Mikhail gorbachev biography president andrew

Gorbachev inherited the issues that Andropov and Chernenko had been struggling to tackle, including serious domestic problems and escalating Cold War tensions. During his term as general secretary, Gorbachev engaged with U. The expense put further stress on the already suffering Soviet economy. Gorbachev worked diligently to create reforms that he believed would improve the Soviet standard of living.

He worked toward establishing a market economy that was more socially oriented. Even a couple of years prior to his appointment, Gorbachev had attempted to improve Soviet relations with the leaders of Western nations. We can do business together. Over the next three years, Reagan and Gorbachev met at four additional summits, during which their relationship further warmed as they collaborated on bringing the Cold War to a close.

Unfortunately, U. The Soviet Union failed to release a full report until more than two weeks after the event. During the summit in Geneva and the October Reykjavik summit, the strain between Gorbachev and Reagan was apparent. The two disagreed over the development of a Strategic Defense Initiative, which Reagan wanted and Gorbachev didn't. Both summits ended in stalemates.

The Soviet Union welcomed some desperately needed relief from the expenses of the space race. In , he organized elections that required Communist Party members to run against non-party members. During his presidency, Gorbachev promoted more peaceful international relations. He ordered Soviet troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. Through his peaceful negotiations with President Reagan, Gorbachev was also instrumental in ending the Cold War.

He was likewise credited for his crucial role in the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of Germany. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 10 August Archived from the original on 21 July Retrieved 25 November Archived from the original on 7 December Archived from the original on 1 March Retrieved 30 August Archived PDF from the original on 24 September Retrieved 16 January The New York Times.

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Retrieved 28 December Sources [ edit ]. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. JSTOR PMC Gorbachev saw the office mainly as a position for himself to remain influential in Soviet politics. His main goal was to keep the Soviet Union together, controlled by Moscow. After the August coup in , Gorbachev resigned as leader of the Communist Party and held onto the Soviet presidency.

When Union republics began to turn away from the Soviet system, Gorbachev's power was dramatically reduced. By late he had almost no influence outside of Moscow. When Russia , Ukraine and Belarus became independent, Gorbachev was basically a President of a country that only existed on paper. He resigned on December 25, Gorbachev studied law at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

He met his future wife, Raisa Gorbachova , there. Gorbachova studied sociology. After retiring from politics in , Gorbachev started The Gorbachev Foundation , which is currently headed by his daughter Irina. Gorbachev died at a hospital in Moscow on 30 August , [ 5 ] at the age of His funeral was held on 3 September, however President Vladimir Putin did not give him a state funeral.

Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in A Russian play about Gorbachev titled Gorbachev was made in Gorbachev's legacy is a complex mix. He is credited with reforms like perestroika and glasnost , but his leadership also saw the end of the Soviet Union. Thus, Gorbachev's legacy is a subject of intense debate among historians. Media related to Mikhail Gorbachev at Wikimedia Commons.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Page Talk. Authorities arrested Gorbachev's grandfather in the spring of for not planting enough, even though there was no seed available. Three-year-old Mikhail's father Sergei was Andrei's eldest son. Gorbachev's father took over all farming duties, providing not only for his wife and son but for his mother Stepanida and two sisters.

Grandfather Andrei was released from a work camp in , returned to the village, and soon managed a collective pig farm that won awards for the region. By , with both grandfathers back home, Gorbachev recalled that life, although at a poverty level by any standards, returned to normal. It had even improved. Gorbachev occasionally got to see a silent movie and delighted in ice cream that was brought to the village.

Families took Sundays off, picnicking, playing, and visiting. Then on one Sunday morning on June 22, , terrifying news reached the village and the Gorbachevs and Gopkalos. By August, men in the village headed to the war. Ten-year-old Gorbachev took over farm duties to provide for him and his mother. In Memoirs, Gorbachev observed, "Our way of life had changed completely.

And we, wartime children, skipped from childhood directly into adulthood. Happier moments also occurred during the war years, thanks to Gorbachev's paternal grandfather, who looked after the growing boy. However, in August , the family received word that Gorbachev's father had been killed, only to learn soon after that he was actually alive and would return to them.

