Gorbachev

"In a time of Putin's aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all," British Prime Minister ...

He played the critical role in a peaceful conclusion of the Cold War by his decision against using force to hold the empire together.” “A new, more peaceful and promising world seemed to be on the horizon,” Phillips said. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who met Gorbachev both in Russia and the United States, described him as “a bold leader who was unafraid to confront reality.” [Putin expressed condolences](https://www.reuters.com/world/russias-putin-expresses-deepest-condolences-death-gorbachev-interfax-2022-08-30/) following Gorbachev’s death, according to a [statement reportedly sent](https://www.reuters.com/world/russias-putin-expresses-deepest-condolences-death-gorbachev-interfax-2022-08-30/) to Russian news agency Interfax. Other leaders contrasted Putin with Gorbachev in their condolence messages. [Gorbachev’s death Tuesday](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/30/mikhail-gorbachev-soviet-union-cold-war-obit-035311).

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed “his deepest condolences” on Gorbachev's death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax news agency. “Tomorrow ...

but there was one miscalculation: we did not know our country well,” said Vladimir Shevchenko, who headed Gorbachev’s protocol office when he was Soviet leader. After decades of Cold War tension and confrontation, Gorbachev brought the Soviet Union closer to the West than at any point since World War II. Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War II and bring about the reunification of Germany.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union whose attempts to shake up his country's political and economic system led to the collapse of the ...

MIKHAIL Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow aged 91, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday. Read more at The Business ...

He oversaw the end to the Soviet empire, a divided Europe and the Cold War.

Poland to the Poles, Hungary to the Hungarians, Czechoslovakia to the Czechs and Slovaks!” “We were well on the way to a civil war, and I wanted to avoid that,” Gorbachev turned over power — and the Soviet “nuclear button” — to Yeltsin, calling Bush to tell him: “Mr. “Gorbachev failed to see,” wrote Sebestyen, “that the demonstrators were hiding behind him as a way of protesting against their own rulers.” “In place of the Stalinist model of socialism,” he told his nation, “we are coming to a citizens’ society of free people.” This time, Gorbachev wasn’t pleased — he tried to stymie independence movements in the Baltics and elsewhere. “The fact is that the Cold War ended by negotiation to the advantage of both sides.” “Glasnost has begun to tear the veil that concealed incompetence and a lack of initiative,” wrote Eric Bourne in the 1988 World Book Year Book. “Under the badge of democratization, restructuring has now encompassed politics, the economy, spiritual life, and ideology,” Gorbachev told the General Assembly. In January 1987, Gorbachev said he wanted history‘s “blank spots” filled in, including an examination of the nation’s bloody past. “An end has been put to the Cold War and to the arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the country, which has crippled our economy, public attitudes, and morals. Certainly, the events of the 1980s — including the humiliating defeat in Afghanistan — had already made it harder for any Soviet leader to continue the nation on its existing path.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, Russian news agencies cited hospital officials as saying.

The protests fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years, which gave rise to a few independent states later on. When pro-democracy protests swept across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force - unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Gorbachev forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, ...

I think his tragedy is in a sense that he was too decent for the country he was leading," said Gorbachev biographer William Taubman, a professor emeritus at Amherst College in Massachusetts. But he will be remembered fondly by historians, and one day - I believe it - by Russians," said Cold War historian Sergey Radchenko. but there was one miscalculation: we did not know our country well," said Vladimir Shevchenko, who headed Gorbachev's protocol office when he was Soviet leader. Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in a part of Ukraine now occupied by pro-Moscow forces, said Gorbachev had "deliberately led the (Soviet) Union to its demise" and called him a traitor. "The era of Gorbachev is the era of perestroika, the era of hope, the era of our entry into a missile-free world ... Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

In a file photo taken on Dec 21, 2004, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk during a press conference in ...

