Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev dies at 91

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has died at the age of 91, Russian state media reported on Tuesday, August 30.

“This evening, after a serious and prolonged illness, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died,” Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital said in a statement, as quoted by TASS.

Mikhail Gorbachev was born in 1931, in what is today Russia’s Stavropol Krai. He earned a law degree from Moscow State University and a second diploma from the Stavropol Agricultural Institute.

Gorbachev began his political career in the Soviet Union’s youth organization, the Komsomol, and went on to work for a local bureau of the Communist Party (CPSU). He became a member of the CPSU’s Central Committee in 1971.

Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985. As leader of the Soviet Union, he embarked upon a series of liberalizing reforms, which he referred to as policies of glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”). He also pursued a rapprochement with the West.

In February 1990, Gorbachev was elected president of the USSR, becoming the first and last person to hold this office. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that same year.

In August 1991, a group of top Soviet officials attempted to unseat Gorbachev in an ultimately unsuccessful coup.

Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR in December 1991, after the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed the Belovezh Accords — an agreement that formally dissolved the Soviet Union and created the Commonwealth of Independent States.