Mikhail Gorbachev Former President Of The Soviet Union Who Brought Down The Iron Curtain Dies

The man credited with introducing key political and economic reforms to the USSR and helping to end the Cold War had been in poor health for some time. With his outgoing, charismatic nature, Gorbachev broke the mold for Soviet leaders who until then had mostly been aloof, frosty figures. Almost from the beginning of his leadership, he tried for important reforms to make the system work more efficiently and more democratically. Hence the two key phrases of the Gorbachev era: “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring). “I started these reforms and my stars were freedom and democracy, without bloodshed. So the people would cease to be a flock led by a shepherd. They would become citizens,” he later said.

From farm labor to rising party star

Gorbachev had humble beginnings: He was born into a farming family on March 2, 1931 near Stavropol, and as a boy he did farm work alongside his studies, working with his father who was a combine operator. In later life, Gorbachev said he was “particularly proud of my ability to immediately detect a fault in the combine, just by the sound of it”. He joined the Communist Party in 1952 and completed a law degree at Moscow University in 1955. There he met — and married — fellow student Raisa Titarenko.
In the early 1960s, Gorbachev became head of the agriculture department for the Stavropol region. By the end of the decade he had risen to the top of the party hierarchy in the region. He came to the attention of Mikhail Suslov and Yuri Andropov, members of the Politburo, the main policy-making body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who elected him to the Central Committee in 1971 and arranged trips abroad for their rising star.
In 1978, Gorbachev returned to Moscow and the following year was selected as a candidate for the Politburo. The management of Soviet agriculture was not successful. As he realized, the collective system was fundamentally flawed in more ways than one. A regular member of the Politburo since 1980, Gorbachev gained greater influence in 1982 when his mentor, Andropov, succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as party general secretary. He built a reputation as an enemy of corruption and inefficiency, eventually rising to the top of the party in March 1985.

“A man to do business with”

Hoping to shift resources to the political sector of the Soviet economy, Gorbachev began arguing for an end to the arms race with the West.
But throughout his six years in office, Gorbachev always seemed to move too fast for the party establishment — which saw its privileges under threat — and too slow for more radical reformers, who hoped to abolish one-party state and the mandate economy. Desperate to maintain control of the reform process, he appeared to have underestimated the depth of the financial crisis. He also seemed to have a blind spot about the power of the nationality issue: Glasnost created increasingly strong calls for independence from the Baltic and other Soviet republics in the late 1980s.
He was successful in foreign policy, but mostly from an international perspective, with other world leaders taking note. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called him “a man to do business with”.
In 1986, face-to-face with US President Ronald Reagan at a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev made a stunning proposal: eliminate all long-range missiles possessed by the United States and the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 “for his leading role in the peace process that today characterizes important parts of the international community”. The resulting pact, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, endured as a pillar of arms control for three decades until, in 2019, the United States formally withdrew and the Russian government said it had been consigned to the dustbin.

Revolt of the hardliners

While Gorbachev’s arms control agreements with the US could be seen as in the Soviet interest, the secession of some Eastern European countries, followed by German unification and NATO membership for the newly unified Germany (the West Germany was previously in NATO ), angered old-school communists.
By August 1991, the hardliners had had enough. With Gorbachev vacationing in the Crimea, they staged an uprising. Boris Yeltsin, the president of the largest Soviet republic — Russia — and a staunch critic of what he saw as Gorbachev’s half-way reforms, nevertheless came to his rescue, confronting and defeating the coup plotters.
But throughout the Soviet Union, republics — one after another — declared their independence, and on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. As he read his resignation speech, Gorbachev defined what his likely legacy would be: “The country received freedom, it was liberated politically and spiritually, and that was the most important achievement.”
The red flag that flew over the Kremlin, a symbol of the USSR, came down. The Soviet Union — it was over and Yeltsin was in control. “We live in a new world,” Gorbachev said.
In April 2012, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Gorbachev if he had planned the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev said that there was nothing in his speeches “to the end” that advocated its dissolution: “The dissolution of the union was the result of the betrayal of the Soviet nomenklatura, the bureaucracy, as well as the betrayal of Yeltsin. He spoke of working together me, working with me on a new treaty of union, signed the draft treaty of union, initialed that treaty. But at the same time, he was working behind my back.” In 1996 Gorbachev ran against Yeltsin for the Russian presidency but received less than 1% of the vote.

