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At the age of 54, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected to the general secretariat by Politburo on 11 March 1985. [29] In May 1985, Gorbachev publicly admitted the slowing down of the economic development and inadequate living standards, being the first Soviet leader to do so while also beginning a series of fundamental reforms.
However, the first and only Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, was elected by the democratically elected Congress of People's Deputies. [9] In connection with the dissolution of the Soviet Union national elections for the office of President never took place. To be elected to the office a person must have been a Soviet citizen and older than ...
Gorbachev meeting the Romanian Marxist–Leninist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1985. According to Taubman, Ceaușescu was Gorbachev's "favorite punching bag". [72] On taking power, Gorbachev found some unrest among different national groups within the Soviet Union.
Former Belarus leader Stanislav Shushkevich, the man who broke the news to Mikhail Gorbachev that the Soviet Union was being consigned to history, has died at the age of 87, Belarusian media ...
In May 1989 he visited Beijing and there met its leader Deng Xiaoping; Deng shared Gorbachev's belief in economic reform but rejected calls for democratization. [145] Pro-democracy students had massed in Tiananmen Square during Gorbachev's visit but after he left were massacred by troops. Gorbachev did not condemn the massacre publicly but it ...
Gorbachev's father had joined the Red Army and fought on the frontlines; he was wrongly declared dead during the conflict and fought in the Battle of Kursk before returning to his family, injured. [20] After Germany was defeated, Gorbachev's parents had their second son, Aleksandr, in 1947; he and Mikhail would be their only children. [11]
On 18 October 1991, in the St. George Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace Mikhail Gorbachev and the leaders of eight Union republics (excluding Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan) signed the Treaty on the Economic Community as planned. Ukraine and Moldova said they would sign at a later date.
The following day Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev's former office, [158] though the Russian authorities had taken over the suite two days earlier. The Soviet Armed Forces were placed under the command of the Commonwealth of Independent States , but were eventually subsumed by the newly independent republics, with the bulk becoming the Armed Forces ...