Mikhail Gorbachev Dies: Last Leader Of Soviet Union Was 91
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Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the 20th century’s most consequential world leaders, who ushered in an era of reform in the Soviet Union and played a role in ending the Cold War with the West, has died, Russian state media and other outlets reported on Tuesday. He was 91.
Russian state TV said that Gorbachev died after a “long and grave illness.”
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The subject of one of President Ronald Reagan’s most famous quotes – “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” from Berlin in 1987 – he led the USSR from March 1985 until its collapse in late 1991, first as General Secretary of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and later as its president starting in March 1990.
Being the last leader of the Soviet Union colored his legacy for many of the country’s citizens, but his tenure saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the lifting of the Iron Curtain. When he came to power in 1985, he stood in contrast to his immediate predecessors — young, vibrant and smiling — and soon began promoting glasnost, or “openness,” a policy of more open consultative government and wider dissemination of information.
Late in his term, he moved the longtime communist country more toward social democracy. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Born on March 2, 1931, in Privolnoye, USSR (later Russia), Gorbachev attended Moscow State University before rising through the ranks of the country’s communist leadership. In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, he succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the USSR’s Communist Party after Chernenko’s death. In November of that year, Gorbachev and Reagan met for a summit in Geneva to discuss the arms race and other aspects of the era’s geopolitics.
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They two leaders would hold other summits in the ensuing years, and Gorbachev also met with Reagan’s successor, President George H.W. Bush, in Malta in 1989.
Gorbachev also was in charge during one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters, when the Chernobyl nuclear plant melted down in 1986; the incident and its aftermath was dramatized in the Emmy-winning 2019 HBO limited series Chernobyl, with David Dencik portraying Gorbachev. By 1988, Gorbachev began a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which the USSR had invaded in 1979 — leading to the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the retaliatory Soviet boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The last Soviet troops left the country in 1989.
In 1993, he founded Green Cross International, in response to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit call to create a “Red Cross for the environment.” In 1994, he co-founded its U.S. affiliate — Global Green — to foster a global shift toward a sustainable and secure future. He made multiple trips to the U.S. for Global Green, including a 2002 speaking event at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey.
Also during the 1990s and beyond, Gorbachev appeared as himself in numerous Western films and TV shows, including docuseries This Is Your Life and Biography and documentaries including The Gulf War, Paul McCartney in Red Square and The 11th Hour. He also was interviewed on Larry King Live, Charlie Rose (three times) and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2014.
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On the latter, correspondent Jason Jones met with the former Soviet leader, who told him with a sly grin, “If you bring cameras in here again, I will put you against the wall.” When Jones asked, “Mr. Gorbachev, can you put back that wall?” Gorbachev replied: “The wall came down and it’s a great thing that it happened. And we need to keep going along that path that we chose.”
Gorbachev also famously was parodied in the 1988 comedy feature The Naked Gun. In the opening scene of the film from the Airplane! and Police Squad! team of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, Police Lt. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) infiltrates a meeting of several leaders who were considered enemies of the United States. One by one, Drebin pummels and disables them; when he gets to Gorbachev (played by David Lloyd Austin), the cop “rubs off” the famous red birthmark on Soviet leader’s head. Drebin then looks at the camera and says – in Nielsen’s typical deadpan fashion, the line, “I knew it!”
Gorbachev also appeared in TV commercials for the likes of Louis Vuitton and Pizza Hut. In a 1998 spot for the latter, he and a child walk into a restaurant and share a pizza. Other patrons begin to debate in Russian: “Because of him, we have political instability!” an older one asserts. “Because of him we have freedom,” a younger man counters. After a bit more back and forth, an elderly woman chimes in saying, “Because of him we have many things — like Pizza Hut.” The ad ends with everyone in the place rising and saying, “Hail to Gorbachev!” drawing smiles and waves from the former leader.
Gorbachev’s wife of 46 years, Raisa, a longtime activist for women’s rights and other issues and served as the Soviet Union’s internationally popular first lady, died of leukemia in 1999.
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