Speaking out after the presidency

Three years later, Gorbachev lost the love of his life — his wife of 46 years, Raisa — to cancer. The couple had a daughter, Irina. “At the worst times I was always very calm and balanced. But now that he’s gone — I don’t want to live. The center of our lives is gone,” she said.
But Gorbachev continued, speaking out on nuclear disarmament, the environment, poverty — and in his wife’s memory, he and his family founded the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation to fight childhood cancer. Previously, he had founded the Green Cross — to deal with ecological issues — and the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies, or the Gorbachev Foundation. In 2011, Gorbachev also launched the annual “Gorbachev Awards” to celebrate “those who have changed the world for the better”. Gorbachev’s involvement in Russian politics also continued. He was head of the Social Democratic Party of Russia from 2001 until his resignation in 2004 due to conflicts with the direction and leadership of the party. In 2007, he became head of a new Russian political movement — the Union of Social Democrats, which in turn founded the opposition Independent Democratic Party of Russia.
He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2012 that he agreed that Russian democracy is “alive,” but added: “That it’s ‘good’… not so. I’m alive, but I can’t say I’m well.” He explained that “the institutions of democracy do not work effectively in Russia, because they are not free after all.”

Mixed heritage

In an interview with CNN in 2019, Gorbachev said the US and Russia should try to avoid the development of a “New Cold War” despite worsening tensions. “This could turn out to be a hot war that could mean the destruction of our entire civilization. This must not be allowed,” he said. And asked about scrapping the 1987 treaty he signed with Reagan, Gorbachev expressed hope that such arms control agreements could be revived. “All the agreements that are there are preserved and not destroyed,” he said. “But these are the first steps towards his destruction [that which] it must not be destroyed under any circumstances.” The ultimate goal of arms control, he added, must be complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Gorbachev’s post-USSR life also included some surprises as he worked to raise money for his causes by appearing in advertisements for Pizza Hut and Louis Vuitton. In 2004 Gorbachev won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for “Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf / Beintus: Wolf Tracks”, which he recorded with former US President Bill Clinton and actress Sophia Loren. Other awards included the 2008 Medal of Freedom from the US National Constitution Center and Russia’s highest honor, the Order of St. Andrew, given to him on his 80th birthday in 2011 by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. But to the end, Gorbachev was a leader who was more respected abroad than at home. In Russia, he was vilified by some for destroying the Soviet empire and by others for moving too slowly to free his nation from the grip of communism. In the West, however, he remains the Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped end the Cold War. Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Gorbachev died at 91. CNN’s Tim Lister contributed reporting.

title: “Mikhail Gorbachev Former President Of The Soviet Union Who Brought Down The Iron Curtain Dies Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-23” author: “Mark Johnson”

The man credited with introducing key political and economic reforms to the USSR and helping to end the Cold War had been in poor health for some time. With his outgoing, charismatic nature, Gorbachev broke the mold for Soviet leaders who until then had mostly been aloof, frosty figures. Almost from the beginning of his leadership, he tried for important reforms to make the system work more efficiently and more democratically. Hence the two key phrases of the Gorbachev era: “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring). “I started these reforms and my stars were freedom and democracy, without bloodshed. So the people would cease to be a flock led by a shepherd. They would become citizens,” he later said.

