Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet Politburo member, with Margaret Thatcher at the Prime Minister's official residence Chequers. (Photo by Fox Photos)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1984
Chequers, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
Mikhail Gorbachev shakes hands with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Chequers on December 16, 1984. (Photo by Terry Disney)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1984
London, England, UK
Mikhail Gorbachev, a member of the Politburo, in London for a week-long official visit, December 1984. (Photo by Georges De Keerle)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1984
Moscow, Russia
Mikhail Gorbachev celebrates the Anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7, 1984, in Moscow, Soviet Union. (Photo by Georges De Keerle)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1984
Longford TW6, United Kingdom
Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian Politburo member and second in line at the Kremlin, walks along the red carpet with Margaret Thatcher, U.K. Prime Minister, after arriving at London Heathrow airport on Saturday, December 15, 1984. (Photo by Bryn Colton)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1985
Geneva, Switzerland
Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev hold their historic "fireside chat" in a Geneva boathouse on November 19, 1985, in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1985
Geneva, Switzerland
Ronald Reagan (second L) and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev (R foreground) and staff walk to the boathouse for their historic "fireside chat" November 19, 1985, in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1985
Jealott's Hill, Berkshire, UK
Mikhail Gorbachev, wearing protective goggles during a visit to the Imperial Chemical Industries research station at Jealott's Hill, Berkshire. (Photo by David Caulkin)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1985
Mikhail Gorbachev. (Photo by Francois Lochon)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1985
Mikhail Gorbachev at a press conference in Elysee Palace. (Photo by Francois Lochon)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1985
Mikhail Gorbachev (L) & Ronald Reagan exchanging glances during the summit. (Photo by Bill Fitzpatrick)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1986
Borgartún 105, Reykjavík, Iceland
Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev stand in front of the Hofdi House during their second summit meeting in October 1986 in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1986
Geneva, Switzerland
Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan at the Geneva Summit 1986 (Photo by Universal History Archive)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1987
Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (right) synchronize their watches. (Photo by MPI)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1987
105 B College St, White House, TN 37188, United States
Ronald Reagan (R) posing with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in the White House library, Washington, D.C., December 8, 1987. (Photo by White House Photos)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1987
London, England, UK
Mikhail Gorbachev and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shake hands at the end of a meeting with former US President Ronald Reagan for an agreement on nuclear disarmament on December 7, 1987, in London, England. (Photo by Georges De Keerle)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1987
105 B College St, White House, TN 37188, United States
Mikhail Gorbachev and US president Ronald Reagan at a Summit meeting in Washington, D.C. (Photo by White House)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1987
Moscow, Russia
Margaret Thatcher with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during a visit to Moscow, March 1987. (Photo by Georges De Keerle)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1987
Berlin, Germany
Erich Honecker welcomes Mikhail Gorbachev at the Warsaw Pact summit in Berlin, GDR, on 28th April 1987. (Photo by Wojtek Laski)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1989
Vatican
Mikhail Gorbachev and John Paul II. Vatican, 1st December 1989. (Photo by Wojtek Laski)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1990
Mikhail Gorbachev (Photo by Sergei Guneyev)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1991
Moscow, Russia
Mikhail Gorbachev during a Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in Moscow, Russia, on 4th September 1991. (Photo by Wojtek Laski)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
1991
Moscow, Russia
George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev during a press conference in Moscow, Russia, on 31st July 1991. (Photo by Wojtek Laski)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
2013
Cologne, Germany
Mikhail Gorbachev attends a meet and greets before talking with Fritz Pleitgen about his autobiography Alles Zu seiner Zeit (All in good time) during the lit. Cologne at Guerzenich on March 13, 2013, in Cologne, Germany. (Photo by Ralf Juergens)
Gallery of Mikhail Gorbachev
2014
Willy-Brandt-Straße 1, 10557 Berlin, Germany
Angela Merkel (R) meets with former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev at the Chancellery on November 10, 2014, in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sandra Steins)
Achievements
Membership
Russian Academy of Arts
The Club of Rome
Awards
Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development
Nobel Peace Prize
Ronald Reagan Freedom Award
40 Presidential Dr, Simi Valley, CA 93065, United States
Ronald Reagan awards former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev with the first Ronald Reagan Freedom Award at the Reagan Library, 1992. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian Politburo member and second in line at the Kremlin, walks along the red carpet with Margaret Thatcher, U.K. Prime Minister, after arriving at London Heathrow airport on Saturday, December 15, 1984. (Photo by Bryn Colton)
Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev hold their historic "fireside chat" in a Geneva boathouse on November 19, 1985, in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly)
Ronald Reagan (second L) and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev (R foreground) and staff walk to the boathouse for their historic "fireside chat" November 19, 1985, in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly)
Mikhail Gorbachev, wearing protective goggles during a visit to the Imperial Chemical Industries research station at Jealott's Hill, Berkshire. (Photo by David Caulkin)
Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev stand in front of the Hofdi House during their second summit meeting in October 1986 in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly)
105 B College St, White House, TN 37188, United States
Ronald Reagan (R) posing with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in the White House library, Washington, D.C., December 8, 1987. (Photo by White House Photos)
Mikhail Gorbachev and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shake hands at the end of a meeting with former US President Ronald Reagan for an agreement on nuclear disarmament on December 7, 1987, in London, England. (Photo by Georges De Keerle)
Mikhail Gorbachev attends a meet and greets before talking with Fritz Pleitgen about his autobiography Alles Zu seiner Zeit (All in good time) during the lit. Cologne at Guerzenich on March 13, 2013, in Cologne, Germany. (Photo by Ralf Juergens)
Angela Merkel (R) meets with former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev at the Chancellery on November 10, 2014, in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sandra Steins)
40 Presidential Dr, Simi Valley, CA 93065, United States
Ronald Reagan awards former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev with the first Ronald Reagan Freedom Award at the Reagan Library, 1992. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
(Mikhail Gorbachev is the man who changed everything. It w...)
Mikhail Gorbachev is the man who changed everything. It was Gorbachev's initiative that raised the Iron Curtain; his actions that resulted in one of the era's most symbolic events, the demolition on the Berlin Wall; his reforms that set in train events leading to the fall of Communism.
Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century: Gorbachev and Ikeda on Buddhism and Communism
(Mikhail Gorbachev and Daisaku Ikeda are contemporaries ra...)
Mikhail Gorbachev and Daisaku Ikeda are contemporaries raised in different cultures: Gorbachev is a statesman influenced by Marx and communist politics while Ikeda is a Buddhist inspired by the thirteenth-century Japanese sage, Nichiren. This book is a result of a series of conversations between these two men. Together they explore their experiences of life amidst the turmoil of the twentieth century and together they search for a common ethical basis for future development.
(After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Ru...)
After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has been in the past 25 years. Putin’s motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia’s elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal the development of Putin’s regime and the intentions behind it.
What Is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom
(Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, world peace i...)
Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, world peace is at risk again. The President of the United States has withdrawn from the disarmament treaty with Russia, Europe is disintegrating, China is surging forward and a wave of nationalism and populism is destabilizing established political institutions and endangering hard-won liberties. In view of this dangerous and unpredictable state of affairs, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last great statesman of the 1989 revolution, has written this short book to warn us of the grave risks we now face and to urge us all, political leaders and citizens alike, to take action to address them.
Mikhail Gorbachev is a Russian politician and statesman. Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Communist Party. He initiated the changes known as "perestroika" and "glasnost," and became the first president of the Soviet Union in 1990. His efforts to democratize his country’s political system and decentralize its economy led to the downfall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Background
Ethnicity:
Mikhail Gorbachev's father was Russian, while his mother was of the Ukrainian descent.
Mikhail Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, in Privolnoye, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union (now Russia), to Sergey Andreyevich Gorbachev and Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva. While his father was a combine harvester and World War II veteran, his mother was employed as a kolkhoz worker.
Mikhail Gorbachev did not have an easy childhood. He was just old enough to remember when, during the 1930s, both of his grandfathers were caught in the purges and arrested. Although they were released after prison, having been tortured in one case and internally exiled and used as forced labor in the other, young Gorbachev knew what it was like to live in the home of an enemy of the people.
The war and early postwar years provided the family with the opportunity to recover from the stigma of false charges laid against the older generation, although the wartime experience itself was harsh. Gorbachev's father was in the army, saw action on several fronts, and was twice wounded. Remaining in the Russian countryside, Gorbachev and his mother had to engage in back-breaking work in the fields.
After the war, Gorbachev chose to remain on his land, although it was now taken by the Communist Government, the ranks of which he would penetrate later. Gorbachev privately described his life and work on a Soviet collective farm as serfdom.
