Mikhail Gorbachev built his career in the Communist Party and youth organization in the Stavropol region. He became regional first secretary in 1970, moved to Moscow as a Central Committee secretary responsible for agriculture in 1978, and joined the Politburo in 1980. Selected general secretary in March 1985, he inherited economic stagnation, an expensive military rivalry, and a political system resistant to change. He initially sought renewal of socialism rather than the dissolution of the Soviet state.

Gorbachev promoted perestroika, or restructuring, and glasnost, greater openness in public discussion. Economic reforms loosened some central controls without establishing a stable replacement, while reduced censorship exposed past repression and current failures. Political changes introduced competitive elections for the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989. In 1990 he became the Soviet Union's first executive president and supported ending the Communist Party's constitutional monopoly. These policies widened debate but also weakened institutions through which the central government had exercised authority.

His foreign policy reduced confrontation with the West. Negotiations with Ronald Reagan produced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, and Gorbachev declined to use military power to stop the collapse of Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989. He accepted German reunification and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

Within the Soviet Union, shortages, competing reform plans, and nationalist movements intensified the crisis. Violence in several republics and efforts to preserve central control complicated his reforming reputation. Conservative officials attempted a coup in August 1991, placing him under confinement in Crimea. The coup failed, but Boris Yeltsin and the republics gained power at his expense. Gorbachev resigned on December 25 as the Soviet Union ceased to exist. He later founded organizations devoted to political discussion and environmental causes, published books, and unsuccessfully contested the Russian presidency in 1996. He died in 2022. His career is assessed differently by those who emphasize political freedom and peaceful international change and those who associate his leadership with economic insecurity and the loss of a state. His central achievement and dilemma lay in initiating reforms whose consequences exceeded his intended control.