Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, (; ; born 2 March 1931) is a former Soviet statesman. He was the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. He was the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991 (titled as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, as Chairman of the from 1989 to 1990, and as Soviet Union]] from 1990 to 1991).

Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai in 1931 into a peasant UkrainianRussian family, and in his teens, operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law. While he was at the university, he joined the Communist Party, and soon became very active within it. In 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and appointed a candidate member of the Politburo in 1979. Within three years of the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, following the brief "interregna" of Andropov and Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected general secretary by the Politburo in 1985. Before he reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in Western newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger generation at the top level.

Answer this series of questions:

1. Who was head of state in the Soviet Union in 1990?
2. What year was he born?
3. Where?
4. Was his family wealthy?
5. What kind of work did they do?
6. Where did he join the Communist Party?
7. Which university?
8. What did he study there?
9. When did he graduate?
10. When was he elected general secretary by Politburo?
1. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
2. 1931
3. Stavropol Krai
4. No
5. Peasants
6. university
7. Moscow State University
8. law
9. 1955
10. 1985