Mikhail Gorbachev

Template:Short description Template:Good article Template:Use American English Template:Use dmy dates Mikhail Sergeyevich GorbachevTemplate:Family name footnoteTemplate:Efn (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who was the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1985, and additionally as head of state from 1988.Template:Efn Ideologically, he initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism, but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s.

Born in Privolnoye, North Caucasus Krai, into a peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage, Gorbachev grew up under the rule of Joseph Stalin. In his youth, Gorbachev operated combine harvesters on a collective farm, before joining the Communist Party, which then governed the Soviet Union as a one-party state. Studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Titarenko in 1953 and received his law degree in 1955. Moving to Stavropol, he worked for the Komsomol youth organization and, after Stalin's death, became a keen proponent of the de-Stalinization reforms of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Gorbachev was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee in 1970, overseeing the construction of the Great Stavropol Canal. In 1978, Gorbachev returned to Moscow to become a secretary of the party's Central Committee. He joined the governing Politburo (25th term) as a non-voting member the following year and as a voting member in 1980. Three years after the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev—following the brief tenures of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko—in 1985, the Politburo elected Gorbachev as general secretary.

Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and its Marxist–Leninist principles, Gorbachev believed significant reform was necessary for its survival. He withdrew troops from the Soviet–Afghan War, and embarked on summits with United States president Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear weapons and end the Cold War. Domestically, Gorbachev's policy of glasnost ("openness") and demokratizatsiya ("democratization") allowed for enhanced freedom of speech and the press, while his perestroika ("restructuring") sought to decentralize economic decision-making to improve its efficiency. Ultimately, his democratization measures and formation of the elected Congress of People's Deputies undermined the one-party state. When various Warsaw Pact countries abandoned Marxist–Leninist governance in 1989, he declined to intervene militarily. Growing nationalist sentiment within constituent republics threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading hardliners within the party to launch an unsuccessful coup against him in August 1991. In the coup's wake, the Soviet Union dissolved against Gorbachev's wishes. After resigning from the presidency, he launched the Gorbachev Foundation, became a vocal critic of Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and campaigned for Russia's social-democratic movement.

Considered one of the most significant figures of the second half of the 20th century, Gorbachev remains controversial. The recipient of a wide range of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, he was praised for his role in ending the Cold War, introducing new political and economic freedoms in the Soviet Union, and tolerating both the fall of Marxist–Leninist administrations in eastern and central Europe and the German reunification. Critics see him as weakening Russia's global influence and precipitating an economic collapse in the country.

Early life and education

1931–1950: Childhood and adolescence

File:Миша Горбачёв с дедом Пантелеем и бабушкой Василисой.jpg

Gorbachev and his Ukrainian maternal grandparents, late 1930s

Template:Mikhail Gorbachev series Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in the village of Privolnoye, then in the North Caucasus Krai of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union.Template:Sfnm At the time, Privolnoye was divided between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians.Template:Sfn Gorbachev's paternal family were Russians and had moved from Voronezh several generations before; his maternal family were of ethnic Ukrainian heritage and had migrated from Chernihiv.Template:Sfnm His parents named him Viktor at birth, but at his mother's insistence he had a secret baptism, where his grandfather christened him Mikhail.Template:Sfnm His relationship with his father, Sergey Andreyevich Gorbachev, was close; his mother, Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva (née Gopkalo), was colder and punitive.Template:Sfn His parents were poor,Template:Sfn and lived as peasants.Template:Sfn They had married as teenagers in 1928,Template:Sfn and in keeping with local tradition had initially resided in Sergey's father's house, an adobe-walled hut, before a hut of their own could be built.Template:Sfn

The Soviet Union was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, led by Joseph Stalin. Stalin had initiated a project of mass rural collectivization meant to help convert the country into a socialist society.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev's maternal grandfather joined the Communist Party and helped form the village's first kolkhoz (collective farm) in 1929, becoming its chair.Template:Sfnm It was Template:Convert outside Privolnoye, and when he was three years old, Gorbachev left his parental home and moved into the kolkhoz with his maternal grandparents.Template:Sfn

The country was experiencing the famine of 1930–1933, in which two of Gorbachev's paternal uncles and an aunt died.Template:Sfnm This was followed by the Great Purge, in which individuals accused of being "enemies of the people" were interned in labor camps or executed. Both of Gorbachev's grandfathers served time in labor camps.Template:Sfnm After his December 1938 release, Gorbachev's maternal grandfather discussed having been tortured by the secret police, an account that influenced the young boy.Template:Sfn

During the Second World War, in June 1941 the German Army invaded the Soviet Union. German forces occupied Privolnoye for four and a half months in 1942.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev's father fought on the frontlines; he was wrongly declared dead during the conflict and fought in the Battle of Kursk before returning to his family, injured.Template:Sfnm After Germany was defeated, Gorbachev's parents had their second son, Aleksandr, in 1947; he and Mikhail were their only children.Template:Sfn

The village school was closed during much of the war, re-opening in autumn 1944.Template:Sfn Gorbachev did not want to return but excelled academically when he did.Template:Sfn He read voraciously, moving from the Western novels of Thomas Mayne Reid to the works of Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, and Mikhail Lermontov.Template:Sfn In 1946, he joined the Komsomol, the Soviet political youth organization, becoming leader of his local group, and was then elected to the Komsomol committee for the district.Template:Sfn From primary school he moved to the high school in Molotovskoye; he stayed there during the week and walked the Template:Convert home during weekends.Template:Sfn As well as being a member of the school's drama society,Template:Sfnm he organized sporting and social activities and led the school's morning exercise class.Template:Sfn Over the course of five consecutive summers starting with 1946, he returned home to assist his father in operating a combine harvester; during those summers, they sometimes worked 20-hour days.Template:Sfnm In 1948, they harvested over 8,000 centners of grain, a feat for which Sergey was awarded the Order of Lenin and his son the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.Template:Sfnm

1950–1955: University

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Gorbachev (first from right) with his classmates at the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, 1952

I would consider it a high honour to be a member of the highly advanced, genuinely revolutionary Communist Party of Bolsheviks. I promise to be faithful to the great cause of Lenin and Stalin, to devote my entire life to the party's struggle for Communism.

