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Leader of the Soviet Union from to

"Gorbachev" redirects here. For other people with the surname, see Gorbachev (surname).

Mikhail Gorbachev
Gorbachev in
In office 11 March &#;– 24 August [a]
Premier
Deputy	Vladimir Ivashko
Preceded by	Konstantin Chernenko
Succeeded by	Vladimir Ivashko (acting)
In office 15 March &#;– 25 December [b]
Vice President	Gennady Yanayev[c]
Preceded by	Himself as Chairman of the Supreme&#;Soviet
Succeeded by	Office abolished[d]
In office 25 May &#;– 15 March
Deputy	Anatoly Lukyanov
Preceded by	Himself as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme&#;Soviet
Succeeded by	Anatoly Lukyanov
In office 1 October &#;– 25 May
Preceded by	Andrei Gromyko
Succeeded by	Himself as Chairman of the Supreme&#;Soviet
Additional positions In office 11 March [e]&#;– 15 November Preceded by Party established Succeeded by Party disestablished In office 9 February &#;– 10 March Preceded by Konstantin Chernenko Succeeded by Yegor Ligachyov
Born	()2 March Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet&#;Union
Died	30 August () (aged&#;91) Moscow, Russia
Resting place	Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
Political party
Spouse	Raisa Titarenko &#; &#; (m.&#;; died&#;)&#;
Children	1
Alma mater	Moscow State University (LLB)
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize ()
Signature
Website	Official website
Central institution membership – Member, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th Politburo – Candidate, 25th Politburo – Member, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th Secretariat – Member, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th Central Committee
Leader of the Soviet Union

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev^[f][g] (2 March – 30 August ) was a Russian politician and statesman who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from to the country's dissolution in He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from and additionally as head of state beginning in , as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from to , Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from to and the president of the Soviet Union from to Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism but moved towards social democracy by the early s.

He was the only Soviet leader born after the country's foundation.

Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, Russian SFSR, to a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage. Growing up under the rule of Joseph Stalin in his youth, he operated combine harvesters on a collective farm before joining the Communist Party, which then governed the Soviet Union as a one-party state.

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Studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Titarenko in and received his law degree in Moving to Stavropol, he worked for the Komsomol youth organization and, after Stalin's death, became a keen proponent of the de-Stalinization reforms of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee in , overseeing the construction of the Great Stavropol Canal.

In , he returned to Moscow to become a Secretary of the party's Central Committee; he joined the governing Politburo (25th term) as a non-voting member in and a voting member in Three years after the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev—following the brief tenures of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko—in , the Politburo elected Gorbachev as general secretary, the de facto leader.

Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and its Marxist–Leninist ideals, Gorbachev believed significant reform was necessary for its survival. He withdrew troops from the Soviet–Afghan War and embarked on summits with United States president Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear weapons and end the Cold War. Domestically, his policy of glasnost ("openness") allowed for enhanced freedom of speech and press, while his perestroika ("restructuring") sought to decentralize economic decision-making to improve its efficiency.

Ultimately, Gorbachev's democratization measures and formation of the elected Congress of People's Deputies undermined the one-party state. When various Warsaw Pact countries abandoned Marxist–Leninist governance in , he declined to intervene militarily. Growing nationalist sentiment within constituent republics threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading the hardliners within the Communist Party to launch an unsuccessful coup against Gorbachev in August In the coup's wake, the Soviet Union dissolved against Gorbachev's wishes.

After resigning from the presidency, he launched the Gorbachev Foundation, became a vocal critic of Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and campaigned for Russia's social-democratic movement.

Gorbachev is considered one of the most significant figures of the second half of the 20th century.

The recipient of a wide range of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, in the West he is praised for his role in ending the Cold War, introducing new political and economic freedoms in the Soviet Union, and tolerating both the fall of Marxist–Leninist administrations in eastern and central Europe and the German reunification. Gorbachev has a complicated legacy in Russia.

While in power, he had net positive approval ratings, being viewed as a reformer and changemaker.

