MOSCOW (AP) — Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, waged a losing battle to salvage a crumbling empire but produced extraordinary reforms that led to the end of the Cold War, has died at 91, Russian media reported Tuesday.
News organizations quoted a statement from the Central Clinical Hospital saying he died after a long illness. The statement gave no other details.
Though in power for less than seven years, Gorbachev unleashed a breathtaking series of changes. But they quickly overtook him and resulted in the collapse of the authoritarian Soviet state, the freeing of Eastern European nations from Russian domination and the end of decades of East-West nuclear confrontation.
His decline was humiliating. His power hopelessly sapped by an attempted coup against him in August 1991, he spent his last months in the office watching republic after republic declare independence until he resigned on Dec. 25, 1991. The Soviet Union wrote itself into oblivion a day later.
A quarter-century after the collapse, Gorbachev told The Associated Press that he had not considered using widespread force to keep the USSR together because he feared chaos in a nuclear country.
“The country was loaded to the brim with weapons. And it would have immediately pushed the country into a civil war,” Gorbachev said.
Many of the changes, including the Soviet breakup, bore no resemblance to the transformation that Gorbachev had envisioned when he became the Soviet leader in March 1985.
By the end of his rule, he was powerless to halt the whirlwind he had sown. Yet Gorbachev may have had a greater impact on the second half of the 20th century than any other political figure.
“I see myself as a man who started the reforms necessary for the country, Europe and the world,” Gorbachev told The AP in a 1992 interview shortly after leaving office.
“I am often asked, would I have started it all again if I had to repeat it? Yes, indeed. And with more persistence and determination,” he said.
Mikhail Gorbachev won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Cold War and spent his later years collecting accolades and awards from all corners of the world. Yet he was widely despised at home.
Russians blamed him for the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union — a once-fearsome superpower whose territory fractured into 15 separate nations. His former allies deserted him and made him a scapegoat for the country’s troubles.
The official news agency Tass reported that Gorbachev would be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife.
Mikhail Gorbachev bio
Vladimir Isachenkov and Kate de Pury in Moscow contributed.
Jim Heintz, The Associated Press