— Gorbachev's letter requesting membership of the Communist Party, 1950Template:Sfn

In June 1950, Gorbachev became a candidate member of the Communist Party.Template:Sfn He applied to study at the law school of Moscow State University (MSU), then the most prestigious university in the country. They accepted him without asking for an exam, likely because of his worker-peasant origins and his possession of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.Template:Sfnm His choice of law was unusual; it was not a well-regarded subject in Soviet society at that time.Template:Sfn At age 19, he traveled by train to Moscow, the first time he had left his home region.Template:Sfn

In Moscow, Gorbachev resided with fellow MSU students at a dormitory in the Sokolniki District.Template:Sfn He felt at odds with his urban counterparts, but soon came to fit in.Template:Sfn Fellow students recall his working especially hard, often late into the night.Template:Sfnm He gained a reputation as a mediator during disputesTemplate:Sfn and was outspoken in class, but was private about his views; for instance, he confided in some students his opposition to the Soviet jurisprudential norm that a confession proved guilt, noting that confessions could have been forced.Template:Sfn During his studies, an antisemitic campaign spread through the Soviet Union, culminating in the Doctors' plot; Gorbachev publicly defended Volodya Liberman, a Jewish student accused of disloyalty.Template:Sfnm

At MSU, Gorbachev became the Komsomol head of his entering class, and then Komsomol's deputy secretary for agitation and propaganda at the law school.Template:Sfnm One of his first Komsomol assignments in Moscow was to monitor the election polling in Presnensky District to ensure near-total turnout; Gorbachev found that most people voted "out of fear".Template:Sfn In 1952, he was appointed a full member of the Communist Party.Template:Sfnm He was tasked with monitoring fellow students for subversion; some of his fellow students said he did so only minimally and that they trusted him to keep confidential information secret from the authorities.Template:Sfn Gorbachev became close friends with Zdeněk Mlynář, a Czechoslovak student who later became a primary ideologist of the 1968 Prague Spring. Mlynář recalled that the duo remained committed Marxist–Leninists despite their growing concerns about the Stalinist system.Template:Sfnm After Stalin died in March 1953, Gorbachev and Mlynář joined the crowds massing to see Stalin's body lying in state.Template:Sfnm

At MSU, Gorbachev met Raisa Titarenko, who was studying in the university's philosophy department.Template:Sfnm She was engaged to another man, but after that engagement fell apart, she began a relationship with Gorbachev;Template:Sfn together they went to bookstores, museums, and art exhibits.Template:Sfn In early 1953, he took an internship at the procurator's office in Molotovskoye district, but he was angered by the incompetence and arrogance of those working there.Template:Sfn That summer, he returned to Privolnoye to work with his father on the harvest; the money earned allowed him to pay for his wedding.Template:Sfnm On 25 September 1953 he and Raisa registered their marriage at Sokolniki Registry OfficeTemplate:Sfnm and in October moved in together at the Lenin Hills dormitory.Template:Sfn Raisa discovered that she was pregnant and although the couple wanted to keep the child she fell ill and required an abortion.Template:Sfn

In June 1955, Gorbachev graduated with a distinction;Template:Sfnm his final paper had been on the advantages of "socialist democracy" over "bourgeois democracy" (liberal democracy).Template:Sfn He was subsequently assigned to the Soviet Procurator's office, which was focusing on the rehabilitation of the innocent victims of Stalin's purges, but found that they had no work for him.Template:Sfnm He was then offered a place on an MSU graduate course specializing in kolkhoz law, but declined.Template:Sfnm He had wanted to remain in Moscow, where Raisa was enrolled in a PhD program, but instead gained employment in Stavropol; Raisa abandoned her studies to join him there.Template:Sfnm

Early CPSU career

1955–1969: Stavropol Komsomol

File:Stavropol. Mikhail Gorbachev, his wife and daughter in 1964.png

Gorbachev with his wife (far right) and daughter in Stavropol, 1964

In August 1955, Gorbachev started work at the Stavropol regional procurator's office, but disliked it and got a transfer to work for Komsomol,Template:Sfnm becoming deputy director of Komsomol's agitation and propaganda department for that region.Template:Sfnm In this position, he visited villages in the area and tried to improve the lives of their inhabitants; he established a discussion circle in Gorkaya Balka to help its peasant residents gain social contacts.Template:Sfn

Gorbachev and his wife Raisa initially rented a small room in Stavropol,Template:Sfnm taking daily evening walks around the city and on weekends hiking in the countryside.Template:Sfn In January 1957, Raisa gave birth to a daughter, Irina,Template:Sfnm and in 1958 they moved into two rooms in a communal apartment.Template:Sfnm In 1961, Gorbachev pursued a second degree, in agricultural production; he took a correspondence course from the local Stavropol Agricultural Institute, receiving his diploma in 1967.Template:Sfnm His wife had also pursued a second degree, attaining a PhD in sociology in 1967 from the Moscow State Pedagogical University;Template:Sfnm while in Stavropol she joined the Communist Party.Template:Sfn

Stalin was succeeded as Soviet leader by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin and his cult of personality in a speech given in February 1956, after which he launched a de-Stalinization process throughout Soviet society.Template:Sfn Later biographer William Taubman suggested that Gorbachev "embodied" the "reformist spirit" of the Khrushchev era.Template:Sfn Gorbachev was among those who saw themselves as "genuine Marxists" or "genuine Leninists".Template:Sfn He helped spread Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist message in Stavropol, but encountered many who saw Stalin as a hero and praised his purges as just.Template:Sfnm

Gorbachev rose steadily through the ranks of the local administration.Template:Sfn The authorities regarded him as politically reliable,Template:Sfn and he would flatter his superiors, for instance gaining favor with prominent local politician Fyodor Kulakov.Template:Sfnm With an ability to outmanoeuvre rivals, some colleagues resented his success.Template:Sfn In September 1956, he was promoted First Secretary of the Stavropol city's Komsomol, placing him in charge of it;Template:Sfnm in April 1958 he was made deputy head of the Komsomol for the entire region.Template:Sfnm He was given better accommodation: a two-room flat with its own private kitchen, toilet, and bathroom.Template:Sfn In Stavropol, he formed a discussion club for youths,Template:Sfnm and helped mobilize local young people to take part in Khrushchev's agricultural and development campaigns.Template:Sfn

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1986-1126-307, LPG Golßen, Besuch durch KPdSU Delegation.jpg

Gorbachev on a visit to East Germany in 1966

In March 1961, Gorbachev became First Secretary of the regional Komsomol,Template:Sfnm in which position he went out of his way to appoint women as city and district leaders.Template:Sfn In 1961, Gorbachev played host to the Italian delegation for the World Youth Festival in Moscow;Template:Sfn that October, he attended the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.Template:Sfnm In January 1963, Gorbachev was promoted to personnel chief for the regional party's agricultural committee,Template:Sfn and in September 1966 became First Secretary of the Stavropol City Party Organization ("Gorkom").Template:Sfnm By 1968 he was frustrated with his job—in large part because Khrushchev's reforms were stalling or being reversed—and he contemplated leaving politics to work in academia.Template:Sfn However, in August 1968, he was named Second Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, making him the deputy of First Secretary Leonid Yefremov and the second most senior figure in Stavropol Krai.Template:Sfnm In 1969, he was elected as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and made a member of its Standing Commission for the Protection of the Environment.Template:Sfn

Cleared for travel to Eastern Bloc countries, in 1966 he was part of a delegation which visited East Germany, and in 1969 and 1974 visited Bulgaria.Template:Sfn In August 1968 the Soviet Union led an invasion of Czechoslovakia to put an end to the Prague Spring. Although Gorbachev later stated that he had had private concerns about the invasion, he publicly supported it.Template:Sfn In September 1969 he was part of a Soviet delegation sent to Czechoslovakia, where he found the people largely unwelcoming.Template:Sfnm That year, the Soviet authorities ordered him to punish Fagim B. Sadygov, a philosophy professor of the Stavropol agricultural institute whose ideas were regarded as critical of Soviet agricultural policy; Gorbachev ensured that Sadykov was fired from teaching but ignored calls for him to face tougher punishment.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev later related that he was "deeply affected" by the incident; "my conscience tormented me" for overseeing Sadykov's persecution.Template:Sfn

