Mikhail Gorbachev, Last Soviet Union President Dies At 91

Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and only President of the Soviet Union, has died, according to Russian media. He was 91.

The Central Clinical Hospital on the outskirts of Moscow told the state news agency Tass that Gorbachev died Tuesday night “after a serious and prolonged illness.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a condolence telegram Wednesday that Gorbachev “deeply understood” the need to reform the Soviet system and that he “strove to offer his own solutions to urgent problems.”

“Gorbachev was a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of world history. He led our country during a period of complex, dramatic changes and large-scale foreign policy, economic and social challenges,” Putin said.

The Central Clinical Hospital on the outskirts of Moscow told the state news agency Tass that Gorbachev died Tuesday night “after a serious and prolonged illness.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a condolence telegram Wednesday that Gorbachev “deeply understood” the need to reform the Soviet system and that he “strove to offer his own solutions to urgent problems.”

“Gorbachev was a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of world history. He led our country during a period of complex, dramatic changes and large-scale foreign policy, economic and social challenges,” Putin said.

When pro-democracy protests rocked Soviet bloc nations in communist Eastern Europe in 1989, Gorbachev refrained from using force – unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

But the protests fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in chaotic fashion.

Gorbachev – who was briefly deposed in an August 1991 coup by party hardliners – struggled vainly to prevent that collapse.