MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, THE LAST SOVIET PRESIDENT, DIES AGED 91

  • 31/08/2022

Mikhail Gorbachev, who avoided violence to end the Cold War but was unable to stop the fall of the Soviet Union, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 91, according to hospital officials in Moscow.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, worked to bring about the reunification of Germany by negotiating arms reduction agreements with the United States and forming alliances with Western nations.

 “Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease,” Russia’s Central Clinical Hospital said in a statement. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed “his deepest condolences” on Gorbachev’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told.

When pro-democracy protests swept across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force - unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

But the protests fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in chaotic fashion.

Gorbachev struggled in vain to prevent that collapse.

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