1970–1977: heading the Stavropol region

File:Stavropol. Celebrating the 250th anniversary of the city. Gorbachev M.S., Suslov M.A. 1978.png

Gorbachev and Suslov at Stavropol's 250th anniversary celebrations, 1978

In April 1970, Yefremov was promoted to a higher position in Moscow and Gorbachev succeeded him as the First Secretary of the Stavropol kraikom. This granted Gorbachev significant power over the Stavropol region.Template:Sfnm He had been vetted for the position by senior Kremlin leaders and was informed of their decision by the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev.Template:Sfn Aged 39, he was considerably younger than his predecessors.Template:Sfn As head of the Stavropol region, he automatically became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (24th term) in 1971.Template:Sfnm According to biographer Zhores Medvedev, Gorbachev "had now joined the Party's super-elite".Template:Sfn As regional leader, Gorbachev initially attributed economic and other failures to "the inefficiency and incompetence of cadres, flaws in management structure or gaps in legislation", but eventually concluded that they were caused by an excessive centralization of decision making in Moscow.Template:Sfn He began reading translations of restricted texts by Western Marxist authors such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Aragon, Roger Garaudy, and Giuseppe Boffa, and came under their influence.Template:Sfn

File:Stavropol region. Gorbachev M.S. construction of the Great Stavropol Canal.png

Gorbachev inspecting the construction of the Great Stavropol Canal

Gorbachev's main task as regional leader was to raise agricultural production levels, a task hampered by severe droughts in 1975 and 1976.Template:Sfn He oversaw the expansion of irrigation systems through construction of the Great Stavropol Canal.Template:Sfnm For overseeing a record grain harvest in Ipatovsky district, in March 1972 he was awarded the Order of the October Revolution by Brezhnev in a Moscow ceremony.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev sought to maintain Brezhnev's trust;Template:Sfn as regional leader, he repeatedly praised Brezhnev in his speeches, for instance referring to him as "the outstanding statesman of our time".Template:Sfn Gorbachev and his wife holidayed in Moscow, Leningrad, Uzbekistan, and resorts in the North Caucasus;Template:Sfn he holidayed with the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, who was favorable towards him and who became an important patron.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev developed good relationships with senior figures including the Soviet prime minister, Alexei Kosygin,Template:Sfnm and the longstanding senior party member Mikhail Suslov.Template:Sfnm

The government considered Gorbachev sufficiently reliable to be sent in Soviet delegations to Western Europe; he made five trips there between 1970 and 1977.Template:Sfnm In September 1971 he was part of a delegation to Italy, where they met with representatives of the Italian Communist Party; Gorbachev loved Italian culture but was struck by the poverty and inequality he saw there.Template:Sfn In 1972, he visited Belgium and the Netherlands, and in 1973 West Germany.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev and his wife visited France in 1976 and 1977, on the latter occasion touring the country with a guide from the French Communist Party.Template:Sfn He was surprised by how openly West Europeans offered their opinions and criticized their political leaders, something absent from the Soviet Union, where most people did not feel safe speaking so openly.Template:Sfn He later related that for him and his wife, these visits "shook our a priori belief in the superiority of socialist over bourgeois democracy".Template:Sfn

Gorbachev had remained close to his parents; after his father became terminally ill in 1974, Gorbachev traveled to be with him in Privolnoe shortly before his death.Template:Sfn His daughter, Irina, married fellow student Anatoly Virgansky in April 1978.Template:Sfn In 1977, the Supreme Soviet appointed Gorbachev to chair the Standing Commission on Youth Affairs due to his experience with mobilizing young people in Komsomol.Template:Sfn

Secretary of the Central Committee of CPSU

File:Gorbachev M.S., Shevardnadze E.A. Georgia in 1983.png

Gorbachev, accompanied by First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party Eduard Shevardnadze, during a visit to the Georgian SSR in 1983

In November 1978, Gorbachev was appointed a Secretary of the Central Committee.Template:Sfnm His appointment was approved unanimously by the Central Committee's members.Template:Sfn To fill this position, Gorbachev and his wife moved to Moscow, where they were initially given an old dacha outside the city. They then moved to another, at Sosnovka, before being allocated a newly built brick house.Template:Sfn He was given an apartment inside the city, but gave that to his daughter and son-in-law; Irina had begun work at Moscow's Second Medical Institute.Template:Sfn As part of the Moscow political elite, Gorbachev and his wife now had access to better medical care and to specialized shops; they were given cooks, servants, bodyguards, and secretaries, many of these spies for the KGB.Template:Sfn In his new position, Gorbachev often worked twelve to sixteen hour days.Template:Sfn He and his wife socialized little, but liked to visit Moscow's theaters and museums.Template:Sfnm

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Gorbachev was skeptical of the deployment of Soviet troops in Afghanistan (pictured here in 1986)

In 1978, Gorbachev was appointed to the Central Committee's Secretariat for Agriculture (25th term), replacing his old patron Kulakov, who had died of a heart attack.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev concentrated his attentions on agriculture: the harvests of 1979, 1980, and 1981 were all poor, due largely to weather conditions,Template:Sfnm and the country had to import increasing quantities of grain.Template:Sfnm He had growing concerns about the country's agricultural management system, coming to regard it as overly centralized and requiring more bottom-up decision making;Template:Sfn he raised these points at his first speech at a Central Committee Plenum, given in July 1978.Template:Sfn He began to have concerns about other policies too. In December 1979, the Soviets sent the armed forces into neighbouring Afghanistan to support its Soviet-aligned government against Islamist insurgents; Gorbachev privately thought it a mistake.Template:Sfn At times he openly supported the government position; in October 1980 he for instance endorsed Soviet calls for Poland's Marxist–Leninist government to crack down on growing internal dissent in that country.Template:Sfn That same month, he was promoted from a candidate member to a full member of the Politburo (25th term), becoming the youngest member of the highest decision-making authority in the Communist Party.Template:Sfn After Brezhnev's death in November 1982, Andropov succeeded him as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the de facto leader in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was enthusiastic about the appointment.Template:Sfnm However, although Gorbachev hoped that Andropov would introduce liberalizing reforms, the latter carried out only personnel shifts rather than structural change.Template:Sfn Gorbachev became Andropov's closest ally in the Politburo;Template:Sfn with Andropov's encouragement, Gorbachev sometimes chaired Politburo meetings.Template:Sfn Andropov encouraged Gorbachev to expand into policy areas other than agriculture, preparing him for future higher office.Template:Sfnm In April 1983, in a sign of growing ascendancy, Gorbachev delivered the annual speech marking the birthday of the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin;Template:Sfnm this required him re-reading many of Lenin's later writings, in which the latter had called for reform in the context of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, and encouraged Gorbachev's own conviction that reform was needed.Template:Sfn In May 1983, Gorbachev was sent to Canada, where he met Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and spoke to the Canadian Parliament.Template:Sfnm There, he met and befriended the Soviet ambassador, Aleksandr Yakovlev, who later became a key political ally.Template:Sfnm

