Mikhail Gorbachev

Early life and education

1931–1950: Childhood and adolescence

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in Privolnoye, a village then in the North Caucasus Krai of the Russian SFSR of the Soviet Union and now in the Krasnogvardeysky District of the Stavropol Krai. Privolnoye was divided between Russians and ethnic Ukrainians at the time. His paternal family were Russians and had moved from Voronezh several generations before, while his maternal family were ethnic Ukrainians and had migrated from Chernigov. Gorbachev's parents, Sergey Andreyevich Gorbachev and Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva (née Gopkalo), named him Viktor at birth. However, at Maria's insistence, Gorbachev had a secret baptism, where Sergey's father christened him Mikhail. Gorbachev's relationship with Sergey was close, while Maria was cold and punitive. The couple were poor and lived as peasants. They married as teenagers in 1928. In keeping with local tradition, Sergey and Maria initially resided in the house of the former's father, an adobe-walled hut, before a hut of their own could be built.

The Soviet Union was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, led by Joseph Stalin. Stalin had initiated a project of mass rural collectivization meant to help convert the country into a socialist society. Maria's father joined the Communist Party in 1928 and helped form Privolnoye's first kolkhoz the following year, becoming its chair. It was 19 kilometers (12 miles) outside Privolnoye. At the age of three, Gorbachev left his parental home and moved into the kolkhoz with Maria's parents.

Two of Gorbachev's paternal uncles and an aunt died in the famine of 1930–1933. This was followed by the Great Purge, in which individuals accused of being "enemies of the people" were interned in labor camps or executed. Both of Gorbachev's grandfathers served time in labor camps. After his December 1938 release, Maria's father discussed having been tortured by the secret police, an account that influenced Gorbachev.

During the Second World War, the German Army started invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, and occupied Privolnoye for four and a half months the following year. Sergey fought on the frontlines; he was wrongly declared dead during the war and fought in the 1943 Battle of Kursk before returning to his family, injured. Following the war, Sergey and Maria had their second son, Aleksandr, in 1947; Gorbachev and Aleksandr were the couple's only children.

1950–1955: University

In June 1950, Gorbachev became a candidate member of the Communist Party. He applied to study at the law school of Moscow State University (MSU), then the most prestigious university in the country. They accepted him without asking for an exam, likely because of his worker-peasant origins and his possession of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. His choice of law was unusual; it was not a well-regarded subject in Soviet society at that time. At age 19, he traveled by train to Moscow, the first time he had left his home region.

In Moscow, Gorbachev resided with fellow MSU students at a dormitory in the Sokolniki District. He felt at odds with his urban counterparts, but soon came to fit in. Fellow students recall his working especially hard, often late into the night. He gained a reputation as a mediator during disputes and was outspoken in class, but was private about his views; for instance, he confided in some students his opposition to the Soviet jurisprudential norm that a confession proved guilt, noting that confessions could have been forced. During his studies, an antisemitic campaign spread through the Soviet Union, culminating in the Doctors' plot; Gorbachev publicly defended Volodya Liberman, a Jewish student accused of disloyalty.

At MSU, Gorbachev became the Komsomol head of his entering class, and then Komsomol's deputy secretary for agitation and propaganda at the law school. One of his first Komsomol assignments in Moscow was to monitor the election polling in Presnensky District to ensure near-total turnout; Gorbachev found that most people voted "out of fear". In 1952, he was appointed a full member of the Communist Party. He was tasked with monitoring fellow students for subversion; some of his fellow students said he did so only minimally and that they trusted him to keep confidential information secret from the authorities. Gorbachev became close friends with Zdeněk Mlynář, a Czechoslovak student who later became a primary ideologist of the 1968 Prague Spring. Mlynář recalled that the duo remained committed Marxist–Leninists despite their growing concerns about the Stalinist system. After Stalin died in March 1953, Gorbachev and Mlynář joined the crowds massing to see Stalin's body lying in state.

At MSU, Gorbachev met Raisa Titarenko, who was studying in the university's philosophy department. She was engaged to another man, but after that engagement fell apart, she began a relationship with Gorbachev; together they went to bookstores, museums, and art exhibits. In early 1953, he took an internship at the procurator's office in Molotovskoye district, but he was angered by the incompetence and arrogance of those working there. That summer, he returned to Privolnoye to work with his father on the harvest; the money earned allowed him to pay for his wedding. On 25 September 1953, he and Raisa registered their marriage at Sokolniki Registry Office, and in October, moved in together at the Lenin Hills dormitory. Raisa discovered that she was pregnant and although the couple wanted to keep the child she fell ill and required an abortion.

