Mikhail Gorbachev
Learn about Mikhail Gorbachev — the last Soviet leader whose reforms of glasnost and perestroika inadvertently ended the Cold War and dissolved the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (1931–2022) was one of history's most paradoxical figures: a committed communist who accidentally destroyed communism, a reformer who unleashed forces he could not control, and a man revered in the West for ending the Cold War while often reviled in Russia for destroying their country. His six years as Soviet leader (1985–1991) changed the world more than any comparable period since World War II.
Gorbachev inherited a Soviet Union in crisis — economic stagnation, technological backwardness, imperial overreach in Afghanistan, and a sclerotic political system led by aging men. His response was revolutionary: glasnost (openness) lifted censorship and allowed public criticism of the system, while perestroika (restructuring) attempted to modernize the economy without abandoning socialism. He withdrew from Afghanistan, signed arms reduction treaties, and declined to use force to maintain Soviet control over Eastern Europe.
This last decision was arguably the most consequential. When Gorbachev refused to send tanks to suppress the revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe in 1989 — breaking with the tradition of Soviet military intervention — the Iron Curtain collapsed with breathtaking speed. The Berlin Wall fell, Eastern Europe democratized, and the Soviet Union itself dissolved. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, but the country he tried to reform ceased to exist the following year. History's verdict on Gorbachev remains divided between those who see him as a liberator and those who see him as the man who lost an empire.