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For better or worse, the figure of Mikhail Gorbachev is closely linked to the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the USSR.
He shocked the world with his reforms and was at the heart of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who ended the Cold War, has died at the age of 91, Russian news agencies reported Tuesday citing hospital sources.
He suffered from a long and serious illness, according to what the hospital where he died told Russian media.
He will be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, the resting place of many prominent Russians, alongside his wife Raisa who died in 1999, the Russian news agency Tass reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his deepest condolences over Gorbachev’s death, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax agency.
Gorbachev won acclaim from the international community and received the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War and reunifying Germany.
In Russia, however, his reputation has never recovered among those who blame him for the fall of the Soviet Union.
When he ran for president in 1996 he only received 5% of the votes.
According to some analysts, his mistake was to think that he could reform and, at the same time, maintain the Soviet Union as it was.
Gorbachev himself thus analyzed his role in the fall of the soviet bloc:
“Despite all the current evils and miseries, the Russians, and in general the great majority of the citizens of the countries of the former Soviet orbit, prefer to live in a free and democratic society, such as the one they enjoy today, to the situation who lived under communism. That is the framework in which I can frame my responsibility in my time as a former president of the Soviet Union”.
political career
Mikhail Sergeyovitch Gorbachev was born in 1931 in Privolnoe, a town in the Stravopol region of southern Russia.
They are political career It started when he reached the position of regional director of the Communist Party.
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Gorbachev was born in 1931.
At the age of 48, he became Minister of Agriculture in the government of Josif Stalin and traveled to Moscow.
In 1986, after the death of Konstantin Cherchenko, he was elected as General Secretary of the Communist Partythe highest office in the Soviet Union.
His appointment surprised many, as he prevailed over politicians with more experience and age.
Upon his election, then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave him what was regarded as the approval of western countries.
“I like Gorbachev,” said the Iron Lady. “I think we can do business with him.”
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For many, Gorbachev’s mistake was in thinking that he could both reform and maintain the Soviet Union as it was.
His elegant way of dressing and his direct way of speaking distinguished him from his predecessorsand his wife, Raisa, who died in 1999, looked more like an American first lady than the wife of a secretary general.
Perestroika and Glasnost
Once in power, Gorbachev launched two strategies to try to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, which seemed imminent.
According to the leader, the country needed a perestroika or economic restructuring.
“They are lagging behind the rest of the economy. Their poor-quality products are a disgrace,” he told Communist Party leaders.
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Gorbachev with his wife Raisa during a visit to London.
Perestroika was accompanied by another strategy, volumewhich translates as openness or transparency.
Indeed, under his mandate they increased the tolerance of creed and thought and the dissemination of national and international news.
He also launched a campaign to democratize the Communist Party and allow multi-party system.
Regarding foreign policy, Gorbachev focused on putting end to cold war years and signed several agreements with the US governments of Ronald Reagan and George Bush for the control of nuclear weapons.
The president also ended the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, regularized diplomatic relations with China, and even allied himself with the United States during the 1991 Gulf War.
Collapse
In the late 1980s, Gorbachev faced his toughest test: the Soviet Union was beginning to crumble.
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Gorbachoy and Ronald Reagan sign an agreement for nuclear disarmament.
In July 1989, he announced that the member countries of the Warsaw Pact could decide their own future.
In Poland, Lech Walesa took power, and in September, Hungary opened its borders to the west without any response from the Soviet troops.
In November of that same year, the course of European history changed: the Berlin Wall fell and, shortly after, Germany was reunited.
In March 1991, the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia gained independence from Moscow.
Initially, Gorbachev tried to prevent it by forcebut the wave of independence spread through all the member countries of the Warsaw Pact.
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The fall of the Berlin Wall was the most powerful symbol of the end of the collapse of the socialist bloc.
Gorbachev was accused by his hard-line party members of letting the Baltic countries go and undermining the foundations of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union.
blow
In August 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev was held in his Crimean summer villa by a group of Communist Party delegates who tried to force him to resign and prevent the signing of the new agreement that replaced the central Soviet structure with a more federal one.
The then president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsindenounced the coup and rallied support for Gorbachev.
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Yeltsin’s support was key to keeping Gorbachev in power, but he was unable to do so for long.
The still general secretary returned to Moscow, but he was politically weakened.
In December 1991 and after Ukraine’s independence, Yeltsin declared the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Four days later, on Christmas Day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his post.
The USSR had ceased to exist.
His vision 25 years later
In 2016, on the 25th anniversary of those world-changing events, the former Soviet leader gave an interview to BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg.
“What happened with the USSR was my drama. And a drama for everyone who lived in the Soviet Unionhe said. “There was betrayal behind our backs. Behind my back,” said the former president.
“They couldn’t do it by democratic means. So they committed a crime. It was a coup,” he declared.
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After his departure from power, Gorbachev devoted himself to the foundation that bears his name.
In that same conversation with the BBC, Gorbachev justified his actions before those who blamed him, especially in Russia, for the country’s decomposition and consequent loss of international influence.
“The confrontation and the division in a country like ours, full of weapons, including nuclear weapons, could have caused numerous deaths and immense destruction,” he explained.
“I couldn’t let that happen. Giving up was my victory“, said.
From perestroika to Putin’s Russia
When asked in recent years his opinion about the current situation in Russia, the authoritarian drift of which many accuse the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the balance of perestroika, the former secretary general was critical.
“That process (initiated by perestroika) not completed“, he told the BBC in 2016.
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For Gorbachev, the reform process initiated by perestroika has not been completed.
“We have to talk frankly about this. There are people for whom freedom is a nuisance, they don’t feel good about it,” he said, without clarifying which people he was referring to.
Since the disappearance of the USSR, Gorbachev traveled the world giving lectures and administering the foundation that bears his name.
He also published books such as “The Hour of Peace”, “The Future Century of Peace”, “There is no alternative to Peace”, “Moratorium” and “Perestroika”.
The nuclear disarmament became one of its causes.
However, in his last years, Gorbachev saw how one of his great achievements as a leader was dismantled.
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Some of the major nuclear agreements signed by Gorbachev have been abandoned by Trump and Putin.
In 2019, Donald Trump withdrew his country from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that Gorbachev and then-US President Ronald Reagan had signed in 1987.
Shortly after, Putin followed in Washington’s footsteps.
“All nations must destroy all nuclear weapons. It is necessary to save ourselves and our planet,” Gorbachev told the BBC in November 2019, marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. that probably most marked his intense political life.
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