WASHINGTON, August 31. /TASS/. The first and only president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, was a rare leader who had the courage to risk his career to achieve ‘a different future’, US President Joe Biden said in a written statement issued on Wednesday.
Speaking of glasnost and perestroika, the American leader said that "These were the acts of a rare leader - one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it. The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people." He also called Gorbachev "a man of remarkable vision."
According to the American president, at the time, "Few high-level Soviet officials had the courage to admit that things needed to change". "As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I saw him do that and more. As leader of the USSR, he worked with [US President Ronald] Reagan to reduce our two countries’ nuclear arsenals, to the relief of people worldwide praying for an end to the nuclear arms race. After decades of brutal political repression, he embraced democratic reforms," Biden said. The president pointed out that he believed that the first and only president of the Soviet Union "believed in glasnost and perestroika - openness and restructuring - not as mere slogans, but as the path forward for the people of the Soviet Union after so many years of isolation and deprivation".
Biden also said when he served as US vice president in 2009, he discussed with Gorbachev "our countries’ ongoing work to reduce US and Russian nuclear stockpiles." "It was easy to see why so many worldwide held him in such high esteem. We send our deepest condolences to his family and friends, and to people everywhere who benefited from his belief in a better world," the head of state concluded.
Gorbachev’s biography
The USSR's first and only president passed away on August 30 at the age of 91. He held the highest state office for six years. The politician proclaimed a new course almost immediately after his appointment as Secretary General of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in 1985, then he headed the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Gorbachev proposed to establish the post of president and abolished the article of the Constitution on the leading role of the party. The Russian words of his invention, ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’, entered many languages at the time.
Gorbachev resigned as the President of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. The USSR ceased to exist at the same time. Interestingly, there is still no record in his employment record book, which is kept in the Gorbachev Foundation, that he is no longer the head of state.
On October 11 to 12, 1986, Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan met in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik. The meeting became one of the most important stages in the Soviet-American negotiation process on strategic offensive weapons (START).