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Gorbachev family and the people of Russia." "I always admired the courage & integrity he showed in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion ... He played the critical role in a peaceful conclusion of the Cold War by his decision against using force to hold the empire together ... He played a crucial role to end the Cold War and bring down the Iron Curtain. "Tomorrow he will send a telegram of condolences to his family and friends." He did more than any other individual to bring about the peaceful end of the Cold War.

Mikhail Gorbachev was a man of remarkable vision. When he came to power, the Cold War had gone on for nearly 40 years and communism for even longer,

Gorbachev visited the White House in 2009, he and I spoke for a long time about our countries’ ongoing work to reduce U.S. The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people. Few high-level Soviet officials had the courage to admit that things needed to change.

The Soviet leader who ended Cold War dies aged 91. Updated. Published. 4 min ago.

In 2006, I threw on a black dress and hopped on the subway to New York's Hammerstein Ballroom to attend the Women's World Awards.

There was, of course, a lot of pain and corruption that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. He certainly still had that aura when I first met him on the red carpet of the Women’s World Awards. Still, for many in the West, the former Soviet leader represented an optimism and spirit of hope that sparked a true turning point in our lifetimes. While I didn’t grow up ducking under a desk in the event of a nuclear war, I did get a chance to visit Moscow for a college debating tournament in the late 1980s. It had been 15 years since Gorbachev had resigned as President of the Soviet Union. In many ways, it was a stunning testament to the adage, “If you build it, they will come.”

President Biden said the former Soviet leader had the "imagination to see that a different future was possible."

World leaders reacted to the death of Mikhail S. [said](https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1564727984719814662?s=20&t=f-kTUDB69w4ZtXxf-0gblg) on Twitter that “in a time of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, [Gorbachev’s] tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all.” [wrote](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202208/1274279.shtml) that “in a historical reflection, Gorbachev is naive and immature,” adding that he would be remembered as “a tragic figure who catered to the US and the West without principle.” [Hiroshima](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/26/japan-russia-nuclear-hiroshima/?itid=lk_inline_manual_21), said Gorbachev had “left behind great accomplishment as a world leader supporting the abolishment of nuclear weapons.” [said](https://twitter.com/CondoleezzaRice/status/1564726532370604032?s=20&t=tjpy5y4RK1_hKRLQd2q03g) on Twitter that Gorbachev’s life was “consequential because, without him and his courage, it would not have been possible to end the Cold War peacefully.” Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his “deepest condolences,” a spokesman told the Interfax news agency, adding that Putin will “send a telegram of condolences to his family and friends.”

In a photo from March 15, 1990, first Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev takes the oath at the Congress of Deputies, in Moscow. PHOTO: AFP. Updated.

But they turned out to be the actual essential elements of the Soviet system - having removed them, the system unravelled as well." In the three decades since his fall from power, Russia has judged Gorbachev harshly. "It's one of the ultimate tragedies of (Gorbachev) that none of the points that he ultimately came to accept and espouse have been preserved by the leaders of Russia today." "The imperial aspiration is now reasserted as the official policy in Moscow and the general approach - that what you need to do if you face a crisis is to crush it with tanks - is now back in fashion," he said. "He thought it could be reformed, he thought removing some of the essential elements of the Soviet system such as the fear, the repression, the command economy and so forth would still preserve the system. Gorbachev never stood for election to earn himself a popular mandate - unlike his great rival Boris Yeltsin, who was voted into power as president of Russia and was instrumental in the dissolution of the USSR and the ousting of Gorbachev.

William Taubman, the author of Gorbachev: His Life and Times, is also the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. Mikhail Gorbachev ...

