Mikhail Gorbachev , the leader who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but was unable to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 91 , Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday, citing hospital officials.
Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain, which had divided Europe since World War II.
When pro-democracy protests swept through the Soviet-bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force, as had his predecessors in the Kremlin, who sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary. in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
The protests fueled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated in the following two years in a chaotic manner.
Gorbachev struggled in vain to prevent this collapse.
Becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, aged just 54, he set out to revitalize the system by introducing limited political and economic freedoms, but his reforms spiraled out of control.
His policy of “glasnost” – freedom of expression – allowed previously unthinkable criticism of the party and the state, but also emboldened nationalists who began to push for independence in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and elsewhere.
Many Russians never forgave Gorbachev for the turmoil his reforms unleashed, seeing the subsequent drop in their living standards as too high a price to pay for democracy.
After visiting Gorbachev in hospital on June 30, liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg told the armed forces media outlet Zvezda: “He gave us all the freedom, but we don’t know what to do with it.”