Education
As a child, Gorbachev had a passion for learning. When he graduated from high school with a silver medal in 1950, his father persuaded him to continue on to university. Gorbachev’s academic record was stellar, and he was accepted into Moscow University, the premier school in the Soviet Union, without having to take the entrance exam. The university even provided him with free-living accommodations at a nearby hostel.
As a law student, Gorbachev was a disciplined hard worker. He read the works of many authors and particularly liked a two-year course on the history of political ideas.Gorbachev graduated from Moscow University cum laude with a law degree in 1955 and shortly afterward returned to his hometown with his new wife, Raisa, a fellow Moscow University alumnus.
Gorbachev realized that agricultural successes in his area might translate into a job in Moscow. In 1967, he obtained a correspondence master’s degree from Stavropol Institute of Agriculture, after which he became a qualified agricultural economist. Student acquaintances from these years describe him as bright, hard-working, and careful to establish good contacts with people of importance.
Once back in Stavropol after graduation, Gorbachev took a position at the Stavropol territorial prosecutor’s office. Soon after he began the job, Gorbachev ran into some old acquaintances. They remembered him from his involvement in the Young Communist League during high school. Because Gorbachev had shown himself to be dedicated and organized, they asked him to be the assistant director of propaganda for the territorial committee of the local Communist youth league.
Soviet premier Joseph Stalin had died two years prior, and the Soviet Union’s process of political restructuring created an exciting climate for young Communist Party activists. Eager to get involved, Gorbachev accepted the offer and resigned his position at the prosecutor’s office after just 10 days on the job. Gorbachev steadily rose through the ranks of the Communist League. In 1956, he was made the first secretary of the Stavropol City Komsomol Committee. In 1961, he was appointed as a delegate to the party congress.
His reputation as a hardworking and dedicated activist worked for him as he was soon promoted up the ranks. He became Head of the Department of Party Organs in the Stavropol Agricultural Kraikom in 1963 and soon took on major responsibilities for the Stavropol city committee as well. Party leader Leonid Brezhnev rewarded his ability by appointing him Stavropol's first secretary in 1966, roughly equivalent to mayor.
In 1970 he assumed the important post of the first secretary for the Stavropol Territorial Party Committee. This position, which is similar to a governor in the United States, proved a stepping stone to Central Committee membership and national recognition. Working in this capacity, he improved the basic living standard of the workers and helped them reorganize collective farms. He even assisted them in expanding private plots.
A year later membership in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev displayed a talent for winning the good opinion of very diverse people. These included not only men of somewhat different outlooks within the Soviet Communist Party. Later they were also to embrace Western conservatives - most notably Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher - as well as European social democrats such as the former West German chancellor Willy Brandt and Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.
However, Gorbachev's early success in winning friends and influencing people depended not only on his ability and charm. He had an advantage in his location. Stavropol was spa territory, and leading members of the Politburo came there on holiday. The local party secretary had to meet them, and this gave Gorbachev the chance to make a good impression on figures such as Mikhail Suslov and Yuri Andropov.
Both of them later supported his promotion to the secretaryship of the Central Committee, with responsibility for agriculture, when one of Gorbachev's mentors, Fyodor Kulakov, a previous first secretary of Stavropol territory, who held the agricultural portfolio within the Central Committee Secretariat (along with membership in the Politburo), died in 1978. From that time, Gorbachev was based in Moscow. As the youngest member of an increasingly geriatric political leadership, he was given rapid promotion through the highest echelons of the Communist Party, adding to his secretaryship candidate membership of the Politburo in 1979 and full membership in 1980.
Gorbachev made a critical advancement in his burgeoning political career when he became a full member of the Politburo, otherwise known as the Political Bureau of the Central Agency, the executive committee for numerous Communist Party factions. During Yuri Andropov’s term as the general secretary, his visibility increased as he was counted as one of the most active members. His journey to different nations shaped his political and social view. With the death of Andropov and his successor Konstantin Chernenko, the need for a younger leader became evident. In 1985, Gorbachev was elected as the general secretary by the Politburo.
He aimed at bringing forth a change in the party. He also wanted to bring about a change in the state economy by introducing concepts of openness, restructuring, democratization, and accelerated economic development. In an attempt to increase the efficiency of the Soviet bureaucracy, he brought about various technological advancements to enhance productivity and reduce waste. He established a market economy that was more socially oriented and raised an anti-alcohol campaign.