Still, Gorbachev facilitated our meetings with current and former aides in Moscow and in Stavropol, the southern city where he climbed the ladder of the party apparatus, and our visit to Privolnoye, the village where he was born. During a later interview, I was surprised when Gorbachev said he didn’t tell his wife he was about to become Soviet leader until the night before he was anointed. He seemed to enjoy the fact that Jane and I worked together; still in love with Raisa, he always respected women, unlike most of Russia’s leaders, particularly the current one. No more!” At which point she burst into tears because, he added, “I was the last thing she could control and now that was gone.” We expected him to have his own interpreter present (though Jane and I are fluent in Russian), but he didn’t. I was shocked when he volunteered the story about how his mother often whipped him with a belt him until, at age 13, he grabbed it, tore it from her, and said, “That’s it! Kissing her three times on alternative cheeks with a twinkle in his eye, he pronounced in Old Church Slavonic, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” Jane wasn’t quite sure whether the former leader of Godless Communist Russia was teasing her, or not. We expected Gorbachev to demand that we submit our questions in writing before the interviews, but he never did. I later witnessed Gorbachev’s attempts to make his country and the world a better and more decent place through his programs of perestroika and glasnost. But I started to get to know the man when I met him in 2005, more than a decade after he was forced to resign as the USSR’s first and last president. He tried to reform the USSR, eventually to democratize it, but was overwhelmed by the people and forces he freed. But rather than ask Gorbachev’s permission to undertake his biography (for fear he would say no), I told him I was doing it and requested his cooperation.

Tributes have poured in from around the world for Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the former Soviet Union who died on Tuesday age 91, with many global ...

delivered to Party cadres months after coming to power, Xi asked why the Soviet Union and its ruling Communist Party collapsed. Others pointed sarcastically to how Gorbachev was loved by the United States and the West. His comments were not broadcast in China, Miller wrote. "Economic reform will not work unless supported by a radical transformation of the political system," Gorbachev said in his remarks, according to author Chris Miller in "The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR." Beijing's official response to Gorbachev's death has been brief. A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, when asked for comment in a briefing Wednesday, said Gorbachev "had made positive contributions to the normalization of relations between China and the Soviet Union."

The denigration of Mikhail Gorbachev in China underlines the lengths Xi Jinping has gone to forge a path different from the reformist Soviet leader's.

The denigration of Gorbachev underlines the lengths the party and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have gone to forge a path different from the one taken by the reformist Soviet leader. “In the end, nobody was man enough to stand up and resist.” Still, the vast majority of people were likely to be unmoved by his death. “Go in peace,” internet users wrote under search results for Gorbachev’s name on the Baidu engine Wednesday. “He won widespread acclaim in the West by selling out the interests of his homeland.” Gorbachev is seen in China as the man who brought disaster on his own people and blithely dismantled a great socialist nation in a cautionary tale of failed leadership that Chinese Communist Party officials have obsessively studied for decades.

Feted abroad and despised at home in practically equal measure, Mikhail Gorbachev left a complex legacy as the last leader of the Soviet Union.

Russian president pays tribute to ex-Soviet leader but no decision yet on whether he will get state funeral.

Putin had a strained relationship with Gorbachev, who initiated policies that ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union. No romantic period and ‘century of honey’ took place. “He led our country over the period of complex, dramatic transformations and extensive foreign political, economic, and social challenges.

Leaders of many countries have expressed condolences over the death of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 ...

[Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. "He was a brave and visionary leader, who shaped our world in ways previously thought unimaginable. "The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace." It opened the way for a free Europe. "Few high-level Soviet officials had the courage to admit that things needed to change. "He played a crucial role to end the Cold War and bring down the Iron Curtain.

Mikhail Gorbachev was lionised by the West for lifting the Iron Curtain and ending the Cold War, but opinion is far more negative in Russia and much of its ...