Gorbachev never forgot the hardships of the time. In , Gorbachev was able to return to school. His learning depended on teachers and his own resourcefulness. Few books or supplies were available. In summer, he worked up to twenty hours a day with his father, who had started operating a combine harvester on the farm. The two had long conversations about life, duty, family, work, and country.

Young Gorbachev had a bright, quick mind and noted how hard the peasant families worked yet could never improve their impoverished life. Every household had to deliver much of what they produced to the government. Yet in , when Gorbachev was seventeen, he and his father produced a very large amount of grain with their combine and were rewarded.

Gorbachev's honor at seventeen remained his most prized award over all those he received as an adult. Gorbachev finished secondary school in with a silver medal, the award for second best student in the graduating class. About the same time, he became a "candidate" member of the Communist Party. His Red Banner award, work record, party status, and "worker peasant" background helped him to be accepted into Moscow State University law school.

Gorbachev quickly developed an interest in politics and became active in the Komsomol, the Young Communist League. In , he became the Komsomol leader for the entire law school and also was admitted as a full member to the Communist Party. Although he proclaimed the Stalin propaganda, Gorbachev's personal decency was evident to his fellow students.

Gorbachev had arrived in Moscow in at the height, at least to date, of the Cold War — The Cold War was a prolonged conflict for world dominance between the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. The weapons of conflict were commonly words of propaganda and threats. Both the Soviets and the United States possessed the atomic bomb and were busily developing the more powerful hydrogen bomb , or H-bomb.

The Korean War —53 had broken out. Communism and U. Communism is a system in which the government or state controls production and there is no private ownership of property, whereas in capitalism there is corporate or private ownership of goods, where competition and a free market are emphasized. As a law student, Gorbachev was a disciplined hard worker.

He read the works of many authors and particularly liked a two-year course on the history of political ideas. In the midst of Gorbachev's university years, Stalin died in He had doubts about Stalin's approach to leadership which held that anyone against his ideas was a criminal. Yet Gorbachev kept those views to himself. Stalin was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev —; see entry , and soon Gorbachev heard the words "peaceful coexistence" with the United States.

This turn-about in philosophy impressed Gorbachev. Classmates recall he enjoyed attending various lectures and art exhibitions and was always ready to discuss his latest intellectual experience. However, it was Raisa Maximovna Titorenko who greatly expanded Gorbachev's interests. Gorbachev met Titorenko, his future wife, at the university.

Raisa Titorenko was born in the Siberian town of Rubtsovsk. All through school, she was an outstanding student, graduating with the gold medal, first in her class. Not only intelligent, Raisa was quite a beauty. At the university, she studied philosophy and, like Gorbachev, loved to soak in all the cultural experiences available in Moscow.

Mikhail gorbachev biography president andrew

They were soon inseparable and married on September 25, After graduation in June , the young couple went back to Stavropol, where Gorbachev became an organizer for the Komsomol. Much as Khrushchev had done, Gorbachev returned to his home to begin a rapid climb through party ranks. Their only child, Irina, was born in The capital of the Stavropol province was the city of Stavropol, with a population of , Here, Gorbachev established relationships with other young Komsomol members including Eduard Shevardnadze —; see entry , whom one day Gorbachev would appoint as Soviet foreign minister.

Between and , Gorbachev was first secretary chief officer of the city of Stavropol's Komsomol. By , Gorbachev was first secretary for the Komsomol of the larger Stavropol province. In , he jumped from Komsomol to the party and also enrolled in the Stavropol Agricultural Institute's department of agricultural economy. Gorbachev realized that agricultural successes in his area might translate into a job in Moscow.

During this time, Raisa Gorbachev also continued her work on a doctoral dissertation. The topic was changes in peasant life on the collective farms of the Stavropol area. She received her candidate of science degree in philosophy, the equivalent of a Ph. She authored a book based on her dissertation and taught at the same institute where her husband was working on his second degree.

Gorbachev continued his rise in the party ranks. He became first secretary of the party for the city of Stavropol, then first secretary of Stavropol province. The first secretary of a province held the power of the region firmly in his hands. Gorbachev managed all the party affairs for the area. Most members of the Communist Party Central Committee were first regional secretaries, to which post Gorbachev was elected in The Central Committee was the main administrative body of the Communist Party.

