The treatment of Mr. Gorbachev as the initiator of recent arms control moves has offered the West German peace marchers a way out of their past position.
In Glasgow, for instance, Mr. Blair said the peace marchers had displayed "a right and entirely understandable hatred of war.
They were joined by a hundred thousand other peace marchers.
A crowd of peace marchers, between 50,000 and 100,000 comprising all ethnic groups, rallied in protest.
The Freedom Riders and peace marchers of the 60's did not all come from boring suburban tracts.
When British paratroopers gunned down 13 peace marchers in Derry in 1972, the IRA inaugurated a new campaign of violence.
"But the leadership, much of it is a remnant of the 60's, the new left, those campus radicals grown old, the peace marchers and the nuclear freeze activists."
Even as German peace marchers filled the streets over the weekend, the government quietly dropped its opposition to NATO planning for Turkey's defense.
Time passes in the guise of Eugene McCarthy, peace marchers and feminist consciousness-raising group meetings.
Later, Serbs fired into a crowd of peace marchers, and by late Sunday night violence was intensifying in and around Sarajevo.