He was the last leader of the USSR, and “was known for his attempt at large-scale reform of the country, called ‘perestroika’, and for defusing international tensions with the West during the last stage of the Cold War”, retains the Russian media close to power Sputnik. Mikhail Gorbachev is dead, a Moscow hospital announced on Tuesday August 30. He was 91 years old.
“Today in the evening [mardi]after a long serious illness, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev died »said the Central Clinical Hospital, quoted by the news agency TASS.
Vladimir Putin shortly afterwards expressed his “deep condolences”. The Russian President “will send a telegram of condolences to the family and loved ones in the morning” of the former leader, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, as related TASS.
The BBC reports for its part that tributes have poured in all over the world, the head of the UN Antonio Guterres declaring in particular that Mikhail Gorbachev had “changed the course of history.
“An ordinary man who became the leader of a superpower”
Mikhail Gorbachev, that Sputnik described as “an ordinary man who became the leader of a superpower”was born on March 2, 1931. The son of a peasant, he began his career in the party in 1962. He reached “in supreme position”, as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, traces The Moscow Times. He was then 54 years old, and the USSR was “in economic, social and political decline” after the so-called period of « stagnation » under Leonid Brezhnev and the short-lived terms of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.
Start then “his era”with “its twin policies of perestroika – reconstruction – and glasnost – opening up”which will end “with the coup that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991”. “Mikhail Gorbachev has repeatedly said that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was never his end goal, but his leadership set off a chain reaction that changed the world”decrypts the log.
“Admired” in the West, “controversial figure” in Russia
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, “admired in the West” for the role he played in bringing the Cold War to an end in his country, Mikhail Gorbachev remains “a figure that divides”highlighted The Moscow Times, “because he is seen to have implemented policies that precipitated the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economic chaos and the loss of superpower status that followed.”
“Some saw him as an idealist, others as a reformer, and some even as a traitor and a CIA ‘agent'”écrit Sputnik.