General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev during French President Francois Mitterrand’s visit to the Soviet Union. Moscow, Russia, 6th December 1989.
Wojtek Laski | Hulton Archive | Getty Images
Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union and a reformer who helped end the Cold War and lead his country from communism to capitalism, died Tuesday at 91, according to the Gorbachev Foundation.
“Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital reported, according to Interfax.
Born in the village of Privolnoye, Gorbachev grew up a committed communist during World War II. He wound up winning a Nobel Peace prize in 1990 for helping end the Cold War.
Unlike his predecessors, when pro-democracy rallies began in Poland and swept across the Soviet bloc in 1989, Gorbachev did not send in Soviet tanks to crush the uprisings.
But within two years, the Soviet Union began to disintegrate as the captive Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia peeled away and other nations that had long been under Moscow’s yoke, including Ukraine, sought independence.
Gorbachev’s death came as Russia was bogged down in a brutal war with Ukraine.