In February 1984, Andropov died; on his deathbed he indicated his desire that Gorbachev succeed him.Template:Sfnm Many in the Central Committee nevertheless thought the 53-year-old Gorbachev was too young and inexperienced.Template:Sfnm Instead, Konstantin Chernenko—a longstanding Brezhnev ally—was appointed general secretary, but he too was in very poor health.Template:Sfnm Chernenko was often too sick to chair Politburo meetings, with Gorbachev stepping in last minute.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev continued to cultivate allies both in the Kremlin and beyond,Template:Sfn and gave the main speech at a conference on Soviet ideology, where he angered party hardliners by implying that the country required reform.Template:Sfnm

In April 1984, Gorbachev was appointed chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the highest organ of state authority in the Soviet Union, a largely honorific position.Template:Sfnm In June he traveled to Italy as a Soviet representative for the funeral of Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer,Template:Sfnm and in September to Sofia, Bulgaria to attend celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of its liberation from the Nazis by the Red Army.Template:Sfn In December, he visited Britain at the request of its prime minister Margaret Thatcher; she was aware that he was a potential reformer and wanted to meet him.Template:Sfnm At the end of the visit, Thatcher said: "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together".Template:Sfnm He felt that the visit helped to erode Andrei Gromyko's dominance of Soviet foreign policy and sent a signal to the United States government that he wanted to improve Soviet–US relations.Template:Sfn

Leader of the Soviet Union (1985–1991)

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Gorbachev in 1985 at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland

On 11 March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected the eighth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by the Politburo of the CPSU after the death of Konstantin Chernenko.Template:Sfn

While Gorbachev wanted to preserve the Soviet Union and Marxist-Leninist ideals, he recognised the need for significant reforms. He decided to withdraw troops from the Soviet–Afghan WarTemplate:Sfn and met with United States president Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavik Summit to discuss the limitation of nuclear weapons production and ending the Cold War. He also proposed a three-stage programme for abolishing the world's nuclear weapons by the end of the 20th century.Template:Sfnm

Domestically, his policy of glasnost ("openness") allowed for the improvement of freedom of speech and free press,Template:Sfn while his perestroika ("restructuring") sought to decentralize economic decision-making to improve its efficiency.Template:Sfn Ultimately, Gorbachev's democratization efforts and formation of the elected Congress of People's Deputies undermined the supremacy the CPSU had in Soviet governance.Template:Sfn When various Warsaw Pact countries abandoned Marxist–Leninist governance in 1989, he declined to intervene militarily. Growing nationalist sentiment within constituent republics threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading the hardliners within the Communist Party to launch an unsuccessful coup against Gorbachev in August 1991.

Unraveling of the USSR

In the Revolutions of 1989, most of the Marxist–Leninist states of Central and Eastern Europe held multi-party elections resulting in regime change.Template:Sfn In most countries, like Poland and Hungary, this was achieved peacefully, but in Romania, the revolution turned violent, and led to Ceaușescu's overthrow and execution.Template:Sfn Gorbachev was too preoccupied with domestic problems to pay much attention to these events.Template:Sfn He believed that democratic elections would not lead Eastern European countries into abandoning their commitment to socialism.Template:Sfnm In 1989, he visited East Germany for the fortieth anniversary of its founding;Template:Sfnm shortly after, in November, the East German government allowed its citizens to cross the Berlin Wall, a decision Gorbachev praised. Over the following years, much of the wall was demolished.Template:Sfn Neither Gorbachev nor Thatcher or Mitterrand wanted a swift reunification of Germany, aware that it would likely become the dominant European power. Gorbachev wanted a gradual process of German integration but Helmut Kohl began calling for rapid reunification.Template:Sfn With German reunification in 1990, many observers declared the Cold War over.Template:Sfn

1990–1991: presidency of the Soviet Union

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Gorbachev addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 1988. During the speech, he dramatically announced deep unilateral cuts in Soviet military forces in Eastern Europe.

In February 1990, both liberalisers and Marxist–Leninist hardliners intensified their attacks on Gorbachev.Template:Sfn A liberalizer march took place in Moscow criticizing Communist Party rule,Template:Sfn while at a Central Committee meeting, the hardliner Vladimir Brovikov accused Gorbachev of reducing the country to "anarchy" and "ruin" and of pursuing Western approval at the expense of the Soviet Union and the Marxist–Leninist cause.Template:Sfn Gorbachev was aware that the Central Committee could still oust him as general secretary, and so decided to reformulate the role of head of government to a presidency from which he could not be removed.Template:Sfnm He decided that the presidential election should be held by the Congress of People's Deputies. He chose this over a public vote because he thought the latter would escalate tensions and feared that he might lose it;Template:Sfnm a spring 1990 poll nevertheless still showed him as the most popular politician in the country.Template:Sfn

In March, the Congress of People's Deputies held the first (and only) Soviet presidential election, in which Gorbachev was the only candidate. He secured 1,329 in favor to 495 against; 313 votes were invalid or absent. He therefore became the first (and only) executive President of the Soviet Union.Template:Sfnm A new 18-member Presidential Council de facto replaced the Politburo.Template:Sfnm At the same Congress meeting, he presented the idea of repealing Article 6 of the Soviet constitution, which had ratified the Communist Party as the "ruling party" of the Soviet Union. The Congress passed the reform, undermining the de jure nature of the one-party state.Template:Sfnm

In the 1990 elections for the Russian Supreme Soviet, the Communist Party faced challengers from an alliance of liberalisers known as "Democratic Russia"; the latter did particularly well in urban centers.Template:Sfnm Yeltsin was elected the parliament's chair, something Gorbachev was unhappy about.Template:Sfnm That year, opinion polls showed Yeltsin overtaking Gorbachev as the most popular politician in the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn Gorbachev struggled to understand Yeltsin's growing popularity, commenting: "he drinks like a fish ... he's inarticulate, he comes up with the devil knows what, he's like a worn-out record".Template:Sfn The Russian Supreme Soviet was now out of Gorbachev's control;Template:Sfn in June 1990, it declared that in the Russian Republic, its laws took precedence over those of the Soviet central government.Template:Sfn Amid a growth in Russian nationalist sentiment, Gorbachev had reluctantly allowed the formation of a Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as a branch of the larger Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev attended its first congress in June, but soon found it dominated by hardliners who opposed his reformist stance.Template:Sfnm

German reunification and the Gulf War

In January 1990, Gorbachev privately agreed to permit East German reunification with West Germany, but rejected the idea that a unified Germany could retain West Germany's NATO membership.Template:Sfn His compromise that Germany might retain both NATO and Warsaw Pact memberships did not attract support.Template:Sfn On 9 February 1990 in a phone conversation with James Baker, then the US secretary of state, he said that "a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable" to which Baker agreed. Scholars are puzzled why Gorbachev never pursued a written pledge. In May 1990, he visited the US for talks with President Bush;Template:Sfnm there, he agreed that an independent Germany would have the right to choose its international alliances.Template:Sfn Ultimately he acquiesced to the reunification on the condition that NATO troops not be posted to the territory of Eastern Germany.Template:Sfn There remains some confusion over whether US secretary of state James Baker led Gorbachev to believe that NATO would not expand into other countries in Eastern Europe. There was no oral or written US promise that explicitly said so. Gorbachev stated that he was only made such a promise regarding East Germany and that it was kept. In July, Kohl visited Moscow and Gorbachev informed him that the Soviets would not oppose a reunified Germany's being part of NATO.Template:Sfn Domestically, Gorbachev's critics accused him of betraying the national interest;Template:Sfn more broadly, they were angry that Gorbachev had allowed the Eastern Bloc to move away from direct Soviet influence.Template:Sfn

File:Bush Gorba P15623-25A.jpg

In September 1990, Gorbachev met repeatedly with US president George H. W. Bush at the Helsinki Summit.

