Definition of "reversion"

Well Russia at the present time is at a crossroads. It is often said that the Cold War is over and that the West has won it. That's only half true. Because what has happened is that the communists have been defeated, but the ideas of freedom now are on trial. If they don't work, there will be a reversion to, not communism which has failed, but what I call a new despotism which would pose a mortal danger to the rest of the world because it would be infected with the virus of Russian imperialism which of course has been a characteristic of Russian foreign policy for centuries.

1992 March 30, Richard Nixon, 13:46 from the start, in Richard Nixon on "Inside Washington"‎, Richard Nixon Foundation, retrieved 25 May 2020

Why nothing capital of my master's wardrobe has drop'd lately—but I could give you a mortgage on some of his winter Cloaths with equity of redemption before November or—you shall have the reversion—of the French velvet, or a post obit on the Blue and Silver—

1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, III.ii

Each day too slew it’s[sic] thousands six or seven,Till at the crowning carnage—Waterloo—They threw their pens down in divine disgust,The page was so besmeared with blood and dust. […](Here, Sathan’s sole good work deserves insertion—’Tis, that he has both Generals in reversion).

1822, Lord Byron, The Vision of Judgement, stanza 6

By the spring of 1972, however, Peking’s general anti-Japanese offensive was fading away in any case, and in mid-May the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese jurisdiction brought the Self-Defense Forces into the vicinity of the Tiao Yü T’ai (or Senkaku). Peking accordingly dropped the issue as suddenly as it had taken it up.

1975, Harold C. Hinton, “Japan: Power and Problems”, in Three and A Half Powers: The New Balance in Asia‎, Indiana University Press, page 223