The last leader of the Soviet Union and general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party between 1985 and 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, died this Tuesday at the age of 91, after a “severe and long illness”, advances the TASS agency, citing a source from the Central Health Clinic. Moscow.

Gorbachev’s office had said the former head of state was undergoing treatment at the hospital.

According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the great cause of his life was “Perestroika”, a process of change that he promoted in 1985 as leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (USSR) and that led to the end of the Cold War.

The first and last President of the USSR carried out several political and economic reforms, which culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated with the United States the reduction of nuclear weapons and the de-escalation of the tension that had marked the last decades, in addition to withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Unlike the last leaders of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev did not invade countries that were under Soviet orbit, such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, when protests erupted that sought the end of Soviet-style regimes.

In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President, but he never retired from political life.