In August 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government invaded Kuwait; Gorbachev endorsed President Bush's condemnation of it. This brought criticism from many in the Soviet state apparatus, who saw Hussein as a key ally in the Persian Gulf and feared for the safety of the 9,000 Soviet citizens in Iraq, although Gorbachev argued that the Iraqis were the clear aggressors.Template:Sfnm In November the Soviets endorsed a UN Resolution permitting force to be used in expelling the Iraqi Army from Kuwait.Template:Sfn Gorbachev later called it a "watershed" in world politics, "the first time the superpowers acted together in a regional crisis".Template:Sfn However, when the US announced plans for a ground invasion, Gorbachev opposed it, urging instead a peaceful solution.Template:Sfn In October 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; he was flattered but acknowledged "mixed feelings" about the accolade.Template:Sfnm Polls indicated that 90% of Soviet citizens disapproved of the award, widely seen as an anti-Soviet accolade.Template:Sfn

With the Soviet budget deficit climbing and no domestic money markets to provide the state with loans, Gorbachev looked elsewhere.Template:Sfn Throughout 1991, Gorbachev requested sizable loans from Western countries and Japan, hoping to keep the Soviet economy afloat and ensure the success of perestroika.Template:Sfn Although the Soviet Union had been excluded from the G7, Gorbachev secured an invitation to its London summit in July 1991.Template:Sfnm There, he continued to call for financial assistance; Mitterrand and Kohl backed him,Template:Sfn while Thatcher—no longer in office—urged Western leaders to agree.Template:Sfnm Most G7 members were reluctant, instead offering technical assistance and proposing the Soviets receive "special associate" status—rather than full membership—of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev was frustrated that the US would spend $100 billion on the Gulf War but would not offer his country loans.Template:Sfnm Other countries were more forthcoming; West Germany had given the Soviets DM60 billion by mid-1991.Template:Sfn Bush visited Moscow in late July, when he and Gorbachev concluded ten years of negotiations by signing the START I treaty, a bilateral agreement on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms.Template:Sfnm

August coup and government crises

File:GorbachevMS.jpg

Gorbachev in October 1991

At the 28th Communist Party Congress in July 1990, hardliners criticized the reformists, but Gorbachev was re-elected party leader.Template:Sfnm Seeking compromise with the liberalizers, Gorbachev assembled a team of his own and Yeltsin's advisers to come up with an economic reform package: the result was the "500 Days" programme. This called for further decentralization and some privatization.Template:Sfnm In September, Yeltsin presented the plan to the Russian Supreme Soviet, which backed it.Template:Sfnm Many in the Communist Party and state apparatus warned against it, and it was abandoned.Template:Sfn

By mid-November 1990, much of the press was calling for Gorbachev to resign and predicting civil war.Template:Sfn In November, he announced an eight-point program with governmental reforms, among them the abolition of the presidential council.Template:Sfnm By this point, Gorbachev was isolated from many of his former close allies and aides.Template:Sfn Yakovlev had moved out of his inner circle and Eduard Shevardnadze had resigned.Template:Sfnm

Amid growing dissent in the Baltics, in January 1991 Gorbachev demanded that the Lithuanian Supreme Council rescind its pro-independence reforms.Template:Sfn Soviet troops occupied buildings in Vilnius and attacked protesters, 15 of whom were killed.Template:Sfnm A referendum on the issue brought 76.4% in favor of continued federation; the six rebellious republics had not taken part.Template:Sfnm Negotiations took place to decide what form the new constitution would take; it was planned to be signed in August.Template:Sfn

File:August 1991 coup - awaiting the counterattack outside the White House Moscow - panoramio.jpg

Tens of thousands of anti-coup protesters surrounding the White House in Moscow.

In August, Gorbachev holidayed at his dacha in Foros, Crimea.Template:Sfnm Two weeks into his holiday, a group of senior Communist Party figures—the "Gang of Eight" launched a coup d'état.Template:Sfn The coup leaders demanded that Gorbachev declare a state of emergency, but he refused.Template:Sfn He was kept under house arrest in the dacha.Template:Sfn The coup plotters publicly announced that Gorbachev was ill and thus Vice President Yanayev would take charge of the country.Template:Sfnm

Yeltsin entered the Moscow White House. Protesters prevented troops storming the building to arrest him.Template:Sfnm In front of the White House, Yeltsin, atop a tank, gave a memorable speech condemning the coup. The coup's leaders realized that they lacked sufficient support and ended their efforts.Template:Sfn Gorbachev returned to Moscow and thanked Yeltsin.Template:Sfn Two days later, he resigned as general secretary.Template:Sfnm

Final days and collapse

After the coup, the Supreme Soviet indefinitely suspended all Communist Party activity, effectively ending communist rule in the Soviet Union.

File:RIAN archive 848095 Signing the Agreement to eliminate the USSR and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States.jpg

Leaders of the Soviet Republics sign the Belovezha Accords, which eliminated the USSR and established the Commonwealth of Independent States, 1991

On 30 October, Gorbachev attended a conference in Madrid trying to revive the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. The event was co-sponsored by the US and Soviet Union. There, he again met with Bush.Template:Sfnm En route home, he traveled to France where he stayed with Mitterrand at the latter's home near Bayonne.Template:Sfnm

To maintain unity, Gorbachev continued to plan for a union treaty, but met opposition to the continuation of a federal state as the leaders of several Soviet republics bowed to nationalist pressure.Template:Sfn Yeltsin stated that he would veto any idea of a unified state, instead favoring a confederation with little central authority.Template:Sfnm Only the leaders of Kazakhstan and Kirghizia supported Gorbachev's approach.Template:Sfn The referendum in Ukraine on 1 December with a 90% turnout for secession from the Union was a fatal blow; Gorbachev had expected Ukrainians to reject independence.Template:Sfnm

File:Cold War border changes.png

Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991

Without Gorbachev's knowledge, Yeltsin met with Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk and Belarusian president Stanislav Shushkevich in Belovezha Forest, near Brest, Belarus, on 8 December and signed the Belavezha Accords, which declared the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as its successor.Template:Sfnm Gorbachev only learned of this development when Shushkevich phoned him; Gorbachev was furious.Template:Sfnm He desperately looked for an opportunity to preserve the Soviet Union, hoping that the media and intelligentsia would rally against its dissolution.Template:Sfn Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian Supreme Soviets then ratified the establishment of the CIS.Template:Sfnm On 9 December, Gorbachev issued a statement calling the CIS agreement "illegal and dangerous".Template:Sfn On 20 December, the leaders of 11 of the 12 remaining republics—all except Georgia—met in Kazakhstan and signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, agreeing to dismantle the Soviet Union and formally establish the CIS. They provisionally accepted Gorbachev's resignation as president of what remained of the Soviet Union. Accepting the fait accompli, Gorbachev said he would resign as soon as he saw that the CIS was a reality.Template:Sfn

