00:14If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today.
00:20Mikhail Gorbachev was General Secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party from 1985 to 1991.
00:32He was also the first democratically elected president in 1990.
00:37He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his leadership role in ending the Cold War and promoting peaceful international relations.
00:47Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, to a Russian-Ukrainian family in the village of Prevolnoia in southern Russia.
00:58Gorbachev's parents were peasants. His father Sergei operated a combined harvester for a living.
01:05He passed on his experience to his young son Mikhail.
01:09Gorbachev steadily rose through the ranks of the Communist League.
01:14In 1956, he was made First Secretary of the Stavropol City Councilor Committee.
01:20In 1961, he was appointed as a delegate to the Party Congress.
01:25Throughout the 1960s, Gorbachev continued to advance his political position and increase his knowledge of agriculture and economics,
01:36eventually becoming the regional agricultural administrator and party leader.
01:41In 1980, Gorbachev made a critical advancement in his burgeoning political career, when he became a full member of the Politburo.
01:52In 1984, Gorbachev's mentor at the Kremlin, Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party died.
02:01An important year in Gorbachev's timeline, 1984 was also when he first met Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain, with whom he would develop a strong relationship.
02:14In 1985, when Andropov's successor Konstantin Chernenko also died, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party.
02:24Gorbachev inherited the issues that Andropov and Chernenko had been struggling to tackle, including serious domestic problems and escalating Cold War tensions.
02:37During his term as General Secretary, Gorbachev was engaged with US President Ronald Reagan in a costly race to amass nuclear weapons in space.
02:47The expense put further stress on the already suffering Soviet economy.
02:53Gorbachev worked diligently to create reforms that he believed would improve the Soviet standard of living.
03:01Unfortunately, US-Soviet relations took a major hit when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986.
03:13The Soviet Union failed to release a full report until more than two weeks after the event.
03:20In light of Gorbachev's policy of openness, some considered his reaction hypocritical.
03:26Included among Gorbachev's key political reforms was a new, more democratic election system.
03:33In 1989 he organized elections that required Communist Party members to run against non-party members.
03:42He revoked the Communist Party's special status as set forth in the USSR's constitution.
03:50State power was handed over to the Congress of People's Duties of the USSR, the Soviet Union's first parliament based on democratic elections.
04:00On March 15, 1990, the Congress of People's Duties elected Gorbachev the first president of the Soviet Union.
04:10During his presidency, Gorbachev promoted more peaceful international relations.
04:15He ordered Soviet troops to withdraw from Afghanistan.
04:20Through his peaceful negotiations with President Reagan, Gorbachev was also instrumental in ending the Cold War.
04:29He is likewise credited for his crucial role in the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of Germany.
04:39For his excellent leadership and his contributions to the overall betterment of world development,
04:46Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 15, 1990.
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