page_title: Mikhail Gorbachev
section_title: Presidency of the Soviet Union: 1990–1991
hierarchical_section_title: Mikhail Gorbachev / Unraveling of the USSR / Presidency of the Soviet Union: 1990–1991
caption_attribution_description: English: “Mikhail Gorbachev”. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR speaks at the opening of a UN General Assembly meeting. Русский: «Михаил Сергеевич Горбачев». Генеральный секретарь ЦК КПСС, председатель Президиума Верховного Совета СССР Михаил Сергеевич Горбачев выступает с речью перед Генеральной ассамблеей ООН. США, Нью-Йорк
context_page_description: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a Russian and former Soviet politician. The eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, he was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. He was also the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991, serving as the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990, and president of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991. Ideologically, he initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism although by the early 1990s had moved toward social democracy.
  Of mixed Russian and Ukrainian heritage, Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, to a poor peasant family. Growing up under the rule of Joseph Stalin, in his youth he operated combine harvesters on a collective farm before joining the Communist Party, which then governed the Soviet Union as a one-party state according to Marxist-Leninist doctrine. While studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Titarenko in 1953 prior to receiving his law degree in 1955.
context_section_description: In February 1990, both liberalisers and Marxist-Leninist hardliners intensified their attacks on Gorbachev. A liberalizer march took part in Moscow criticizing Communist Party rule, while at a Central Committee meeting, the hardliner Vladimir Brovikov accused Gorbachev of reducing the country to "anarchy" and "ruin" and of pursuing Western approval at the expense of the Soviet Union and the Marxist-Leninist cause. Gorbachev was aware that the Central Committee could still oust him as General Secretary, and so decided to reformulate the role of head of government to a presidency from which they could not remove him. He decided that the presidential election should be held by the Congress of People's Deputies. He chose this over a public vote because he thought the latter would escalate tensions and feared that he might lose it; a spring 1990 poll nevertheless still showed him as the most popular politician in the country.
  In March, the Congress of People's Deputies held the first (and only) Soviet presidential election, in which Gorbachev was the only candidate. He secured 1,329 in favor to 495 against; 313 votes were invalid or absent. He therefore became the first executive President of the Soviet Union. A new 18-member Presidential Council de facto replaced the Politburo. At the same Congress meeting, he presented the idea of repealing Article 6 of the Soviet constitution, which had ratified the Communist Party as the "ruling party" of the Soviet Union. The Congress passed the reform, undermining the de jure nature of the one-party state.
  In the 1990 elections for the Russian Supreme Soviet, the Communist Party faced challengers from an alliance of liberalisers known as "Democratic Russia"; the latter did particularly well in urban centers. Yeltsin was elected the parliament's chair, something Gorbachev was unhappy about. That year, opinion polls showed Yeltsin overtaking Gorbachev as the most popular politician in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev struggled to understand Yeltsin's growing popularity, commenting: "he drinks like a fish... he's inarticulate, he comes up with the devil knows what, he's like a worn-out record." The Russian Supreme Soviet was now out of Gorbachev's control; in June 1990, it declared that in the Russian Republic, its laws took precedence over those of the Soviet central government. Amid a growth in Russian nationalist sentiment, Gorbachev had reluctantly allowed the formation of a Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as a branch of the larger Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev attended its first congress in June, but soon found it dominated by hardliners who opposed his reformist stance.
caption: Gorbachev addressing the United Nations General Assembly in December 1988. During the speech he dramatically announced deep unilateral cuts in Soviet military forces in Eastern Europe.
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