What if the USSR was ruled in the 1980s by someone like Putin?" The American fast-food chain opened to great fanfare in Moscow in 1990, when he was leader of the Soviet Union and Russia was opening up to the world. When protests against communist rule reached a crescendo in October 1989, he ordered Soviet troops not to leave base. The world-changing events of the 1980s and 1990s are now a distant memory to many. The war in Ukraine and an economic downturn are much more at the forefront of people's minds. TV channel NTV considered whether he was worthy of a monument, adding that Russians were ambivalent on the issue. He never admitted giving the order for troops to attack pro-independence protesters, but couldn't prevent the violence. "If anyone else had been president in Russia, this wouldn't have happened. A crackdown on Azerbaijan's pro-independence movement in 1990 left 147 people dead. But the Nobel Peace Prize winner was a controversial figure in Russia, and opinion on him is split. Fast forward to 2022, and McDonald's has ceased all operations in Russia over the invasion of Ukraine. Everything would be different now [if he had saved it]."

Russian president praises former leader, but resented collapse of USSR he brought about.

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Mikhail Gorbachev died at 91 on Aug. 30, 2022. A historian of the Soviet era assesses his impact and the consequences of his failed attempts to reform state ...

[met in a forest setting ](https://www.neweurope.eu/article/30-years-ago-the-stroke-of-a-pen-in-a-snowy-belarussian-forest-changed-the-world/)in the absence of Gorbachev, where they came up with a hastily conceived plan to break up the USSR and abolish Gorbachev’s presidency. Ultimately, the Soviet Empire disintegrated, not from a popular, massive uprising from below, as many in the West imagine, but from the mistakes and [political infighting](https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html) at the top, which progressively weakened the center’s authority. [achieved the highest position](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mikhail-gorbachev-picked-to-succeed-chernenko) in the party of general secretary in 1985 he embarked on a pell-mell program of reform. [begging for financial help](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/world/gorbachev-pleads-for-100-billion-in-aid-from-west.html) from the George H.W. president [Ronald Reagan came around to the view](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/31/gorbachev-and-reagan-the-capitalist-and-communist-who-helped-end-the-cold-war) that Gorbachev was indeed an authentic dismantler of the Soviet command system. By 1990 his own weakness and indecision had derailed the revolution from above. [Western suspicions](https://indianexpress.com/article/world/how-reagan-and-bush-overcame-skepticism-to-collaborate-with-gorbachev-8122532/) when he first came to power that he was simply a wolf-in-sheep’s clothing, an insincere reformer who was really a hard-line communist, Gorbachev managed to convince the skeptics abroad of his sincerity. As head of government, Gorbachev was faced with an insolvable dilemma: how to achieve the democratic ends he desired without resorting to undemocratic means, force and violence. He mistakenly thought he had a firm agreement with the United States and Germany not to move NATO one inch eastward but failed to get it in writing. [his death at 91](https://www.npr.org/2022/08/30/1120141650/former-soviet-leader-mikhail-gorbachev-has-died), announced by state media in Russia on Aug. But in the process, he ended up undermining socialism as the major alternative to Western neoliberal capitalism. Early fears in the West evolved into anxiety about Gorbachev’s survival as he embarked on his great project.

During his time as leader of the Soviet Union (1985-1991), Gorbachev brought about enormous change in Russian politics and society, in international relations, ...

Death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, receives a cool response in Russia. Read more at straitstimes.com.

The funeral of the Soviet Union's last leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday in Moscow aged 91, will take place on Saturday, Russian news agencies ...

In stark contrast to Gorbachev, who pulled Soviet forces out of Afghanistan as well as countenancing the self-liberation of eastern Europe, Putin believes force ...

Plus the decline in American life expectancy and the latest on Typhoon Hinnamnor.

The last leader of the U.S.S.R. attempted to modernize and reform his country, even as he failed to imagine it as anything but an empire.

Russian President Vladimir Putin famously described the Soviet Union's collapse as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

There are people in the West who regard Mikhail Gorbachev, the late last leader of the Soviet Union as a tragic figure of a liberal reformer, whose efforts ...

