Background and career
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who was the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1985, and additionally as head of state from 1988. Ideologically, he initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism, but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s. Born in Privolnoye, North Caucasus Krai, into a peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage, Gorbachev grew up under the rule of Joseph Stalin. In his youth, Gorbachev operated combine harvesters on a collective farm, before joining the Communist Party, which then governed the Soviet Union as a one-party state. Studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Titarenko in 1953 and received his law degree in 1955. Moving to Stavropol, he worked for the Komsomol youth organization and, after Stalin's death, became a keen proponent of the de-Stalinization reforms of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Gorbachev was appointed the first party secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee in 1970, overseeing the construction of the Great Stavropol Canal. In 1978, Gorbachev returned to Moscow to become a secretary of the party's Central Committee. He joined the governing Politburo (25th term) as a non-voting member the following year and as a voting member in 1980. Three years after the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and following the brief tenures of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, the Politburo elected Gorbachev as general secretary in 1985. Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and its Marxist–Leninist principles, Gorbachev believed significant reform was necessary for its survival. He withdrew troops from the Soviet–Afghan War, and embarked on summits with United States president Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear weapons and end the Cold War. Domestically, Gorbachev's policy of glasnost ("openness") and demokratizatsiya ("democratization") allowed for enhanced freedom of speech and the press, while his perestroika ("restructuring") sought to decentralize economic decision-making to improve its efficiency. Ultimately, his democratization measures and formation of the elected Congress of People's Deputies undermined the one-party state. When various Warsaw Pact countries abandoned Marxist–Leninist governance in 1989, he declined to intervene militarily. Growing nationalist sentiment within constituent republics threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading hardliners within the party to launch an unsuccessful coup against him in August 1991. In the wake of the coup, the Soviet Union dissolved against Gorbachev's wishes. After resigning from the presidency, he launched the Gorbachev Foundation, became a vocal critic of Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and campaigned for Russia's social-democratic movement. Considered one of the most significant figures of the second half of the 20th century, Gorbachev remains controversial. The recipient of a wide range of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, he was praised for his role in ending the Cold War, introducing new political and economic freedoms in the Soviet Union, and tolerating both the fall of Marxist–Leninist administrations in eastern and central Europe and the German reunification. Critics see him as weakening Russia's global influence and precipitating an economic collapse in the country.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in Privolnoye, then part of North Caucasus Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, and now part of Krasnogvardeysky District, Stavropol Krai. Privolnoye was divided between Russians and Ukrainians at the time. His paternal family were Russians and had moved from Voronezh several generations before, while his maternal family were Ukrainians and had migrated from Chernigov. Gorbachev's parents, Sergey Andreyevich Gorbachev and Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva (née Gopkalo), named him Viktor at birth. However, at Maria's insistence, Gorbachev had a secret baptism, where Sergey's father christened him Mikhail. Gorbachev's relationship with Sergey was close, while Maria was cold and punitive. The couple were poor and lived as peasants. They married as teenagers in 1928. In keeping with local tradition, Sergey and Maria initially resided in the house of the former's father, an adobe-walled hut, before a hut of their own could be built. The Soviet Union was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, led by Joseph Stalin. Stalin had initiated a project of mass rural collectivization meant to help convert the country into a socialist society. Maria's father joined the Communist Party in 1928 and helped form Privolnoye's first kolkhoz the following year, becoming its chair. It was 19 kilometers (12 miles) outside Privolnoye. At the age of three, Gorbachev left his parental home and moved into the kolkhoz with Maria's parents. Two of Gorbachev's paternal uncles and an aunt died in the famine of 1930–1933. This was followed by the Great Purge, in which individuals accused of being "enemies of the people" were interned in labor camps or executed. Both of Gorbachev's grandfathers served time in labor camps. After his December 1938 release, Maria's father discussed having been tortured by the secret police, an account that influenced