From farm labor to rising party star

Gorbachev had humble beginnings: He was born into a farming family on March 2, 1931 near Stavropol, and as a boy he did farm work alongside his studies, working with his father who was a combine operator. In later life, Gorbachev said he was “particularly proud of my ability to immediately detect a fault in the combine, just by the sound of it”. He joined the Communist Party in 1952 and completed a law degree at Moscow University in 1955. There he met — and married — fellow student Raisa Titarenko.
In the early 1960s, Gorbachev became head of the agriculture department for the Stavropol region. By the end of the decade he had risen to the top of the party hierarchy in the region. He came to the attention of Mikhail Suslov and Yuri Andropov, members of the Politburo, the main policy-making body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who elected him to the Central Committee in 1971 and arranged trips abroad for their rising star.
In 1978, Gorbachev returned to Moscow and the following year was selected as a candidate for the Politburo. The management of Soviet agriculture was not successful. As he realized, the collective system was fundamentally flawed in more ways than one. A regular member of the Politburo since 1980, Gorbachev gained greater influence in 1982 when his mentor, Andropov, succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as party general secretary. He built a reputation as an enemy of corruption and inefficiency, eventually rising to the top of the party in March 1985.

“A man to do business with”

Hoping to shift resources to the political sector of the Soviet economy, Gorbachev began arguing for an end to the arms race with the West.
But throughout his six years in office, Gorbachev always seemed to move too fast for the party establishment — which saw its privileges under threat — and too slow for more radical reformers, who hoped to abolish one-party state and the mandate economy. Desperate to maintain control of the reform process, he appeared to have underestimated the depth of the financial crisis. He also seemed to have a blind spot about the power of the nationality issue: Glasnost created increasingly strong calls for independence from the Baltic and other Soviet republics in the late 1980s.
He was successful in foreign policy, but mostly from an international perspective, with other world leaders taking note. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called him “a man to do business with”.
In 1986, face-to-face with US President Ronald Reagan at a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev made a stunning proposal: eliminate all long-range missiles possessed by the United States and the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 “for his leading role in the peace process that today characterizes important parts of the international community”. The resulting pact, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, endured as a pillar of arms control for three decades until, in 2019, the United States formally withdrew and the Russian government said it had been consigned to the dustbin.

Revolt of the hardliners

While Gorbachev’s arms control agreements with the US could be seen as in the Soviet interest, the secession of some Eastern European countries, followed by German unification and NATO membership for the newly unified Germany (the West Germany was previously in NATO ), angered old-school communists.
By August 1991, the hardliners had had enough. With Gorbachev vacationing in the Crimea, they staged an uprising. Boris Yeltsin, the president of the largest Soviet republic — Russia — and a staunch critic of what he saw as Gorbachev’s half-way reforms, nevertheless came to his rescue, confronting and defeating the coup plotters.
But throughout the Soviet Union, republics — one after another — declared their independence, and on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. As he read his resignation speech, Gorbachev defined what his likely legacy would be: “The country received freedom, it was liberated politically and spiritually, and that was the most important achievement.”
The red flag that flew over the Kremlin, a symbol of the USSR, came down. The Soviet Union — it was over and Yeltsin was in control. “We live in a new world,” Gorbachev said.
In April 2012, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Gorbachev if he had planned the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev said that there was nothing in his speeches “to the end” that advocated its dissolution: “The dissolution of the union was the result of the betrayal of the Soviet nomenklatura, the bureaucracy, as well as the betrayal of Yeltsin. He spoke of working together me, working with me on a new treaty of union, signed the draft treaty of union, initialed that treaty. But at the same time, he was working behind my back.” In 1996 Gorbachev ran against Yeltsin for the Russian presidency but received less than 1% of the vote.

