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His reforms preceded end of Soviet Union COURTESY PHOTOMikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev — the last president of the Soviet Union and an advocate of reforms that preceded the communist empire’s collapse — died Tuesday.
He was 91.
“Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease,” said the Central Clinical Hospital in Russia.
Tass, the state-owned Russian news agency, said Mr. Gorbachev would be buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery, next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999.
After becoming the Soviet leader in 1985, Mr. Gorbachev promoted perestroika (“restructuring”), the policy that promoted the awareness of economic markets and the ending of central planning, a trademark of communism. He also launched glasnost (“openness”), which allowed for free speech and unprecedented criticism of the Communist Party and the government.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for what was seen as his role in ending the Cold War. In an era teeming with historical moments, the Berlin Wall fell, and Germany was reunited.
Ultimately Mr. Gorbachev’s reforms set the stage for the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991 and, with the Soviet Union gone, he lost his presidency.
For a brief period, Russia appeared to be embracing democracy, electing Moscow Mayor Boris Yeltsin as president and starting its first stock market. But Russia also experienced a dive in its living standards, and the effort at democracy proved short-lived.
Mr. Gorbachev was born March 2, 1931, in Privolnoye, a village in the Stavropol region of the North Caucasus. His family had witnessed the horrors of the early era of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Mr. Gorbachev’s family also had to deal with the invasion of Russia by Nazi Germany.
After he graduated from Moscow State University, Mr. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, settled in Stavropol, where he became the leader of the region’s Communist Party. He went on to join the Communist Party’s Central Committee in 1974 in Moscow.
In 1985, he became the leader of the Soviet Union at age 53, succeeding Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstain Chernenko.
President Ronald Reagan felt he could work with Mr. Gorbachev, and the two leaders signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987.
And Mr. Gorbachev promoted reforms that included a multiparty electoral system and the 1989 creation of the Congress of People’s Deputies.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mr. Gorbachev sought a return to power, but won less than 1% of the vote in the 1996 race against President Yeltsin, who was easily re-elected to a second term. But Mr. Yeltsin’s approval fell to less than 30% as the media reported on his shortcomings (including drunkenness), and Russia’s experiment with democracy ended with the emergence of dictator Vladimir Putin.
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