Mikhail Gorbachev
Key Facts
- Born on 2 March 1931 in Privolnoye, in the Stavropol region, into a peasant family
- Elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 11 March 1985
- Launches perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness)
- Signs the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Ronald Reagan in December 1987
- Withdraws the Red Army from Afghanistan in 1989 and lets Eastern Europe choose its own path
- Nobel Peace Prize 1990
- Resigns on 25 December 1991 as the USSR comes to an end; dies on 30 August 2022
Biography
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) was the last leader of the Soviet Union. Coming to power in 1985 with the aim of reforming the communist system, he opened a period of unprecedented freedom, played a decisive part in ending the Cold War and was unable to prevent the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
Born on 2 March 1931 in Privolnoye, in the Stavropol region, into a peasant family, he experienced as a child the effects of famine and German occupation. A law graduate of Moscow University, he rose through the Communist Party apparatus in his home region and joined the Politburo in 1980. On 11 March 1985, aged fifty-four, he was elected General Secretary of the Party, succeeding a generation of ageing leaders.
Convinced that the Soviet economy was stagnating, he launched perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), which freed speech and the press. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 strengthened his commitment to openness. He organised partly free elections in 1989 and in March 1990 became the first and only President of the USSR. But his reforms disrupted the economy and revived nationalism in the republics, sometimes put down by force.
In foreign policy he broke with confrontation: in December 1987 he signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Ronald Reagan, withdrew the Red Army from Afghanistan in 1989 and let the countries of Eastern Europe choose their own path, which made possible the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. In August 1991 an attempted coup by hardliners failed but weakened his authority to the benefit of Boris Yeltsin. On 25 December 1991 he resigned, and the USSR ceased to exist.
Gorbachev died in Moscow on 30 August 2022, aged ninety-one. Admired in the West as the man who allowed the Cold War to end peacefully, he is judged far more harshly in Russia, where many blame him for the collapse of the USSR and the economic hardship of the 1990s.