Politics · Science · Film · 1931–2022
Born: 2 March 1931 · Died: 30 August 2022 · Age at death: 91
Mikhail Gorbachev died aged 91. He was born on 2 March 1931 and died on 30 August 2022.
Last leader of the Soviet Union, whose glasnost and perestroika reforms helped end the Cold War and won him the Nobel Peace Prize
Did you know?He was the first Soviet leader to have been born after the Russian Revolution took place.
Gorbachev set out to reform the Soviet Union and ended up presiding over its peaceful end. His policies of glasnost, meaning openness, and perestroika, meaning restructuring, loosened censorship and allowed criticism that had been unthinkable for decades. Crucially, when Eastern European countries moved to throw off communist rule in 1989, he chose not to send in tanks. He signed major arms reduction treaties with the United States and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. Admired in the West, he remained a far more controversial figure in Russia, where many blamed him for the economic chaos that followed.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (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.
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Profile
Soviet leader, born 1931
Mikhail Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye on 2 March 1931.
He became Soviet leader in 1985.
He introduced glasnost and perestroika.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Career highlights
Did you know?He once appeared in a Pizza Hut television advert.
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