Mr Gorbachev, who was in power between 1985 and 1991, was the last surviving Cold War leader.
- The last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow aged 91, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.
- Mr Gorbachev, who was in power between 1985 and 1991, was the last surviving Cold War leader.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow aged 91, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.
"Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness," the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said, quoted by the Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies.
Mr Gorbachev, who was in power between 1985 and 1991 and helped bring US-Soviet relations out of a deep freeze, was the last surviving Cold War leader.
Mr Gorbachev changed the course of modern history by triggering the demise of the USSR and allowing Eastern Europe to free itself from Soviet rule, earning him accolades in the West but the scorn of many Russians.
Who was Mikhail Gorbachev?
By championing reforms to achieve "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring), he inadvertently unleashed forces that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and his own ouster.
Lionised in the West for championing freedom and change at a time when many feared the Cold War would never end, Mr Gorbachev became a figure of hate for many Russians who held him responsible for the destruction of the once-mighty Soviet empire.
Mikhail Gorbachev signed a landmark treaty to eliminate intermediate-range missiles with the then US president Ronald Reagan. Source: AP / Bob Daugherty
He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for negotiating a historic nuclear arms pact with US leader Ronald Reagan and his decision to withhold the Soviet army when the Berlin Wall fell a year earlier was seen as key to preserving Cold War peace.
He was also championed in the West for spearheading reforms to achieve transparency and greater public discussion that hastened the breakup of the Soviet empire.
I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together.The then UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher
In most instances while he was in power, Mr Gorbachev chose peace over confrontation, hastening a thaw in ties with the West through close relationships with Western leaders such as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and US President Ronald Reagan.
The UK's Margaret Thatcher famously remarked: "I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together."
How did he lose power and what about his legacy?
But the more he relaxed restrictions during his rule, the more he was sidelined by the energetic Boris Yeltsin, then a fast-rising Communist official.
By the time the USSR collapsed, Mr Gorbachev had become irrelevant.
Over the past decades, an increasingly frail Mr Gorbachev had ambiguous relations with President Vladimir Putin -- backing the former KGB agent in a new stand-off with the West over Ukraine but criticising him for turning the clock back on democracy in Russia.
He spent much of the last two decades on the political periphery, intermittently calling for the Kremlin and the White House to mend ties as tensions soared to Cold War levels since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched an offensive in Ukraine earlier this year.
Mr Gorbachev spent the twilight years of his life in and out of hospital with increasingly fragile health and observed self-quarantine during the pandemic as a precaution against the coronavirus.
How did he come to power?
Born 2 March 1931 into a peasant family in Russia's southern Stavropol region, Mr Gorbachev grew up with the hardships of World War Two and the repressive rule of dictator Joseph Stalin, whose regime sentenced his grandfather to nine years in a labour camp.
As a boy, he was bright and hard-working. At 16 he was awarded the Red Banner of Labour for helping in a record harvest, and in 1950 he won a coveted place at Moscow State University to study law.
Five years later, the ambitious graduate and his young wife Raisa moved back to Stavropol, where he began a rapid rise through the ranks of the Communist Party, becoming the youngest member of the Politburo, the Soviet Union's supreme policy-making body, at age 49, in 1979.
He took over the world's biggest state and second superpower in 1985 when he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party.
At 54 and full of fresh ideas, Mr Gorbachev was a startling contrast to the geriatric ideologues previously in control of the Kremlin.
His foreign policy choices sent shockwaves through the world order. He defused the US-Soviet nuclear standoff with a series of disarmament agreements, withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and loosened the reins on the leadership of Moscow's Eastern European satellite countries.
At home, his perestroika and glasnost policies set off seismic changes.
Thousands of political prisoners were freed, among them scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov.
End the Cold War era
But storm clouds were gathering. Mr Gorbachev's attempt in 1985 to crack down on chronic alcohol abuse was a disaster, sapping the state budget and earning the Soviet leader the lasting hatred of alcohol-loving countrymen.
His encouragement of freedom at home quickened the disintegration of the multi-ethnic Soviet empire.
From the Baltic republics to the Caucasus and Central Asia, independence movements and inter-ethnic strife shook the seemingly invincible structure of Soviet domination, while glasnost brought wave upon wave of embarrassing revelations about the Soviet Union's dark past.
In 1989, Eastern Europe countries threw out their Communist governments and the Berlin Wall was torn down.
In 1990, Mr Gorbachev was elected the first and final president of the Soviet Union but within months had to contend with a revolt by hardline communists.
The August 1991 coup failed, but it was the defiant Boris Yeltsin who faced it down and became a national hero while Mr Gorbachev was held under house arrest far away in a Crimean resort.
Soon after, the Soviet Union vanished and with it Mr Gorbachev's position.
In an op-ed published in a government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta in December 2016, days ahead of the 25th anniversary of his resignation, Mr Gorbachev recognised his share of responsibility in the Soviet Union's collapse.
"But my conscience is clean," he wrote. "I defended the Union until the end, acting through political means."
Facing political ostracism at home, the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner hit the international lecture circuit, backed environmental causes, and made what some observers found embarrassing fund-raising campaigns for his Gorbachev Foundation, including an appearance in a Pizza Hut television commercial.
What people said about Mikhail Gorbachev
Russian President Vladimir Putin:
He expressed "his deepest condolences", his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax news agency. "Tomorrow he will send a telegram of condolences to his family and friends."
It is unlikely that Russian President Vladimir Putin will appear before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Source: AAP
"Mikhail Gorbachev was a man of remarkable vision ... He believed in glasnost and perestroika - openness and restructuring - not as mere slogans, but as the path forward for the people of the Soviet Union after so many years of isolation and deprivation.
"These were the acts of a rare leader - one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it. The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people."
United States President Joe Biden. Source: ABACA / Pool/ABACA/PA
"I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev, a one-of-a kind statesman who changed the course of history. He did more than any other individual to bring about the peaceful end of the Cold War.
"The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace."
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson:
"I always admired the courage & integrity he showed in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion ... In a time of Putin's aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all."
The Reagan Foundation and Institute:
"The Reagan Foundation and Institute mourns the loss of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who once was a political adversary of Ronald Reagan's who ended up becoming a friend. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Gorbachev family and the people of Russia."
Former US Secretary of State James Baker:
"History will remember Mikhail Gorbachev as a giant who steered his great nation towards democracy. He played the critical role in a peaceful conclusion of the Cold War by his decision against using force to hold the empire together ... The free world misses him greatly."
Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
"I am saddened to hear of the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev. He was a man who tried to deliver a better life for his people. His life was consequential because, without him and his courage, it would not have been possible to end the Cold War peacefully."
