The last leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev has died at the age of 91.

Having come to power in 1981, Gorbachev initiated sweeping political and economic reforms aimed at modernizing and opening up the USSR and the Eastern bloc countries. For this, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.  

In the history of the 20^th century, Gorbachev is the Soviet leader who put an end to the age of communism and the Cold War. Seen as a hero in the West, in his own country Gorbachev is regarded as a controversial figure, the man whose policies brought about the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Here is his own evaluation of those events and of East-West relations as a whole:

“The opening up of the socialist camp was a necessary change,” Gorbachev said in an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio in the late 2010s. “Cooperation should be developed. If everyone wants to dominate, and takes no heed of anyone else, that is not going to work. All such projects end badly. The time when there will be no dividing lines is still far in the future.”

In 2019 Mikhail Gorbachev called for the annihilation of nuclear weapons “to save ourselves and the planet”.

"As long as there exist mass destruction weapons and most of all nuclear weapons, the danger is colossal. All nations must declare that nuclear weapons must be annihilated - to save ourselves and the planet," Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview with the BBC.

For most Bulgarians, Mikhail Gorbachev is the man who brought about the downfall of the Bulgarian Communist Party. “We keep waiting for someone new, the good leader who will make everything all right,” Mikhail Gorbachev said in his interview for the BNR. “You know, the hopes of a new tsar, of a new secretary general (of the communist party – editorial note), or someone else are a thing of the past, gone and forgotten. People should change, and are changing.”