Who was Mikhail Gorbachev?

In 1950, Gorbachev entered Moscow State University's law school, an unusual choice given law's low prestige in Soviet society, but one that opened doors because of his peasant background and award. There he met Raisa Titarenko, a philosophy student, and the two married in 1953. He defended a Jewish classmate against an antisemitic campaign then sweeping the university, and privately voiced skepticism about the Soviet legal doctrine that treated confessions as proof of guilt. He also formed a lasting friendship with Czechoslovak student Zdeněk Mlynář, later a key figure in the 1968 Prague Spring.

Graduating with distinction in 1955, Gorbachev found no opening in Moscow and instead took a position in Stavropol, with Raisa abandoning her own doctoral studies to join him. He started in the regional procurator's office before shifting to Komsomol work, where he spent years organizing youth activities and slowly climbing the ranks. He also completed a second degree in agricultural production by correspondence, while Raisa earned a sociology doctorate in Moscow and joined the Communist Party herself.

Gorbachev rose steadily through Stavropol's party apparatus, becoming regional Komsomol chief in 1961 and eventually First Secretary of the Stavropol region in 1970, a post that made him a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee. He oversaw construction of the Great Stavropol Canal and was rewarded for a record grain harvest with the Order of the October Revolution, presented personally by Leonid Brezhnev. He cultivated relationships with senior figures including KGB chief Yuri Andropov, who became an important patron, and was sent on several trips to Western Europe that exposed him to open political criticism absent at home.

In 1978 Gorbachev moved to Moscow as a secretary of the Central Committee overseeing agriculture, joining the Politburo as a non-voting member in 1979 and a full member in 1980. Poor harvests during these years deepened his doubts about centralized economic management. When Andropov succeeded Brezhnev as general secretary in 1982, Gorbachev became his closest Politburo ally, chairing meetings in his absence, though Andropov's death in 1984 and the brief, ailing leadership of Konstantin Chernenko delayed Gorbachev's own ascent. In 1984 he visited Britain, where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared she could do business with him.

Elected general secretary by the Politburo in March 1985 following Chernenko's death, Gorbachev set out to preserve the Soviet system while reforming it. His policy of glasnost expanded freedom of speech and press, and perestroika sought to decentralize economic decision-making. He withdrew Soviet troops from the war in Afghanistan and pursued arms-control negotiations with American president Ronald Reagan, including the Reykjavik summit, while proposing a staged elimination of nuclear weapons by the century's end.

His reforms had consequences he had not intended. The creation of an elected Congress of People's Deputies eroded the Communist Party's monopoly on power, and in 1990 the Congress repealed the constitutional clause enshrining one-party rule, around the same time electing Gorbachev to a newly created presidency. When Warsaw Pact states abandoned Marxist-Leninist governments in 1989, including East Germany's opening of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev chose not to intervene militarily, and he later accepted German reunification on the condition that NATO forces not be stationed in the former East Germany.

Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, though most Soviet citizens disapproved of the honor. By then his domestic popularity was fading as Boris Yeltsin, elected to lead the Russian Supreme Soviet, emerged as a rival power base and declared Russian law supreme over Soviet law. In August 1991, hardline Communist officials attempted a coup while Gorbachev was on holiday in Crimea, placing him under house arrest, but the plot collapsed in the face of public resistance led by Yeltsin.

Weakened by the coup, Gorbachev could not prevent the Soviet Union's breakup. Yeltsin, Ukraine's Leonid Kravchuk, and Belarus's Stanislav Shushkevich signed an agreement in December 1991 declaring the Soviet Union dissolved and forming the Commonwealth of Independent States, a move Gorbachev called illegal but could not reverse. On 25 December 1991, he announced his resignation as Soviet president, citing achievements in political freedom and the end of the arms race even as the country he led ceased to exist the following day.

Out of office, Gorbachev and Raisa moved into a modest apartment, and he founded the Gorbachev Foundation in 1992 to study and defend the legacy of perestroika. He financed it through international lecture fees, book sales, and even television advertisements, while also launching the environmental organization Green Cross International and the World Political Forum. He ran for the Russian presidency in 1996 but won less than one percent of the vote. In 1999 his wife Raisa was diagnosed with leukemia and died that September after treatment in Germany.

Gorbachev continued pushing Russian social democracy, helping found parties that struggled to gain traction and were eventually dissolved. He initially welcomed Vladimir Putin's rise but grew increasingly critical of his government, opposing Putin's return to the presidency in 2012 while also defending Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and criticizing Western sanctions. He warned repeatedly against a new Cold War and spoke out on global events including the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Friends said he was distressed by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, viewing it as undoing his life's work.

Gorbachev died on 30 August 2022 at Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital after a prolonged illness, having suffered from severe diabetes for years. He was given a funeral with an honor guard and Russian Orthodox rites, though not a full state funeral, and was buried beside Raisa at Novodevichy Cemetery. He remains a deeply divisive figure, celebrated abroad for ending the Cold War and permitting the peaceful collapse of Eastern Bloc communism, but viewed by many Russians as responsible for the economic hardship and loss of superpower status that followed the Soviet Union's disintegration.