Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union who ended the Cold War without bloodshed, has died in hospital on Tuesday. He was 91.
International news agencies reported staff at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow as saying that he died on Tuesday night “after a serious and protracted disease.” Further details were not provided.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his deepest condolences over the former leader’s death, a Kremlin spokesperson said.
The official news agency TASS reported Gorbachev will be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetary next to his wife.
His legacy
From 1985 until the collapse of the Soviet union in 1991, Gorbachev oversaw a massive overhaul of the country’s economic and political policies.
His policy of glasnost, or free speech, allowed previously unthinkable criticism of the Communist Party and the state, but it also emboldened calls for independence in the Soviet Union’s constituent republics — first in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and then elsewhere.
As the last Soviet leader, Gorbachev forged arms reduction reals with the United States and partnerships with the West to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War II, which saw the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.
Some Russians never forgave Gorbachev for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed, considering the subsequent plunge in living standards to be too high a price to pay for democracy.
After visiting Gorbachev in hospital on June 30, liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg told the armed forces news outlet Zvezda: “He gave us all freedom — but we don’t know what to do with it.”
