Labels:text | human face | man | smile | clock | watch | person OCR: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Gorbachev, Mikhail Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 and helped to bring about reforms that changed the political map of Europe. The youngest Soviet leader since Stalin, Gorbachev revolutionized Soviet politics, freed intellectual dissidents, and was a key figure in the ending of the Cold War. When he became the general secretary of the Communist party in 1985, he signaled a new open style (christened "glasnost") after the dour years of Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko. In changing a corrupt, inefficient regime, he engineered political change as well as economic reform, withdrawing from Eastern Europe and making the Soviet states genuine democratic bodies. Though a skillful diplomat and popular in the Mikhail Gorbachev, West, rising nationalism and a disintegrating Soviet politician, 1931 - economy at home led to a collapse in his authority. There was an abortive coup by the old guard in 1991. Four months later, LLLL the U.S.S.R. was formally dissolved and LLL Gorbachev resigned shifting power to the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. CHRONOLOGY
