The Latest Breaking News from Soviet Union

The last leader of the Soviet Union, who has died at 91, enjoyed an unusual second act as a spokesperson for Western brands. Kevin E G Perry looks back at how Mikhail Gorbachev came to embody the triumph of capitalism

Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, was revered in West but criticised by many Russians for overseeing end of USSR.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, hospital officials in Moscow said.

Euphoria. There is no better word to describe my feelings, the feelings of many in the Soviet intelligentsia, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and started the reforms that the world came to know as perestroika and glasnost. It was the euphoria of liberation, freedom, hope.

In power less than seven years, Gorbachev unleashed breathtaking changes that overtook him and resulted in the collapse of the authoritarian Soviet state, the freeing of Eastern European nations from Russian domination and the end of decades of East-West nuclear confrontation.

‘An epoch in world history came to an end directly as a result of his actions’

Here is a timeline of some key events over the nearly seven years that Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday at age 91, held power in the Soviet Union.

Lauded in the West as the man who helped bring down the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War without bloodshed, Mikhail Gorbachev was widely despised at home as the gravedigger of the communist Soviet Union.

Gorbachev died after ‘a serious and long illness’, say hospital officials in Moscow