Mikhail Gorbachev, Last Leader Of Soviet Union, Dead At 91: State Media
The former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev has reportedly died. He was 91.
His death was reported by Ria Novosti, a Russian state media outlet. The outlet cited the Central Clinical Hospital.
Gorbachev was a transformational world leader of the 20th century who attempted to move his nation out of Soviet-era Communism and into a modern democracy. He received a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in changing the nature of East-West relations and helping bring a peaceful end to the decades-long Cold War.
Gorbachev was also a controversial character within his own country and throughout the world. Some Russians viewed him as weak and irresponsible for placing his country in an unstable position as the Soviet Union dissolved. Other critics in the West point out that Gorbachev didn’t go far enough to root out Communism and improve the Soviet economy, as his reforms failed to address advancing private property rights or limiting the government’s monopoly on production.
Yet friends and opponents agree that the Soviet leader was known for his strong diplomacy and amiable personality. He found ways of pushing his country toward free thinking and presenting the USSR as a world power that could successfully negotiate with the West. His role in calming Soviet-American tensions temporarily helped end the decades-long Cold War.
The Young Optimist
Gorbachev was born to parents Sergei and Maria Gorbachev in the village of Privolnoye on March 2, 1931. They named him Viktor, but his grandfather christened him Mikhail after his birth in a secret baptism insisted upon by his mother and grandmother despite Stalin’s brazen opposition to religion in the Soviet Union.
The Gorbachev family was poor for much of Mikhail’s childhood. Both of his grandfathers survived the Gulag, and he and most of his family survived Joseph Stalin’s Soviet famine in 1932-1933 that killed at least 5 million people and was infamously covered up by Western journalists. Despite his family’s bleak standing in the Soviet social structure, Gorbachev looked back fondly on his childhood. “We were poor, practically beggars,” he recalled. “But in general I felt wonderful.”
Less than 10 years later, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, his father was drafted into the army and given charge of a combat engineering squad, seeing action in many battles. Mikhail and his family received a letter in 1944 stating his father had been killed in action. “The family wept for three days,” Gorbachev said. But the mourning would soon end when they received a letter from his father stating he was alive.
A Leader In The Making
After the war, Mikhail wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue his studies. But his family was so determined to get him into school that his father was willing to sell everything they had. His grandfather even gave him the coat off his back to ensure Mikhail would stay warm when he left home. “You’ve got to study, Mishka,” his grandfather told him. “That’s what it takes to become a real person. Study well!”
School wasn’t easy for him at first, but he soon excelled. He read anything he could and became passionate about acting. Through his rhetorical skills, desire to learn, and ability to earn respect, it became evident to those around him that he was a natural leader. He would go on to study law at Moscow State University, where he met his wife, Raisa.
“The Moscow University gave me fundamental knowledge and an intellectual potential that determined my career,” he recollected. “It was here that the long process of reassessing my country’s history, its present and its future began and continued over so many years.”
The Birth Of A Political Giant
The natural leadership of Gorbachev was given a chance to blossom quickly after he graduated from Moscow State. In 1956, he was elected as the First Secretary of the Stavropol City Komsomol Committee. By 1970, he was the First Secretary of the Stavropol Territorial Communist Party Committee, an important role focused on developing agricultural facilities and farms in the region. Gorbachev was only 39 when he took this position, significantly younger than other party leaders in the region.
It was during this time that he met KGB police chief Yury Andropov, the man who would eventually lead the Soviet Union following the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982.
Gorbachev and Andropov grew close, or at least as close as two Communist leaders jockeying for positions could. The two would sometimes stay up late talking. “Like me, Andropov didn’t like the long, noisy, drunken dinners,” Gorbachev remembered.
Gorbachev spent seven years as the Stavropol leader, during which time he implemented a plan for the region’s long-term development.
His leadership didn’t go unnoticed. On November 27, 1978, Gorbachev was elected Central Committee Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He and his family moved to Moscow a week later. After proving himself a capable leader through his
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