic instinct was to eavesdrop on Mr. Gorbachev's improbable conversation with his East German counterpart, Erich Honecker. Mr. Gorbachev's hard-hitting message, overshadowing East Germany's birthday celebrations, was “life punishes those who come too late.” Indeed, Mr. Honecker was forced to step down...