Gorbachev 's The Soviet Union - Mikhail Gorbachev single handedly saved the Russian people by enacting the collapse of the Soviet Union through initiatives such as Perestrokia and Glasnost. Albeit unintentional, Gorbachev 's reforms were the final nail in the Soviet coffin that should have been shut years earlier.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (born 2 March 1931) is a Russian and formerly Soviet politician. The eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, he was the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. He was also the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991, serving as the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, chairman of the.
The Gorbachev era: perestroika and glasnost. When Brezhnev died in 1982, most elite groups understood that the Soviet economy was in trouble. Due to senility, Brezhnev had not been in effective control of the country during his last few years, and Kosygin had died in 1980. The Politburo was dominated by old men, and they were overwhelmingly Russian.
Mikhail Gorbachev was born in the small village of Privolnoye (in the Stavropol Territory) to Sergei and Maria Panteleyvna Gorbachev. His parents and his grandparents had all been peasant farmers before Joseph Stalin's collectivization program. With all farms owned by the government, Gorbachev's father went to work as a driver of a combine-harvester.
Gorbachev’s grandfather, Pantelei Yefimovich Gopkalo, was a devoted member of the Communist Party. In 1937 Gopkalo was arrested by the NKVD Secret Police and charged with being a leader on an underground organization supporting Leon Trotsky. Gorbachev’s grandfather was imprisoned for two years where he endured torture until his release in 1938.