Early CPSU career

1955–1969: Stavropol Komsomol

In August 1955, Gorbachev started work at the Stavropol regional procurator's office, but disliked it and got a transfer to work for Komsomol, becoming deputy director of Komsomol's agitation and propaganda department for that region. In this position, he visited villages in the area and tried to improve the lives of their inhabitants; he established a discussion circle in Gorkaya Balka to help its peasant residents gain social contacts.

Gorbachev and his wife Raisa initially rented a small room in Stavropol, taking daily evening walks around the city and on weekends hiking in the countryside. In January 1957, Raisa gave birth to a daughter, Irina, and in 1958 they moved into two rooms in a communal apartment. In 1961, Gorbachev pursued a second degree, in agricultural production; he took a correspondence course from the local Stavropol Agricultural Institute, receiving his diploma in 1967. His wife had also pursued a second degree, attaining a PhD in sociology in 1967 from the Moscow State Pedagogical University; while in Stavropol she joined the Communist Party.

Stalin was succeeded as Soviet leader by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin and his cult of personality in a speech given in February 1956, after which he launched a de-Stalinization process throughout Soviet society. Later biographer William Taubman suggested that Gorbachev "embodied" the "reformist spirit" of the Khrushchev era. Gorbachev was among those who saw themselves as "genuine Marxists" or "genuine Leninists". He helped spread Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist message in Stavropol, but encountered many who saw Stalin as a hero and praised his purges as just.

Gorbachev rose steadily through the ranks of the local administration. The authorities regarded him as politically reliable, and he would flatter his superiors, for instance gaining favor with prominent local politician Fyodor Kulakov. With an ability to outmaneuver rivals, some colleagues resented his success. In September 1956, he was promoted First Secretary of the Stavropol city's Komsomol, placing him in charge of it; in April 1958 he was made deputy head of the Komsomol for the entire region. He was given better accommodation: a two-room flat with its own private kitchen, toilet, and bathroom. In Stavropol, he formed a discussion club for youths, and helped mobilize local young people to take part in Khrushchev's agricultural and development campaigns.

1970–1977: heading the Stavropol region

In April 1970, Yefremov was promoted to a higher position in Moscow and Gorbachev succeeded him as the First Secretary of the Stavropol kraikom. This granted Gorbachev significant power over the Stavropol region. He had been vetted for the position by senior Kremlin leaders and was informed of their decision by the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Aged 39, he was considerably younger than his predecessors. As head of the Stavropol region, he automatically became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (24th term) in 1971. According to biographer Zhores Medvedev, Gorbachev "had now joined the Party's super-elite". As regional leader, Gorbachev initially attributed economic and other failures to "the inefficiency and incompetence of cadres, flaws in management structure or gaps in legislation", but eventually concluded that they were caused by an excessive centralization of decision making in Moscow. He began reading translations of restricted texts by Western Marxist authors such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Aragon, Roger Garaudy, and Giuseppe Boffa, and came under their influence.

Gorbachev's main task as regional leader was to raise agricultural production levels, a task hampered by severe droughts in 1975 and 1976. He oversaw the expansion of irrigation systems through construction of the Great Stavropol Canal. For overseeing a record grain harvest in Ipatovsky district, in March 1972 he was awarded the Order of the October Revolution by Brezhnev in a Moscow ceremony. Gorbachev sought to maintain Brezhnev's trust; as regional leader, he repeatedly praised Brezhnev in his speeches, for instance referring to him as "the outstanding statesman of our time". Gorbachev and his wife holidayed in Moscow, Leningrad, Uzbekistan, and resorts in the North Caucasus; he holidayed with the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, who was favorable towards him and who became an important patron. Gorbachev developed good relationships with senior figures including the Soviet prime minister, Alexei Kosygin, and the longstanding senior party member Mikhail Suslov.

