biography
| name: |
Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich
|
pronunciation:
[go(r)bachof]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1931– )
|
| biography:
| Soviet statesman, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1985–91), and president of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1988–91), born in Privolnoye, E Russia. He studied at Moscow State University and Stavropos Agricultural Institute, began work as a machine operator (1946), and joined the Communist Party in 1952. He held a variety of senior posts in the Stavropol city and district Party organization (1956–70), and was elected a deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet (1970) and a member of the Party Central Committee (1971). He became secretary for agriculture (1979–85), a member of the Politburo in 1980, and, on the death of Chernenko, general secretary of the Central Committee (1985–91). In 1988 he also became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and in 1990, the first (and last) executive president of the USSR. On becoming party general secretary he launched a radical programme of reform and restructuring (perestroika) of the Soviet economic and political system. A greater degree of civil liberty, public debate, journalistic and cultural freedom, and a reappraisal of Soviet history was allowed under the policy of glasnost (openness of information). In foreign and defence affairs he reduced military expenditure, pursued a policy of detente and nuclear disarmament with the West, and ended the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan (1989). He briefly survived a coup in August 1991, but was forced to resign following the abolition of the Communist Party and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Since 1992 he has been president of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (the Gorbachev Foundation), which he established in 1991. He failed to attract a significant vote in the 1996 presidential elections. |
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