Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.
Kaleidoscope
COUNTRY:
Russia
PERSON: Mikhail Gorbachev
HEADLINE: Biographies
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was the communist leader of the Soviet Union who
instituted a radical reform program that prompted the eventual dismantling of
the Soviet state.
Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, a village in Stavropol, Russia, on Mar 2,
1931. After working in agriculture
for some years, he received a law degree from Moscow State University in 1955
and graduated from the Stavropol Agricultural Institute in 1967. Having joined
the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1952 at the age of 21,
Gorbachev quickly rose through the ranks of the Russian
branch of the party, becoming regional first secretary in 1970. In 1971 he
joined the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and was named to the
Central Committee Secretariat in 1978, with the task of overseeing the nation's
troubled agricultural sector. In 1980 he became the youngest member of the
Politburo.
Gorbachev had
close ties to Central Committee General Secretary Yuri Andropov and his
successor Konstantin Chernenko and became effective head of state when
Chernenko died in March 1985. Gorbachev became chairperson of the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet (legislature) in 1988, for the first time linking the top
party
post with the top government post. In 1986, Gorbachev initiated a series of
reforms that ultimately resulted in the breakup of the Soviet Union, including
changes aimed at repairing the nation's battered economy, which had been
focused for so long on maintaining its military branch that the rest of the
economy had
stagnated and food shortages were common. Gorbachev also worked to change
political structures, purging conservatives from party and government offices
and trying to increase democracy, changes that prompted the failed coup of Aug
18, 1991. Although he was restored to office after the coup attempt, Gorbachev
never regained the same degree of
power and he resigned on Dec 25, 1991, shortly after presidents of most of the
nation's republics declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed and that
they had created a Commonwealth of Independent States.
His policy of noninterference in the affairs of the countries of Eastern
Europe was vital when they were seeking political change and the overthrow of
communism. He signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Abolition Treaty in 1987
and sanctioned the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Heedless of his
negative public image in a downgraded and impoverished empire, Gorbachev
campaigned for president in June 1996 elections. He won half of one
percent of the national vote.
[Source: Encyclopedia of Russian History]
LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
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1998 LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
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