On August 30, at the age of 92, the first and only President of the USSR and the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev died, the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow reported.
“Gorbachev died on Tuesday evening after a serious and long illness,” the hospital said.
In recent years, the politician suffered diabetes mellitus.
Russian Telegram channels report that the day before death Mikhail Gorbachev arrived at the hospital for hemodialysis. The former General Secretary had problems with kidneys. He was in the special department of the Central Clinical Hospital.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born in March 2, 1931, in Privolnoye, Krasnogvardeisky District, Stavropol territory, to a peasant family. In 1950, he with silver medal graduated school and enrolled in Faculty of Law of the Moscow State University. Two years later he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
On 10 March 1985, after the death of the General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko at the extraordinary plenum of the Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the CPSU.
On March 15, 1990, at the extraordinary Third Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected President of the USSR – the first and last in the history of the Soviet Union.
In 1985-1991, Gorbachev attempted to reform the social system in the USSR. In order to "renew socialism”, to give it a “second wind”, this initiative was called “perestroika”.
In August 1991, a number of Gorbachev's associates, including power ministers, attempted a coup d'etat. The attempt failed, however, as a result, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the Central Committee and announced his withdrawal from the CPSU.
On December 25 of the same year, after the signing of the Bialowieza Agreements on the liquidation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Mikhail Gorbachev announced the termination of his activities as President of the USSR.
After his retirement, Gorbachev created the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Science Research (Gorbachev Foundation) on the basis of former research institutes under the Central Committee of the CPSU, which he headed as president in January 1992.
Mikhail Gorbachev put forward his candidacy for the presidential election of Russia in 1996. He was awarded more than 300 state and public awards, was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1990). He has published several dozen books.
Mikhail Gorbachev still has an apartment in Moscow and dacha in the Moscow region. In February 2017, the family of the former President of the USSR put up for sale a mansion at the Tegernsee in Germany. The total area of three – storey villa with 17 rooms Hubertus – Schloessl (“Hubertus-Schloessl”) is equal to 2600 square meters with living area – 600 square meters. It was estimated at 7 million euro.
The mass media reports that Mikhail Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery, in the ancestral burial site next to his wife.
This year, on May 10, the first President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, who died at the age of 89, died.
Before that, on May 4, the first head of independent Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich died in Minsk at the age of 87.
