BREAKING: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died 'after a serious and long illness.'
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev addresses a group of 150 business executives in San Francisco, Monday, June 5, 1990.Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has died "after a serious and long illness," the Central Clinical Hospital reported on Tuesday.Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union before it dissolved.
He tore through the Iron Curtain between the USSR and the West by opening relations with the U.S., agreeing to a series of crucial summits soon after taking power. He signed treaties to reduce the size of his country's nuclear arsenal and, in a well-received reversal in military policy, he withdrew troops from a nine-year war in Afghanistan.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union, signs the decree relinquishing control of nuclear weapons to Boris Yeltsin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Dec. 25, 1991.Gorbachev's vision was to legitimize communism by putting a democratic face on it. What he didn't seem to realize was that his people would start demanding the real thing.
As the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time at the Kremlin in Moscow, Gorbachev had no choice but to resign. Others benefitted far more from his changes than he did.
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