Mikhail Gorbachev was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His reforms, dubbed glasnost and perestroika , were intended to strengthen the Soviet economy and allow more democratic freedoms. He also initiated a policy of rapprochement with the West.

To this day, however, Gorbachev's legacy is disputed because, although he brought democracy and freedom to Russia and ended the Cold War, his reforms also ushered in the fall of the Soviet empire.