The government considered Gorbachev sufficiently reliable to be sent in Soviet delegations to Western Europe; he made five trips there between 1970 and 1977. In September 1971 he was part of a delegation to Italy, where they met with representatives of the Italian Communist Party; Gorbachev loved Italian culture but was struck by the poverty and inequality he saw there. In 1972, he visited Belgium and the Netherlands, and in 1973 West Germany. Gorbachev and his wife visited France in 1976 and 1977, on the latter occasion touring the country with a guide from the French Communist Party. He was surprised by how openly West Europeans offered their opinions and criticized their political leaders, something absent from the Soviet Union, where most people did not feel safe speaking so openly. He later related that for him and his wife, these visits "shook our a prior belief in the superiority of socialist over bourgeois democracy".

Secretary of the Central Committee of CPSU

In November 1978, Gorbachev was appointed a secretary of the Central Committee. His appointment was approved unanimously by the Central Committee's members. To fill this position, Gorbachev and his wife moved to Moscow, where they were initially given an old dacha outside the city. They then moved to another, at Sosnovka, before being allocated a newly built brick house. He was given an apartment inside the city, but gave that to his daughter and son-in-law; Irina had begun work at Moscow's Second Medical Institute. As part of the Moscow political elite, Gorbachev and his wife now had access to better medical care and to specialized shops; they were given cooks, servants, bodyguards, and secretaries, many of these spies for the KGB. In his new position, Gorbachev often worked twelve to sixteen hour days. He and his wife socialized little, but liked to visit Moscow's theaters and museums.

In 1978, Gorbachev was appointed to the Central Committee's Secretariat for Agriculture (25th term), replacing his old patron Kulakov, who had died of a heart attack. Gorbachev concentrated his attentions on agriculture: the harvests of 1979, 1980, and 1981 were all poor, due largely to weather conditions, and the country had to import increasing quantities of grain. He had growing concerns about the country's agricultural management system, coming to regard it as overly centralized and requiring more bottom-up decision making; he raised these points at his first speech at a Central Committee Plenum, given in July 1978. He began to have concerns about other policies too. In December 1979, the Soviets sent the armed forces into neighboring Afghanistan to support its Soviet-aligned government against Islamist insurgents; Gorbachev privately thought it a mistake. At times he openly supported the government position; in October 1980 he for instance endorsed Soviet calls for Poland's Marxist–Leninist government to crack down on growing internal dissent in that country. That same month, he was promoted from a candidate member to a full member of the Politburo (25th term), becoming the youngest member of the highest decision-making authority in the Communist Party. After Brezhnev's death in November 1982, Andropov succeeded him as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the de facto leader in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was enthusiastic about the appointment. However, although Gorbachev hoped that Andropov would introduce liberalizing reforms, the latter carried out only personnel shifts rather than structural change. Gorbachev became Andropov's closest ally in the Politburo; with Andropov's encouragement, Gorbachev sometimes chaired Politburo meetings. Andropov encouraged Gorbachev to expand into policy areas other than agriculture, preparing him for future higher office. In April 1983, in a sign of growing ascendancy, Gorbachev delivered the annual speech marking the birthday of the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin; this required him re-reading many of Lenin's later writings, in which the latter had called for reform in the context of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, and encouraged Gorbachev's own conviction that reform was needed. In May 1983, Gorbachev was sent to Canada, where he met Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and spoke to the Canadian Parliament. There, he met and befriended the Soviet ambassador, Aleksandr Yakovlev, who later became a key political ally.

Leader of the Soviet Union (1985–1991)

On 11 March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected the eighth general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by the Politburo of the CPSU after the death of Konstantin Chernenko.

While Gorbachev wanted to preserve the Soviet Union and Marxist-Leninist ideals, he recognized the need for significant reforms. He decided to withdraw troops from the Soviet–Afghan War and met with United States president Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavik Summit to discuss the limitation of nuclear weapons production and ending the Cold War. He also proposed a three-stage program for abolishing the world's nuclear weapons by the end of the 20th century.

Domestically, his policy of glasnost ("openness") allowed for the improvement of freedom of speech and free press, while his perestroika ("restructuring") sought to decentralize economic decision-making to improve its efficiency. Ultimately, Gorbachev's democratization efforts and formation of the elected Congress of People's Deputies undermined the supremacy the CPSU had in Soviet governance. When various Warsaw Pact countries abandoned Marxist–Leninist governance in 1989, he declined to intervene militarily. Growing nationalist sentiment within constituent republics threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading the hardliners within the Communist Party to launch an unsuccessful coup against Gorbachev in August 1991.

