In his attempts to improve ties with America, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, also finalised arms reduction deals with the United States and also built partnerships with Western powers. He was also involved in the reunification of Germany. He had made Western powers remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two.
However, the leader's policy could not keep the Soviet Union intact for long. His broad internal reforms helped weaken the Soviet Union to such an extent that it fell into multiple parts. Current President Vladimir Putin has called the incident the ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe.’
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Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease," Russia's Central Clinical Hospital said in a statement. To pay tribute to the great man behind Russia-US relations, the Russian President expressed "his deepest condolences, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax news agency.
Tomorrow he will send a telegram of condolences to his family and friends, he said. The former leader will be buried in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetry, next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999.
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As soon as the news of his demise came, world leaders expressed their condolence and paid tribute to the leader. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Gorbachev had opened the way for a free Europe. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also expressed that Mikhail Gorbachev was one of his kind. He said that Gorbachev's tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all.
Due to his policies and ties with the allies, the Nobel Prize winner was able to bring the Soviet Union closer to the West after both sides suffered the Cold War for more than two years. It is worth noting that, Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
The biggest irony of his life is that what is considered to be one of the biggest achievements of Mikhail Gorbachev, seemed to fade away in the final months of his life. Russia's invasion of Ukraine proved to be a major setback in the Russia-American relationship. Russia had to face major sanctions from the West for its action in Ukraine. This has led people in both countries to apprehend a new Cold War era.
Gorbachev died in a symbolic way when his life's work, freedom, was effectively destroyed by Putin, said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
'Too decent for the Country'
Historians, global leaders, and common people often remember Mikhail Gorbachev as a man who contributed immensely by bringing peace to the region after ending Cold War, but many consider him to be incapable of leading a united Soviet Union
He was a good man - he was a decent man. I think his tragedy is in a sense that he was too decent for the country he was leading, said Gorbachev biographer William Taubman, a professor emeritus at Amherst College in Massachusetts.
The era of Gorbachev is the era of perestroika, the era of hope, the era of our entry into a missile-free world ... but there was one miscalculation: we did not know our country well, said leader Vladimir Shevchenko, who headed Gorbachev's protocol office when he was Soviet leader while paying tribute to the leader.
Our union fell apart, that was a tragedy and his tragedy," the RIA news agency cited him as saying.
Repenting the fall of the Soviet under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, many people also call him a traitor for his liberal policies. Gorbachev had deliberately led the (Soviet) Union to its demise, said Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in a part of Ukraine now occupied by pro-Moscow forces. He went ahead and called him a traitor.
He gave us all freedom - but we don't know what to do with it, liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg told the armed forces news outlet Zvezda after visiting Gorbachev in hospital in June.
Such sharp remarks are the result of Mikhail Gorbachev's abstinence from using force against pro-democracy protests that swept across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989. He broke the decades-old trend of Soviet leaders crushing such protests brutally by using force. For example, Kremlin leaders had earlier sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Mikhail's policy did nothing more than fuelling the aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of Soviet Union. This led to their chaotic separation over the next two years. Even though he didn't use force against such protests, he tried hard to avert such situations. He was also briefly deposed in an August 1991 coup by party hardliners
In 1985, when he became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party at the age of 54, he tried to bring refreshing reforms of political and economic freedom to the Union. But his reforms went out of control.
Being a supporter of free speech and constructive criticism, Gorbachev launched his policy of glasnost, free speech, which allowed previously unthinkable criticism of the party and the state. However, it had its repercussions for a state that survived by crushing down the opposition for decades. The policy emboldened nationalists who began to press for independence in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and elsewhere.
This ultimately led to the fragmentation of the Soviet into many countries. Gorbachev's liberal policies make him responsible for the fragmentation of the Soviets in eyes of Russians. That's why many of them never forgave Gorbachev for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed, considering the subsequent plunge in their living standards too high a price to pay for democracy.
Gorbachev lived to see some of his worst fears realised and his brightest dreams drowned in blood and filth. But he will be remembered fondly by historians, and one day - I believe it - by Russians, said Cold War historian Sergey Radchenko.
(With input from wire agencies)
