The Leadership And Legacy Of Mikhail Gorbachev

The December of 1991 marked the end of the Soviet Union—and with it, an entire era. Like the February Revolution of 1917 that ended tsardom, the events leading up to August 1991 took place in rapid succession, with both spontaneity and, to some degree, retrospective inevitability. To understand the demise of Soviet Union is to understand the communist party-state system itself. Although the particular happenings of the Gorbachev years undoubtedly accelerated its ruin, there existed fundamental flaws within the Soviet system that would be had been proven ultimately fatal. The USSR became a past chapter of history because it was impossible to significantly reform the administrative

Gorbachev's policy of Glasnost eliminated the strict censorship practiced for hundreds of years. Glasnost stands for openness, and Soviet citizens were now allowed to speak openly about their country's problems. Perestroika, or

This study will examine Gorbachev's understanding of the Glasnost policy and the role of Glasnost in Gorbachev's larger political reform program with the help of the Gorbachev Factor, by Archie Brown, and Gorbachev's Glasnost, by Joseph Gibbs.

During the Cold War Ronald Reagan made a speech said in 1982 about the Soviet Union, saying, “We're approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention, totalitarianism”, this meant that the Soviet Union used a political invention that takes control of public life (Ronald Reagan). At first, Ronald Reagan thought that the Soviet Union desired war, but when he talked to Sir Winston Churchill, Churchill said, “I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines, but what we have to consider here today while time remains is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries", this meant that the Soviet Union wanted to control the world and spread communism all around the world (Ronald Reagan, Sir Winston Churchill). Also, Reagan’s strategy was to do military build up then reduce Russia’s nuclear weapons (We The People.org). When Ronald Reagan met Gorbachev in a meeting, the first thing they did to stop the Cold War is by signing the INF treaty which reduced 50% nuclear weapons in Russia, but all of nuclear weapons in America were to be wiped out (Atomic Archive.com). In their other meeting in Reykjavik Summit in the Hofdi House, Reagan and Gorbachev talked about human rights until Reagan asked Gorbachev for his SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), Gorbachev refused to give his SDI because of his fear of imbalance power (The Reagan Vision). This is how Gorbachev and Reagan reduced Cold War tensions to the point where communism and the Cold War was falling

The shift away from the period of Détente is can be associated with the changing of leadership and policies of the Soviet Union beginning around the time of Khrushchev’s removal from power. With the change of leadership and governmental structure, the Soviet Union took a renewed hardline approach to populous dissent, and sought to reestablish and solidify Soviet control over its domestic territory and satellite governments. The new hardline government of the Soviet Union matched with the neo-conservative government of the United States under Ronald Reagan saw a return to earlier Cold War hostilities.

Khrushchev’s 1956 Secret Speech was one of the most important moments in Soviet history. It was the beginning of the permanent divided within the party between reformists and hardliners. This divide created a new type of informal political norm for both the Soviet System and the Soviet Leader- I will call this the ‘rollback effect.’ This rollback effect influenced every Soviet leader’s view on problems in Soviet society, and thus, their policy preferences. Furthermore, the remnants of the rollback effect can still be seen in contemporary Russian politics, and can help explain Putin’s aggressive policy measures.

Mikhail Gorbachev had served as the general secretary for the Communist Party. When he gained power over the country, Gorbachev found out there was a lot more kept from him while in office than what he knew of such as the Afghanistan war was expensive and was becoming unsuccessful, military spending was high. His slogan for the foreign policy was “New Thinking” which was based on solving global issues. Gorbachev helped the Soviet Union gain more of an acceptance among the nations to show that there is more to Russia than what has been portrayed. This ongoing press was to show that he will run the country different than shown in the past. This slogan ultimately was the collapse of communism all together and brought an

Mikhail Gorbachev was a Soviet official, the secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991, and he was also a Soviet Union president in 1990-1991. His plans for democratizing his country’s political system and to decentralize the economy as well, led to the downfall of communism and the Soviet Union’s breakup in 1991. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in part because he had ended the Soviet Union’s postwar domination of eastern Europe.

This investigation examines to what extent did the four summits between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985-1988 contribute to ending the Cold War? My research assesses whether the summits were the main catalyst for ending the war or whether there were broader political and economic forces from both the USA and USSR that ended it. The years from 1985 to 1993 will be the main focus.

On March 11, 1990 through December 25, 1991, an event happened that the world had been trying to cause for decades: the fall of the Soviet Union. Major steps had been taken the decade prior by Ronald Reagan that improved the US’s relationship with the USSR, even despite their frosty beginnings; after all, at the beginning of his presidency, Reagan called Konstantin Chernenko’s Soviet Union an ‘evil empire’ (Talbott 1). However, when George H.W Bush took office, he began by reevaluating his strategic policy to form his own plan, not by simply following Reagan’s policies from his time in office. The decade before, Gorbachev had loosened the reigns of Communism , so much so that it was being overthrown all across Eastern Europe, most notably with

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power he was the first intellectual to lead the Soviet Communist Party since Lenin when he was appointed in March 1985, as a Law graduate of Moscow State University. A native to the Northern Caucasus, Gorbachev had governed his home region of Stavropol, Krai for fifteen years. As the region was home to extensive agriculture he gained extensive experience supervising a huge economic complex whilst directing Party organization and managing the inter-ethnic situations of the Northern Caucasus. After fifteen years of governing his home region, he moved to Moscow and took up the position of Secretary of the Central Committee responsible for agriculture. His position within the party and diplomatic training accelerated

When Mikhail Gorbachev took the helm of the Soviet Union in March of 1985, he began the process of introducing reforms such as glasnost, perestroika, and democratization into the Soviet system. Glasnost, or openness, encouraged the free flow of ideas and information, but this flow came at the price of many people losing their fear of the Communist party. Perestroika, or economic restructuring, was designed to jumpstart the sagging Soviet economy by injecting a small amount of capitalism into the Soviet command economy; however, that small drop only served to destabilize the economy and create more stagnation. Finally, democratization pushed the U.S.S.R. in a more democratic direction by allowing for multi-candidate elections, but this

Such is the case with Gorbachev. Moran (2012) suggested that Gorbachev and his supposed attitudes towards democracy and freedom that was outlawed during Soviet rule may not be as liberating as once thought. He suggested that " Gorbachev himself was not as much of a liberal democrat as he is often portrayed in the West. He used force to try to suppress the independence movement in the Baltics, and otherwise sought to preserve the Soviet regime, not end it. He was certainly much less ruthless and repressive than his predecessors. But that is judging him by a very low standard of comparison."

Perestroika translates to “restructuring” and was a policy introduced by Gorbachev which intended to reform the baseline of the Soviet economy in an attempt to

Gorbachev wanted to bring freedom to the people, ease the Party’s control over the media and release thousands of political prisoners.