Unraveling of the USSR

In the Revolutions of 1989, most of the Marxist–Leninist states of Central and Eastern Europe held multi-party elections resulting in regime change. In most countries, like Poland and Hungary, this was achieved peacefully, but in Romania, the revolution turned violent, and led to Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu's overthrow and execution. In 1989, he visited East Germany for the fortieth anniversary of its founding; shortly after, in November, the East German government allowed its citizens to cross the Berlin Wall, a decision Gorbachev praised. Over the following years, much of the wall was demolished. Neither Gorbachev nor Thatcher or Mitterrand wanted a swift reunification of Germany, aware that it would likely become the dominant European power. Gorbachev wanted a gradual process of German integration but Helmut Kohl began calling for rapid reunification. With German reunification in 1990, many observers declared the Cold War over.

1990–1991: presidency of the Soviet Union

In February 1990, both liberalizers and Marxist–Leninist hardliners intensified their attacks on Gorbachev. A liberalizer march took place in Moscow criticizing Communist Party rule, while at a Central Committee meeting, the hardliner Vladimir Brovikov accused Gorbachev of reducing the country to "anarchy" and "ruin" and of pursuing Western approval at the expense of the Soviet Union and the Marxist–Leninist cause. Gorbachev was aware that the Central Committee could still oust him as general secretary, and so decided to reformulate the role of head of government to a presidency from which he could not be removed. He decided that the presidential election should be held by the Congress of People's Deputies. He chose this over a public vote because he thought the latter would escalate tensions and feared that he might lose it; a spring 1990 poll nevertheless still showed him as the most popular politician in the country.

In March, the Congress of People's Deputies held the first (and only) Soviet presidential election, in which Gorbachev was the only candidate. He secured 1,329 in favor to 495 against; 313 votes were invalid or absent. He therefore became the first (and only) executive president of the Soviet Union. A new 18-member Presidential Council de facto replaced the Politburo. At the same Congress meeting, he presented the idea of repealing Article 6 of the Soviet constitution, which had ratified the Communist Party as the "ruling party" of the Soviet Union. The Congress passed the reform, undermining the de jure nature of the one-party state.

In the 1990 elections for the Russian Supreme Soviet, the Communist Party faced challengers from an alliance of liberalizers known as "Democratic Russia"; the latter did particularly well in urban centers. Yeltsin was elected the chair of the supreme state organ of power, something Gorbachev was unhappy about. That year, opinion polls showed Yeltsin overtaking Gorbachev as the most popular politician in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev struggled to understand Yeltsin's growing popularity, commenting: "he drinks like a fish ... he's inarticulate, he comes up with the devil knows what, he's like a worn-out record". The Russian Supreme Soviet was now out of Gorbachev's control; in June 1990, it declared that in the Russian Republic, its laws took precedence over those of the Soviet central government. Amid a growth in Russian nationalist sentiment, Gorbachev had reluctantly allowed the formation of a Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as a branch of the larger Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev attended its first congress in June, but soon found it dominated by hardliners who opposed his reformist stance.

Final days and collapse

After the coup, the Supreme Soviet indefinitely suspended all Communist Party activity, effectively ending communist rule in the Soviet Union.

On 30 October, Gorbachev attended a conference in Madrid trying to revive the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. The event was co-sponsored by the US and Soviet Union. There, he again met with Bush. En route home, he traveled to France where he stayed with Mitterrand at the latter's home near Bayonne.

To maintain unity, Gorbachev continued to plan for a union treaty, but met opposition to the continuation of a federal state as the leaders of several Soviet republics bowed to nationalist pressure. Yeltsin stated that he would veto any idea of a unified state, instead favoring a confederation with little central authority. Only the leaders of Kazakhstan and Kirghizia supported Gorbachev's approach. The referendum in Ukraine on 1 December with a 90% turnout for secession from the Union was a fatal blow; Gorbachev had expected Ukrainians to reject independence.

