president of Soviet Union
Born: 2 March 1931 (age 90) Russia
Title/Office: President (1990–1991), Soviet Union
Founder: Congress of People's Deputies
Political Affiliation: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Awards and Honors: Grammy Award (2003) Nobel Prize (1990)
Mikhail Gorbachev, in full Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, (born March 2, 1931, Privolnoye, Stavropol Kray, Russia, USSR), Soviet official, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991, and president of 1990–91 in the Soviet Union. His efforts to democratize his country's political system and decentralize his economy led to the fall of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Partly because he ended the Soviet Union's post-war domination of Eastern Europe, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Prize. peace in the 1990s
Early life Of Mikhail Gorbachev
Gorbachev was the son of Russian peasants in the Stavropol Territory (Kray) in southwestern Russia. He joined the Komsomol (Young Communist League) in 1946 and for the next four years ran combine harvesters on a state farm in Stavropol. He proved to be a promising Komsomol member, and in 1952 he entered the Law School of Moscow State University and became a member of the Communist Party. He graduated with a law degree in 1955 and held several positions in the Komsomol and regular party organizations in Stavropol, becoming the first secretary of the regional party committee in 1970.
General Secretary of the CPSU: Perestroika for the Fall of the Soviet Union
Gorbachev was named a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1971 and was appointed party secretary of agriculture in 1978. He became a candidate member of the Politburo in 1979 and a full member in 1980. A major reason for his steady growth in the party was the patronage of the party's leading ideologue Mikhail Suslov. During Yuri Andropov's 15-month tenure (1982–84) as General Secretary of the Communist Party, Gorbachev became one of the most active and visible members of the Politburo; And, following Andropov's death in February 1984 and Konstantin Chernenko becoming general secretary, Gorbachev became the latter's potential successor. Chernenko died on 10 March 1985, and the next day the Politburo elected Gorbachev general secretary of the CPSU. After his accession, he was still the youngest member of the Politburo.
Gorbachev quickly set out to consolidate his personal power under the Soviet leadership. Their primary domestic goal was to revive the stagnant Soviet economy after its years of drift and low growth during Leonid Brezhnev's tenure in power (1964–82). For this, he called for rapid technological modernization and increased worker productivity, and he sought to make the cumbersome Soviet bureaucracy more efficient and accountable.
When these superficial changes failed to produce tangible results, in 1987–88 Gorbachev initiated profound reforms of the Soviet economic and political system. Under his new policy of glasnost ("openness"), a major cultural thaw occurred: freedom of expression and information greatly expanded; The press and broadcast were allowed unprecedented clarity in their reporting and criticism, And the legacy of the country's Stalinist totalitarian regime was eventually completely rejected by the government. Under Gorbachev's policy of perestroika ("restructuring"), the first modest efforts were made to democratize the Soviet political system; Multiple-candidate competitions and secret ballots were introduced in some elections for party and government positions. Under perestroika, some limited free-market mechanisms also began to be introduced into the Soviet economy, but even these modest economic reforms faced severe resistance from the party and government bureaucrats, who were unwilling to give up their control over the country's economic life.
In foreign affairs, Gorbachev cultivated warm relations and trade with the developed countries of both the West and the East from the very beginning. In December 1987 he signed an agreement with the US President. Ronald Reagan to destroy all existing stocks of intermediate-range nuclear-tipped missiles for both of his countries. In 1988–89 he oversaw the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan after nine years of occupation of that country.
In October 1988 Gorbachev was able to consolidate his power by his election to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (National Legislature). But, partly because his economic reforms were being hindered by the Communist Party, Gorbachev tried to reorganize the legislative and executive branches of government to free him from the hold of the CPSU. Accordingly, in December 1988 as part of the changes made to the constitution, a new bicameral parliament was created, called the U.S.S.R. Called the Congress of People's Deputies, some of its members were elected by the people indirect (i.e., multiple-candidate) elections. In 1989 the newly elected People's Deputies Congress elected a new USSR from its ranks. The Supreme Soviet, unlike its predecessor of that name, had a de facto permanent parliament with substantial legislative powers. In May 1989, Gorbachev was elected president of this Supreme Soviet and thus remained national president.
Gorbachev was the most important initiator of a series of events in late 1989 and 1990 that changed the political fabric of Europe and marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. During 1989 he seized every opportunity to lend his support to reformist communists in the Soviet-bloc countries of Eastern Europe, and when Communist rule in those countries collapsed like a domino later that year, Gorbachev took his Agreed tacitly in the fall. When democratically elected, non-communist governments came to power in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in late 1989–90, Gorbachev agreed to a phased withdrawal of Soviet troops from those countries. By the summer of 1990, it had agreed to the reunification of the East with West Germany and even over the possibility of that reunified nation becoming a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a longtime enemy of the Soviet Union. also agreed. In 1990 Gorbachev received the Nobel Peace Prize for his remarkable achievements in international relations.
The new liberties resulting from Gorbachev's democratization and decentralization of his country's political system led to civil unrest in several constituent republics (eg, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan) and outright attempts to achieve independence in others (eg, Lithuania). . In response, Gorbachev used military force to suppress bloody inter-ethnic conflict in several Central Asian republics in 1989–90, while devising constitutional mechanisms that could provide for a republic's legitimate separation from the USSR.
In 1990, Gorbachev further accelerated the transfer of power from the party to elected government institutions, with the CPSU coming to power and losing prestige due to growing incentives for democratic political processes. In March of the same year, the Congress of People's Deputies appointed him to the USSR with broad executive powers. The newly elected president was elected, and at the same time, the Congress, under his leadership, ended the Communist Party's monopoly of constitutionally guaranteed political power in the Soviet Union, thus paving the way for the legalization of other political parties in Russia.
Gorbachev was clearly successful in dismantling the totalitarian aspects of the Soviet state and moving his country towards true representative democracy. However, he proved less willing to free the Soviet economy from the grip of a centralized state direction. Gorbachev abandoned the authoritarian use of power that traditionally served to power the Soviet economy, but at the same time, he opposed any decisive changes to private ownership and the use of free-market mechanisms. Gorbachev sought in vain to strike a compromise between these two opposite options, and so the centrally planned economy continued to crumble, with no private enterprise to replace it. Gorbachev remained the undisputed master of the ailing Communist Party, but his efforts to increase his presidential powers through decrees and administrative reshuffle proved fruitless, and the authority and effectiveness of his government began to decline severely. In the face of a crumbling economy, growing public frustration, and constant shifts of power to constituent republics, Gorbachev wavered in direction, associating himself with party conservatives and security organs in the late 1990s.
The Later Life of Mikhail Gorbachev
In 1996, Gorbachev ran for the presidency of Russia but received less than 1 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, he remained active in public life as a speaker and as a member of various global and Russian think tanks. In 2006 he, together with Russian billionaire and former legislator Aleksandr Lebedev, bought nearly half of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which is known for its willingness to challenge Kremlin policies. On 30 September 2008, it was announced that Gorbachev and Lebedev were forming a new political party, although this never materialized. Although Gorbachev was at times critical of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, he supported the country's annexation of Crimea (2014) during the Ukraine crisis.