Gorbachev honored with Liberty Medal.(Inside Track)(Mikhail Gorbachev)

Mikhail Gorbachev, former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was welcomed to Philadelphia as the conquering hero on September 18 to receive America's Liberty Medal. Former President George H.W. Bush presented the medal to Gorbachev at a star-studded ceremony at the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall in Historic Philadelphia, next to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

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The event, broadcast live by CBS TV's Philadelphia affiliate, CBS3, opened with big-screen photo montages of Gorbachev, as CBS narrators enthused over the man who, they said, "changed history, freeing millions from oppression," and "ended the Cold War." Joseph M. Torsella, president and CEO of the Constitution Center; Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter; Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell; and Bush all lavished superlatives on the former Soviet leader and praised Gorbachev's commitment to liberty. "He grew up under the brutal rule of Stalin, a dictator who introduced the words 'purge' and 'gulag' into the beautiful language of Pushkin and Chekhov," said Torsella. "But when he came to occupy the same office that Stalin held, 63 years later, ... he introduced very different words. 'Glasnost,' ...