Without Gorbachev's knowledge, Yeltsin met with Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk and Belarusian president Stanislav Shushkevich in Belovezha Forest, near Brest, Belarus, on 8 December and signed the Belavezha Accords, which declared the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as its successor. Gorbachev only learned of this development when Shushkevich phoned him; Gorbachev was furious. He desperately looked for an opportunity to preserve the Soviet Union, hoping that the media and intelligentsia would rally against its dissolution. Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian Supreme Soviets then ratified the establishment of the CIS. On 9 December, Gorbachev issued a statement calling the CIS agreement "illegal and dangerous". On 20 December, the leaders of 11 of the 12 remaining republics—all except Georgia—met in Kazakhstan and signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, agreeing to dismantle the Soviet Union and formally establish the CIS. They provisionally accepted Gorbachev's resignation as president of what remained of the Soviet Union. Accepting the fait accompli, Gorbachev said he would resign as soon as he saw that the CIS was a reality.

Gorbachev reached a deal with Yeltsin that called for Gorbachev to announce his resignation as Soviet president and Commander-in-Chief on 25 December, vacating the Kremlin by 29 December. Yakovlev, Chernyaev and Shevardnadze joined Gorbachev to help him write a resignation speech. Gorbachev gave his speech in the Kremlin in front of television cameras, for international broadcast. In it, he announced, "I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." He expressed regret for the breakup of the Soviet Union but cited what he saw as the achievements of his administration: political and religious freedom, the end of totalitarianism, the introduction of democracy and a market economy, and an end to the arms race and Cold War. Gorbachev was the third out of eight Soviet leaders, after Malenkov and Khrushchev, not to die in office. The following day, 26 December, the Soviet of the Republics, the upper house of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, voted the country out of existence. As of 31 December 1991, all Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased to function.

Post-USSR life

1991–1999: Initial years

Out of office, he and Raisa initially lived in their dilapidated dacha on Rublevskoe Shosse, and were allowed to privatize their smaller apartment on Kosygin Street. He focused on establishing his foundation, launched in March 1992; Yakovlev and Revenko were its first vice presidents. Its initial tasks were analyzing and publishing material on the history of perestroika, and defending the policy. The foundation tasked itself with monitoring and critiquing life in post-Soviet Russia, presenting alternative development forms to Yeltsin's.

To finance his foundation, Gorbachev began lecturing internationally, charging large fees. On a visit to Japan, he was given multiple honorary degrees. In 1992, he toured the US in a Forbes private jet to raise money for his foundation, meeting the Reagans for a social visit. From there he went to Spain, where he met with his friend Prime Minister Felipe González. He further visited Israel and Germany, where he was received warmly for his role in facilitating German reunification. To supplement his lecture fees and book sales, Gorbachev appeared in television commercials and photograph advertisements, enabling him to keep the foundation afloat. With his wife's assistance, he worked on his memoirs, which were published in Russian in 1995 and in English the following year. He began writing a monthly syndicated column for The New York Times.

In 1993, Gorbachev launched Green Cross International, which focused on encouraging sustainable futures, and then the World Political Forum. In 1995, he initiated the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates.

Gorbachev and Yeltsin soon resumed their criticism of each other, for example when Yeltsin lifted price caps and plunged many Russians into poverty. In 1995, his foundation held a conference on "The Intelligentsia and Perestroika", proposing to the Duma a law that would reduce many of the presidential powers established by Yeltsin's 1993 constitution.

In contrast to her husband's political activities, Raisa focused on campaigning for children's charities. In 1997, she founded a sub-division of the Gorbachev Foundation known as Raisa Maksimovna's Club to improve women's welfare in Russia. The Foundation had initially been housed in the former Social Science Institute building, but Yeltsin introduced limits to the number of rooms it could use there; the American philanthropist Ted Turner donated over $1 million to enable the foundation to build new premises on the Leningradsky Prospekt. In 1999, Gorbachev visited Australia, giving a speech to the country's parliament. Shortly after, in July, Raisa was diagnosed with leukemia. With the assistance of German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, she was transferred to a cancer center in Münster, Germany, and underwent chemotherapy. She died in September, and Gorbachev's daughter Irina and his two granddaughters moved into his Moscow home to live with him.

1999–2008: Promoting social democracy in Putin's Russia

In December 1999, Yeltsin resigned and was succeeded by his deputy, Vladimir Putin, who won the March 2000 presidential election. Gorbachev initially welcomed Putin's rise, seeing him as an anti-Yeltsin figure. Although he spoke out against some of the Putin government's actions, Gorbachev praised the new government in 2002. At the time, he believed Putin to be a committed democrat who nevertheless had to use "a certain dose of authoritarianism" to stabilize the economy and rebuild the state after the Yeltsin era. At Putin's request, Gorbachev became co-chair of the "Petersburg Dialogue" project between high-ranking Russians and Germans.

