Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the final president of the communist country, has died at age 91, according to a hospital in a statement Tuesday.
“Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow confirmed, reported the Interfax, TASS, and RIA Novosti news agencies.
Other circumstances surrounding his death have not yet been revealed. The nature of the illness was not disclosed.
Gorbachev spent decades working up the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party, becoming the country’s leader in 1985 when he was selected as the party’s general secretary.
His policy of “glasnost,” or free speech, allowed previously unthinkable criticism of the party and the state, but also emboldened nationalists who began to press for independence in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and elsewhere….