Images Of Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
(Russian: Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв, pronounced [mʲɪxɐˈil
sʲɪrˈɡʲeɪvʲɪtɕ ɡərbɐˈtɕof] ; born 2 March 1931) was the
second-to-last General Secretary of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until 1991, and
the last head of state of the USSR, serving from 1988
until its collapse in 1991. He was the only Soviet
leader to have been born after the October Revolution of
1917.
Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai into a peasant
family, and in his teens operated combine harvesters on
collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State
University in 1955 with a degree in law. While in
college, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, and soon became very active within it. In 1970,
he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the
Stavropol Kraikom, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet
in 1974, and appointed a member of Politburo in 1979.
After the deaths, within three years, of Soviet Leaders
Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko,
Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by Politburo in
1985. Already before he reached the post, he had
occasionally been mentioned in western newspapers as a
likely next leader and a man of the younger generation
at the top level.
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