Mikhail Gorbachev (1931 - 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union, first as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1985 and then as the country's only president. His policies of glasnost and perestroika liberalised Soviet political life, and his arms control agreements with the United States brought the Cold War to a peaceful end. [1] He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and resigned in December 1991 as the Soviet Union dissolved. [2]
Early life and education
Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in the village of Privolnoye in the Stavropol region of southern Russia, into a peasant family. Both his grandfathers were arrested during Stalin's purges, and as a teenager he worked on combine harvesters, receiving the Order of the Red Banner of Labour for his work. [1]
He studied law at Moscow State University, graduating in 1955, and later took a correspondence degree in agricultural economics from the Stavropol agricultural institute. He joined the Communist Party in 1952 and rose through its regional apparatus in Stavropol. [2]
Rise in the Communist Party
Appointed first secretary of the Stavropol regional party committee in 1970, Gorbachev came to the attention of senior figures in Moscow, including Yuri Andropov. He was brought into the Central Committee Secretariat in 1978 with responsibility for agriculture and joined the Politburo in 1979 and 1980. [1]
Following the deaths in quick succession of Leonid Brezhnev, Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, at 54 the youngest member of the Politburo. [2]
Glasnost and perestroika
Confronted with economic stagnation and an unsustainable military budget, Gorbachev launched perestroika, a restructuring of the Soviet economy that permitted limited private enterprise and enterprise autonomy, and glasnost, an opening of public discussion that relaxed censorship and allowed criticism of the party and of Soviet history. [1]
Political reform followed, with competitive elections to a new Congress of People's Deputies in 1989 and the removal in 1990 of the constitutional monopoly of the Communist Party. The reforms released long-suppressed national movements in the Baltic republics and elsewhere, and accelerated pressures the central government could not contain. [1]
Ending the Cold War
Gorbachev met President Ronald Reagan in a series of summits that produced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, the first agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. He withdrew Soviet forces from Afghanistan by 1989 and made clear that Moscow would not use force to preserve communist governments in Eastern Europe. [2]
That decision allowed the revolutions of 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification to proceed without Soviet military intervention. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his leading role in the peace process that changed relations between East and West. [3]
Collapse of the Soviet Union and later life
In August 1991 hardline officials attempted a coup against him; it failed within days but fatally weakened his authority in favour of the Russian president Boris Yeltsin. As the republics declared independence, Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991 and the Soviet Union ceased to exist the following day. [1]
He established the Gorbachev Foundation and Green Cross International, campaigned on environmental and nuclear disarmament issues, and stood unsuccessfully in the 1996 Russian presidential election. He died in Moscow on 30 August 2022 at the age of 91. [1] Assessments of his record remain divided: widely honoured abroad for ending the Cold War, he was often blamed within Russia for the collapse of the state and the hardship that followed.
