Before Mikhail Gorbachev came along, the Soviet Union seemed an immovable superpower in perpetual antagonism to the US, but with a breathtaking series of reforms, he changed all that as president, redirecting the course of the 20th century.
Alongside former US president Ronald Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Gorbachev was a key protagonist in a global drama that many thought impossible and, for those who lived through it, seemed almost surreal.
Under Gorbachev, the Berlin Wall crumbled, thousands of political prisoners were released and millions of people who had known only communism got their first glimpse of freedom.
Photo: Reuters
However, he was unable to control the forces he unleashed and ultimately waged a losing battle to salvage a crumbling empire.
Gorbachev died on Tuesday at a Moscow hospital.
He was 91.
Although little known outside Sovietologist circles before he became leader in 1985, he quickly became a dominant and charismatic figure on the world stage. The splotchy purple birthmark on his bald pate made him instantly recognizable, and his vigor stood in sharp contrast to a run of aged and barely articulate Kremlin leaders.
His vision of remaking the Soviet Union into a more humane and flexible country had the power of the epochal.
By 1990, he had won the Nobel Prize for his “leading role” in ending the Cold War and reducing nuclear tensions.
However, a year later, he was the sad and bewildered embodiment of failure. The country had fallen apart in his hands, and at home he was derided, despised and increasingly shunted aside as irrelevant.
His power hopelessly sapped by an attempted coup against him in August 1991, Gorbachev spent his last months in office watching republic after republic declare independence until he resigned on Dec. 25, 1991, and the Soviet Union wrote itself into oblivion a day later.
Many of the changes, including the Soviet breakup, bore no resemblance to the transformation that Gorbachev had envisioned when he became Soviet leader in March 1985.
By the end of his rule, he was powerless to halt the whirlwind he had sown. Yet Gorbachev might have had a greater impact on the second half of the 20th century than any other political figure.
“I see myself as a man who started the reforms that were necessary for the country and for Europe and the world,” Gorbachev told reporters in a 1992 interview shortly after he left office. “I am often asked, would I have started it all again if I had to repeat it? Yes, indeed. And with more persistence and determination.”
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