
The final leader of the Soviet Union whose reform policies of glasnost and perestroika led to the peaceful end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR.
Nhà lãnh đạo cuối cùng của Liên Xô, người có các chính sách cải cách glasnost và perestroika dẫn đến sự kết thúc hòa bình của Chiến tranh Lạnh và sự tan rã của Liên Xô.
This biography of Mikhail Gorbachev helps you learn English through real historical stories. Explore Mikhail Gorbachev's impact on the world.
Mikhail Gorbachev was born in 1931 into a poor peasant family in southern Russia, enduring the harsh realities of Stalin's rule and the devastation of World War II. After studying law at Moscow State University, he steadily climbed the ranks of the Communist Party. In 1985, representing a new, younger generation of leadership, he was selected as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, inheriting a stagnating economy and a deeply entrenched, repressive political system.
Recognizing that the Soviet Union could not survive without radical change, Gorbachev introduced two revolutionary policies: "glasnost" (openness), which allowed for unprecedented freedom of speech and press, and "perestroika" (restructuring), aimed at decentralizing the sluggish command economy. On the international stage, he actively pursued arms reduction treaties with US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, significantly easing Cold War tensions and withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
When pro-democracy movements swept across Eastern Europe in 1989, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev made the historic decision not to intervene militarily, breaking from decades of Soviet policy. While this earned him the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize and global admiration, his reforms unleashed uncontrollable nationalist forces at home. In December 1991, following a failed hardline coup, the Soviet Union officially dissolved, and Gorbachev peacefully resigned. He remains a highly polarizing figure—revered in the West as a visionary peacemaker, but often blamed by many Russians for the collapse of their empire.