Their votes elected the general secretary of the Communist Party, who held the highest position of power in the Soviet Union. During the early and mids, Gorbachev was able to travel to countries in both Western and Eastern Europe , considerably broadening his view of European politics. He also caught the attention of Yuri Andropov — , chairman of the KGB, the Soviet secret police , which was also the most powerful Soviet intelligence agency.

Andropov often vacationed in Stavropol. He was highly impressed with Gorbachev and became a mentor to him. Then on November 27, , much to Gorbachev's surprise, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev —; see entry appointed him secretary of the Central Committee in charge of agriculture, no doubt based on Andropov's recommendation. Gorbachev and his wife moved from Stavropol, where they had lived for twenty-three years, to Moscow.

By October , Gorbachev had been promoted to full member of the Politburo. The Politburo was a group of select people in the Central Committee that directed policy. The party experienced a rapid succession of leaders between and Brezhnev died in , and Andropov became general secretary. However, Andropov died in and was replaced by another aged and ill hard-line communist, Konstantin Chernenko — Chernenko died in The vigorous fifty-four-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev became the new general secretary of the Communist Party on March 11, Andrey Gromyko —; see entry , veteran Soviet foreign minister and a leader in the Politburo, enthusiastically nominated Gorbachev for the position.

In Gromyko's nomination speech, he characterized Gorbachev by saying, "This man has a nice smile, but he has teeth of iron. Gorbachev had long exhibited a can-do attitude. He was a man of action and wasted no time setting a tone in the country to expect change. One immediate outward example of the change was seen with Raisa. Unlike any general secretary's wife before, she accompanied her husband on travels around the Soviet Union and to foreign countries.

She became a partner and ally in her husband's initiatives. She also took up the cause of conservation and promotion of the Russian cultural heritage. Gorbachev began an antialcohol campaign that proved very unpopular. At first, he held a tight line but was forced to abandon the campaign a few years later. Nevertheless, he had indicated to the people of the Soviet Union that he would be a leader for change.

The nuclear reactor disaster of Chernobyl occurred on April 26, Still under the old communist system of not disclosing internal problems to the outside world, Gorbachev did not publicly respond to the disaster quickly. He first spoke on television about the disaster on May However, that was the last time Gorbachev would use secrecy and cover-up.

Almost immediately, he instituted the official government policy of glasnost, or openness, and perestroika, or restructuring. Gorbachev saw that for the Soviet Union to survive in the late twentieth century world marketplace of ideas and goods, it would have to completely reform its cumbersome political and economic chain of command. Glasnost showed the horrors the Soviets had lived under through the decades and the corruption of the huge government system.

Gorbachev set into motion the most radical domestic reforms of the Soviet political system since it was first established in Most reforms were started in and Gorbachev moved the center of political power away from the Communist Party and into a government structure. The party was no longer manager of the country. He decided the Soviets needed an executive presidency much like the French and American presidencies.

So he introduced to the Constitution the word "president," taking the place of the position of chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, also known as the head of state. Supreme Soviet was the Communist Party's legislature. Under the presidency, he established two executive councils, the Presidential Council, like the U. The Presidential Council took over most duties of the Politburo.

On the legislative side of government, he introduced competitive elections to the Soviet Congress of the People's Deputies that comprised 2, positions. In , Gorbachev got approval for the first multicandidate elections since the s. However, places were reserved for organizations such as the Communist Party seats. In turn, Congress elected from its members a Supreme Soviet—a two-part body made of the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities.

These were similar to genuine Western-style debating bodies and parliaments. In , Gorbachev got rid of many of the old party faithfuls and replaced them with those whose ideas were like his. Gorbachev also undertook a radical restructuring of the economy. He took the party out of detailed management of the economy by slashing the Central Committee from twenty departments to nine.

The essence of Gorbachev's economic restructuring was decentralization, giving more control to localities. Although he pushed the economy toward a real marketplace competition, he had to walk a fine line between moving too fast and too slow. Commercial banks and trading associations were not yet well organized. Gorbachev laid out plans to drastically increase production of consumer goods and services between and To ease the difficult economic transition, Gorbachev knew the Soviet Union needed to halt its all-out Cold War arms race with the United States.

