[vivegi]

You can view the recent changes to a wikipedia article page using the Related changes link under the Tools subheading on the left pane of the article page.

Here is an example from the page on Mikhail Gorbachev.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked?hi...

You can also modify the filter to look at different period. (Not sure of the limits there on how far back you can go)

You can also click on the View history link at the top of the article page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mikhail_Gorbachev...

and the result page has a link to the oldest article version.