Gorbachev. During the Second World War, the German Army started invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, and occupied Privolnoye for four and a half months the following year. Sergey fought on the frontlines; he was wrongly declared dead during the war and fought in the 1943 Battle of Kursk before returning to his family, injured. Following the war, Sergey and Maria had their second son, Aleksandr, in 1947; Gorbachev and Aleksandr were the couple's only children. The school in Privolnoye was closed during much of the war, re-opening in autumn 1944. Gorbachev did not want to return but excelled academically when he did. He read voraciously, moving from the Western novels of Thomas Mayne Reid to the works of Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, and Mikhail Lermontov. In 1946, Gorbachev joined the Komsomol, the Soviet political youth organization, becoming leader of his local group, and was then elected to the Komsomol committee for the district. From primary school, he moved to the high school in Molotovskoye; he stayed there during the week and walked the 19 km (12 mi) home during weekends. As well as being a member of the school's drama society, Gorbachev organized sporting and social activities, and led the school's morning exercise class. Over the course of five consecutive summers starting with 1946, he returned home to assist Sergey in operating a combine harvester; they sometimes worked 20 hours a day during those summers. In 1948, they harvested over 800 metric tons (1,800,000 pounds) of grain, a feat for which Sergey was awarded the Order of Lenin; the following year, Gorbachev was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
In June 1950, Gorbachev became a candidate member of the Communist Party. He applied to study at the law school of Moscow State University (MSU), then the most prestigious university in the country. They accepted him without asking for an exam, likely because of his worker-peasant origins and his possession of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. His choice of law was unusual; it was not a well-regarded subject in Soviet society at that time. At age 19, he traveled by train to Moscow, the first time he had left his home region. In Moscow, Gorbachev resided with fellow MSU students at a dormitory in the Sokolniki District. He felt at odds with his urban counterparts, but soon came to fit in. Fellow students recall his working especially hard, often late into the night. He gained a reputation as a mediator during disputes and was outspoken in class, but was private about his views; for instance, he confided in some students his opposition to the Soviet jurisprudential norm that a confession proved guilt, noting that confessions could have been forced. During his studies, an antisemitic campaign spread through the Soviet Union, culminating in the Doctors' plot; Gorbachev publicly defended Volodya Liberman, a Jewish student accused of disloyalty. At MSU, Gorbachev became the Komsomol head of his entering class, and then Komsomol's deputy secretary for agitation and propaganda at the law school. One of his first Komsomol assignments in Moscow was to monitor the election polling in Presnensky District to ensure near-total turnout; Gorbachev found that most people voted "out of fear". In 1952, he was appointed a full member of the Communist Party. He was tasked with monitoring fellow students for subversion; some of his fellow students said he did so only minimally and that they trusted him to keep confidential information secret from the authorities. Gorbachev became close friends with Zdeněk Mlynář, a Czechoslovak student who later became a primary ideologist of the 1968 Prague Spring. Mlynář recalled that the duo remained committed Marxist–Leninists despite their growing concerns about the Stalinist system. After Stalin died in March 1953, Gorbachev and Mlynář joined the crowds massing to see Stalin's body lying in state. At MSU, Gorbachev met Raisa Titarenko, who was studying in the university's philosophy department. She was engaged to another man, but after that engagement fell apart, she began a relationship with Gorbachev; together they went to bookstores, museums, and art exhibits. In early 1953, he took an internship at the procurator's office in Molotovskoye district, but he was angered by the incompetence and arrogance of those working there. That summer, he returned to Privolnoye to work with his father on the harvest; the money earned allowed him to pay for his wedding. On 25 September 1953, he and Raisa registered their marriage at Sokolniki Registry Office, and in October, moved in together at the Lenin Hills dormitory. Raisa discovered that she was pregnant and although the couple wanted to keep the child she fell ill and required an abortion. In June 1955, Gorbachev graduated with a distinction; his final paper had been on the advantages of "socialist democracy" over "bourgeois democracy" (liberal democracy). He was subsequently assigned to the Soviet Procurator's office, which was focusing on the rehabilitation of the innocent victims of Stalin's purges, but found that they had no work for him. He was then offered a place on an MSU graduate course specializing in kolkhoz law, but declined. He had wanted to remain in Moscow, where Raisa was enrolled in a PhD program, but instead gained employment in Stavropol; Raisa abandoned her studies to join him there.