The relaxing of tensions between the two superpowers would allow Gorbachev to devote energy and resources to domestic issues. The Soviet Union had no economic means to continue matching the relentless American missile buildup. Reagan was the most intensely anti-Soviet American president to date. Gorbachev was determined to show a new look of flexibility in negotiations and to eventually win over Reagan.

When Gorbachev came into office, he inherited a U. The Soviets had demanded Star Wars and all research toward it be canceled. Gorbachev considered this an unnecessarily tough stance. There, he proposed a grand compromise, the eventual elimination of intermediate-range nuclear forces INF in exchange for withdrawal and destruction of U. Furthermore, he proposed to make deep cuts in offensive missiles, if Star Wars was confined to laboratory research only.

Although the talks fell apart, the precedent of better cooperation was set, and Gorbachev began altering his position on Star Wars more and more. In December , Gorbachev in a brilliant political move released Nobel Peace Prize—winning physicist Andrey Sakharov —; see entry from exile in Gorky. This won worldwide approval. Sakharov had fallen out of favor with the Soviets because of his outspokenness and went into exile in early He had long advocated control of nuclear weapons , and now Gorbachev spoke of a need only for a sufficient defensive position and "mutual security" for the Soviets and America.

Gorbachev was laying the groundwork for the end of the Cold War. His new thinking was tremendously intriguing for western strategists. By , some Western European polls showed Gorbachev as more popular than Reagan. Gorbachev quickly became a local and national television media celebrity. Delighted to visit America, he exhibited. Clearly, Gorbachev was a new kind of Soviet leader.

In January , Gorbachev announced plans to withdraw Soviet troops from the decade-long costly war in Afghanistan that further showed a dramatic change in Soviet thinking. The next two years saw an impressive amount of interaction between Gorbachev and U. In response, Reagan went to Moscow in May for yet another U. Then Gorbachev returned to the United States the following winter.

By the end of , Gorbachev had allowed the people of Eastern European states to remove communist dictatorships and regain independence. He watched the toppling of the Berlin Wall , which had kept people from fleeing from communist East Germany to noncommunist West Berlin since , and later saw the reunification of East and West Germany.

In , the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Gorbachev. He met with the new U. All of the initiatives made Gorbachev extremely popular in the West, but in the Soviet Union major problems existed. The combination of raised economic expectations coupled with continuing shortages of basic goods and growing unemployment caused Gorbachev's popularity at home to drop significantly.

Also, many old-time party hard-liners were aghast watching their former satellite countries break away. The old-line conservatives wanted the reforms to slow or even stop. Liberals wanted much faster progress in reform. Gorbachev briefly turned to some of the hard-liners for support. But on August 18, , while on a vacation in the Crimea a peninsula reaching into the Black Sea , a coup was attempted.

Gorbachev and his wife were held at their villa for several days. The coup collapsed thanks to resistance by the people of Moscow led by Russian president Boris Yeltsin —. Gorbachev returned to Moscow but never gained back any real authority. Yeltsin would essentially become the most influential Soviet leader. In a last effort to distance himself from the Communist Party, Gorbachev resigned from the party on August 24, However, power formally shifted to Russian president Yeltsin on November 7, He banned the Communist Party in Russia.

Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on December 25, The Soviet Union ended its existence on December 31, Gorbachev kept a residence in Moscow and bought a villa in Finland. He made a run for election as Russian president in against Yeltsin but garnered less than 1 percent of the vote. In , Raisa Gorbachev died of leukemia, a blood disease.

He also lectures extensively abroad. Doder, Dusko, and Louise Branson. Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin. New York : Viking, Gorbachev, Mikhail, and Zdenek Mlynar. New York: Columbia University Press, Morrison, Donald, ed. Mikhail S. Gorbachev: An Intimate Biography. New York: Time Books, President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.

Unlike previous Soviet leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev had fully grown up in the well-established Soviet communist system. His school experiences in the early twentieth century differ markedly from what U. In his book Memoirs, Gorbachev describes his school experiences:. The school of that time, its teachers and its pupils, defies unemotional description.

As a matter of fact, it was not even a school. Aside from being housed in various village buildings built for completely different purposes, it possessed only a handful of textbooks, a few maps and visual aids and some chalk, an item not obtained without some effort. That was virtually all we had. The rest was up to the teachers and pupils.

We made our ink ourselves.