Gorbachev reached a deal with Yeltsin that called for Gorbachev to announce his resignation as Soviet president and Commander-in-Chief on 25 December, vacating the Kremlin by 29 December.Template:Sfn Yakovlev, Chernyaev and Shevardnadze joined Gorbachev to help him write a resignation speech.Template:Sfn Gorbachev gave his speech in the Kremlin in front of television cameras, for international broadcast.Template:Sfnm In it, he announced, "I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." He expressed regret for the breakup of the Soviet Union but cited what he saw as the achievements of his administration: political and religious freedom, the end of totalitarianism, the introduction of democracy and a market economy, and an end to the arms race and Cold War.Template:Sfn Gorbachev was the third out of eight Soviet leaders, after Malenkov and Khrushchev, not to die in office.Template:Sfn The following day, 26 December, the Soviet of the Republics, the upper house of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, voted the country out of existence. As of 31 December 1991, all Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased to function.Template:Sfn

Post-USSR life

1991–1999: Initial years

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Gorbachev visiting Reagan, at Reagan's ranch and vacation home in 1992

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Gorbachev giving a speech at the Legislative Yuan in Taiwan, 1994

Out of office, he and Raisa initially lived in their dilapidated dacha on Rublevskoe Shosse, and were allowed to privatize their smaller apartment on Kosygin Street.Template:Sfn He focused on establishing his foundation, launched in March 1992;Template:Sfnm Yakovlev and Revenko were its first vice presidents.Template:Sfn Its initial tasks were analyzing and publishing material on the history of perestroika, and defending the policy. The foundation tasked itself with monitoring and critiquing life in post-Soviet Russia, presenting alternative development forms to Yeltsin's.Template:Sfn

To finance his foundation, Gorbachev began lecturing internationally, charging large fees.Template:Sfn On a visit to Japan, he was given multiple honorary degrees.Template:Sfn In 1992, he toured the US in a Forbes private jet to raise money for his foundation, meeting the Reagans for a social visit.Template:Sfn From there he went to Spain, where he met with his friend Prime Minister Felipe González.Template:Sfn He further visited Israel and Germany, where he was received warmly for his role in facilitating German reunification.Template:Sfn To supplement his lecture fees and book sales, Gorbachev appeared in television commercials and photograph advertisements, enabling him to keep the foundation afloat.Template:Sfn With his wife's assistance, he worked on his memoirs, which were published in Russian in 1995 and in English the following year.Template:Sfnm He began writing a monthly syndicated column for The New York Times.Template:Sfn

In 1993, Gorbachev launched Green Cross International, which focused on encouraging sustainable futures, and then the World Political Forum.Template:Sfn In 1995, he initiated the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. Template:External media

Gorbachev and Yeltsin soon resumed their criticism of each other,Template:Sfn for example when Yeltsin lifted price caps and plunged many Russians into poverty.Template:Sfn In 1995, his foundation held a conference on "The Intelligentsia and Perestroika", proposing to the Duma a law that would reduce many of the presidential powers established by Yeltsin's 1993 constitution.Template:Sfn

File:Mikhail Gorbachev with Carlos Menem.jpg

Gorbachev with Argentine president Carlos Menem in 1999

In contrast to her husband's political activities, Raisa focused on campaigning for children's charities.Template:Sfn In 1997, she founded a sub-division of the Gorbachev Foundation known as Raisa Maksimovna's Club to improve women's welfare in Russia.Template:Sfn The Foundation had initially been housed in the former Social Science Institute building, but Yeltsin introduced limits to the number of rooms it could use there;Template:Sfn the American philanthropist Ted Turner donated over $1 million to enable the foundation to build new premises on the Leningradsky Prospekt.Template:Sfn In 1999, Gorbachev visited Australia, giving a speech to the country's parliament.Template:Sfn Shortly after, in July, Raisa was diagnosed with leukemia. With the assistance of German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, she was transferred to a cancer center in Münster, Germany, and underwent chemotherapy.Template:Sfn She died in September,Template:Sfn and Gorbachev's daughter Irina and his two granddaughters moved into his Moscow home to live with him.Template:Sfn

File:RIAN archive 46207 Funeral of Raisa Gorbachev.jpg

Gorbachev, daughter Irina and his wife's sister Lyudmila at the funeral of Raisa, 1999

1996 presidential campaign

The Russian presidential elections were scheduled for June 1996, and although he was urged not to run, Gorbachev decided to do so.Template:Sfn He never expected to win outright, but thought a centrist bloc could be formed around either himself or one of the other candidates with similar views, such as Grigory Yavlinsky, Svyatoslav Fyodorov, or Alexander Lebed.Template:Sfn After securing the necessary one million signatures of nomination, he announced his candidacy in March.Template:Sfn Launching his campaign, he traveled across Russia giving rallies in twenty cities.Template:Sfn He repeatedly faced anti-Gorbachev protesters, while some pro-Yeltsin local officials tried to hamper his campaign by banning local media from covering it or by refusing him access to venues.Template:Sfn In the election, Gorbachev came seventh with approximately 386,000 votes, or around 0.5% of the total.Template:Sfn Yeltsin and Zyuganov went through to the second round, where the former was victorious.Template:Sfn

1999–2008: Promoting social democracy in Putin's Russia

File:Inauguration of Vladimir Putin 7 May 2000-13.jpg

Gorbachev attended the inauguration of Vladimir Putin in May 2000.

In December 1999, Yeltsin resigned and was succeeded by his deputy, Vladimir Putin, who won the March 2000 presidential election.Template:Sfn Gorbachev initially welcomed Putin's rise, seeing him as an anti-Yeltsin figure.Template:Sfn Although he spoke out against some of the Putin government's actions, Gorbachev praised the new government in 2002.Template:Sfn At the time, he believed Putin to be a committed democrat who nevertheless had to use "a certain dose of authoritarianism" to stabilize the economy and rebuild the state after the Yeltsin era.Template:Sfn At Putin's request, Gorbachev became co-chair of the "Petersburg Dialogue" project between high-ranking Russians and Germans.Template:Sfn

In 2000, Gorbachev helped form the Russian United Social Democratic Party.Template:Sfn In June 2002, he participated in a meeting with Putin, who praised the venture.Template:Sfn In 2003, Gorbachev's party merged with the Social Democratic Party to form the Social Democratic Party of Russia,Template:Sfn but it failed to gain traction with voters.Template:Sfn Gorbachev resigned as party leader in May 2004 after the 2003 election campaign. The party was banned in 2007 by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation due to its failure to establish local offices with at least 500 members in the majority of Russian regions. Later that year, Gorbachev founded a new movement, the Union of Social Democrats, stating that it would not contest the forthcoming elections.

