What did Mikhail Gorbachev do to change the Soviet Union?
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, in the southern Russian region of Stavropol. Mikhail’s parents both worked on collective farms, and as a teenager, Gorbachev drove combine harvesters. Mikhail was an active member of the Communist Party by the time he graduated from Moscow State University in 1955. He began a rapid…
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, in the southern Russian region of Stavropol. Mikhail’s parents both worked on collective farms, and as a teenager, Gorbachev drove combine harvesters.
Mikhail was an active member of the Communist Party by the time he graduated from Moscow State University in 1955. He began a rapid rise through the regional party structure upon his return to Stavropol with his new wife Raisa.
Gorbachev was part of a new generation of party activists who grew increasingly dissatisfied with the Soviet hierarchy’s aging leaders. By 1961, he was the Young Communist League’s regional secretary and a delegate to the Party Congress.
Mikhail Gorbachev role as an agricultural administrator provided him with the opportunity to introduce innovations, and this, combined with his party membership, gave him significant influence in the region.
What did Mikhail Gorbachev do to change the Soviet Union?
Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the dissolution of a Soviet Union that had existed for nearly 70 years and had dominated huge swathes of Asia and Eastern Europe.
Yet, when he set out his programme of reforms in 1985, his sole intention had been to revive his country’s stagnant economy and overhaul its political processes.
His efforts became the catalyst for a series of events that brought an end to communist rule, not just within the USSR, but also across its former satellite states.