Speaking out after the presidency

Three years later, Gorbachev lost the love of his life — his wife of 46 years, Raisa — to cancer. The couple had a daughter, Irina. “At the worst times I was always very calm and balanced. But now that he’s gone — I don’t want to live. The center of our lives is gone,” she said.
But Gorbachev continued, speaking out on nuclear disarmament, the environment, poverty — and in his wife’s memory, he and his family founded the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation to fight childhood cancer. Previously, he had founded the Green Cross — to deal with ecological issues — and the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies, or the Gorbachev Foundation. In 2011, Gorbachev also launched the annual “Gorbachev Awards” to celebrate “those who have changed the world for the better”. Gorbachev’s involvement in Russian politics also continued. He was head of the Social Democratic Party of Russia from 2001 until his resignation in 2004 due to conflicts with the direction and leadership of the party. In 2007, he became head of a new Russian political movement — the Union of Social Democrats, which in turn founded the opposition Independent Democratic Party of Russia.
He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2012 that he agreed that Russian democracy is “alive,” but added: “That it’s ‘good’… not so. I’m alive, but I can’t say I’m well.” He explained that “the institutions of democracy do not work effectively in Russia, because they are not free after all.”

Mixed heritage

In an interview with CNN in 2019, Gorbachev said the US and Russia should try to avoid the development of a “New Cold War” despite worsening tensions. “This could turn out to be a hot war that could mean the destruction of our entire civilization. This must not be allowed,” he said. And asked about scrapping the 1987 treaty he signed with Reagan, Gorbachev expressed hope that such arms control agreements could be revived. “All the agreements that are there are preserved and not destroyed,” he said. “But these are the first steps towards his destruction [that which] it must not be destroyed under any circumstances.” The ultimate goal of arms control, he added, must be complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Gorbachev’s post-USSR life also included some surprises as he worked to raise money for his causes by appearing in advertisements for Pizza Hut and Louis Vuitton. In 2004 Gorbachev won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for “Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf / Beintus: Wolf Tracks”, which he recorded with former US President Bill Clinton and actress Sophia Loren. Other awards included the 2008 Medal of Freedom from the US National Constitution Center and Russia’s highest honor, the Order of St. Andrew, given to him on his 80th birthday in 2011 by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. But to the end, Gorbachev was a leader who was more respected abroad than at home. In Russia, he was vilified by some for destroying the Soviet empire and by others for moving too slowly to free his nation from the grip of communism. In the West, however, he remains the Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped end the Cold War. Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Gorbachev died at 91. CNN’s Tim Lister contributed reporting.

title: “Mikhail Gorbachev Former President Of The Soviet Union Who Brought Down The Iron Curtain Dies Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-24” author: “Lisa Ferranti”

The man credited with introducing key political and economic reforms to the USSR and helping to end the Cold War had been in poor health for some time. With his outgoing, charismatic nature, Gorbachev broke the mold for Soviet leaders who until then had mostly been aloof, frosty figures. Almost from the beginning of his leadership, he tried for important reforms to make the system work more efficiently and more democratically. Hence the two key phrases of the Gorbachev era: “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring). “I started these reforms and my stars were freedom and democracy, without bloodshed. So the people would cease to be a flock led by a shepherd. They would become citizens,” he later said.

From farm labor to rising party star

Gorbachev had humble beginnings: He was born into a farming family on March 2, 1931 near Stavropol, and as a boy he did farm work alongside his studies, working with his father who was a combine operator. In later life, Gorbachev said he was “particularly proud of my ability to immediately detect a fault in the combine, just by the sound of it”. He joined the Communist Party in 1952 and completed a law degree at Moscow University in 1955. There he met — and married — fellow student Raisa Titarenko.
In the early 1960s, Gorbachev became head of the agriculture department for the Stavropol region. By the end of the decade he had risen to the top of the party hierarchy in the region. He came to the attention of Mikhail Suslov and Yuri Andropov, members of the Politburo, the main policy-making body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who elected him to the Central Committee in 1971 and arranged trips abroad for their rising star.
In 1978, Gorbachev returned to Moscow and the following year was selected as a candidate for the Politburo. The management of Soviet agriculture was not successful. As he realized, the collective system was fundamentally flawed in more ways than one. A regular member of the Politburo since 1980, Gorbachev gained greater influence in 1982 when his mentor, Andropov, succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as party general secretary. He built a reputation as an enemy of corruption and inefficiency, eventually rising to the top of the party in March 1985.

