Михаил Сергеевич Горбачёв
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Books
59
Awards
Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the USSR in 1985 and introduced reforms that ended the Cold War. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in reducing nuclear threats and enabling German reunification. Despite global acclaim, he was widely unpopular in Russia, receiving less than 1% of the vote in the 1996 presidential election. He died on August 30, 2022, in Moscow.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Mikhail Gorbachev — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Mikhail Gorbachev by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Mikhail Gorbachev — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Gorbachev was born in 1931 in Privolnoye, Stavropol province, into a peasant family. His father, Sergei Gorbachev, was a tractor driver; his mother, Maria Panteleyeva, a peasant. During World War II, he survived Nazi occupation in 1942–1943. In 1947, at age 16, he helped his father harvest a record crop, earning the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. He studied law at Moscow State University from 1950 to 1955, where he met his future wife, Raisa.
Gorbachev rose through Communist Party ranks, becoming a full Politbureau member in 1980. As General Secretary from 1985, he launched perestroika restructuring and glasnost openness. He ended the Soviet–Afghan War, released dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1986, and held summits with U.S. President Ronald Reagan. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. In 1991, a coup by hardliners failed, leading to the dissolution of the USSR and Gorbachev’s resignation on December 25, 1991.
Gorbachev married Raisa Maksimovna Titarenko in September 1953. Their daughter Irina was born in 1957. Raisa died in 1999. Gorbachev had an aversion to hard liquor and did not smoke. He spoke with a southern Russian accent and sang folk songs. In retirement, he appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial and recorded Peter and the Wolf with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren, winning a Grammy in 2004.
Gorbachev ended the Cold War and enabled German reunification in 1989–1990. He received the Nobel Peace Prize 1990, the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award 1992, and over 50 other honors. In Russia his reforms are blamed for economic collapse, and he remained unpopular. He died in Moscow in 2022 at age 91 and was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery. Vladimir Putin did not attend his funeral, seen as a deliberate snub.
The complete filmography of Mikhail Gorbachev — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Mikhail Gorbachev — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Mikhail Gorbachev's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from Mikhail Gorbachev — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
My Whole Life I Worked to Perfect Our System. I Couldn’t Wait to Get to the Most Powerful Position, Because I Thought Then I Would Be Able to Fix Problems That Only the Leader Can Fix. but When I Got There, I Realized We Needed Revolutionary Change. the Only Way Things Got Done Was If You Knew Somebody or You Paid Somebody Under the Table. so What System Did We Have? It Was Time to Dismantle the Whole Thing.
A Society Should Never Become Like a Pond with Stagnant Water, Without Movement. That’s the Most Important Thing.
Sometimes It’s Difficult to Accept, to Recognise One’s Own Mistakes, but One Must Do It. I Was Guilty of Overconfidence and Arrogance, and I Was Punished for That.
We Could Only Solve Our Problems by Cooperating with Other Countries. It Would Have Been Paradoxical Not to Cooperate. and Therefore We Needed to Put an End to the Iron Curtain, to Change the Nature of International Relations, to Rid Them of Ideological Confrontation, and Particularly to End the Arms Race.
Without Perestroika, the Cold War Simply Would Not Have Ended. but the World Could Not Continue Developing as It Had, with the Stark Menace of Nuclear War Ever Present.
If Not Me, Who? and If Not Now, When?
America Must Be the Teacher of Democracy, Not the Advertiser of the Consumer Society. It Is Unrealistic for the Rest of the World to Reach the American Living Standard.
The World Will Not Accept Dictatorship or Domination.
What We Need Is Star Peace and Not Star Wars.
If What You Have Done Yesterday Still Looks Big to You, You Haven’t Done Much Today.
On the Day I Became Soviet Leader, in March 1985, I Had a Special Meeting with the Leaders of the Warsaw Pact Countries and Told Them: ‘You Are Independent, and We Are Independent. You Are Responsible for Your Policies, We Are Responsible for Ours. We Will Not Intervene in Your Affairs, I Promise You.’
It Would Be Naive to Think That the Problems Plaguing Mankind Today Can Be Solved with Means and Methods Which Were Applied or Seemed to Work in the Past.
It Is Better to Discuss Things, to Argue and Engage in Polemics Than Make Perfidious Plans of Mutual Destruction.
I Am a Communist, a Convinced Communist! for Some That May Be a Fantasy. but to Me It Is My Main Goal.
Jesus Was the First Socialist, the First to Seek a Better Life for Mankind.
More Socialism Means More Democracy, Openness and Collectivism in Everyday Life.
The Market Came with the Dawn of Civilization and It Is Not an Invention of Capitalism. If It Leads to Improving the Well Being of the People There Is No Contradiction with Socialism.
Sometimes People Ask Me Why I Began Perestroika. Were the Causes Basically Domestic or Foreign? the Domestic Reasons Were Undoubtedly the Main Ones, but the Danger of Nuclear War Was so Serious That It Was a No Less Significant Factor.
Imagine a Country That Flies into Space, Launches Sputniks, Creates Such a Defense System, and It Can’t Resolve the Problem of Women’s Pantyhose. There’s No Toothpaste, No Soap Powder, Not the Basic Necessities of Life. It Was Incredible and Humiliating to Work in Such a Government.
Sometimes When You Stand Face to Face with Someone, You Cannot See His Face.
Democracy Must Learn to Defend Itself.
I Think the Environmental Problem Will Be the Number One Item on the Agenda of the 21St Century… This Is a Problem That Cannot Be Postponed.
Democracy Is the Wholesome and Pure Air Without Which a Socialist Public Organization Cannot Live a Full Blooded Life.