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However, as the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of these reforms, so did his approval rating; contemporary Russians often deride him for weakening Russia's global influence and precipitating an economic collapse in the country. His unsuccessful run for president in showed, despite neoliberal reforms in Russia at the time, mass unpopularity with the results of his administration and possibly regret for the collapse of the USSR.

Early life and education

– childhood

Gorbachev was born on 2 March in the village of Privolnoye, then in the North Caucasus Krai of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union. At the time, Privolnoye was divided almost evenly between ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians.

Gorbachev's paternal family were ethnic Russians and had moved to the region from Voronezh several generations before; his maternal family were of ethnic Ukrainian heritage and had migrated from Chernihiv. His parents named him Viktor at birth, but at the insistence of his mother—a devout Orthodox Christian—he had a secret baptism, where his grandfather christened him Mikhail.

His relationship with his father, Sergey Andreyevich Gorbachev, was close; his mother, Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva (née Gopkalo), was colder and punitive. His parents were poor, and lived as peasants.

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They had married as teenagers in , and in keeping with local tradition had initially resided in Sergey's father's house, an adobe-walled hut, before a hut of their own could be built.

The Soviet Union was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, and during Gorbachev's childhood was under the leadership of Joseph Stalin.

Stalin had initiated a project of mass rural collectivization which, in keeping with his Marxist–Leninist ideas, he believed would help convert the country into a socialist society. Gorbachev's maternal grandfather joined the Communist Party and helped form the village's first kolkhoz (collective farm) in , becoming its chair.

This farm was 19 kilometres (12&#;mi) outside Privolnoye village and when he was three years old, Gorbachev left his parental home and moved into the kolkhoz with his maternal grandparents.

The country was then experiencing the famine of –, in which two of Gorbachev's paternal uncles and an aunt died. This was followed by the Great Purge, in which individuals accused of being "enemies of the people", including those sympathetic to rival interpretations of Marxism like Trotskyism, were arrested and interned in labor camps, if not executed.

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Both of Gorbachev's grandfathers were arrested (his maternal in and his paternal in ) and spent time in Gulag labor camps before being released. After his December release, Gorbachev's maternal grandfather discussed having been tortured by the secret police, an account that influenced the young boy.

Following on from the outbreak of the Second World War in , in June the German Army invaded the Soviet Union.

German forces occupied Privolnoye for four and a half months in Gorbachev's father had joined the Red Army and fought on the frontlines; he was wrongly declared dead during the conflict and fought in the Battle of Kursk before returning to his family, injured. After Germany was defeated, Gorbachev's parents had their second son, Aleksandr, in ; he and Mikhail would be their only children.

The village school was closed during much of the war but re-opened in autumn Gorbachev did not want to return but when he did he excelled academically.

He read voraciously, moving from the Western novels of Thomas Mayne Reid to the works of Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, and Mikhail Lermontov. In , he joined the Komsomol, the Soviet political youth organization, becoming leader of his local group and then being elected to the Komsomol committee for the district. From primary school he moved to the high school in Molotovskoye; he stayed there during the week while walking the 19&#;km (12&#;mi) home during weekends.

As well as being a member of the school's drama society, he organized sporting and social activities and led the school's morning exercise class. Over the course of five consecutive summers from onward he returned home to assist his father in operating a combine harvester, during which they sometimes worked hour days. In , they harvested over 8, centners of grain, a feat for which Sergey was awarded the Order of Lenin and his son the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.

– university

In June , Gorbachev became a candidate member of the Communist Party. He also applied to study at the law school of Moscow State University (MSU), then the most prestigious university in the country.

They accepted him without asking for an exam, likely because of his worker-peasant origins and his possession of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. His choice of law was unusual; it was not a well-regarded subject in Soviet society at that time. At age 19, he traveled by train to Moscow, the first time he had left his home region.

In Moscow, Gorbachev resided with fellow MSU students at a dormitory in the Sokolniki District.

He and other rural students felt at odds with their Muscovite counterparts, but he soon came to fit in. Fellow students recall him working especially hard, often late into the night. He gained a reputation as a mediator during disputes and was also known for being outspoken in class, although he would reveal some of his views only privately; for instance, he confided in some students his opposition to the Soviet jurisprudential norm that a confession proved guilt, noting that confessions could have been forced.