Gorbachev inherited the issues that Andropov and Chernenko had been struggling to tackle, including serious domestic problems and escalating Cold War tensions. But Gorbachev’s youthful energy and enthusiasm gave the Soviet Union hope that a new generation of leaders geared toward positive change had taken charge. During his term as general secretary, Gorbachev was engaged with United States president Ronald Reagan in a costly race to amass nuclear weapons in space.
The expense put further stress on the already suffering Soviet economy. Gorbachev worked diligently to create reforms that he believed would improve the Soviet standard of living. By providing more freedom and democracy to the Soviets, he strove toward "glasnost" and "perestroika," openness and restructuring. He worked toward establishing a market economy that was more socially oriented. Gorbachev’s reforms were also geared toward increasing productivity and reducing waste.
Although his reforms were supported by the public, many communist hard-liners openly opposed Gorbachev. Eventually, by the late 1980s, Gorbachev's push for economic liberalization resulted in the emergence of co-operatives and other forms of independent businesses, making the movement to freedom irreversible.
Gorbachev had important meetings with Ronald Reagan culminating in their summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, and leading to a more stable political and military situation in the world, that resulted in the reunification of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. At that time the Soviet hard-liners criticized Gorbachev's international moves, saying that he was not a leader, but rather a follower of Ronald Reagan's instruction: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall" when the state of world affairs did not allow Gorbachev to disobey without risk of losing his face. He also followed recommendations by Margaret Thatcher on opening the "Iron Curtain" to allow the Russian people to see the world and learn about the diverse international reality and travel freely on their own.
At first, Gorbachev skillfully used hidden buttons within the rigid structure of the Soviet power tainted by the long tradition of obedience, fear, and intimidation, which was installed by dictator Joseph Stalin within the ranks of Communist bureaucracy. That fear of the man in Kremlin served Gorbachev's plans well, as he managed to overcome the resistance of hardliners in ending the ruling powers of the Communist Party. Soon Gorbachev began giving away many power buttons in Moscow, which allowed his rivals to gain strength and independently form opposition groups.
Andrei Gromyko, the last living member of Joseph Stalin's old Politburo, had criticized Gorbachev's methods as "weak leadership" and also said, "He (Gorbachev) is unfit for the Hat" (where the Hat means Kremlin or an allusion to the Tsar's crown of power). Such criticism was ignored by most of the younger members of the Communist Politburo and Central Committee because weak central leadership allowed provincial bosses to privatize state property at a fraction of its real value.
Gorbachev replaced his hard-line critic Andrei Gromyko with Eduard Shevardnadze as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, and both Gorbachev and Shevardnadze pushed for international détente and withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. In another effort to add weight to his gradually eroding power, in March of 1990 Gorbachev updated his official title by adding a newly created post as President of the Soviet Union, albeit he was not really a democratically elected president.
He surrounded himself with the political council of 15 top politicians, but he was lacking the grass-roots connections with masses and mid-level bureaucracy across the country. At that time Gorbachev began to experience powerlessness in his efforts to change the gigantic Soviet system, he was known for expressing his powerlessness by using profanities and anger at his meetings with the ranks of Soviet Government and industrial leaders. Gorbachev was facing an impossible task of modernizing the brittle structure of Soviet Communism, especially the massive and inefficient Soviet military-industrial complex where opposition to reforms was the most organized, and inefficiency was dissembled as a military secret, like a catch-22, thus making it unreformable.
Gorbachev himself was still perceived as the Secretary-General of the Soviet Communist Party, and that stigma became the weakest part of his image in the eyes of many open-minded and quickly learning people in the Soviet Union. His effort to gain political weight by adding a figure of Vice-President of the Soviet Union had failed and soon backfired. Gorbachev's fatal mistake was letting the Members of Politburo to chose the Vice-President of the Soviet Union behind closed doors in Kremlin; the "chosen" one was a career communist Gennadi Yanayev who would very soon betray Gorbachev during the coup.
Eventually, Gorbachev became overshadowed by a much stronger figure of Boris Yeltsin, who gained more popular support by pushing further economic and political reforms, and also criticized Gorbachev's manner of restructuring of the Soviet system as slow, indecisive, and inefficient. The rivalry between two former Communist comrades ended in the August 1991 coup, when still powerful KGB and Soviet Army leaders tried to take the power away from both Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
Gorbachev was captured in a coup to seize power. Despite being an opposition leader, Yeltsin intervened and personally manned a resistance against the coup, which finally released Gorbachev. Yeltsin became the focal point of resistance to the putschists, his political position was greatly weakened. With the hard-liners discredited, disaffected nationalities pressed for full independence, and Yeltsin became increasingly intransigent in pressing Russian interests at the expense of any kind of federal union. In December 1991 the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian republics got together to announce that the Soviet Union was ceasing to exist. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned the presidency of the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist that same day.
During the post-Soviet period, Gorbachev held no position of power, but he continued to be politically active. His relations with Yeltsin were so bad that at one point Yeltsin attempted to prevent him from traveling abroad, but abandoned that policy following protests from Western leaders. Throughout the Yeltsin years, Gorbachev was never invited to the Kremlin, although he was consulted on a number of occasions by Vladimir Putin when he succeeded Yeltsin. Gorbachev's main activities were centered on the foundation he headed, an independent think-tank of social-democratic leanings, which promoted research, seminars, and conferences on developments within the former Soviet Union and on major international issues.
Gorbachev became the author of several books, most notably two volumes of memoirs published in Russian in 1995 and, in somewhat abbreviated form, in English and other languages in 1996. In 1996 Gorbachev ran for president of Russia but garnered less than 1 percent of the vote. He nevertheless remained active in public life, as a speaker and as a member of various global and Russian think tanks.
Other significant works included a book of political reflections, based on tape-recorded conversations with his Czech friend from university days, Zdenek Mlynár, which appeared in 2002. In 2006 he paired with Russian billionaire and former lawmaker Aleksandr Lebedev to purchase nearly half of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, known for its willingness to challenge Kremlin policies. On September 30, 2008, it was announced that Gorbachev and Lebedev were forming a new political party, though it never materialized.
(Mikhail Gorbachev is the man who changed everything. It w...)
1995
Religion
Gorbachev's grandmother was deeply religious and kept a religious icon along with pictures of Lenin and Stalin in a corner of the room. Due to her, Gorbachev was secretly baptized Russian Orthodox as a child. He professed to be an atheist in order to rise in the Communist Party.
In 2008, Gorbachev confronted speculations that he had been a closeted Christian during an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax. "Over the last few days some media have been disseminating fantasies - I can't use any other word - about my secret Catholicism, citing my visit to the Sacro Convento friary, where the remains of St. Francis of Assisi lie," Gorbachev said. "To sum up and avoid any misunderstandings, let me say that I have been and remain an atheist," he stated.
He acknowledged the important role religion plays in society and said he looks forward to visiting Orthodox churches in Russia, Catholic and Protestant churches in the United States and Europe, synagogues in Israel, and mosques in the Arab world.
Politics
Gorbachev had become a candidate member of the Communist Party while he was in high school, but it wasn’t until 1952, when he was at Moscow University, that he was granted full membership. With Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin's death, the Soviet Union began a period of political and intellectual unrest which paved the way for a major restructuring of the Soviet Union's political system and economic administration. For young party activists like Gorbachev, this was a period of exciting changes and challenges.
Within the Soviet Union, Gorbachev promoted great political changes. His most important measure came in 1989 when he set up elections in which members of the Communist Party had to compete against opponents who were not party members. Later that same year, he called for an end to the special status of the Communist Party guaranteed by the Soviet Constitution. He also ended the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan.
Two issues, however, caused growing difficulty for Gorbachev. First, there was the problem of nationalities, as the Soviet Union consisted of nearly one hundred different ethnic groups. Many of these groups began to engage in open warfare against each other and even more serious, some ethnic groups, like the Lithuanians and the Ukrainians began to call for outright independence. Second, the country's economy was sinking deeper into crisis. Both industrial and agricultural production was declining, and the old system, in which the economy ran under the centralized control of the government, no longer seemed to work.
While Gorbachev wrestled with these problems, a powerful rival began to emerge. Once considered an ally, Boris Yeltsin became the country's leading supporter of radical economic reform (improvement). Yeltsin formally left the Communist Party in 1990, something Gorbachev refused to do, and was elected president of the Russian Republic in June 1991. Gorbachev, on the other hand, had been made president of the Soviet Union without having to win a national election. Thus, Yeltsin could claim a greater degree of popular support.