“A man to do business with”

Hoping to shift resources to the political sector of the Soviet economy, Gorbachev began arguing for an end to the arms race with the West.
But throughout his six years in office, Gorbachev always seemed to move too fast for the party establishment — which saw its privileges under threat — and too slow for more radical reformers, who hoped to abolish one-party state and the mandate economy. Desperate to maintain control of the reform process, he appeared to have underestimated the depth of the financial crisis. He also seemed to have a blind spot about the power of the nationality issue: Glasnost created increasingly strong calls for independence from the Baltic and other Soviet republics in the late 1980s.
He was successful in foreign policy, but mostly from an international perspective, with other world leaders taking note. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called him “a man to do business with”.
In 1986, face-to-face with US President Ronald Reagan at a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev made a stunning proposal: eliminate all long-range missiles possessed by the United States and the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 “for his leading role in the peace process that today characterizes important parts of the international community”. The resulting pact, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, endured as a pillar of arms control for three decades until, in 2019, the United States formally withdrew and the Russian government said it had been consigned to the dustbin.

Revolt of the hardliners

While Gorbachev’s arms control agreements with the US could be seen as in the Soviet interest, the secession of some Eastern European countries, followed by German unification and NATO membership for the newly unified Germany (the West Germany was previously in NATO ), angered old-school communists.
By August 1991, the hardliners had had enough. With Gorbachev vacationing in the Crimea, they staged an uprising. Boris Yeltsin, the president of the largest Soviet republic — Russia — and a staunch critic of what he saw as Gorbachev’s half-way reforms, nevertheless came to his rescue, confronting and defeating the coup plotters.
But throughout the Soviet Union, republics — one after another — declared their independence, and on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. As he read his resignation speech, Gorbachev defined what his likely legacy would be: “The country received freedom, it was liberated politically and spiritually, and that was the most important achievement.”
The red flag that flew over the Kremlin, a symbol of the USSR, came down. The Soviet Union — it was over and Yeltsin was in control. “We live in a new world,” Gorbachev said.
In April 2012, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Gorbachev if he had planned the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev said that there was nothing in his speeches “to the end” that advocated its dissolution: “The dissolution of the union was the result of the betrayal of the Soviet nomenklatura, the bureaucracy, as well as the betrayal of Yeltsin. He spoke of working together me, working with me on a new treaty of union, signed the draft treaty of union, initialed that treaty. But at the same time, he was working behind my back.” In 1996 Gorbachev ran against Yeltsin for the Russian presidency but received less than 1% of the vote.

Speaking out after the presidency

Three years later, Gorbachev lost the love of his life — his wife of 46 years, Raisa — to cancer. The couple had a daughter, Irina. “At the worst times I was always very calm and balanced. But now that he’s gone — I don’t want to live. The center of our lives is gone,” she said.
But Gorbachev continued, speaking out on nuclear disarmament, the environment, poverty — and in his wife’s memory, he and his family founded the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation to fight childhood cancer. Previously, he had founded the Green Cross — to deal with ecological issues — and the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies, or the Gorbachev Foundation. In 2011, Gorbachev also launched the annual “Gorbachev Awards” to celebrate “those who have changed the world for the better”. Gorbachev’s involvement in Russian politics also continued. He was head of the Social Democratic Party of Russia from 2001 until his resignation in 2004 due to conflicts with the direction and leadership of the party. In 2007, he became head of a new Russian political movement — the Union of Social Democrats, which in turn founded the opposition Independent Democratic Party of Russia.
He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2012 that he agreed that Russian democracy is “alive,” but added: “That it’s ‘good’… not so. I’m alive, but I can’t say I’m well.” He explained that “the institutions of democracy do not work effectively in Russia, because they are not free after all.”