Gorbachev was critical of US hostility to Putin, arguing that the US government "doesn't want Russia to rise" again as a global power, but wanted to be "the sole superpower".Template:Sfn Gorbachev was critical of US policy following the Cold War, arguing that the West had attempted to "turn [Russia] into some kind of backwater".Template:Sfn He rejected Bush's claim that the US had "won" the Cold War, arguing that both sides had cooperated to end the conflict.Template:Sfn He was critical of how the US had broken its word and expanded NATO right up to Russia's borders.Template:Sfn He spoke out against the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia because it lacked UN backing, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the US.Template:Sfn

2008–2022: Growing criticism of Vladimir Putin

In September 2008, Gorbachev and business oligarch Alexander Lebedev announced they would form the Independent Democratic Party of Russia. After the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian War, Gorbachev spoke out against US support for Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. Gorbachev nevertheless remained critical of Russia's government.Template:Sfn

File:Barack Obama & Joe Biden with Mikhail Gorbachev 3-20.09.jpg

Gorbachev (right) being introduced to US president Barack Obama by US vice president Joe Biden, March 2009. US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul is pictured in the background.

In 2009, he met with US president Barack Obama to "reset" strained US–Russian relations. In 2011, Medvedev awarded him the Order of St Andrew the Apostle the First-Called.Template:Sfn

Gorbachev opposed Putin's decision to run for president in the 2012 election.Template:Sfn

In 2014, he defended the Crimean status referendum and Russia's annexation of Crimea that began the Russo-Ukrainian War.Template:Sfn He spoke out against the sanctions placed on Russia as a result of the annexation.

Russia can succeed only through democracy. Russia is ready for political competition, a real multiparty system, fair elections and regular rotation of government. This should define the role and responsibility of the president.

– Gorbachev, 2017

At a 2014 event marking 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev warned that the ongoing war in Donbas had brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War, and he accused the US of adopting an attitude of "triumphalism" towards Russia. In 2016, he said that "Politicians who think that problems and disputes can be solved by using military force... should be rejected by society, they should clear the political stage." In June 2018, he welcomed the Russia–United States summit in Helsinki between Putin and US president Donald Trump. After the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Gorbachev declared, "The storming of the capitol was clearly planned in advance, and it's obvious by whom."

In July 2022, Gorbachev's close friend, journalist Alexei Venediktov, said that Gorbachev was very upset when he found out that Putin had launched an invasion of Ukraine. According to Venediktov, Gorbachev believed that Putin "destroyed his life's work", and was calling for "an early cessation of hostilities and immediate start of peace negotiations".

Political ideology

In the early 1950s, Gorbachev was conventionally Stalinist.Template:Sfn By the mid-1980s, when he took power, Gorbachev argued that the Communist Party had to adapt and engage in creative thinking much as Lenin had earlier creatively interpreted and adapted the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to the situation of early 20th-century Russia.Template:Sfn However, the changes that Gorbachev proposed fitted completely within Marxist-Leninist ideology.Template:Sfn Gorbachev's political outlook was shaped by the 23 years he served as a party official in Stavropol.Template:SfnTemplate:Additional citation needed Perestroika was harder to define, and its meaning shifted with time.Template:Sfn It originally meant "radical reform of the economic and political system".Template:Sfn Later, Gorbachev began to consider market mechanisms and co-operatives.Template:Sfn Gorbachev however remained a believer in socialism, if not in the actual Soviet system.Template:Sfn During the 1980s, his thought radically shifted,Template:Sfn to the extent that by 1989 or 1990, he was effectively a social democrat.Template:SfnTemplate:Additional citation needed

Personal life

File:Gorbachev Party Document of the CPSU.gif

The official Soviet portrait of Gorbachev. Many official photographs and visual depictions of Gorbachev removed the port-wine birthmark from his head.Template:Sfn

Gorbachev spoke in a southern Russian accent,Template:Sfnm and sang both folk and pop songs.Template:Sfn Throughout his life, he tried to dress fashionably.Template:Sfn Having an aversion to hard liquor,Template:Sfn he drank sparingly and did not smoke.Template:Sfn He was protective of his private lifeTemplate:Sfn and cherished his wife and family.Template:Sfn He sent his daughter, his only child, to a local school in Stavropol rather than to one for the children of party elites.Template:Sfn Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Soviet administration, he treated women respectfully.Template:Sfn

Gorbachev was baptized Russian Orthodox; his grandparents had been practicing Christians.Template:Sfn In 2008, after he visited the tomb of St Francis of Assisi, he clarified that he was an atheist. Gorbachev considered himself an intellectual;Template:Sfn Doder and Branson thought that "his intellectualism was slightly self-conscious",Template:Sfn noting that unlike most Russian intelligentsia, Gorbachev was not closely connected "to the world of science, culture, the arts, or education".Template:Sfn When living in Stavropol, he and his wife collected hundreds of books.Template:Sfn Among his favorite authors were Arthur Miller, Dostoevsky, and Chinghiz Aitmatov, while he also enjoyed reading detective fiction.Template:Sfn He enjoyed going for walks,Template:Sfn having a love of natural environments,Template:Sfn and was also a fan of association football.Template:Sfn He favored small gatherings where the assembled discussed topics like art and philosophy rather than the large, alcohol-fueled parties common among Soviet officials.Template:Sfn

Death

File:Mikhail Gorbachev Lying in repose.jpg

Gorbachev lying in state at the House of Unions

Gorbachev died at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow on 30 August 2022, at the age of 91. He died after a "severe and prolonged illness". He had suffered from severe diabetes and underwent several surgeries and hospital stays.

His funeral was held on 3 September 2022 in the Column Hall of the House of Unions. The ceremony included an honor guard, but was not a state funeral. The service included rites administered by a Russian Orthodox priest. He is buried at Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, in the same grave as his wife Raisa, as requested by his will.

Reception and legacy

Opinions on Gorbachev are deeply divided.Template:Sfn According to a 2017 survey carried out by the independent institute Levada Center, 46% of Russian citizens have a negative opinion towards Gorbachev, 30% are indifferent, while only 15% have a positive opinion. Many, particularly in Western countries, see him as the greatest statesman of the second half of the 20th century.Template:Sfn US press referred to the presence of "Gorbymania" in Western countries during the late 1980s and early 1990s, as represented by large crowds that turned out to greet his visits,Template:Sfnm with Time naming him its "Man of the Decade" in the 1980s.Template:Sfn In the Soviet Union itself, opinion polls indicated that Gorbachev was the most popular politician from 1985 through to late 1989.Template:Sfn His domestic supporters saw him as a reformer trying to modernise the Soviet Union,Template:Sfn and to build democratic socialism.Template:Sfn Taubman characterized Gorbachev as "a visionary who changed his country and the world—though neither as much as he wished".Template:Sfn Taubman regarded Gorbachev as being "exceptional ... as a Russian ruler and a world statesman", highlighting that he avoided the "traditional, authoritarian, anti-Western norm" of both predecessors like Brezhnev and successors like Putin.Template:Sfn McCauley thought that in allowing the Soviet Union to move away from Marxism–Leninism, Gorbachev gave the Soviet people "something precious, the right to think and manage their lives for themselves", with inevitable uncertainty and risk.Template:Sfn The Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that Lithuanians would not glorify Gorbachev or forget about the 1991 January Events.