In 2000, Gorbachev helped form the Russian United Social Democratic Party. In June 2002, he participated in a meeting with Putin, who praised the venture. In 2003, Gorbachev's party merged with the Social Democratic Party to form the Social Democratic Party of Russia, but it failed to gain traction with voters. Gorbachev resigned as party leader in May 2004 after the 2003 election campaign. The party was banned in 2007 by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation due to its failure to establish local offices with at least 500 members in the majority of Russian regions. Later that year, Gorbachev founded a new movement, the Union of Social Democrats, stating that it would not contest the forthcoming elections.

Gorbachev was critical of US hostility to Putin, arguing that the US government "doesn't want Russia to rise" again as a global power, but wanted to be "the sole superpower". Gorbachev was critical of US policy following the Cold War, arguing that the West had attempted to "turn [Russia] into some kind of backwater". He rejected Bush's claim that the US had "won" the Cold War, arguing that both sides had cooperated to end the conflict. He was critical of how the US had broken its word and expanded NATO right up to Russia's borders. He spoke out against the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia because it lacked UN backing, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the US.

2008–2022: Growing criticism of Vladimir Putin

In September 2008, Gorbachev and business oligarch Alexander Lebedev announced they would form the Independent Democratic Party of Russia. After the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian War, Gorbachev spoke out against US support for Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. Gorbachev nevertheless remained critical of Russia's government.

In 2009, he met with US president Barack Obama to "reset" strained US–Russian relations. In 2011, Medvedev awarded him the Order of St Andrew the Apostle the First-Called.

Gorbachev opposed Putin's decision to run for president in the 2012 election.

In 2014, he defended the Crimean status referendum and Russia's annexation of Crimea that began the Russo-Ukrainian War. He spoke out against the sanctions placed on Russia as a result of the annexation.

At a 2014 event marking 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev warned that the ongoing war in Donbas had brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War, and he accused the US of adopting an attitude of "triumphalism" towards Russia. In 2016, he said that "Politicians who think that problems and disputes can be solved by using military force... should be rejected by society, they should clear the political stage." In June 2018, he welcomed the Russia–United States summit in Helsinki between Putin and US president Donald Trump. After the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Gorbachev declared, "The storming of the capitol was clearly planned in advance, and it's obvious by whom."

In July 2022, Gorbachev's close friend, journalist Alexei Venediktov, said that Gorbachev was very upset when he found out about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to Venediktov, Gorbachev believed that Putin "destroyed his life's work", and was calling for "an early cessation of hostilities and immediate start of peace negotiations".

Political ideology

In the early 1950s, Gorbachev was conventionally Stalinist. By the mid-1980s, when he took power, Gorbachev argued that the Communist Party had to adapt and engage in creative thinking much as Lenin had earlier creatively interpreted and adapted the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to the situation of early 20th-century Russia. However, the changes that Gorbachev proposed fitted completely within Marxist-Leninist ideology. According to Doder and Branson, Gorbachev's outlook was shaped in part by his long provincial career in Stavropol, where he held regional party posts for 23 years. Perestroika was harder to define, and its meaning shifted with time. It originally meant "radical reform of the economic and political system". Later, Gorbachev began to consider market mechanisms and co-operatives. Gorbachev however remained a believer in socialism, if not in the actual Soviet system. During the 1980s, his thought radically shifted, to the extent that by 1989 or 1990, he was effectively a social democrat.

Personal life

Gorbachev spoke in a southern Russian accent, and sang both folk and pop songs. He frequently referred to himself in the third person. Throughout his life, he tried to dress fashionably. Having an aversion to hard liquor, he drank sparingly and did not smoke. He was protective of his private life and cherished his wife and family. He sent his daughter, his only child, to a local school in Stavropol rather than to one for the children of party elites. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Soviet administration, he treated women respectfully.

