Editorial Board
So Long to Mikhail Gorbachev
The final leader of the Soviet Union failed at most of his ambitions. He also ended the Cold War.
It could've been worse.
Photographer: Bettmann/Getty Images
Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday at 91, defied convention in ways small and large throughout some of the most tumultuous years of the Cold War. He failed in his most basic ambitions. But the world was better for them all the same.
Born to peasants in a rural village that had been ravaged by collectivization, Gorbachev grasped the failures and contradictions of Soviet life more acutely than most. Even so, he assiduously climbed the ladder of Communist officialdom. He impressed his superiors, accrued power and soon found himself in the Politburo.