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Mikhail Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Dead At 91

By RFE/RL August 30, 2022

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has died at the age of 91, according to Russian media.

They quote the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow as saying he died late on August 30 "after a serious and prolonged illness."

TASS quoted a source familiar with the family's wishes as saying he would be buried at Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery alongside his wife, Raisa, who died in 1999.

The last Soviet president, Gorbachev took over the Communist Party and Soviet leadership in 1985 and presided over six turbulent years that saw the fall of the Iron Curtain, the reunification of Germany, and ultimately the Soviet demise that then-KGB officer and current Russian President Vladimir Putin has since called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."

He famously ushered in "glasnost" and "perestroika" in an effort to keep the Soviet Union alive.

He resisted using troops as pro-democracy protests swept across Eastern Bloc nations of Eastern Europe in 1989.

But the developments there helped fuel aspirations for democracy and autonomy among the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which fell apart, sometimes violently, in the next two years.

Gorbachev was politically debilitated by a hard-line coup in August 1991 that failed in large part due to a popular resistance led by Boris Yeltsin.

A week later, Gorbachev resigned as Communist Party general-secretary.

In late December, his resignation as president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics effectively spelled the end of the Soviet empire.

Gorbachev had in turns praised Putin for returning stability to Russia and decried his clampdowns on the media and dissent and his tight grip on power.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin expressed his deepest condolences on Gorbachev's death.

With reporting by Izvestiya, TASS, Interfax, Reuters, and The New York Times

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/gorbachev-obituary- dead-91-soviet-union-/32011303.html

Copyright (c) 2022. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.