Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev dies aged 91

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, died at the age of 91 on Tuesday August 30. He will go down in history as one of the major players in the military de-escalation that ended the Cold War. For Jacques Attali, Gorbachev was a man in the service of peace: “He showed the world that a dictatorship can become a democracy.”

When on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, Mikhail Gorbachev lets it go and decides not to intervene. He will win the Nobel Peace Prize a few months later. The farmers son was a great reformer. In particular, he put an end to the gulags and freed imprisoned dissidents upon his arrival. Alongside Ronald Reagan, he is the man of disarmament and rapprochement with the United States. But at home, in Russia, Gorbachev is the symbol of economic decline. Cornered, in December 1991, he signed his letter of resignation and the end of the Soviet Union.