On 11 March 1985, following the demise of the ailing Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, marking the advent of a transformative chapter in Soviet history.
At 54, Gorbachev was the youngest leader since Stalin, bringing with him a vision of reform that sought to revitalise the stagnating Soviet economy and loosen the iron grip of state control.
His policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) would, in time, redefine the political landscape, not just within the USSR but across the world, hastening the end of the Cold War and inadvertently setting the stage for the Soviet Union’s eventual dissolution.
