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Dec 12, 2017 · The meeting took place during Major’s visit to Moscow and right after his one-on-one with President Gorbachev. During the meeting with Major, Gorbachev had raised his concerns about the new NATO dynamics: “Against the background of favorable processes in Europe, I suddenly start receiving information that certain circles intend to go on ...
- Overview
- Early life
- General secretary of the CPSU: perestroika to the fall of the Soviet Union
Mikhail Gorbachev was a Soviet politician. Gorbachev served as the last general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1985–91) as well as the last president of the Soviet Union (1990–91). Both as general secretary and as president, Gorbachev supported democratic reforms. He enacted policies of glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”), and he pushed for disarmament and demilitarization in eastern Europe. Gorbachev’s policies ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990–91.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Learn more about this Russian political party.
collapse of the Soviet Union
Read about the sequence of events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
How did Mikhail Gorbachev become president of the Soviet Union?
Gorbachev was the son of Russian peasants in Stavropol territory (kray) in southwestern Russia. He joined the Komsomol (Young Communist League) in 1946 and drove a combine harvester at a state farm in Stavropol for the next four years. He proved a promising Komsomol member, and in 1952 he entered the law school of Moscow State University and became...
Gorbachev was named a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1971, and he was appointed a party secretary of agriculture in 1978. He became a candidate member of the Politburo in 1979 and a full member in 1980. He owed a great deal of his steady rise in the party to the patronage of Mikhail Suslov, the leading party ideologue. Over the course of Yury Andropov’s 15-month tenure (1982–84) as general secretary of the Communist Party, Gorbachev became one of the Politburo’s most highly active and visible members; and, after Andropov died and Konstantin Chernenko became general secretary in February 1984, Gorbachev became a likely successor to the latter. Chernenko died on March 10, 1985, and the following day the Politburo elected Gorbachev general secretary of the CPSU. Upon his accession, he was still the youngest member of the Politburo.
Gorbachev quickly set about consolidating his personal power in the Soviet leadership. His primary domestic goal was to resuscitate the stagnant Soviet economy after its years of drift and low growth during Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure in power (1964–82). To this end, he called for rapid technological modernization and increased worker productivity, and he tried to make the cumbersome Soviet bureaucracy more efficient and responsive.
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Comprehension Quiz: Cold War
When these superficial changes failed to yield tangible results, Gorbachev in 1987–88 proceeded to initiate deeper reforms of the Soviet economic and political system. Under his new policy of glasnost (“openness”), a major cultural thaw took place: freedoms of expression and of information were significantly expanded; the press and broadcasting were allowed unprecedented candour in their reportage and criticism; and the country’s legacy of Stalinist totalitarian rule was eventually completely repudiated by the government. Under Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika (“restructuring”), the first modest attempts to democratize the Soviet political system were undertaken; multicandidate contests and the secret ballot were introduced in some elections to party and government posts. Under perestroika, some limited free-market mechanisms also began to be introduced into the Soviet economy, but even these modest economic reforms encountered serious resistance from party and government bureaucrats who were unwilling to relinquish their control over the nation’s economic life.
In foreign affairs, Gorbachev from the beginning cultivated warmer relations and trade with the developed nations of both West and East. In December 1987 he signed an agreement with U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan for their two countries to destroy all existing stocks of intermediate-range nuclear-tipped missiles. In 1988–89 he oversaw the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan after their nine-year occupation of that country.
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Aug 30, 2022 · Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential political figures of the 20th Century. He presided over the dissolution of a Soviet Union that had existed for nearly 70 years and had dominated ...
Aug 31, 2022 · Mikhail Gorbachev - the last Soviet leader, who died on Tuesday - had a "huge impact on the course of history", Russia's President Vladimir Putin says. He had understood reforms were necessary, Mr ...
- He helped end the cold war. When considering which of the 1980s’ big three leaders – Gorbachev, US president Ronald Reagan and UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher – was most important in ending the cold war peacefully, the answer is clearly Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.
- He tried to democratise the Soviet Union. When Gorbachev became Soviet leader in March 1985, he inherited a country and system in trouble. The situation was not quite as critical as he led people to believe, but the economy was slowing down.
- He freed eastern Europe. Gorbachev’s promise to allow eastern Europeans the right to go their own way was a logical consequence of glasnost at home. Political protesters in Soviet satellite states used Gorbachev’s reforms to see how far they could push their governments away from the days when their movements were controlled, their purchases restricted and freedom of speech limited.
- He sparked the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev allowed Soviet citizens to find their voice in the 1980s, and they used their collective power to criticise the government and non-Russians built powerful independence movements.
Sep 1, 2022 · Gorbachev and other Russians independent of Putin have for years voiced their genuine frustration with NATO’s successive expansions in Europe, a sentiment that eventual peacemaking with Russia will have to confront. Hopes for a Russian democracy were both seeded — and set back — by Gorbachev’s attempted liberalization.
Meeting Gorbachev is a 2018 biographical documentary film directed by Werner Herzog and André Singer about the life of Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union. The film features three interviews between Herzog and Gorbachev, conducted over the span of six months, and had its world premiere at the Telluride Film ...
