Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the Soviet Union, dies at 91
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has died “after a severe and prolonged illness”, the Central Clinical Hospital announced on Tuesday.
He was 91 years old. A more specific cause of death is unknown.
Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union before the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 and was the country’s sole president in the final months of his term.
Young and dynamic, he came to power in the 1980s, marking a new spring for one of the world’s two superpowers at the time. As an outside political insider, Gorbachev initiated radical reforms that led to a series of bad events.
Soon after coming to power, he established relations with the United States and agreed to a series of major summits that brought down the Iron Curtain between the Soviet Union and the West.
He signed agreements to reduce the country’s nuclear arsenal and withdrew his troops from the nine-year war in Afghanistan in an acknowledged shift in military policy.
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At home, Gorbachev has two brands: greater transparency and freedom — a policy known as openness — and bold economic reform or reforms. It wasn’t a winning combination after all.
Openness created a sense of freedom and empowerment among the Soviet people, who were quick to express their disappointment when Gorbachev’s economic policies did not work. On December 25, 1991, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, signed a decree in the
Moscow Kremlin handing over control of nuclear weapons to Boris Yeltsin. On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, signed a decree in the Moscow Kremlin handing over control of nuclear weapons to Boris Yeltsin. LIU HYUNG SHING/Associated Press, file
Gorbachev’s vision was to legitimize communism by giving it a democratic face. He did not realize that his people would begin to demand what was real. The riots spread like wildfire in the Eastern Bloc countries. Gorbachev allowed peaceful revolutions to happen. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
Gorbachev is revered in the West for ending the Cold War. Due to the collapse of the state, he became an object of domestic ridicule.
When the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time in the Moscow Kremlin, Gorbachev had no choice but to resign. Others benefited far more from his changes than he did.
His political opponent, Boris Yeltsin, emerged from the post-Soviet chaos. When Gorbachev ran against Yeltsin, he received less than 1 percent of the vote, humiliating his political career.
But the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who the Nobel organization says is “respected for his leadership of fundamental changes in East-West relations,” remains an influential figure.
