Mikhail Gorbachev the last leader of the former Soviet Union died at the age of 91 in the hospital on Tuesday.
He was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
He led to the collapse of the Soviet Union with his overhaul of both political and economic policies.
He introduced the policy of free speech which was also known as glasnost.
This allowed people to freely criticize the Communist party and the state which was unthinkable before.
This emboldened many people in different parts of the Soviet Union who then asked for Independence starting with the Baltic state of Latvia and then Lithuania, Estonia and many others which followed leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He advocated for arms reduction and negotiations with other superpowers, especially with the US and the west in general.
He also partnered with the west to remove the iron curtain which allowed Germany to unification, the iron curtain had divided Europe from world war II until its fall in 1990.
Although he is remembered as a hero in the west with a Nobel peace prize because of his reforms that helped in the desolation of the former Soviet Union which was a pain for the US’s rise to superpower status, he was seen as a traitor in Russia who caused the fall of Soviet Union due to his weakness.