Reformist leader ended Cold War but oversaw the disintegration of his country

As the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev waged a losing battle to salvage the crumbling empire but produced extraordinary reforms that led to the end of the Cold War.

Though in power less than seven years, Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, unleashed a breathtaking series of changes. But they quickly 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.

His decline was humiliating. His power hopelessly sapped by an attempted coup against him in

August 1991, he spent his last months in office watching republic after republic declare independence until he resigned on

Christmas Day, 1991. The Soviet Union wrote itself into oblivion a day later.

A quarter of a century after the collapse, Gorbachev told the Associated Press that he had not considered using widespread force to try to keep the USSR together because he feared chaos in the nuclear country. ‘‘The country was loaded to the brim with weapons. And it would have immediately pushed the country into a civil war,’’ he said.

Many of the changes, including the Soviet breakup, bore no resemblance to the transformation that Gorbachev had envisioned when he became leader in March 1985. By the end of his rule he was powerless to halt the whirlwind he had sown. Yet Gorbachev may have had a greater impact on the second half of the 20th century than any other political figure.

‘‘I see myself as a man who started the reforms that were necessary for the country and for Europe and the world,’’ Gorbachev said in 1992 shortly after he left office. ‘‘I am often asked, would I have started it all again if I had to repeat it? Yes, indeed. And with more persistence and determination.’’

Gorbachev won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Cold War and spent his later years collecting accolades and awards from all corners of the world. Yet he was widely despised at home.

Russians blamed him for the implosion of the Soviet Union, whose territory fractured into 15 separate nations. His former allies deserted him and made him a scapegoat for the country’s troubles. His run for president in 1996 was a national joke, and he polled less than 1% of the vote.

In 1997, he resorted to making a TV ad for Pizza Hut to earn money for his charitable foundation. ‘‘In the ad, he should take a pizza, divide it into 15 slices like he divided up our country, and then show how to put it back together again,’’ quipped Anatoly Lukyanov, a one-time Gorbachev supporter.

Gorbachev never set out to dismantle the Soviet system. What he wanted to do was improve it. Soon after taking power, he began a campaign to end his country’s economic and political stagnation, using ‘‘glasnost’’, or openness, to help achieve his goal of ‘‘perestroika’’, or restructuring.

Once he began, one move led to another: he freed political prisoners, allowed open debate and multi-candidate elections, gave his countrymen freedom to travel, halted religious oppression, reduced nuclear arsenals, established closer ties with the West and did not resist the fall of Communist regimes in Eastern European satellite states.

But the forces he unleashed quickly escaped his control. Long-suppressed ethnic tensions flared, sparking wars and unrest in trouble spots such as the southern Caucasus. Strikes and labour unrest followed price increases and shortages of consumer goods.

Competitive elections produced a new crop of populist politicians who challenged Gorbachev’s policies and authority. Chief among them was his former protege and eventual nemesis, Boris Yeltsin, who became Russia’s first president.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born in the village of Privolnoye in southern Russia. Both his grandfathers were peasants, collective farm chairmen and members of the Communist Party, as was his father.

Despite these party credentials, the family did not emerge unscathed from the terror unleashed by Josef Stalin: both grandfathers were arrested and imprisoned for allegedly anti-soviet activities.

But, rare in that period, both were eventually freed. In 1941, when Gorbachev was 10, his father went off to war, along with most of the other men from Privolnoye. The Nazis occupied Privolnoye for five months.

When the war was over, young Gorbachev was one of the few village boys whose father returned. By age 15, he was helping his father drive a combine harvester after school and during the region’s blistering summers.

His performance earned him the order of the Red Banner of Labour, an unusual distinction for a 17-year-old. That prize and the party background of his parents helped him land admission in 1950 to the country’s top university, Moscow State.

There, he met his wife, Raisa Maximovna Titorenko, and joined the Communist Party. His early career coincided with the ‘‘thaw’’ begun by Nikita Khrushchev. He was a true, if unorthodox, believer in socialism and became a full Politburo member in 1980.

Along the way he was able to travel to the West, which shook his belief in the superiority of Soviet-style socialism. ‘‘The question haunted me: Why was the standard of living in our country lower than in other developed countries?’’ he recalled in his memoirs. ‘‘It seemed that our aged leaders were not especially worried about our undeniably lower living standards, our unsatisfactory way of life, and our falling behind in the field of advanced technologies.’’

In March 1985, when his mentor Konstantin Chernenko died, the party finally chose a younger man to lead the country: Gorbachev was 54. He began a series of attention-grabbing summit meetings with world leaders, especially US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. After a parade of stodgy leaders in the Kremlin, Western leaders swooned over the charming, vigorous Gorbachev and his stylish, brainy wife. But perceptions were different at home: many Russians found Raisa Gorbachev showy and arrogant.

Raisa died of leukaemia in 1999. The couple had a daughter, Irina, and two granddaughters. Russia’s official news agency Tass reported that Gorbachev will be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife. – AP