Michael Gorbachev

Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 unt

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV served as leader of the Soviet Union from 1985-1991. He is world-renowned and admired for streamlining and decentralizing the oppressive system he inherited. In an effort to secure relations with the West, Gorbachev signed two broad disarmament pacts, and ended Communist rule in Eastern Europe. He taught the world two new words: perestroika (governmental restructuring) and glasnost (political openness). As a result of his extraordinary achievements, Gorbachev was the recipient of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, the Orders of Lenin, the Red Banner of Labor, and the Badge of Honor.In 1992, Gorbachev became President of the Gorbachev Foundation, known as the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies. The Gorbachev Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation. Its purpose is to articulate and address the challenges of the post Cold War world, through the revisioning of global priorities. The Foundation has made financial contributions to various medical, cultural and athletic causes, provided humanitarian aid to the children of Chechnya, and has selected the treatment of childhood leukemia in Russia as its priority charity project.In 1993, Gorbachev founded the environmental organization, Green Cross International. This is a non-governmental group with chapters in the United States, Russia, The Netherlands, Japan, and Switzerland. Green Cross International is a three-pronged program with a mission to clean up military toxins, assist in the creati on of global ecological law, and foster a value shift on the environment.Source: redcross.ca