During his studies, an antisemitic campaign spread through the Soviet Union, culminating in the Doctors' plot; Gorbachev publicly defended Volodya Liberman, a Jewish student who was accused of disloyalty to the country by one of his fellows.

At MSU, Gorbachev became the Komsomol head of his entering class, and then Komsomol's deputy secretary for agitation and propaganda at the law school.

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One of his first Komsomol assignments in Moscow was to monitor the election polling in Presnensky District to ensure the government's desire for near-total turnout; Gorbachev found that most of those who voted did so "out of fear". In , he was appointed a full member of the Communist Party. As a party and Komsomol member, he was tasked with monitoring fellow students for potential subversion; some of his fellow students said that he did so only minimally and that they trusted him to keep confidential information secret from the authorities.

Gorbachev became close friends with Zdeněk Mlynář, a Czechoslovak student who later became a primary ideologist of the Prague Spring. Mlynář recalled that the duo remained committed Marxist–Leninists despite their growing concerns about the Stalinist system. After Stalin died in March , Gorbachev and Mlynář joined the crowds massing to see Stalin's body lying in state.

At MSU, Gorbachev met Raisa Titarenko, who was studying in the university's philosophy department.

She was engaged to another man, but after that engagement fell apart, she began a relationship with Gorbachev; together they went to bookstores, museums, and art exhibits. In early , he took an internship at the procurator's office in Molotovskoye district, but he was angered by the incompetence and arrogance of those working there.

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That summer, he returned to Privolnoye to work with his father on the harvest; the money earned allowed him to pay for a wedding. On 25 September he and Raisa registered their marriage at Sokolniki Registry Office and in October moved in together at the Lenin Hills dormitory. Raisa discovered that she was pregnant and although the couple wanted to keep the child she fell ill and required a life-saving abortion.

In June , Gorbachev graduated with a distinction; his final paper had been on the advantages of "socialist democracy" (the Soviet political system) over "bourgeois democracy" (liberal democracy).

He was subsequently assigned to the Soviet Procurator's office, which was then focusing on the rehabilitation of the innocent victims of Stalin's purges, but found that they had no work for him. He was then offered a place on an MSU graduate course specializing in kolkhoz law, but declined. He had wanted to remain in Moscow, where Raisa was enrolled in a PhD program, but instead gained employment in Stavropol; Raisa abandoned her studies to join him there.

Early CPSU career

– Stavropol Komsomol

In August , Gorbachev started work at the Stavropol regional procurator's office, but disliked the job and used his contacts to get a transfer to work for Komsomol, becoming deputy director of Komsomol's agitation and propaganda department for that region.

In this position, he visited villages in the area and tried to improve the lives of their inhabitants; he established a discussion circle in Gorkaya Balka village to help its peasant residents gain social contacts.

Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa initially rented a small room in Stavropol, taking daily evening walks around the city and on weekends hiking in the countryside.

In January , Raisa gave birth to a daughter, Irina, and in they moved into two rooms in a communal apartment. In , Gorbachev pursued a second degree, in agricultural production; he took a correspondence course from the local Stavropol Agricultural Institute, receiving his diploma in His wife had also pursued a second degree, attaining a PhD in sociology in from the Moscow State Pedagogical University; while in Stavropol she too joined the Communist Party.

Stalin was ultimately succeeded as Soviet leader by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin and his cult of personality in a speech given in February , after which he launched a de-Stalinization process throughout Soviet society.

Later biographer William Taubman suggested that Gorbachev "embodied" the "reformist spirit" of the Khrushchev era. Gorbachev was among those who saw themselves as "genuine Marxists" or "genuine Leninists" in contrast to what they regarded as the perversions of Stalin. He helped spread Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist message in Stavropol, but encountered many who continued to regard Stalin as a hero or who praised the Stalinist purges as just.

Gorbachev rose steadily through the ranks of the local administration.

The authorities regarded him as politically reliable, and he would flatter his superiors, for instance gaining favor with prominent local politician Fyodor Kulakov. With an ability to outmanoeuvre rivals, some colleagues resented his success. In September , he was promoted First Secretary of the Stavropol city's Komsomol, placing him in charge of it; in April he was made deputy head of the Komsomol for the entire region.

