Who Was Mikhail Gorbachev?

Who Was Mikhail Gorbachev? Today marks the 95th birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev, who was born on 2 March 1931, and unfortunately passed on 30 August 2022. Mikhail Gorbachev was a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991. He was best known for implementing the policies of “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring), which were aimed at reforming the socialist system in the Soviet Union and ultimately contributed to the end of the Cold War. The first question for this piece was to ask, “Who was Mikhail Gorbachev?” Was Mikhail Gorbachev really a Communist or it was by default or design that he found himself being a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)? Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on 3 March 1931 in the village of Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai. Gorbachev’s Ukrainian mother, Maria Panteleyevna, was a devout Orthodox Christian and had her baby, initially named Viktor, secretly christened ‘Mikhail’. During the early 1930s, the then leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, initiated an intense policy of systematic socialisation. Part of implementing Stalin’s vision was rapid industrialisation, collectivisation of farming and rooting out “class enemies”. The result of Stalin’s policies was widespread famine in the Ukraine between 1931 and 1933, in which Gorbachev’s paternal uncles and aunt died