Gorbachev became the eighth and also the last leader of the Soviet Union. Among other things, he is known for the political reforms in the Soviet Union during the late 1980s – glasnost and perestroika. The former was about reforms around freedom of expression, while the latter meant liberalization of the Soviet Union’s economy.
He became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 and led the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. He also led the Union during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Chose a more peaceful path
When the winds of democracy began to sweep across the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s, Gorbachev, unlike his predecessors during the Hungarian Revolt in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968, chose not to meet the popular protests with military force and violence.
This made the aspirations for independence in several sub-republics, including in the Baltics, even stronger and ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet Empire.
In 1990, Gorbachev received the Nobel Peace Prize for what he considered to have ended the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union that had then been ongoing since the end of World War II.
But the reforms were not enough, and after almost seven years as the leader of the Soviet Union, on 25 December 1991, he had to hand over the reins to the president of the Russian republic, Boris Yeltsin. The then 60-year-old Gorbachev had fought frantically to hold the crumbling empire together but failed.
Comeback attempt
During the 1990s and the early 2000s, Gorbachev made several unsuccessful attempts at a political comeback in Russia, then for the Social Democratic Party.
According to Russian RIA, Mikhail Gorbachev died after a long illness in a hospital in Moscow.
The article is updated