1994 Grawemeyer Award Recipient in Ideas for Improving World Order, Mikhail Gorbachev passes away

New Delhi: Mikhail Gorbachev, the final Soviet leader, passed away on Tuesday, August 30. He was 91 years old. He had aimed to revitalize the Soviet Union but instead released forces that caused communism to fall, the state to disintegrate, and the Cold War to come to an end. A statement from the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow stated that Gorbachev passed away following a protracted illness. Nothing further was mentioned. US President Joe Biden called Gorbachev a “man of remarkable vision” and a “rare leader” who had the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it. “The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people,” Biden said in a statement.

Mikhail Gorbachev was named the winner of the 1994 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He was honored for his December 1988 address at the United Nations, during which he called for international cooperation among nations, through the UN, to achieve a new-world order. “The United Nations embodies, as it were, the interests of different states,” he said. “Fresh opportunities are opening before it in all the spheres within its competence: military, political, economic, scientific and technical, ecological and humanitarian.”

Gorbachev used the speech also to announce major changes in the Soviet Union, including dramatic cuts in its military presence and in its nuclear arsenal.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his efforts to improve cooperation among nations.

Elected general secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, Gorbachev became chairman of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1988. He was elected as the first president of the Soviet Union by the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1990 and resigned in December 1991.