I Say Again That I Am an Atheist. I Do Not Believe in God.
If People Don’t Like Marxism, They Should Blame the British Museum.
The Soviet People Want Full Blooded and Unconditional Democracy.
Surely, God on High Has Not Refused to Give Us Enough Wisdom to Find Ways to Bring Us an Improvement in Relations Between the Two Great Nations on Earth.
What About Jesus Christ? I Say That He Was a Precursor of Idealists; a Precursor of Socialists.
Ex Presidents of the United States Get State Subsidies. Not so in Russia. You Get No Government Support.
I Paid Too Heavy a Price for Perestroika.
I Think God Has Some Mechanism That He Uses to Punish Those That Make Mistakes.
I Think We Need More Young People; We Need to Elect Young People to Government. We Need to Give Them a Chance, in the Media, in Politics, in Democracy.
I Couldn’t Wait to Get to the Most Powerful Position, Because I Thought Then I Would Be Able to Fix Problems That Only the Leader Can Fix. but When I Got There, I Realized We Needed Revolutionary Change.
Starting Reforms in the Soviet Union Was Only Possible from Above, Only from Above. Any Attempt to Go from Below Was Suppressed, Suppressed in a Most Resolute Way.
Political Leaders Still Think Things Can Be Done Through Force, but That Cannot Solve Terrorism. Backwardness Is the Breeding Ground of Terror, and That Is What We Have to Fight.
I Grew up in a Family of Peasants, and It Was There That I Saw the Way That, for Example, Our Wheat Fields Suffered as a Result of Dust Storms, Water Erosion and Wind Erosion; I Saw the Effect of That on Life on Human Life.
There Should Be Competition and Exchanges Between Different Countries, but There Are Certainly Certain Universal Values, and That Is Freedom and Democracy.
It Seems That the Most Important Thing About Reagan Was His Anti Communism and His Reputation as a Hawk Who Saw the Soviet Union as an ‘Evil Empire.’
The Market Is Not an Invention of Capitalism. It Has Existed for Centuries. It Is an Invention of Civilization.
I Believe, as Lenin Said, That This Revolutionary Chaos May yet Crystallize into New Forms of Life.
You Cannot Put Russia Down on Its Knees and Hold It There Because Russia Will Ultimately Pull Out.
I Don’t Think Russia Is Setting This as a Goal; I Don’t Think This Should Be Russia’s Goal. I Think Even the United States Doesn’t Need to Be a Superpower. China Doesn’t Need to Be a Superpower. It’s a Different World.
Every Country Should Conduct Its Own Reforms, Should Develop Its Own Model, Taking into Account the Experience of Other Countries, Whether Close Neighbours or Far Away Countries.
If Current Technological Processes Continue Without Change, the Environment Will Change, and We, the Human Species, Will Either Have to Mutate or Even Die, to Disappear, as Many Species Have Disappeared.
Certain People in the United States Are Driving Nails into This Structure of Our Relationship, Then Cutting off the Heads. so the Soviets Must Use Their Teeth to Pull Them Out.
We Are Not Abandoning Our Convictions, Our Philosophy or Traditions, nor Do We Urge Anyone to Abandon Theirs.
My Life’s Work Has Been Accomplished. I Did All That I Could.
Little-known facts about Mikhail Gorbachev — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Gorbachev appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial, making him the only Communist Party official to do advertising work.
Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, Gorbachev resigned as USSR President on Christmas Day, 1991.
Former leader of the USSR.
Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from May 25, 1989 to March 15, 1990.
Just before Gorbachev’s death, economist Ruslan Grinberg visited him in hospital and commented about his Glasnost policy: ‘He gave us all freedom – but we don’t know what to do with it’.
Merited a place in Time magazine’s Special Issue Heroes of the Environment Leaders & Visionaries section with a tribute by Alexei Yablokov, October 29, 2007.
Briefly overthrown in August 1991 by hardline Communist Party members angry at his policies, but returned to power days later due to widespread opposition to the coup.
President of Green Cross International, a Swiss-based environmentalist organization.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from March 11, 1985 to August 24, 1991.
President of the USSR from March 15, 1990 to December 25, 1991, the only person to occupy this office.
Although viewed as a hero throughout most of the world, he was widely disliked in Russia due to the perception that his policies reduced it to near-Third World status.
Passed away just 9 days before Britain’s monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, whom he had personally known.
Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union broke apart without falling into civil war, unlike the breakup of Yugoslavia at the same time.
Gorbachev, together with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren, won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for Peter and the Wolf.
First recipient of the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award, and in 1994 received the Grawemeyer Award from the University of Louisville, Kentucky.
His decision to allow the Eastern Bloc to break apart prevented significant bloodshed in Central and Eastern Europe, ending the Soviet Empire peacefully.
By 1955, Gorbachev’s hair was thinning, and by the late 1960s he was bald, revealing a distinctive port-wine stain on his head.
He had an aversion to hard liquor, drank sparingly, and did not smoke.
Spoke in a southern Russian accent and was known to sing both folk and pop songs.
Presented with the Golden Plate Award by the American Academy of Achievement in 2000 at Hampton Court Palace.
During the 1960s, he struggled against obesity and dieted to control it.
India awarded Gorbachev the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development in 1988.
Gorbachev’s negotiations with the US helped end the Cold War and reduced the threat of nuclear conflict.
According to The New York Times, few leaders in the 20th century have had such a profound effect on their time.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Mikhail Gorbachev.
Celebrities similar to Mikhail Gorbachev — same craft, ranked by reach.
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