LAST LEADER

Mikhail Gorbachev Died After ‘Serious and Protracted Disease,’ Officials Say

The ambitious politician brought about political free speech and the end of the Cold War, but many never forgave him for the implosion of the Soviet Union

Former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev died Tuesday night “after a serious and protracted disease,” Interfax news agency cited Russia’s Central Clinical Hospital as saying in a statement. He was 91. Ascending to the Soviet Union’s top office in 1985, Gorbachev’s style was markedly different from his predecessors. He oversaw a series of sweeping political and economic reforms, as well as the policies of perestroika, or “restructuring,” and glasnost, or “openness.” This style of new thinking ultimately led to the tearing down of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War. But it also constituted a laxer hold on the Soviet Union’s satellite states—and the Eastern European nationalists struggling for autonomy within them. By 1991, the Soviet Union had imploded, and many Russians never forgave Gorbachev, who lost power at the same time. But he always had a pithy retort pocketed for his critics: “Remember, I am the one who gave you the right to shout.”