Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, died Tuesday, August 30, 2022 at the age of 91 in Russia, said a hospital quoted by Russian news agencies relayed by AFP. “Today in the evening (Tuesday), after a long serious illness, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev died“, said the Central Clinical Hospital (TSKB) dependent on the Russian presidency.
Coming to power in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev launched a wave of political and economic reforms aimed at modernizing and democratizing the Soviet Union, which was facing serious crises. A supporter of a policy of rapprochement with the West, the man with the famous birthmark on his skull received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. Between 1990 and 1991, he served as President of the Soviet Union, before finally having to resign on December 25, 1991, which led to the end of the USSR.
An unfailing love for Raissa
Behind the political career of Mikhail Gorbachev, the figure of his wife, Raïssa Gorbatcheva, emerges implicitly, who knew how to impose herself in the confined universe of Soviet power. She played a significant role alongside her husband during perestroika. Gorbachev will never stop blaming himself for the disappearance of the one he had met on the benches of the university and to whom he devoted an unfailing love during their 50 years of common life.
Raissa Gorbatcheva died on September 20, 1999 at the age of 67, following acute leukemia in a clinic in Germany. “I think again and again about the last days of Raïssa’s life and the torments she suffered. What should I have done or not done to avoid this misfortune? I don’t know, I don’t know“, confided Gorbachev in his last book, One-on-one with yourself. Paradoxically, if she was little appreciated by the Soviets when her husband was in power, her death caused great emotion among the Russians, who belatedly recognized her as their first “first lady”.
International tributes
Like many of his counterparts, French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the last Soviet leader, thanking him for “his commitment to peace in Europe“. The President of the French Republic hailed in a tweet the memory of a “a man of peace whose choices opened a path to freedom for Russians. His commitment to peace in Europe changed our common history.”