Mikhail Gorbachev

At the age of 54, in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev took over the position as USSR President from Leonid Brezhnev. Gorbachev was very aware of the many problems that the USSR faced at the time of his Presidency. In April of 1986, a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded and sent 300 times the usual amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. Unlike the rest of the Soviet leadership, Gorbachev did not use propaganda to cover up this accident. Instead, he went on Soviet national television, seventeen days after the accident, and gave the public the truth and the facts about what had happened. Gorbachev also believed that to help the Soviet Union they needed international relations and peace. He abandoned the anti-Western thoughts of former Soviet leaders in order to integrate the USSR into main currents of modern life. Gorbachev gave the Soviet Union and the world two slogans. Perestroika which means restructuring and Glasnost which means openness. With these he hoped to bring the Soviet Union a democracy. This however was not the case. Over time some of the laws he set into place and the economic situation of the USSR led to its collapse.