NEWNow you can listen to the articles from Fox News!
According to Russian news agencies, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev died at the age of 91 after a long health battle.
News agencies Tass, RIA Novosti and Interfax have sued the Central Clinical Hospital. Gorbachev’s office previously said he was being treated in hospital after a serious and long illness. No further details were provided.
FILE – Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
(AvStocki / ullstein bild via Getty Images)
Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its collapse in December 1991. As general secretary and president, he helped to forge arms reduction deals with the United States and other Western powers and to remove the Iron Curtain. .
Although in power for less than seven years, Gorbachev has unleashed a breathtaking series of changes. But they quickly overcame it and led to the collapse of the Soviet authoritarian state, the liberation of Eastern European nations from Russian rule, and the end of decades of east-west nuclear confrontation.
PUTIN EXCLUDES RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTER FOR STALLING PROGRESS IN UKRAINE, UNITED KINGDOM
Its decline has been humiliating. His power irremediably weakened by a coup attempt against him in August 1991, he spent his last months in office watching republic after republic declare independence until he resigned on December 25, 1991. The Soviet Union canceled itself the next day.
A quarter of a century after the collapse, Gorbachev told the Associated Press that he did not consider using a widespread force to try to keep the USSR united because he feared chaos in a nuclear country.
Michele Gorbachev
(© Russeil Christophe / Collection Corbis Kipa / Corbis via Getty Images)
“The country was loaded to the brim with weapons. And it would immediately push the country into a civil war,” he said.
Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War and spent his final years collecting accolades and prizes from all corners of the world. Yet he was widely despised at home.
The Russians blamed him for the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, a once fearsome superpower whose territory fractured into 15 separate nations. His former allies abandoned him and made him a scapegoat for the troubles of the country.
“Mikhail Gorbachev is as respected in the West as he is hated in Russia,” former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Rebekah Koffler told Fox News. “For the Westerners he brought openness and reconstruction (glasnost and perestroika) and for the Russians he destroyed the USSR”.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The official Tass news agency reported that Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife, Raisa. He is outlived by his daughter, Irina, and two grandchildren.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
