Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the USSR, died at the age of 91

He is a major player in the history of the 20th century who died on Tuesday August 30. Died at the age of 91, the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will remain, for the West, a partner towards peace and the end of the cold war. But the comments are, today, much more mixed in Russia. “Dismantling the Soviet Union was a bad idea. The Soviet Union was like an airplane, a beautiful car: it should have been modernized instead”says a Russian.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, contented himself with a press release in which he evokes a leader with great influence on the history of the world. Son of farmers and born into a modest family, the young Mikhail Gorbachev studied in Moscow (Russia). He is very quickly spotted by the party, and climbs the ladder. Upon his arrival at the head of a tottering Soviet Union, he undertook ambitious reforms: perestroika, economic restructuring and “glasnost” (“transparency”), i.e. a little freedom of opinion and of the press.

Mikhail Gorbachev puts an end to the gulag, and frees imprisoned dissidents. He then withdraws Soviet soldiers from Afghanistan and charms the rulers of the West. In 1986, the Chernobyl disaster weakened his authority and showed the world the state of disrepair of the USSR. In 1989, Gorbachev is the one who makes possible the fall of the Berlin Wall, and becomes Nobel Peace Prize the following year. In 1991, booed in Russia, he signed his letter of resignation and put an end to the Soviet Union.