Who was Mikhail Gorbachev?

Who was Mikhail Gorbachev? (according to Soviet TV) - 1985

Mikhail Gorbachev, born in 1931 in the village of Privolnoe, in the Stavropol Krai, studied law at Moscow's Lomonosov University (MGU) from 1950 to 1955. After law school, he was dedicated to Party and Komsomol activities in Krai of Stavropol, to which he returns and was elected a delegate to the XXII Party Congress (being also elected to the XXIV and all subsequent ones). In 1968 he receives the post of second secretary of that Krai and in 1970 he is elected its first secretary and, at the same time, deputy of the Supreme Soviet. A year later he also became a member of the Central Committee of that Soviet. In 1978 he was elected Central Committee secretary, two years later as a member of the Politburo and, in 1985, as general secretary, a position with which he initiated a series of profound reforms in Soviet society through Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (transparency in politics).

Although necessary, given the decrease in the growth rates of the Soviet economy, based mainly on extensive investment in capital goods and infrastructure (easier to coordinate centrally), Perestroika is criticized for not having created a functional alternative to the problem of the planned economy in the USSR, in addition to having loosened the previous system. On the other hand, it is possible to recognize Gorbachev's intention to dynamize that planned economy through the reduction of military expenditures and the attempt to reduce the indiscipline and the power of the nomenklatura.

The creation of the post of president of the RSFS of Russia in 1990, to which Boris Yeltsin was elected, gave great power to that Republic and resulted in the existence of a strong opposition that ended up emptying the previous Soviet power. Although thinking about reforms to socialism and greater representation of the Soviet parliamentary system, Gorbachev paved the way for the end of the Soviet Union and real socialism.

It should also be noted that Gorbachev was responsible for a peaceful period in world history, criticized for being dominated by a single power, the USA, but which today is seriously threatened by Ukraine's proximity to "Western" power and, mainly, by the recent of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin.

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