Mikhail Gorbachev,
the last leader of the Soviet Union,
died at age 91 yesterday.
The Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow
says he died after a long illness.
No other details were given,
though he was in power for
less than seven years.
Gorbachev brought a series of changes
to the then communist country.
We're going to dig into the leader's
legacy and look into his career.
Let's start first with a look
at his life from Tina Kraus.
Mikhail Gorbachev sparked a revolution
as he helped bring down the Berlin
Wall and dissolved the Soviet Union.
After almost 70 years as a socialist state,
Gorbachev was born in
1931 to a farming family.
He joined the Communist Party as a law
student and rose through the ranks in Moscow.
Gorbachev also met the love
of his life, Raisa.
The two married in 1953 and had a daughter.
In 1985, Gorbachev became the
youngest secretary general in
the Communist Party's history.
He instituted government
restructuring and transparency,
opening the Soviet Union to the world.
With that openness,
Gorbachev played a key role
in ending the Cold War.
Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
He found common ground with President
Ronald Reagan signing the IMF Nuclear
Reduction Treaty in 1987.
The two became good friends.
Mikhail Gorbachev is a living example.
Of the power of possibility.
He is a man whose shining
legacy will live forever.
But Gorbachev's openness and
reform caused the Communist
Party to lose its grip on power.
He was elected president of
the Soviet Union in 1990.
But a year later,
hardliners staged a coup,
and Gorbachev eventually resigned.
The former leader won many awards,
including the Nobel Peace
Prize and the Liberty Medal.
25 years after the collapse
of the Soviet Union,
Gorbachev kept fighting for equality.
He remained active in Russian
politics and world affairs.
But it was the walls that Gorbachev
tore down and the end of the Soviet
era that truly shaped his legacy.
Gorbachev was a dominant
and charismatic figure,
unlike previous leaders of the Soviet Union.
He made himself known on the world stage.
President Joe Biden released
a statement about his death,
saying in part that he was a rare leader,
one with the imagination to see that
a different future was possible and
the courage to risk his entire career.
To achieve it,
the result was a safer world and
greater freedom for millions of people.
Now, while he was popular abroad,
Gorbachev was not popular in his own country.
Following his death,
current Russian President Vladimir Putin
avoided explicit criticism of him.
He said in part he led the country
during difficult and dramatic changes
amid large scale foreign policy,
economic and society changes.
He deeply realized that reforms were
necessary and tried to offer his
solutions for the acute problems.
Now.
Gorbachev was in office from 1985
to 1991 as the General Secretary
of the Communist Party.
Of the Soviet Union and then as
the President of the Soviet Union,
he worked with US presidents Ronald Reagan,
George HW Bush,
and other world leaders to bring hope
for peace among the superpowers.
As a decades long Cold War raged on,
he was a symbol of a period of
greater freedom for many people,
although for others a symbol
of collapse and humiliation.
Gorbachev, who was someone who was willing
to allow the Soviet bloc to collapse,
allow the Soviet Union.
To collapse rather than plunge
the world into bloody war.
So in that sense there is a very sharp
contrast to the hope that people fell
in 1991 and where we are now with
Vladimir Putin as President of Russia.
Right now, it's not clear if Gorbachev
will be given a state funeral,
and we don't know if Putin would attend
any ceremony held for the late leader.
That's it for dig into it.