{"id":182293,"date":"2022-08-31T00:24:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T21:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/?p=182293"},"modified":"2022-08-31T00:24:37","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T21:24:37","slug":"former-soviet-leader-mikhail-gorbachev-has-died-aged-91","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/former-soviet-leader-mikhail-gorbachev-has-died-aged-91\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has died aged 91"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-182294\" src=\"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/15a5befdb1beecfb9f2f1faa94913e17.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"862\" height=\"575\" srcset=\"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/15a5befdb1beecfb9f2f1faa94913e17.webp 862w, http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/15a5befdb1beecfb9f2f1faa94913e17-300x200.webp 300w, http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/15a5befdb1beecfb9f2f1faa94913e17-768x512.webp 768w, http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/15a5befdb1beecfb9f2f1faa94913e17-696x464.webp 696w, http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/15a5befdb1beecfb9f2f1faa94913e17-630x420.webp 630w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 862px) 100vw, 862px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, Russian news agencies cited hospital officials as saying.<\/p>\n<p>Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the\u00a0Iron Curtain\u00a0that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany.<\/p>\n<p>When pro-democracy protests swept across the\u00a0Soviet bloc\u00a0nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force \u2014 unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.<\/p>\n<p>But the protests fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in chaotic fashion.<\/p>\n<p>Gorbachev struggled in vain to prevent that collapse.<\/p>\n<p>On becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, aged just 54, he had set out to revitalise the system by introducing limited political and economic freedoms, but his reforms spun out of control.<\/p>\n<p>His policy of &#8216;glasnost&#8217; \u2014\u00a0free speech \u2014\u00a0allowed previously unthinkable criticism of the party and the state, but also emboldened nationalists who began to press for independence in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Many Russians never forgave Gorbachev for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed, considering the subsequent plunge in their living standards too high a price to pay for democracy.<\/p>\n<p>After visiting Gorbachev in hospital on June 30, liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg told the armed forces news outlet Zvezda: &#8220;He gave us all freedom \u2014\u00a0but we don&#8217;t know what to do with it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>(REUTERS)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, Russian news agencies cited hospital officials as saying. Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182293"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182295,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182293\/revisions\/182295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}