Gorbachev’s efforts to reform the rigid system collapsed the USSR. The Soviet system lost the competition with the West. “The Soviet system lost the competition with the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent his 22 years in power relentlessly hacking down the legacy of the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Russia has used an [array of weapons](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/23/russia-ukraine-weapons-missiles-nukes-drones/?itid=lb_war-in-ukraine-what-you-need-to-know_6&itid=lb_war-in-ukraine-what-you-need-to-know_9) against Ukraine, some of which have drawn the attention and concern of analysts. [the agreement](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/22/ukraine-grain-deal-turkey-russia/?itid=lb_war-in-ukraine-what-you-need-to-know_1) hammered out by Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations in July. Fears of [a disaster at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/07/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-shelling/?itid=lb_war-in-ukraine-what-you-need-to-know_5) remain as both sides accuse each other of shelling it. Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports had sent food prices soaring and raised fears of more hunger in the [Middle East and Africa](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/23/ukraine-russia-grain-deal-global-food-crisis/?itid=lb_war-in-ukraine-what-you-need-to-know_2). “The conventional wisdom became that Gorbachev was a kind of failure,” Galeotti said. “And therefore, I think there has begun to be a sort of a more specific attempt to demonize Gorbachev as not being patriotic enough.” He told me that he refused to press the nuclear attack button even in training!” Gorbachev’s daughter said a memorial would be held in the old Soviet House of Unions, in a ceremonial room known as Pillars Hall. He did not praise Gorbachev’s greatest reforms, merely noting that the Soviet leader understood the need for change and “strove to offer his own social reforms to our urgent problems.” “That is a myth to a certain extent. In 2016, he called Putin’s policies “an obstacle to progress.” Putin’s disdain for Gorbachev and evident ambivalence about his death highlights a stark gap in global public opinion.

According to Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, it was a good thing that the reforms planned by Gorbachev did not end where he was aiming for them ...

Although he is often attributed with ending the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain, Gorbachev’s legacy is not as pristine as some would like it to be. According to Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, it was a good thing that the reforms planned by Gorbachev did not end where he was aiming for them to end. The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, died at the age of 91.

The legacy of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has its complicated — and darker — sides.

He also toed the current Kremlin line that [the West had made a dangerous mistake](https://www.gorby.ru/en/presscenter/publication/show_29421/) in “trying to draw Ukraine into NATO.” All the while, Gorbachev criticized Putin for his crackdown on internal dissent and independent media. Gorbachev may have navigated a peaceful end to the Cold War and saved the world from calamity, but for millions of Russians, he was responsible for the disorder and penury that followed, along with a rapid descent in Russia’s status on the global stage. But for a Russian pensioner or soldier or local government official — or for one of those Russian navy cadets or officers — this was the reality. I was a journalist in Moscow in this early post-Soviet time, a period marked by a collapse in the value of the Russian ruble, rampant inflation and a spike in violent crime — in a nation that had succeeded in little else but always managed to keep the public order. When Gorbachev ran for the Russian presidency in 1996, he received less than 1 percent of the vote. That secrecy almost certainly cost the lives of plant workers and residents of the area, and was in any case an unconscionable silence. Ask Lithuanians how they remember Gorbachev, and you will get a sense for the paradox: On the one hand, it was his statecraft that led to their independence movement; on the other, when Lithuanians In the uneasy two-year period between the 1989 revolutions and the formal end of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev dispatched troops to quell unrest in other parts of his fading empire. He didn’t want the Soviet Union to go away; his hopes were for a democratic socialism or a more humane form of communism. Meanwhile, Gorbachev’s failings — real and exaggerated by Russian nationalist propaganda — were central to the rise of Vladimir Putin, who served Gorbachev’s Kremlin as an officer in the KGB. On the one hand, there is no question: The demise of the Soviet Union would never have happened in the peaceful way it did had a lesser statesman been at the helm. Counterfactuals are hard, but a final chapter of the Cold War featuring someone other than Gorbachev (or, for that matter, leaders less capable than Bush and Secretary of State James Baker) might have ended in very different and nasty ways.

But Gorbachev is to be buried in the cemetery of Novodevichy Convent, the resting place for the ousted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who had criticized ...