Mixed heritage

In an interview with CNN in 2019, Gorbachev said the US and Russia should try to avoid the development of a “New Cold War” despite worsening tensions. “This could turn out to be a hot war that could mean the destruction of our entire civilization. This must not be allowed,” he said. And asked about scrapping the 1987 treaty he signed with Reagan, Gorbachev expressed hope that such arms control agreements could be revived. “All the agreements that are there are preserved and not destroyed,” he said. “But these are the first steps towards his destruction [that which] it must not be destroyed under any circumstances.” The ultimate goal of arms control, he added, must be complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Gorbachev’s post-USSR life also included some surprises as he worked to raise money for his causes by appearing in advertisements for Pizza Hut and Louis Vuitton. In 2004 Gorbachev won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for “Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf / Beintus: Wolf Tracks”, which he recorded with former US President Bill Clinton and actress Sophia Loren. Other awards included the 2008 Medal of Freedom from the US National Constitution Center and Russia’s highest honor, the Order of St. Andrew, given to him on his 80th birthday in 2011 by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. But to the end, Gorbachev was a leader who was more respected abroad than at home. In Russia, he was vilified by some for destroying the Soviet empire and by others for moving too slowly to free his nation from the grip of communism. In the West, however, he remains the Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped end the Cold War. Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Gorbachev died at 91. CNN’s Tim Lister contributed reporting.

title: “Mikhail Gorbachev Former President Of The Soviet Union Who Brought Down The Iron Curtain Dies Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-14” author: “Anna Milligan”

The man credited with introducing key political and economic reforms to the USSR and helping to end the Cold War had been in poor health for some time. With his outgoing, charismatic nature, Gorbachev broke the mold for Soviet leaders who until then had mostly been aloof, frosty figures. Almost from the beginning of his leadership, he tried for important reforms to make the system work more efficiently and more democratically. Hence the two key phrases of the Gorbachev era: “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring). “I started these reforms and my stars were freedom and democracy, without bloodshed. So the people would cease to be a flock led by a shepherd. They would become citizens,” he later said.

From farm labor to rising party star

Gorbachev had humble beginnings: He was born into a farming family on March 2, 1931 near Stavropol, and as a boy he did farm work alongside his studies, working with his father who was a combine operator. In later life, Gorbachev said he was “particularly proud of my ability to immediately detect a fault in the combine, just by the sound of it”. He joined the Communist Party in 1952 and completed a law degree at Moscow University in 1955. There he met — and married — fellow student Raisa Titarenko.
In the early 1960s, Gorbachev became head of the agriculture department for the Stavropol region. By the end of the decade he had risen to the top of the party hierarchy in the region. He came to the attention of Mikhail Suslov and Yuri Andropov, members of the Politburo, the main policy-making body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who elected him to the Central Committee in 1971 and arranged trips abroad for their rising star.
In 1978, Gorbachev returned to Moscow and the following year was selected as a candidate for the Politburo. The management of Soviet agriculture was not successful. As he realized, the collective system was fundamentally flawed in more ways than one. A regular member of the Politburo since 1980, Gorbachev gained greater influence in 1982 when his mentor, Andropov, succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as party general secretary. He built a reputation as an enemy of corruption and inefficiency, eventually rising to the top of the party in March 1985.

“A man to do business with”

Hoping to shift resources to the political sector of the Soviet economy, Gorbachev began arguing for an end to the arms race with the West.
But throughout his six years in office, Gorbachev always seemed to move too fast for the party establishment — which saw its privileges under threat — and too slow for more radical reformers, who hoped to abolish one-party state and the mandate economy. Desperate to maintain control of the reform process, he appeared to have underestimated the depth of the financial crisis. He also seemed to have a blind spot about the power of the nationality issue: Glasnost created increasingly strong calls for independence from the Baltic and other Soviet republics in the late 1980s.
He was successful in foreign policy, but mostly from an international perspective, with other world leaders taking note. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called him “a man to do business with”.
In 1986, face-to-face with US President Ronald Reagan at a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev made a stunning proposal: eliminate all long-range missiles possessed by the United States and the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 “for his leading role in the peace process that today characterizes important parts of the international community”. The resulting pact, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, endured as a pillar of arms control for three decades until, in 2019, the United States formally withdrew and the Russian government said it had been consigned to the dustbin.

