RUSSIA: The 91-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, the former head of the Soviet Union who peacefully ended the Cold War, has passed away. According to the Moscow hospital where he passed away, he had a protracted and terrible illness.
Although his cause of death has not been disclosed, international media reported in June that he had been hospitalized after being diagnosed with a renal condition.
When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he opened up the former USSR to the outside world and implemented a number of domestic reforms.
But he was powerless to stop the Soviet Union’s slow demise, which gave rise to contemporary Russia.
World leaders pay tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev
The UN leader, Antonio Guterres, said he “changed the course of history” as tributes were received from all around the world.
“Mikhail Gorbachev was a one-of-a-kind statesman,” UN Secretary-General Guterres wrote in a Twitter tribute. “The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger also paid tribute to the late Soviet leader.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his deepest condolences following Gorbachev’s death,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
According to US President Joe Biden, Gorbachev was a “rare leader” who, despite the Cold War tensions, had the “imagination to envision that a different future was possible.”
He was hailed as a “trusted and respected leader” who “paved the way for a free Europe” by the President of the European Union Ursula von der Leyen.
“This legacy is one we will not forget,” she added.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he admired Gorbachev’s courage and integrity, adding: “In a time of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all.”
Mikhail Gorbachev’s works
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the role of de facto president and general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
He was the youngest member of the Politburo at the time, at the age of 54, and was welcomed as a breath of fresh air following several ageing leaders.
Konstantin Chernenko, who had been in office for less than a year, had passed away at the age of 73.
His Perestroika campaign tried to bring some market-like reforms to the state-run system because the Soviet economy had been struggling for years to stay up with the US.
Internationally, he concluded arms control agreements with the US, refrained from interfering when Communist governments in eastern European countries were overthrown and put an end to the brutal Soviet war in Afghanistan that had been raging since 1979.
His glasnost, or openness policy also made it possible for citizens to criticise the government’s previously unimaginable ways.
However, it also gave rise to nationalist feelings in many areas of the nation, which ultimately jeopardised the country’s stability and brought about its dissolution.
Gorbachev agreed to dismantle the Soviet Union in 1991 and resigned from office following the failure of a poorly planned coup by communist hardliners.
According to James Baker, who worked with Gorbachev’s administration to negotiate Germany’s reunification, “history will remember Mikhail Gorbachev as a giant who drove his huge nation towards democracy.”
However, he was never pardoned by many Russians for the unrest that followed the fall of the USSR.
A Russian-appointed official in occupied Ukraine named Vladimir Rogov referred to Mikhail Gorbachev as a traitor and claimed that he had “deliberately guided the (Soviet) Union to its downfall.”
Mikhail Gorbachev will be buried alongside his wife Raisa, who passed away from leukaemia in 1999, in Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery, which is home to many notable Russians, according to the Tass news agency
For “the major role he played in the profound shifts in East-West relations,” he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
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