Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

While Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union he launched several initiatives that helped improve the East-West relations. He also helped reformed the Soviet Union politically and economically. Gorbachev was born into a peasant family and he studied law at Moscow University. Gorbachev became an active member of the Communist Party while still at the university. He was soon an official of Komsomol, the communist youth league, in Stavropol.

Gorbachev made a name for himself boosting agricultural output and came to the attention of Mikhail Suslov, the head of party ideology under Leonid Brezhnex, and KGB chief Yuri Andropov. Gorbachev and Andropov remained close for some time, and when Andropov died in 1984, Gorbachev seemed to be the likely heir. But the party's old guard, who feared the purges that Gorbachev and Adropov encouraged, elected Konstantin Chernenko as general secretary. In order to appease Gorbachev, he was given a powerful role in the part ideologue.

Gorbachev then decided to sway the international opinion. When visiting Britain Margaret Thatcher said of Gorbachev. "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together". Following the death of Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected secretary of the party on March 11, 1985. Gorbachev's foreign and domestic policies were equated with the terms perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (political and social openness). Both of these were centered upon the rebuilding of the Soviet economy.

Gorbachev and Reagan met five times. No other leaders of the two nations had ever met more than this. At the second meeting (October of 1986) between the two, Gorbachev persuaded Reagan into eliminating all ballistic and nuclear bombs within 10 years. These two leaders did not meet again until December of 1987. This visit was a triumph for Gorbachev, who won the American popularity by stopping the Soivet motorcade, ignoring security, and plunged into the crowd and proclaimed in English "Hello, I'm glad to be in America." Gorbachev visited the United States in December of '88 where he vowed to cut Soviet armed forces by 20% by 1991.

During the Bush administration, President George Bush asked to meet with Gorbachev during the Persian Gulf Crisis to show Iraq that the two superpowers were against their invasion of Kuwait. The next time the two men meet was at the Conference on Security Cooperation in Europe. The CSCE limited the deployment of nonnuclear arms on the continent. The CSCE summit was hailed as the formal end of the Cold War.