Gorbachev, Mikhail

Gorbachev, Mikhail (Sergeyevich)

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1985.

(credit: Colton—Picture Search/Black Star)

(born March 2, 1931, Privolye, Stavropol region, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Soviet official and last president of the Soviet Union (1990–91). After earning a law degree from Moscow State University (1955), he rose through the ranks to become a full Politburo member (1980) and general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1985–91). His extraordinary reform policies of glasnost and perestroika were resisted by party bureaucrats; to reduce their power, Gorbachev changed the Soviet constitution in 1988 to allow multicandidate elections and removed the monopoly power of the party in 1990. He cultivated warmer relations with the U.S., and in 1989–90 he supported the democratically elected governments that replaced the communist regimes of eastern Europe. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Russia's economic and political problems led to a 1991 coup attempt by hard-liners. In alliance with president Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev quit the Communist Party, disbanded its Central Committee, and shifted political powers to the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Events outpaced him, and the various republics formed the Commonwealth of Independent States under Yeltsin's leadership. On Dec. 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned the presidency of the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist that same day.

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Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich 

Born Mar. 2, 1931, in the village of Privol’noe, Krasnogvardeiskoe Raion, Stravropol’ Krai. Soviet party figure. Member of the CPSU since 1952.

The son of a peasant, Gorbachev graduated from the law department of Moscow State University in 1955. In 1967 he completed the correspondence course of the Stavropol’ Agricultural Institute. He was an assistant combine operator at a machine tractor station from 1946 to 1950. Between 1956 and 1962, Gorbachev served as first secretary of the Stavropol’ city committee of the Komsomol and second and first secretary of the krai committee. He was first secretary of the Stavropol’ city committee of the CPSU and second secretary of the krai committee from 1966 to 1970; from 1970 to 1978 he was first secretary of the krai committee.

Gorbachev became a secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU in November 1978 and was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1971. A candidate member of the Politbüro of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1979, Gorbachev was elected a member of the Politbüro in 1980. He was a deputy to the eighth through tenth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Gorbachev has received three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, two other orders, and various medals.