Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev ɡərbɐˈtɕɵf]; March 2, 1931 - August 30, 2022), a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 before the collapse of the Soviet Union. He became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985 and became the Supreme Leader of the Soviet Union from 1988. He served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1990, as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1990 to 1991, and as the only President of the Soviet Union from 1990 to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He was the only supreme leader of the Soviet Union who was born after the October Revolution and resigned during his tenure. Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism-Leninism but moved toward social democracy in the early 1990s. Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye in southern Soviet Russia in 1931 to a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian descent. He grew up under Stalin's rule. As a young man he operated a combine harvester on a collective farm before joining the Soviet Communist Party. While studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Titarenko in 1953 and received his law degree in 1955. After moving to Stavropol, he worked for the Komsomol youth organization. After Stalin's death, he became a supporter of Khrushchev's de-Stalinization reforms. In 1970, he was appointed First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee, responsible for overseeing the construction of the Stavropol Grand Canal. In 1978, he returned to Moscow and served as Secretary of the Party Central Committee, and in 1979 he entered the Politburo (the 25th term). After the deaths of Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, who served briefly within three years, the Politburo elected Gorbachev, still in his fifties, as general secretary in 1985, becoming the de facto leader. Although Gorbachev was committed to preserving the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism, he believed that major reforms were necessary for the Soviet Union's survival, especially in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. He withdrew from the Soviet-Afghan War and cooperated with the United States