Gorbachev, who ended Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent collapse of Soviet Union, dies "after a serious and long illness," Russian media report.
After visiting Gorbachev in hospital on June 30, liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg told the armed forces news outlet Zvezda: "He gave us all freedom - but we don't know what to do with it."
(AFP)
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow at the age of 91.
"Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness," the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said on Tuesday, quoted by the Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies.
Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany.
When pro-democracy protests swept across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force –– unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
But the protests fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in a chaotic fashion.
Gorbachev struggled in vain to prevent that collapse.
Turbulence from his reforms
On becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, aged just 54, he had set out to revitalise the system by introducing limited political and economic freedoms, but his reforms spun out of control.
His policy of 'glasnost' - free speech - allowed previously unthinkable criticism of the party and the state, but also emboldened nationalists who began to press for independence in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and elsewhere.
Many Russians never forgave Gorbachev for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed, considering the subsequent plunge in their living standards too high a price to pay for democracy.
After visiting Gorbachev in hospital on June 30, liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg told the armed forces news outlet Zvezda: "He gave us all freedom - but we don't know what to do with it."
Source: TRTWorld and agencies
إرسال تعليق