Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped end the Cold War and changed the world forever, dies aged 91
The IndependentFor free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. A catastrophe or World War Three.” Gorbachev, the eighth and final general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who served from 1985 until 1991, was frequently praised in the West. And while Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin praised Gorbachev following his death as a statesman, feting him publicly as recently as his 90th birthday, in truth Putin despised what he did to the Soviet Union. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.” Indeed, some analysts believe Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine is part of a broader effort to restore Russia’s empire, and redress the sense of humiliation he reportedly felt as a KGB officer serving in what was East Germany when the Soviet Union collapsed on Gorbachev’s watch. It was Gorbachev who would first speak of the disaster to the nation and the wider world, saying: “This is one more tolling of the bell, and a new terrible warning, that in the nuclear age what is needed is new political thinking and new policies.” In the West, Gorbachev found a partner for brokering peace in US president Ronald Reagan, who himself knew a thing or two about making headlines.
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