Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday in Russia at the age of 91.

Winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the last century’s conflict between East and West, Mikhail Gorbachev has spent the past 20 years on the sidelines of politics, but his voice has been regularly heard worried about new tensions. with Washington, reports AFP.

He has regularly urged the Kremlin and the White House to discuss, meet and reach an agreement on global security and reducing their arsenals, as he did in the 1980s with then US President Ronald Reagan.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the last living leader of the Cold War era, a period whose reverberations are especially strong after current Russian President Vladimir Putin’s large-scale offensive against Ukraine that began on February 24.

Until his death, Mikhail Gorbachev did not speak publicly about this conflict of violence not seen in Europe since World War II, which was condemned in the West as the return of Russian imperialism.

In recent weeks, the Russian mass media mentioned the repeated health problems of the former leader.

Respected abroad, Gorbachev has regularly been praised by people around the world, as happened in March 2021, on his 90th birthday, when US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated him

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Controversial in Russia, respected abroad

In Russia, on the contrary, after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, he remained an ambiguous figure.

Although he was the one who gave freedom of speech a chance, for many he was responsible for the collapse of the superpower and the terrible years of economic shock that followed – humiliation.

During his time in power from 1985 to 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev implemented major democratic reforms, known as “peresudo” (perestroika) and “glasnost” (transparency), which made him extremely popular in the West.

In 1990, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for “a peaceful end to the Cold War.” He was also the man who ordered an end to the disastrous Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan and allowed the fall of the Berlin Wall.

His legacy in Russia / Relations with Kremlin leaders

The years after the collapse of the USSR remain traumatic for many Russians, who were plunged into dire poverty, political chaos and a bloody war in Chechnya.

With the coming to power in 2000 of Vladimir Putin, who declared that he considered the disappearance of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, the state ensured the return of Russian power on the international stage.

For Mikhail Gorbachev, relations with the new owners of the Kremlin were always difficult, whether it was the first Russian president Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999), his mortal enemy, or Vladimir Putin, whom he criticized, but saw in this an opportunity for the stable development of Russia.

After a brief failed attempt to return to politics in the 1990s, Gorbachev devoted himself entirely to educational and humanitarian projects. He was also an early supporter of Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s main opposition newspaper.

Born in southwestern Russia in 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev spent part of the Covid-19 pandemic in a Russian hospital, saying that, like many of his countrymen, he was “tired of everything”.