As a reporter, I covered two of the greatest losers of the last century. The superlative “greatest” applies both to the scale of the loss — Mikhail Gorbachev lost Russia and all of its colonies, F. W. de Klerk lost the richest country in Africa — and to the manner in which they lost it.

Our hearts understandably thrill to the courage of those who stand up to power — from Tiananmen Square to Tahrir Square and all the streets that now teem with the young and freedom-hungry. But there is another heroism, scarce and undervalued, that accrues to those who know how to stand down.

What Gorbachev and de Klerk did was not always pretty, and neither man is much celebrated in his own country these days. But each relinquished the power of an abusive elite without subjecting his country to a civil bloodbath. Afterward, they did not flee to the comfort of Swiss bank accounts. On the contrary, they managed a feat that is almost unthinkable in most of today’s erupting autocracies: after succumbing to democracy, they contributed to its legitimacy by becoming candidates for high office — and losing, fair and square. De Klerk, the last white president of a South Africa that oppressed blacks for centuries, actually pressed the flesh and pleaded for votes in black townships, professing a kind of civic kinship I think he genuinely felt. De Klerk and Gorbachev were triumphant partners in their own defeats, and thus in their countries’ victories.

It is always tricky comparing one country’s experience with another’s, but in the examples of these great losers there are some broad lessons for all the countries that are now convulsed by the revolutionary spirit — and for those of us who watch and assess them, not to mention those who bankroll and arm them.