On May 25, 2000, Gorbachev registered his Russian Social Democratic Party, saying he wanted to support liberal ideas. The party's registration by the Justice Ministry paved the way for it to contest future polls. Post presidency, he established a Social Democratic Party of Russia from which he resigned in 2004. Three years henceforth, he formed a new political party called Union of Social Democrats.
Although Gorbachev was at times critical of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, he supported the country’s annexation (2014) of Crimea during the Ukraine crisis. He criticized the United States President Donald Trump who wanted to withdraw the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which he had signed with former United States President Ronald Reagan.
Views
As Gorbachev realized that the fall of the Soviet system was imminent, he strove - and succeeded - to ensure that there was a peaceful, nonviolent transition of the closed and totalitarian Soviet society to democracy and openness. This is Gorbachev's historical achievement. Once he embarked on that quest, greater ecological awareness of how the state was managed inevitably followed. Along with it came a new openness with regard to ecological data, together with popular participation in decision-making that affected the environment.
Gorbachev became active on environmental matters as president of Green Cross International, an organization working for sustainable development. The Green Cross has emerged as a worldwide environmental-protection body that addresses everything from climate change to chemical contamination.
Gorbachev founded The Gorbachev Foundation, an international non-governmental non-profit organization. The Gorbachev Foundation has developed links of close cooperation with leading universities, foundations, international organizations, government bodies, and non-governmental organizations in various countries all over the world.
The Gorbachev Foundation is one of the first independent think tanks in modern Russia. It conducts research into social, economic, and political problems of critical importance at the current stage in Russian and world history. The Foundation seeks to promote democratic values as well as moral and humanist principles in the life of society.
The Foundation’s conceptual framework is based on the belief that in the age of globalization Russia and the rest of the world need new thinking - a new interpretation of the ideas of progress and humanism and evolving principles for more equitable world order. The Foundation facilitates open-minded dialogue among experts and the public and wants to apply research findings for the benefit of civil society’s development and to help educate a new generation of scholars and politicians.
Quotations:
"Dangers await only those who do not react to life."
"As long as weapons of mass destruction exist, primarily nuclear weapons, the danger is colossal. All nations should declare... that nuclear weapons must be destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet."
"If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today."
Membership
Gorbachev is an Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts and the Club of Rome.
Russian Academy of Arts
The Club of Rome
Personality
A charismatic personality, Gorbachev also had the youthfulness, training, intelligence, and political strength to become one of the Soviet Union's most popular leaders.
Gorbachev reads 12 newspapers and magazines a day. His list includes Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Kommersant, The New Times, and others. He is not very keen on the Internet. Earlier Mikhail and his wife used to collect books. His favorite genre is detective fiction.
Mikhail Sergeevich drinks coffee at any time of the day or night. Love for this drink was passed to him from his late wife, Raisa Maksimovna. His other favorite drink is milk.
Quotes from others about the person
"President Gorbachev’s achievements were truly great and historic. Not only did he dissolve the Soviet Union more or less peacefully, but he also prevented a major civil war that could have escalated into a nuclear conflict. I sincerely hope that historians in the future will honor the major achievements and statesmanship of President Gorbachev and of the other leading Soviet politicians of that time." - Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein
"Increased openness, was perhaps the most profound change inaugurated by Mr. Gorbachev. The buried secrets of past regimes and the foibles of the present one were exposed to public scrutiny by a press given the freedom to reverse decades of organized disinformation and report honestly about Soviet history and life. By permitting increased openness in the press and in cultural endeavors, he also freed the minds of the Soviet people, who began to voice their long-suppressed thoughts." - Esther Fein
Interests
hiking
Politicians
Yuri Andropov
Writers
Cursed Days by Ivan Bunin, Arthur Miller, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Chingiz Aitmatov
Artists
Chulpan Khamatova
Sport & Clubs
soccer
Music & Bands
Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Edita Piekha, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Mikhail Pletnev, Andrey Gavrilov
Connections
Gorbachev met Raisa Maximovna Titarenko, a student in the philosophy faculty, in 1951. They were married in 1953 and remained utterly devoted to each other. In an interview on the eve of his seventieth birthday, Gorbachev described Raisa's death at the age of 67 in 1999 as his "hardest blow ever." They had one daughter, Irina.
Gorbachev: His Life and Times
In the first comprehensive biography of Mikhail Gorbachev, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, found common ground with America’s arch-conservative President Ronald Reagan, and permitted the USSR and its East European empire to preserve them.