Ronald Reagan

Reagan's statues stand in Warsaw, Budapest and Tbilisi, and many in Central Europe credit his pressure on Moscow with hastening the end of communism. In Central America his administration's backing for the Contras and the Salvadoran military is remembered for mass killings, and the Iran-Contra affair broke US law. At home he remains the hero of the conservative movement and a symbol of deregulation and inequality to his critics. The same presidency means sharply different things in Gdańsk and in El Mozote.