Gorbachev was baptized Russian Orthodox; his grandparents had been practicing Christians. In 2008, after he visited the tomb of St Francis of Assisi, he clarified that he was an atheist. Gorbachev considered himself an intellectual; Doder and Branson thought that "his intellectualism was slightly self-conscious", noting that unlike most Russian intelligentsia, Gorbachev was not closely connected "to the world of science, culture, the arts, or education". When living in Stavropol, he and his wife collected hundreds of books. Among his favorite authors were Arthur Miller, Dostoevsky, and Chinghiz Aitmatov, while he also enjoyed reading detective fiction. He enjoyed going for walks, having a love of natural environments, and was also a fan of association football. He favored small gatherings where the assembled discussed topics like art and philosophy rather than the large, alcohol-fueled parties common among Soviet officials.

Death

Gorbachev died at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow on 30 August 2022, at the age of 91. He died after a "severe and prolonged illness". He had suffered from severe diabetes and underwent several surgeries and hospital stays.

His funeral was held on 3 September 2022 in the Column Hall of the House of Unions. The ceremony included an honor guard, but was not a state funeral. The service included rites administered by a Russian Orthodox priest. He is buried at Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, in the same grave as his wife Raisa, as requested by his will.

Reception and legacy

Opinions on Gorbachev are deeply divided. According to a 2017 survey carried out by the independent institute Levada Center, 46% of Russian citizens have a negative opinion towards Gorbachev, 30% are indifferent, while only 15% have a positive opinion. Many, particularly in Western countries, see him as the greatest statesman of the second half of the 20th century. US press referred to the presence of "Gorbymania" in Western countries during the late 1980s and early 1990s, as represented by large crowds that turned out to greet his visits, with Time naming him its "Man of the Decade" in the 1980s. In the Soviet Union itself, during Gorbachev's time as General Secretary, opinion polls indicated that he was the most popular politician from 1985 through to late 1989. His domestic supporters saw him as a reformer trying to modernize the Soviet Union, and to build democratic socialism. Taubman characterized Gorbachev as "a visionary who changed his country and the world—though neither as much as he wished". Taubman regarded Gorbachev as being "exceptional ... as a Russian ruler and a world statesman", highlighting that he avoided the "traditional, authoritarian, anti-Western norm" of both predecessors like Brezhnev and successors like Putin. McCauley thought that in allowing the Soviet Union to move away from Marxism–Leninism, Gorbachev gave the Soviet people "something precious, the right to think and manage their lives for themselves", with inevitable uncertainty and risk. The Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that Lithuanians would not glorify Gorbachev or forget about the 1991 January Events.

Gorbachev's negotiations with the US helped bring an end to the Cold War and reduced the threat of nuclear conflict. His decision to allow the Eastern Bloc to break apart prevented significant bloodshed in Central and Eastern Europe; as Taubman noted, this meant that the "Soviet Empire" ended in a far more peaceful manner than the British Empire several decades before. Similarly, under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union broke apart without falling into civil war, as happened during the breakup of Yugoslavia at the same time. McCauley noted that in facilitating the merger of East and West Germany, Gorbachev was "a co-father of German unification", assuring him long-term popularity among the German people.

He faced domestic criticism during his rule. He attracted the admiration of some colleagues, but others came to hate him. Across society, his inability to reverse the decline in the Soviet economy brought discontent. Liberals thought he lacked the radicalism to break from Marxism–Leninism and establish a free market liberal democracy. Conversely, many of his Communist Party critics thought his reforms were reckless and threatened the survival of Soviet socialism; some believed he should have followed the example of China's Communist Party and restricted himself to economic rather than governmental reforms. Many Russians saw his emphasis on persuasion rather than force as a sign of weakness.

Awards and honors

In 1988, India awarded Gorbachev the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development; in 1990, he was given the Nobel Peace Prize for "his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community". Out of office he continued to receive honors. In 1992, he was the first recipient of the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award, and in 1994 was given the Grawemeyer Award by the University of Louisville, Kentucky. In 1995, he was awarded the Grand-Cross of the Order of Liberty by Portuguese president Mário Soares, and in 1998 the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2002, Gorbachev received the Freedom of the City of Dublin from Dublin City Council.

In 2002, Gorbachev was awarded the Charles V Prize by the European Academy of Yuste Foundation. Gorbachev, together with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren, were awarded the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for their recording of Sergei Prokofiev's 1936 Peter and the Wolf for Pentatone. In 2005, Gorbachev was awarded the Point Alpha Prize for his role in supporting German reunification.