Gorbachev, Mikhail

(1931- ) Soviet leader. A communist bureaucrat in his native northern Caucasus, he entered the Politburo in 1979, becoming general secretary of the Communist Party and Soviet leader on 11 March 1985. He met American president Ronald Reagan in summits at Geneva, Reykjavik and, in December 1987, Washington, where an agreement for the elimination of medium and short-range nuclear weapons was signed - significant progress towards ending the Cold War. His radical policies for the Soviet Union, perestroika ('restructuring') and glasnost ('openness'), led to demands for greater freedom, and in 1989-90 the eastern European countries overthrew their communist governments. Increasingly unpopular because of price rises and food shortages during liberalization of the economy, his position was fatally undermined by a coup by hard-line communists in August 1991 and by the prominent role played by Russian president Boris Yeltsin in suppressing it. The republics of the Soviet Union seceded to form the Commonwealth of Independent States. With Gorbachev's resignation on 25 December 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved.