He had been one of the architects of the end of the Cold War.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, has died at the age of 91.
"Today in the evening (Tuesday), after a long serious illness, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev died," said the Central Clinical Hospital (TSKB) dependent on the Russian presidency.
His name was back in the news in March 2021. He had just celebrated his 90th birthday.
In a world turned upside down by the health crisis, he had to resolve to celebrate them in quarantine, alongside his family and loved ones.
Gorbachev was not experiencing his first global upheaval.
History already made him, even before his death, one of the craftsmen.
The story of this man, involved in the Communist Party from the very beginning of the 1950s, at the age of less than 20,
The son of a World War II veteran, Gorbachev studied law before embarking on a political career.
It was during his studies that the man was spotted by the KGB.
He is a reformer.
When he came to power in 1985, he faced a major challenge: to save the USSR from a major international crisis and a struggling economy.
He defends the promotion of two concepts to respond to these difficulties, which have now entered the history books.
Perestroika, and Glasnost, which can be respectively translated by the notions of reconstruction and transparency.
A revolution, on the scale of the USSR.
Here the market and the transparency of political affairs are officially recognized.
Faithful to this line, the man launched a wave of political and economic reforms aimed at modernizing and democratizing the Soviet Union, which was facing serious crises.
Supporter of a policy of rapprochement with the West, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Gorbachev was a man of peace, able to trade with the eternal American rival.
It was he who, one day in December 1989 in Malta, proclaimed the end of the Cold War alongside US President George Bush.
It was he who worked for freedom of the press and decided to bury the monopoly of the single party.
Between 1990 and 1991, he served as President of the Soviet Union, before finally having to resign on December 25, 1991, which led to the end of the USSR.