At this point he was given better accommodation: a two-room flat with its own private kitchen, toilet, and bathroom. In Stavropol, he formed a discussion club for youths, and helped mobilize local young people to take part in Khrushchev's agricultural and development campaigns.

In March , Gorbachev became First Secretary of the regional Komsomol, in which position he went out of his way to appoint women as city and district leaders.

In , Gorbachev played host to the Italian delegation for the World Youth Festival in Moscow; that October, he also attended the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In January , Gorbachev was promoted to personnel chief for the regional party's agricultural committee, and in September became First Secretary of the Stavropol City Party Organization ("Gorkom").

By he was increasingly frustrated with his job—in large part because Khrushchev's reforms were stalling or being reversed—and he contemplated leaving politics to work in academia. However, in August , he was named Second Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, making him the deputy of First Secretary Leonid Yefremov and the second most senior figure in Stavropol Krai.

In , he was elected as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and made a member of its Standing Commission for the Protection of the Environment.

Cleared for travel to Eastern Bloc countries, in he was part of a delegation which visited East Germany, and in and visited Bulgaria. In August the Soviet Union led an invasion of Czechoslovakia to put an end to the Prague Spring, a period of political liberalization in the Marxist–Leninist country.

Although Gorbachev later stated that he had had private concerns about the invasion, he publicly supported it. In September he was part of a Soviet delegation sent to Czechoslovakia, where he found the Czechoslovak people largely unwelcoming to them. That year, the Soviet authorities ordered him to punish Fagim B. Sadygov, a philosophy professor of the Stavropol agricultural institute whose ideas were regarded as critical of Soviet agricultural policy; Gorbachev ensured that Sadykov was fired from teaching but ignored calls for him to face tougher punishment.

Gorbachev later related that he was "deeply affected" by the incident; "my conscience tormented me" for overseeing Sadykov's persecution.

– heading the Stavropol region

In April , Yefremov was promoted to a higher position in Moscow and Gorbachev succeeded him as the First Secretary of the Stavropol kraikom. This granted Gorbachev significant power over the Stavropol region.

He had been personally vetted for the position by senior Kremlin leaders and was informed of their decision by the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Aged 39, he was considerably younger than his predecessors in the position. As head of the Stavropol region, he automatically became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (24th term) in According to biographer Zhores Medvedev, Gorbachev "had now joined the Party's super-elite".

As regional leader, Gorbachev initially attributed economic and other failures to "the inefficiency and incompetence of cadres, flaws in management structure or gaps in legislation", but eventually concluded that they were caused by an excessive centralization of decision making in Moscow.

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He began reading translations of restricted texts by Western Marxist authors such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Aragon, Roger Garaudy, and Giuseppe Boffa, and came under their influence.

Gorbachev's main task as regional leader was to raise agricultural production levels, a task hampered by severe droughts in and He oversaw the expansion of irrigation systems through construction of the Great Stavropol Canal.

For overseeing a record grain harvest in Ipatovsky district, in March he was awarded the Order of the October Revolution by Brezhnev in a Moscow ceremony. Gorbachev always sought to maintain Brezhnev's trust; as regional leader, he repeatedly praised Brezhnev in his speeches, for instance referring to him as "the outstanding statesman of our time".

Gorbachev and his wife holidayed in Moscow, Leningrad, Uzbekistan, and resorts in the North Caucasus; he holidayed with the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, who was favorable towards him and who became an important patron. Gorbachev also developed good relationships with senior figures including the Soviet prime minister, Alexei Kosygin, and the longstanding senior party member Mikhail Suslov.

The government considered Gorbachev sufficiently reliable that he was sent as part of Soviet delegations to Western Europe; he made five trips there between and In September he was part of a delegation that traveled to Italy, where they met with representatives of the Italian Communist Party; Gorbachev loved Italian culture but was struck by the poverty and inequality he saw in the country.

In , he visited Belgium and the Netherlands, and in West Germany. Gorbachev and his wife visited France in and , on the latter occasion touring the country with a guide from the French Communist Party.