[110] In September 1971 he was part of a delegation who traveled to Italy, where they met with representatives of the Italian Communist Party; Gorbachev loved Italian culture but was struck by the poverty and inequality he saw in the country. [589] Out of office he continued to receive honors. [371] Throughout 1991, Gorbachev requested sizable loans from Western countries and Japan, hoping to keep the Soviet economy afloat and ensure the success of perestroika. [329] World Leader #32. It reflected a compromise: ministers would retain the ability to set output targets but these would not be considered binding. [284] Calling for greater pan-European co-operation, he publicly spoke of a "Common European Home" and of a Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals". [163] His wife was his closest adviser, and took on the unofficial role of a "first lady" by appearing with him on foreign trips; her public visibility was a breach of standard practice and generated resentment. [131] At the time, he was the Politburo's youngest member. [591] In 1995 he was awarded the Grand-Cross of the Order of Liberty by Portuguese President Mário Soares,[592] and in 1998 the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. [376] Gorbachev was frustrated that the U.S. would spend $100 billion on the Gulf War but would not offer his country loans. [221] He thought that the "socialist camp" of Marxist-Leninist governed states—the Eastern Bloc countries, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba—were a drain on the Soviet economy, receiving a far greater amount of goods from the Soviet Union than they collectively gave in return. [597], 1985–1991 General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, "Gorbachev" redirects here. [555] Taubman called him "a remarkably decent man";[535] he thought Gorbachev to have "high moral standards". Gorbachev declined to intervene militarily when various Eastern Bloc countries abandoned Marxist-Leninist governance in 1989–90. It criticized elements of Gorbachev's reforms, attacking what she regarded as the denigration of the Stalinist era and arguing that a reformer clique—whom she implied were mostly Jews and ethnic minorities—were to blame. [593] In 2002, Gorbachev received the Freedom of the City of Dublin from Dublin City Council. [271] In the months following the conference, Gorbachev focused on redesigning and streamlining the party apparatus; the Central Committee staff—which then numbered around 3,000—was halved, while various Central Committee departments were merged to cut down the overall number from twenty to nine. He believed that the situation could be resolved through a political solution, urging talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani Communist Parties. They also provisionally accepted Gorbachev's resignation as president of what remained of the Soviet Union. [441] In March, he visited Germany, where he was received warmly by many politicians who praised his role in facilitating German reunification. Age: 89 years old. [538] In 2008, there was some press speculation that he was a practicing Christian after he visited the tomb of St Francis of Assisi, to which he publicly clarified that he was an atheist. [215] Taubman noted that the disaster marked "a turning point for Gorbachev and the Soviet regime". [280] At the Congress, Sakharov spoke repeatedly, exasperating Gorbachev with his calls for greater liberalization and the introduction of private property. [224] He believed strongly in the need to sharply improve relations with the United States; he was appalled at the prospect of nuclear war, was aware that the Soviet Union was unlikely to win the arms race, and thought that the continued focus on high military spending was detrimental to his desire for domestic reform. [453] He repeatedly faced anti-Gorbachev protesters, while some pro-Yeltsin local officials tried to hamper his campaign by banning local media from covering it or by refusing him access to venues. Shortly after Chernenko's death, the Politburo unanimously elected Gorbachev as his successor; they wanted him over another elderly leader. [467] Later that year, Gorbachev founded a new movement, the Union of Social Democrats. His parents named him Victor, but at the insistence of his mother—a devout Orthodox Christian—he had a secret baptism, where his grandfather christened him Mikhail. Gorbachev then opened the floor to responses, after which attendees publicly criticized Yeltsin for several hours. Over following years, much of the wall was demolished. [500] Doder and Branson noted that at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 1986, Gorbachev was seen to be an orthodox Marxist-Leninist;[501] that year, the biographer Zhores Medvedev stated that "Gorbachev is neither a liberal nor a bold reformist". [23] In 1946, he joined Komsomol, the Soviet political youth organization, becoming leader of his local group and then being elected to the Komsomol committee for the district. Gorbachev expected much opposition to his nomination as General Secretary, but ultimately the rest of the Politburo supported him. [197] Gorbachev later considered the campaign to have been an error,[198] and it was terminated in October 1988. Name: Mikhail Gorbachev ( Mikhail Gorbachev ) Born: March 02, 1931 Age: 89 years old [246] Economic problems remained: by the late 1980s there were still widespread shortages of basic goods, rising inflation, and declining living standards. [201] According to Doder and Branston, this meant "greater openness and candour in government affairs and for an interplay of different and sometimes conflicting views in political debates, in the press, and in Soviet culture. [86] By 1968 he was increasingly frustrated with his job—in large part because Khrushchev's reforms were stalling or being reversed—and he contemplated leaving politics to work in academia. [144] Gorbachev continued to cultivate allies both in the Kremlin and beyond,[145] and also gave the main speech at a conference on Soviet ideology, where he angered party hardliners by implying that the country required reform. With the assistance of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, she was transferred to a cancer center in Münster, Germany and there underwent chemotherapy. Even before he left office, Gorbachev had become a kind of. [438] In 1993, Gorbachev launched Green Cross International, which focused on encouraging sustainable futures, and then the World Political Forum. He worked with combine harvesters on huge farms as a teen. Internally, growing nationalist sentiment threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading Marxist-Leninist hardliners to launch the unsuccessful August Coup against Gorbachev in 1991. [409] However, the coup's leaders realized that they lacked sufficient support and ended their efforts. In early 1986, Yeltsin began sniping at Gorbachev in Politburo meetings. [432][433] The following day, 26 December, the Council of the Republics, the upper house of the Supreme Soviet, formally voted the Soviet Union out of existence. Raisa had focused on campaigning for children 's charities with government officials and economists 386 ], by mid-November,..., drunkenness was a tractor driver outside of Moscow motion without understanding they... 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