Who Is Mikhail Gorbachev, The Nobel Prize Winner Who Helped End Cold War And Changed The World Forever

At the time, he was 54, the youngest member of the ruling council known as the Politburo, and was seen as a breath of fresh air after several ageing leaders. In n 2007, he became head of a new Russian political movement, the Union of Social Democrats.

Moscow: Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who brought the Cold War to a peaceful end, has died aged 91. Gorbachev died after a long illness, Russian state news agencies reported. The man credited with introducing key political and economic reforms to the USSR and helping to end the Cold War had been in failing health for some time. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told RIA Novosti. Tributes have been paid worldwide, with UN chief Antonio Guterres saying he “changed the course of history”. “Mikhail Gorbachev was a one-of-a kind statesman,” UN Secretary General Guterres wrote in a Twitter tribute. “The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace.”

WHO IS MIKHAIL GORBACHEV?

• Gorbachev had humble beginnings: He was born into a peasant family on March 2, 1931 near Stavropol, and as a boy, he did farm labor along with his studies.
• He became a member of the Communist Party in 1952 and completed a law degree at Moscow University in 1955. It was here that he met and married fellow student Raisa Titarenko.
• During the early 1960s, Gorbachev became head of the agriculture department for the Stavropol region. By the end of the decade he had risen to the top of the party hierarchy in the region.
• Gorbachev was the the first and last president of the Soviet Union. He became the general secretary of communist party in 1985 at the age of 53. He held the post untill party itself dissolved in 1991.
• At the time, he was 54 – the youngest member of the ruling council known as the Politburo, and was seen as a breath of fresh air after several ageing leaders. His predecessor, Konstantin Chernenko, had died aged 73 after just over a year in office.
  

  Ronald Reagan, left, and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev enjoying a moment at Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo in California. Photograph: Bob Galbraith/AP

• He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 “for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community.”
• In 1996 Gorbachev ran against Yeltsin for the Russian presidency but got less than 1% of the vote.
• Celebrated abroad as the saviour who delivered freedom to millions of Soviet citizens, he was often blamed at home for the chaotic years that followed, and survived long enough to watch Russia return to autocracy under the rule of Vladimir Putin.
• In 2007, he became head of a new Russian political movement — the Union of Social Democrats, which in turn set up the opposition Independent Democratic Party of Russia.

He will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery, the resting place of many prominent Russians, next to his wife Raisa who died of leukaemia in 1999, Tass news agency said.