Mikhail Gorbachev, the 8th and last leader of the Soviet Union has died in Moscow at the age of 91.
He was a titan on the world stage….a young reformer who wowed the west with his promises to reform the Soviet Union.
The architect off glasnost and perestroika…openness and restructuring that he hoped could save the Soviet Union from oblivion
But his checkered record included a delayed reaction to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl…and an inability to control enemies within the Communist Party who rose up against him and launched an attempted….ultimately failed coup…in August 19891.
Former British foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind says while Gorbachev is largely reviled within Russia for the USSR's destruction, it's a tribute to him that the Cold War ended peacefully.
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Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks was based in Moscow in the 1990s, and charted Gorbachev's final years in power.
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Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks was based in Moscow in the 1990s and interviewed Gorbachev after he left power.
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