Gorbachev succeeded in destroying what was left of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union; he brought freedom of speech, of assembly, and of conscience to people who had never known it, except perhaps for a few chaotic months in 1917. By introducing free elections and creating parliamentary institutions, he laid the groundwork for democracy. It is more the fault of the raw material he worked with than of his own real shortcomings and mistakes that Russian democracy will take much longer to build than he thought.

— Gorbachev biographer William Taubman, 2017Template:Sfn

Gorbachev's negotiations with the US helped bring an end to the Cold War and reduced the threat of nuclear conflict.Template:Sfn His decision to allow the Eastern Bloc to break apart prevented significant bloodshed in Central and Eastern Europe; as Taubman noted, this meant that the "Soviet Empire" ended in a far more peaceful manner than the British Empire several decades before.Template:Sfn Similarly, under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union broke apart without falling into civil war, as happened during the breakup of Yugoslavia at the same time.Template:Sfnm McCauley noted that in facilitating the merger of East and West Germany, Gorbachev was "a co-father of German unification", assuring him long-term popularity among the German people.Template:Sfn

He faced domestic criticism during his rule. He attracted the admiration of some colleagues, but others came to hate him.Template:Sfn Across society, his inability to reverse the decline in the Soviet economy brought discontent.Template:Sfn Liberals thought he lacked the radicalism to break from Marxism–Leninism and establish a free market liberal democracy.Template:Sfnm Conversely, many of his Communist Party critics thought his reforms were reckless and threatened the survival of Soviet socialism;Template:Sfn some believed he should have followed the example of China's Communist Party and restricted himself to economic rather than governmental reforms.Template:Sfn Many Russians saw his emphasis on persuasion rather than force as a sign of weakness.Template:Sfn

The Communist Party nomenklatura saw the Soviet Union's dissolution as disastrous, as it resulted in their loss of power.Template:Sfn In Russia, he is widely despised for his role in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing economic collapse in the 1990s.Template:Sfn General Varennikov, one of those who orchestrated the 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev, for instance called him "a renegade and traitor to your own people".Template:Sfn His critics attacked him for allowing the Marxist–Leninist governments across Eastern Europe to fall,Template:Sfn and for allowing a reunited Germany to join NATO, something they deem contrary to Russia's national interest.Template:Sfn The leader of the Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, stated that Gorbachev was a leader whose rule brought "absolute sadness, misfortune and problems" for "all the peoples of our country".

The historian Mark Galeotti stressed the connection between Gorbachev and his predecessor, Andropov. In Galeotti's view, Andropov was "the godfather of the Gorbachev revolution", because—as a former head of the KGB—he was able to put forward the case for reform without having his loyalty to the Soviet cause questioned.Template:Sfn According to McCauley, Gorbachev "set reforms in motion without understanding where they could lead. Never in his worst nightmare could he have imagined that perestroika would lead to the destruction of the Soviet Union".Template:Sfn

According to The New York Times, "Few leaders in the 20th century, indeed in any century, have had such a profound effect on their time. In little more than six tumultuous years, Mr. Gorbachev lifted the Iron Curtain, decisively altering the political climate of the world."

Awards and honors

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Former US president Ronald Reagan awards the first Ronald Reagan Freedom Award to Gorbachev at the Reagan Library, 1992

In 1988, India awarded Gorbachev the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development;Template:Sfn in 1990, he was given the Nobel Peace Prize for "his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community". Out of office he continued to receive honors. In 1992, he was the first recipient of the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award, and in 1994 was given the Grawemeyer Award by the University of Louisville, Kentucky. In 1995, he was awarded the Grand-Cross of the Order of Liberty by Portuguese president Mário Soares, and in 1998 the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2000, he was presented with the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement at an awards ceremony at Hampton Court Palace near London. In 2002, Gorbachev received the Freedom of the City of Dublin from Dublin City Council.

In 2002, Gorbachev was awarded the Charles V Prize by the European Academy of Yuste Foundation. Gorbachev, together with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren, were awarded the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for their recording of Sergei Prokofiev's 1936 Peter and the Wolf for Pentatone. In 2005, Gorbachev was awarded the Point Alpha Prize for his role in supporting German reunification.

Bibliography

Year	Title	Co-author	Publisher
1987	Perestroika – New Thinking for our Country and the World	–	Harper & Row
1996	Memoirs	–	Doubleday
2005	Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century: Gorbachev and Ikeda on Buddhism and Communism	Daisaku Ikeda	I. B. Tauris
2016	The New Russia	–	Polity
2018	In a Changing World	–
2020	What is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom	–	Polity

In popular culture

File:InSapphoWeTrust - Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Mikhail Gorbachev at Madame Tussauds London (8480300191).jpg

Waxworks of Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev at the Madame Tussauds, London

In 2020 and 2021, the Theatre of Nations in Moscow, in collaboration with Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, staged a production called Gorbachev. Yevgeny Mironov and Chulpan Khamatova played the roles of Gorbachev and his wife Raisa respectively.

Gorbachev was portrayed by David Dencik in the 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, by Matthew Marsh in the 2023 film Tetris and by Aleksander Krupa in the 2024 biographical drama Reagan.

Gorbachev appears in the videogame Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War during a mission where the playable character infiltrates the KGB headquarter. Gorbachev is portrayed by David Agranov.

See also

• Index of Soviet Union–related articles
• List of peace activists
• List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates

Further reading

• Brown, Archie. The human factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the end of the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2020). Template:ISBN
• Duncan, W. Raymond, and Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl. Moscow and the third world under Gorbachev (Routledge, 2020). Template:ISBN
• Eklof, Ben. Soviet briefing: Gorbachev and the reform period (Routledge, 2019). Template:ISBN
• Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (2nd ed. 2008) excerpt Template:Webarchive
• Kramer, Mark. "Mikhail Gorbachev and the Origins of Perestroika: A Retrospective." Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 29.3 (2021): 255–258.
• Lane, David. "The Gorbachev revolution: The role of the political elite in regime disintegration." Political studies 44.1 (1996): 4–23.
• McHugh, James T. "Last of the enlightened despots: A comparison of President Mikhail Gorbachev and Emperor Joseph II." Social Science Journal 32.1 (1995): 69–85 online abstract Template:Webarchive.
• Woodby, Sylvia Babus. Gorbachev and the decline of ideology in Soviet foreign policy (Routledge, 2019). Template:ISBN
• Ostrovsky, Alexander (2010). Кто поставил Горбачёва? (Who put Gorbachev?) Template:Webarchive – М.: Алгоритм-Эксмо, 2010. – 544 с. Template:ISBN.
• Ostrovsky, Alexander (2011). Глупость или измена? Расследование гибели СССР. (Stupidity or treason? Investigation of the death of the USSR) Template:Webarchive М.: Форум, Крымский мост-9Д, 2011. – 864 с. Template:ISBN.

External links

• Template:Official website
• Template:New York Times topic
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