In August 1955, Gorbachev started work at the Stavropol regional procurator's office, but disliked it and got a transfer to work for Komsomol, becoming deputy director of Komsomol's agitation and propaganda department for that region. In this position, he visited villages in the area and tried to improve the lives of their inhabitants; he established a discussion circle in Gorkaya Balka to help its peasant residents gain social contacts. Gorbachev and his wife Raisa initially rented a small room in Stavropol, taking daily evening walks around the city and on weekends hiking in the countryside. In January 1957, Raisa gave birth to a daughter, Irina, and in 1958 they moved into two rooms in a communal apartment. In 1961, Gorbachev pursued a second degree, in agricultural production; he took a correspondence course from the local Stavropol Agricultural Institute, receiving his diploma in 1967. His wife had also pursued a second degree, attaining a PhD in sociology in 1967 from the Moscow State Pedagogical University; while in Stavropol she joined the Communist Party. Stalin was succeeded as Soviet leader by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin and his cult of personality in a speech given in February 1956, after which he launched a de-Stalinization process throughout Soviet society. Later biographer William Taubman suggested that Gorbachev "embodied" the "reformist spirit" of the Khrushchev era. Gorbachev was among those who saw themselves as "genuine Marxists" or "genuine Leninists". He helped spread Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist message in Stavropol, but encountered many who saw Stalin as a hero and praised his purges as just. Gorbachev rose steadily through the ranks of the local administration. The authorities regarded him as politically reliable, and he would flatter his superiors, for instance gaining favor with prominent local politician Fyodor Kulakov. With an ability to outmaneuver rivals, some colleagues resented his success. In September 1956, he was promoted First Secretary of the Stavropol city's Komsomol, placing him in charge of it; in April 1958 he was made deputy head of the Komsomol for the entire region. He was given better accommodation: a two-room flat with its own private kitchen, toilet, and bathroom. In Stavropol, he formed a discussion club for youths, and helped mobilize local young people to take part in Khrushchev's agricultural and development campaigns.
In March 1961, Gorbachev became First Secretary of the regional Komsomol, in which position he went out of his way to appoint women as city and district leaders. In 1961, Gorbachev played host to the Italian delegation for the World Youth Festival in Moscow; that October, he attended the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In January 1963, Gorbachev was promoted to personnel chief for the regional party's agricultural committee, and in September 1966 became First Secretary of the Stavropol City Party Organization ("Gorkom"). By 1968 he was frustrated with his job—in large part because Khrushchev's reforms were stalling or being reversed—and he contemplated leaving politics to work in academia. However, in August 1968, he was named Second Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, making him the deputy of First Secretary Leonid Yefremov and the second most senior figure in Stavropol Krai. In 1969, he was elected as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and made a member of its Standing Commission for the Protection of the Environment. Cleared for travel to Eastern Bloc countries, in 1966 he was part of a delegation which visited East Germany, and in 1969 and 1974 visited Bulgaria. In August 1968 the Soviet Union led an invasion of Czechoslovakia to put an end to the Prague Spring. Although Gorbachev later stated that he had had private concerns about the invasion, he publicly supported it. In September 1969 he was part of a Soviet delegation sent to Czechoslovakia, where he found the people largely unwelcoming. That year, the Soviet authorities ordered him to punish Fagim B. Sadygov, a philosophy professor of the Stavropol agricultural institute whose ideas were regarded as critical of Soviet agricultural policy; Gorbachev ensured that Sadykov was fired from teaching but ignored calls for him to face tougher punishment. Gorbachev later related that he was "deeply affected" by the incident; "my conscience tormented me" for overseeing Sadykov's persecution.
In April 1970, Yefremov was promoted to a higher position in Moscow and Gorbachev succeeded him as the First Secretary of the Stavropol kraikom. This granted Gorbachev significant power over the Stavropol region. He had been vetted for the position by senior Kremlin leaders and was informed of their decision by the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Aged 39, he was considerably younger than his predecessors. As head of the Stavropol region, he automatically became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (24th term) in 1971. According to biographer Zhores Medvedev, Gorbachev "had now joined the Party's super-elite". As regional leader, Gorbachev initially attributed economic and other failures to "the inefficiency and incompetence of cadres, flaws in management structure or gaps in legislation", but eventually concluded that they were caused by an excessive centralization of decision making in Moscow. He began reading translations of restricted texts by Western Marxist authors such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Aragon, Roger Garaudy, and Giuseppe Boffa, and came under their influence.
