Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped end Cold War, dies at 91
For six long years, Mikhail S. Gorbachev slavishly turned his attention to one Herculean chore — dismantling the machinery of repression that his predecessors had so proudly and methodically erected.
In a breathtaking series of reforms, the former Soviet leader lifted the Iron Curtain that drew a messy line between the East and the West, liberated the arts and pulled Red Army troops from foreign conflicts such as the Soviet Union’s 10-year debacle in Afghanistan.
He forged disarmament treaties with Cold War enemies, freed political prisoners and ushered in the unfamiliar notion of free elections, cracking open the door for states in Eastern Europe to eventually break free of Moscow’s rule.
“The winds of the Cold War are being replaced by the winds of hope,” Gorbachev said in 1988 of the changes then sweeping away the old ways of confrontation.
While many of Gorbachev’s reforms were short-lived, they made perestroika and glasnost household words around the globe in the 1980s and removed the shackles from a society deeply scarred by dictatorships that for decades had restricted thought, word and deed.
One of the most influential politicians of the 20th century and the last leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev died Tuesday at 91. He had been suffering from acute diabetes and was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Moscow, according to Russian news agencies.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a