Revolt of the hardliners

While Gorbachev’s arms control agreements with the US could be seen as in the Soviet interest, the secession of some Eastern European countries, followed by German unification and NATO membership for the newly unified Germany (the West Germany was previously in NATO ), angered old-school communists.
By August 1991, the hardliners had had enough. With Gorbachev vacationing in the Crimea, they staged an uprising. Boris Yeltsin, the president of the largest Soviet republic — Russia — and a staunch critic of what he saw as Gorbachev’s half-way reforms, nevertheless came to his rescue, confronting and defeating the coup plotters.
But throughout the Soviet Union, republics — one after another — declared their independence, and on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. As he read his resignation speech, Gorbachev defined what his likely legacy would be: “The country received freedom, it was liberated politically and spiritually, and that was the most important achievement.”
The red flag that flew over the Kremlin, a symbol of the USSR, came down. The Soviet Union — it was over and Yeltsin was in control. “We live in a new world,” Gorbachev said.
In April 2012, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Gorbachev if he had planned the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev said that there was nothing in his speeches “to the end” that advocated its dissolution: “The dissolution of the union was the result of the betrayal of the Soviet nomenklatura, the bureaucracy, as well as the betrayal of Yeltsin. He spoke of working together me, working with me on a new treaty of union, signed the draft treaty of union, initialed that treaty. But at the same time, he was working behind my back.” In 1996 Gorbachev ran against Yeltsin for the Russian presidency but received less than 1% of the vote.

Speaking out after the presidency

Three years later, Gorbachev lost the love of his life — his wife of 46 years, Raisa — to cancer. The couple had a daughter, Irina. “At the worst times I was always very calm and balanced. But now that he’s gone — I don’t want to live. The center of our lives is gone,” she said.
But Gorbachev continued, speaking out on nuclear disarmament, the environment, poverty — and in his wife’s memory, he and his family founded the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation to fight childhood cancer. Previously, he had founded the Green Cross — to deal with ecological issues — and the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies, or the Gorbachev Foundation. In 2011, Gorbachev also launched the annual “Gorbachev Awards” to celebrate “those who have changed the world for the better”. Gorbachev’s involvement in Russian politics also continued. He was head of the Social Democratic Party of Russia from 2001 until his resignation in 2004 due to conflicts with the direction and leadership of the party. In 2007, he became head of a new Russian political movement — the Union of Social Democrats, which in turn founded the opposition Independent Democratic Party of Russia.
He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2012 that he agreed that Russian democracy is “alive,” but added: “That it’s ‘good’… not so. I’m alive, but I can’t say I’m well.” He explained that “the institutions of democracy do not work effectively in Russia, because they are not free after all.”

Mixed heritage

In an interview with CNN in 2019, Gorbachev said the US and Russia should try to avoid the development of a “New Cold War” despite worsening tensions. “This could turn out to be a hot war that could mean the destruction of our entire civilization. This must not be allowed,” he said. And asked about scrapping the 1987 treaty he signed with Reagan, Gorbachev expressed hope that such arms control agreements could be revived. “All the agreements that are there are preserved and not destroyed,” he said. “But these are the first steps towards his destruction [that which] it must not be destroyed under any circumstances.” The ultimate goal of arms control, he added, must be complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Gorbachev’s post-USSR life also included some surprises as he worked to raise money for his causes by appearing in advertisements for Pizza Hut and Louis Vuitton. In 2004 Gorbachev won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for “Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf / Beintus: Wolf Tracks”, which he recorded with former US President Bill Clinton and actress Sophia Loren. Other awards included the 2008 Medal of Freedom from the US National Constitution Center and Russia’s highest honor, the Order of St. Andrew, given to him on his 80th birthday in 2011 by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. But to the end, Gorbachev was a leader who was more respected abroad than at home. In Russia, he was vilified by some for destroying the Soviet empire and by others for moving too slowly to free his nation from the grip of communism. In the West, however, he remains the Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped end the Cold War. Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Gorbachev died at 91. CNN’s Tim Lister contributed reporting.