Gorbachev Born: The Man Who Ended the Cold War

Both of Mikhail Gorbachev's grandfathers were arrested during Stalin's purges. One spent time in a Gulag; the other was imprisoned for failing to meet grain quotas during a man-made famine that killed millions. Gorbachev grew up under those shadows in a farming village in southern Russia, joined the Communist Party anyway, and rose through its ranks to become the man who — intentionally or not — ended the Soviet Union. Born on March 2, 1931, in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader born after the 1917 Revolution. He earned a law degree from Moscow State University in 1955, unusual for a party official in an era that valued agricultural and engineering credentials. His wife Raisa, whom he married during his university years, was an intellectual influence who pushed him toward reformist thinking. Gorbachev's rise through the Communist Party was steady but unremarkable until Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief who briefly led the Soviet Union, became his patron. When Konstantin Chernenko died in March 1985, Gorbachev became General Secretary at age 54, the youngest leader since Stalin. He inherited an economy in structural decline, a war in Afghanistan draining resources, and a political system calcified by decades of gerontocratic rule. His twin reform programs, glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), were intended to modernize the Soviet system, not destroy it. Glasnost loosened censorship and allowed public criticism; perestroika introduced limited market mechanisms. The reforms unleashed forces Gorbachev could not control. Nationalist movements erupted across the Baltic states, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. By December 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved into fifteen independent states. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for ending the Cold War without bloodshed — a feat celebrated everywhere except in Russia, where many blamed him for destroying their country.