mikhail
gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was born March 02, 1931 in the village
of Privolnoye near Stavropol, Russia. From the age of 13 he worked
on a collective farm, where his father was a mechanic. He was an
exceptional student and earned a law degree at Moscow University
where he joined the Communist party and became Secretary of the
law department's Young Communist League. After returning to the
Stavropol area he rose in the League hierarchy to become Regional
Secretary of the League, and in 1961 first became a delegate to
the Party Congress. He spent the 1960s working his way up through
the territorial bodies of the Party and continuing his education
in agronomy and economics.
As an agricultural administrator and party leader in his native
region, he acquired a reputation for innovation and incorruptible
honesty, and he soon rose in the Party hierarchy. He was first
elected to the Supreme Soviet in 1970, and served on commissions
dealing with conservation, youth policy, and foreign affairs.
In 1971 he was elected to the Central Committee. In 1978 he became
First Secretary of the Stavropol territorial committee and by
1980 was a full member of the Politburo.
The death of the long-time General Secretary of the Communist
Party, Leonid Brezhnev, presented a brief opportunity for change
in the Soviet Union. Brezhnev's successor, Yuri Andropov, appeared
to be grooming Gorbachev as his own successor, but after Andropov's
unexpected death, Gorbachev was passed over for the top spot and
the aged Konstantin Chernenko came. to power. When Chernenko too
died barely a year after taking power, it was at last clear to
the Party hierarchy that younger leadership was needed and Gorbachev
became General Secretary. He was ready to make long overdue reforms
in the Soviet system.
For six years Gorbachev carried off a delicate balancing act,
forcing reforms on a recalcitrant old guard, while trying to contain
the demand for change from radical reformers within and without
the Communist Party. He permitted an unprecedented freedom of
expression in the USSR and ended the disastrous Soviet military
involvement in Afghanistan.
By 1989 the demand for reform had spread to the Soviet satellite
states of Central Europe. Gorbachev notified the Communist leaders
of those coutries that he would not intervene militarily to keep
them in power as his predecessors had done. Without the support
of the Red Army, these dictatorships were quickly forced to yield
to their democratic opposition, and Gorbachev began the withdrawal
of the remaining Soviet forces from Central Europe. In 1990 he
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his foreign policy initiatives.
Gorbachev continued to press for democratization in the Soviet
Union and permitted free elections in Russia and the other republics
of the Soviet Union. He survived an attempted coup by Communist
hardliners in 1991 but relinquished office after the elected presidents
of the constituent republics undertook to replace the old Soviet
Union with a Confederation of Independent States.
Since leaving office, he has continued to advocate the development
of private ownership in a market economy, and the non-violent
resolution of conflicts in a democratic society. He is President
of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political
Studies, known as the Gorbachev Foundation, which conducts political
and economic research, and promotes international exchange. He
is recognized around the world as one of the most influential
statesman of the 20th century.
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