Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born in the North Caucasus in 1931. He worked as a machine operator on a collective farm before studying law at Moscow University and joining the Communist Party in 1952. He became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, President of the USSR in 1990, and resigned, following the August coup, in December 1991. He is now President of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (the Gorbachev Foundation). He lives in Moscow.