Directions: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives given. Mikhail Gorbechev's ouster, though dramatic in every respect, is on no account a…

Directions: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives given.

Mikhail Gorbechev's ouster, though dramatic in every respect, is on no account a surprise. Both his foes and his closest friends had been warning him of it with a heightening sense of urgency for the past several months. Its consequences, however, are wholly unpredictable. The Soviet Union could well witness protracted violence on a mass scale should the reformists and the republics, those which have sought varying degrees of sovereignty for themselves, choose to defy the central authority. It is possible that the country after an initial period of uncertainty, and perhaps even violence, could revert to the pre-perestroika system. Equally uncertain is the course of east-west relations. These are bound to deteriorate though the extent of deterioration must remain a matter of conjecture. Hailed abroad as a leader who had dared to free soviet citizens from fear, who had enabled the countries of Eastern Europe to become democracies ever as they regained their full sovereign status, who had paved the way for the reunification of Germany and who had exposed the moribund and totalitarian character of communism, he appeared, at home to come under fire from all sides.

As a result of his policies, the countries of Eastern Europe became