Russia: Mikhail Gorbachev has died at the age of 91, Russian news agencies have reported, citing hospital officials. He died after a prolonged illness, the report said, citing a statement from the Central Clinical Hospital. No other details were provided.
"Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and prolonged illness," Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital said, Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies reported.
As the last leader of the Soviet Union, he fought to save the crumbling empire but led to the end of the Cold War. In less than seven years in power, Gorbachev unleashed a series of dramatic changes. But they quickly outgrew him, culminating in the collapse of the authoritarian Soviet regime, the liberation of Eastern European countries from Russian domination, and the end of decades of East-West nuclear confrontation.
He was deposed in August 1991 in a coup attempt against him. He spent his final months overseeing the republic until his resignation on 25 December 1991 after the republic declared independence. The Soviet Union found itself in oblivion a day later. The Cold War ended without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, was in power between 1985 and 1991 and helped bring US-Soviet relations out of the deep freeze. After World War II, he brokered arms reduction agreements with the US and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that divided Europe and bring about the reunification of Germany.
In 1989, when pro-democracy protests spread across Soviet bloc states in communist Eastern Europe, he refrained from using force, unlike previous Kremlin leaders who sent tanks to quell uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. But the protests fueled aspirations for autonomy in the Soviet Union's 15 republics, which disintegrated chaotically over the next two years. Gorbachev fought in vain to prevent that collapse.
After becoming General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, aged just 54, he set out to revitalize the system by introducing political and economic freedoms, but the reforms spiraled out of control. His policy of 'glasnost' - free speech - led to previously unthinkable criticism of the party and the state. It also emboldened nationalists who began pressing for independence in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and elsewhere.
Many Russians never forgave the turmoil unleashed by Gorbachev's reforms, seeing the decline in their living standards as a high price to pay for democracy.
He has spent the past two decades in political circles, frequently calling on the Kremlin and the White House to improve relations, as tensions rose to Cold War levels after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched an offensive in Ukraine earlier this year.
Gorbachev spent the later years of his life in and out of hospital in increasingly frail health, self-quarantining during the pandemic as a precaution against the coronavirus.
To get the latest news & information from www.indiansdaily.com click on the link and follow: Indian in Ireland | Accommodation |
.png)
The opinions posted here do not belong to 🔰www.indiansdaily.com. The author is solely responsible for the opinions.
As per the IT policy of the Central Government, insults against an individual, community, religion or country, defamatory and inflammatory remarks, obscene and vulgar language are punishable offenses. Legal action will be taken for such expressions of opinion.