Moscow: One of the most influential politicians of the 20th Century and former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev has passed away. He was 91.
The former president who opened up the USSR and brought the Cold War to a peaceful end, died at a hospital here in the Russian capital, media reports said Wednesday.As per ABC news, he died “after a serious and long illness”, the Central Clinical Hospital reported on Tuesday.
Gorbachev assumed office in 1985 and opened up the then-USSR to the world introducing a set of reforms at home. He was, however, unable to prevent the slow collapse of the Soviet Union, from which modern Russia emerged.
Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and de facto leader of the country, in 1985. At the time, he was 54 – the youngest member of the ruling council known as the Politburo, and was seen as a breath of fresh air after several ageing leaders. His policy of glasnost, or openness, allowed people to criticise the government in a way which had been previously unthinkable. But it also unleashed nationalist sentiments in many regions of the country which eventually undermined the stability of the country and led to its collapse.
He will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery, the resting place of many prominent Russians, next to his wife Raisa who died of leukaemia in 1999.
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